GRSJ224/feminism-in-superhero-movies

Feminism and the movies

Feminism is defined as the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes , and is strong point of debate and controversy in the multimedia industry, particularly with films and movies. Movies play a very strong role in shaping cultural and social opinions of generations through the way characters and storylines are represented, which is what makes this topic such an important area of discussion. In the current generation, young adults and younger children are so heavily immersed in the world of media and online social platforms and are therefore the most highly influenced by this ever-expanding culture. 

Representation

Representation is an important topic when discussing feminism in superhero movies as one can highlight the problems involved such as a lack of representation of certain roles by female actors and also overrepresentation by female actors of stereotypical female characters.

Character Status

Oversexualisation of women in movies has been a long-lasting issue dating back to many years ago. For example, women are often supporting roles for male focussed movies and are often representing characters such as the love interests or spouses of their male counterparts. The way that women are represented in this way creates an unwanted bias towards having women representing anything more integral than these kinds of roles in the cinematic world, and this is especially prominent in the superhero movie subcategory. While the films have established the stories of some of the most beloved superheroes in comic book history, female characters are gravely underrepresented and may be mischaracterized.

A recent study showed that female sci-fi characters and superheroes only appeared as role models for 18 percent of younger girls and 3 percent of the older cohort. Teenage girls who took the survey were significantly less likely than teenage boys to describe themselves as brave, confident, and heard . This is just one examples of the effect of representing women in background roles in superhero movies and how it creates feelings such as lack of confidence in young women. This will make it harder for them to follow their dreams because they accept that it will be too difficult to achieve, or they might be fearful of discrimination. (2)

Body Image

To start I will mention that when researching the representation of body image in superhero movies, when I searched online, the first page of search finds were all articles on male body image and not a single one was on how women’s bodies are represented. This further accentuates the problem with predominately male focussed representation in superhero movies, not only in the films themselves but also in critiques and papers written around the subject. In general, female representation of body image in superhero movies is centred around lots of tight clothing, mostly revealing, and also accentuating parts of their bodies such as the breast areas. This can cause problems by may lowering women’s body esteem, heighten the value they place on body image, and result in less egalitarian gender role beliefs and expectations. For example, the character Mystique from the X-Men series, played by Jennifer Lawrence, shows a representation of a female body, showing a very sexualised figure with unrealistic hourglass dimensions. This also shows how superhero movies not only sexualise female superheroes but also female superheroines as well. There is also a large lacking representation of the plus sized female community in superhero movies.

Although other industries such as fashion and modelling are slowly making progress to increase involvement of plus sized figures and increase their representation in these fields, the superhero cinematic universe is yet to catch onto this wave. Only just last year (2018) has there been talk of a potential superhero movie about a plus sized female by the name of Faith, however it is still in discussion with no alleged release date confirmed. This shows how again the world of superhero movies forces a stereotypical subtype of human for young people to look up to and so definitely impacts young girls’ ideas of strength and beauty in real life. 

Evolution of Women in Superhero Movies

Early Stages (Pre 2000's)

Here there is a lot of focus on women being in the background of male centred superhero movies. The female characters were often depicted as damsels in distress or the housewives of the superhero characters and they also often when/if they were to converse in the movie, would have conversations based around the other male characters in the movies. Therefore, the problem arose that none of these women actually have stories of their own, they all revolve around men.) This misrepresentative style was particularly prominent from the mid 30’s to the early 60’s but still continued to show all the way through to the late 90’s and also early 2000’s

Current Representation (Post 2000's)

As previously discussed, over many years there has been a huge misrepresentation of female characters in superhero movies and only in very recent times have women started to get the representation that they deserve. This change was made on June 2, when DC/Warner Bros. releases “Wonder Woman,” with Gal Gadot playing the titular character. It is arguable that the creation of a female superhero lead is what has burst the bubble of male only superhero films and this is clearly represented by the creation of Captain Marvel in 2019 and also talk of creation of a Black Widow film to come out in 2020.

However, even with the increase in female representation in superhero movies, there are still issues with equality that are being called into question. A study was done that looked in the distribution of different types of powers between men and women in the superhero cinematic universe. The data suggest that less-physical powers — such as empathy, intellect, and telepathy — tend to be more represented among female characters. Men however, often have highly physical powers, as well as those that involve gadgets . Female superpowers showed to be much more common in areas to do with emotions, sounds, hormones etc. for example pheromone control, or sonic screaming. This further shows how even though, a gap has been bridged and representation of female superheroes in movies has increased greatly (especially in the recent 5 to 10 years) that there is still clear signs of inequality in the types of representation shown between female and male superheroes.