Be Your Own Hero

But don't forget to show others the way.

Create reflections of what you wish you could've seen growing up.

I just finished Miss Representation; amazingly wonderful.  This is a documentary that I think is important to check out and to find others like it and to create others like it.  (Extra plus to me, it's incredibly well-made)  Pointing ou issues of internalized misogyny and media bias are incredibly important to me.  I also, believe that the main way to fight against this is to point it out and make as many people aware of it as possible.  This documentary does this and for that I am incredibly thankful.

A couple others I'm planning to check out soon: Killing Us Softly, Tough Guise, and Spin the Bottle

I do have one problem with it that I would like to point out, because it worries me that the solution presented in the film will become what people latch onto and fight for.  The solution presented is that because of many studies linking current criminal/violent behavior to media being unregulated, in order to fight against gender/racial bias, we need to first put in place regulations on said media.  As a filmmaker and as someone who finds film censorship(regulation) interesting, I have read quite a bit on the subject of film and television censorship.  I am aware that the publication that I have read are most likely biased against censorship for obvious reasons.  However, I am also hyper-aware of the fact that we do have some regulations and barriers put in place today, which in general are partially controlled by media companies that answer to advertisers and so on.  These regulations, specifically the MPAA and FCC are already biased with their regulatory decisions towards women and sexuality, not necessarily the sexualization of a character.  I truly believe that if the government were to officially say that they are going to regulate the media, that we would end up with worse media that is further biased towards women/race/sexuality than we currently have.

For reference, watch This Film Is Not Yet Rated (a not-as-well-made documentary, but entirely valid study of media's route of 'voluntary' censorship), The Celluloid Closet (amazing documentary of homosexuality portrayed in media before the 90s), "Indie Sex" (a three-part study of the sexual bias of gender and sexuality in media), and read The Face on the Cutting Room Floor (an older book on the regulations implemented before the MPAA).  There are probably plenty of other reference material, especially reading-wise, I just recently finished The Face on the Cutting Room Floor so it is fresh in my mind.

Comments

[andrew]

That's a good video.

One problem I have with it is getting someone like Rice involved, a woman who participated in one of the biggest, most violent setbacks in the modern era for women: the Afghanistan and Iraqi invasions. Women and children are the primary victims of war, especially when those wars happen against a country (Iraq) that is in large part a much more progressive area for women than many of its neighbors (Iraq for example had an extensive assistance program for poor mothers, providing food and diapers for free. Compare this to American allies in the region, like Bahrain or Saudi Arabia, or Israel, who's soldiers brag about murdering pregnant Arab women. And let's not forget the Taliban was on the US pay-roll until 9/11).

I appreciate your point on censorship. I would not want the US ruling class involved in media organization at all. Their interests are contrary to ours as working people, especially working women and anyone who challenges the heteronormative, misogynist power structure.

That being said, it will take proactive regulations like banning racist, sexist portrayals in media and replacing them with positive, realistic ones. We will have to go our of our way as a society to do this, and it will require the media to be in the democratic control of poor and working people exclusively.

I used to not think that way, but I've come to realize "class war" is not just empty rhetoric. Just as the Allies in WW2 did not hesitate to bomb a Nazi radio station, we should not hesitate to protect ourselves, friends, and family from the propaganda which leads directly to violence against women and other minorities. Just as an enemy radio broadcast is designed to bolster the morale of its fighting for and demoralize their enemies, a misogynistic music video or TV show bolsters in the realist of ways physical violence and the maintenance of gender, race, and class power structures.

[Sara Bonar]

I was thinking this over in my head last night and I came to a slightly different conclusion. While I do not condone censorship in anyway, there is a certain reality to the fact that while we have more information than we know what to do with available to us in this current day and age, we may not be using all this information productively. I watched a video of a girl reviewing the idea of "thinspo" and "thinspiration" posts on tumblr and pinterest. I had been aware of these through articles I had read of women fighting with these websites to flag them as inappropriate and harmful so that they would be taken down immediately. With my thoughts and agreement with these actions, I realized that I was in fact agreeing with a regulation on internet posts. I've also been in agreement with taking down rape pages on facebook and the harsh slutshaming pages that have recently become popular, because of the harm they do to other people. So if I'm to believe anything in Miss Representation, it's that these images of women in media are harmful. However, I do still stand by my statement that enforcing regulation on the media specifically will cause more bias towards gender, race, and sexuality. I have come to the conclusion that who we should be regulating is the advertising companies. They are the one creating these images and selling them based on patterns that they have created to work. They are also the ones who sway media into using the images as reinforcement. It's all one big cycle that begins and ends with ADVERTISEMENTS, which as far as I know are unregulated. I know that when they receive mass amounts of backlash, they will pull ads, but they generally go for the shock first without thinking of the consequences of their ads other than to make money.