Feminism

•           1960s-1970s
•           There were social divisions in society benefit men in terms of work, educational opportunities, wages and access to political and economic power; there is also an emphasis on sexuality and physical appearance in the representation of women.
•           They see media representations as often naturalizing the power imbalance between men and women by emphasizing that a women’s role is a domestic one, as mothers, carers and housewives.
•           Mulvey’s theory states that Hollywood film was the product of a male-dominated and controlled industry and in such texts men controlled the action and were responsible for moving the narrative along, women were presented as passive objects of the male gaze and pleasure in viewing comes from voyeurism, narcissism and scopophilia. It is applied indiscriminately to all media texts and nowadays it has got some limitations.
•           In recently films, like Kill Bill Vol. 1 or Casino Royal, the women are portrayed with a strong role and not passive at all; however the female lead is still played by glamorous actresses, who are actually sexually appealing to men.
•           Gammon and Marshment pointed that in the recent years a number of texts have represented men as objects for the female gaze. They suggest that women viewers are not merely passive but active and discerning and engage critically with media texts by selecting texts that have meaning for them.
•           They stress the importance of the audience’s role in the construction of meaning in media texts and emphasize the range of interpretation that any text offers.