Discuss how women, minorities, and LGBTQ people are underrepresented in media. Give examples from film or news that highlight this underrepresentation.
What will be an ideal response?
ANS: Students might focus on the following issues:
Males outnumber females in films, cartoons, and newscasts. Only 30.2% of characters in top-grossing films who have names or speak are female, and less than 25% of leading characters are female. The majority of women characters on television shows are depicted in interpersonal and secondary roles. Behind the scenes, only 1.9% of top-grossing movies are directed by women.
Students may discuss the Bechdel Test and its rules: (1) does the film feature two women (2) who talk to each other (3) about something other than a man? They might think of recent and popular films that fail to pass the Bechdel Test.
News programs rarely present women as authorities. Men make up 75% of sources on major news shows. Even on issues that are considered women’s issues, like birth control and abortion, men are the primary sources. Women make up less than one-third of the sources for stories on women’s rights.
Race compounds this issue. In the 500 top-grossing films between 2007 and 2012, 76.3% of speaking characters were white. Hispanic women were most likely to be shown with little or no clothing and black men were those least likely to be portrayed as fathers or in a committed relationship. Media depict Asians and Asian Americans as silent and exotic (women) or as asexual and subordinate (men).
Top-grossing films from 2007 until 2014 featured only 19 characters who were gay, lesbian, or bisexual; none were trans.
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