Gender, Film, and the Screen Industry Review

Practice flashcards covering gender representation in film, news, advertising, social media, and sports based on lecture notes.

The Bechdel Test

A test used to assess the representation of women in films based on whether at least two women speak to each other about something other than a man.

GMMP 2025 Finding

An industry statistic revealing that only $26\%$ of news sources and subjects are women.

The Gender Digital Skill Gap

A gap caused by gender stereotypes, socialization, and existing masculine newsroom cultures that hinders women's technical role in journalism.

Geek Masculinity

A term used to describe a toxic or exclusionary culture within the digital and data turns of the news industry that can marginalize women.

Human Capital Decay

A potential long-term consequence of the digital gap where women's under-representation leads to a loss of professional expertise and status in the field.

Killing Us Softly 4

A 2010 documentary by Jean Kilbourne that examines how advertising traffics in distorted and destructive ideals of femininity.

Goffman's Theory (1979)

A framework for analyzing gender in advertising including Relative size, Feminine touch, Function ranking, Ritualisation of subordination, and Licensed withdrawal.

Ritualisation of Subordination

A component of Goffman's theory referring to how body positioning in advertisements suggests a lower status or submission.

Licensed Withdrawal

A component of Goffman's theory where women in ads appear psychologically removed, distracted, or not present in the moment.

The Male Gaze

A concept from Laura Mulvey's 1975 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" stating women are portrayed as passive objects of male desire from a heterosexual male perspective.

Psychoanalysis

The theoretical grounding used by Laura Mulvey to explain how film reinforces patriarchal power through Freudian and Lacanian theory.

Male Subjectivity vs. Female Objectivity

The reinforcement of the male character's perspective as the primary experience while treating the female figure as a controlled object.

The Female Gaze

Visual narrative strategies that represent the complexity of female desire or strategies unique to female filmmakers, rather than just a reversal of the male gaze.

Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power

A documentary film by Nina Menkes that investigates the connection between cinematic language and gender inequality.

The List (Brainwashed)

Nina Menkes' five criteria for analyzing gendered cinematic techniques: 1. Subject/Object, 2. Framing, 3. Camera Movement, 4. Lighting, and 5. Narrative Position.

Illusion of Agency

The phenomenon in social media design where users select from many gender categories (e.g., 72 on Facebook), but the backend API still codes them into binary categories for advertisers.

Facebook API Gender Coding

The database classification system where gender is simplified to $1=she$, $2=he$, and $6=themignored$, despite front-end user choices.

Context Collapse

The occurrence on social media where multiple distinct social spheres (family, friends, co-workers) are combined and re-mixed into a single visibility context.

Culturally Exalted

The status given to male sports and athletes as the ideal form of masculinity, body image, and sports performance.

Culturally Undercut

The status of female sports, which, despite being accepted, are often under-represented and focused more on femininity or sexuality than athletic merit.