Narrative Journey

Among the takeaways are that media generally reinforces that masculine traits and behaviors are more valued, that girls should be concerned about appearance and treat themselves as sexual objects "for others' consumption," and that children of color "may be particularly vulnerable" to the impact of media portrayals on gender role development.

The gender roles that television characters act out can actually have a huge affect on how young people view themselves. For example, if a girl grows up watching a large amount of media that features traditional female gender roles such as cooking and cleaning, she’s more likely to believe this is the status quo and follow suit. The same thing rings true for men: if a boy grows up consistently watching shows of a violent or insensitive nature, he’s likely to repeat these behaviors. On Common Sense’s website, a symbol with the phrase “positive gender representations” will appear next to a film or TV show if their reviewers rate it so.

Television is rediscovering the power of the female ensemble, and this time, it’s spreading its wings. Though TV history is dappled with groups of women, from the Golden Girls to Pretty Little Liars, many shows – particularly those box set must-sees that tend to fall under the prestige banner – struggle to pass the Bechdel test. Famously, the Bechdel test is usually applied to movies and runs a film against the following criteria: a) it has to have at least two women in it, b) who talk to each other, about c) something other than a man. A shocking number of productions fail it. Even Sex and the City centered its characters on their love lives, for the most part, and it’s kindest to quickly pass over its forgettable imitator, Lipstick Jungle.

Right now, the real world seems to be out of ideas about how to organise its future – and that’s exactly why women’s fantasy futures feel more necessary than ever. Imagining alternative worlds is a political act, whether you want it to be or not, and for some reason, women and people of colour seem to have a particular facility for building fictional worlds that feel both fresh and feasible

In cinema it is most particularly associated with tilting, impossible sets, high angles and deep shadows. The Italian term chiaroscuro is often used to describe the high-contrast arrangement of light and darkness, but German film critic Lotte Eisner preferred a term from her own language: Helldunkel, which she defined as “a sort of twilight of the German soul, expressing itself in shadowy, enigmatic interiors, or in misty, insubstantial landscapes”.

“Demand for internet video shows no signs of slowing down,” said Phil Stokes, UK head of entertainment and media at PwC. However, he warned against forecasting the death of blockbusters or the big screens where they are shown. “The figures do not signal the death of film. Look at the box office performance of films such as Star Wars: Rogue One or Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them to see the significant amount of enthusiasm for blockbuster movies out there.”

For the first time ever, a video game is eligible for an Academy Award. David OReilly’s Everything has gotten overwhelmingly positive reviews and is, most definitely, a different type of game than most of us are used to. But by winning the Jury Prize for Animation at the Vienna Shorts Festival, it’s now on the Oscar “long list,” a historic accomplishment. To be clear, the game isn’t nominated for an Oscar (yet), but it’s on the list of those “films” that qualify for nomination. It’s a list no other video game or interactive project has ever been on.

Sony’s Clean Version initiative allows home entertainment customers to purchase films that have been edited for broadcast television and in-flight entertainment systems. Under the scheme, “scenes of graphic violence, offensive language, sexual innuendo and other adult content” will be censored or removed from some PG-13 and R-rated movies. So far, “clean versions” of 24 films, including Captain Phillips, Step Brothers and the Spider-Man movies, have been made available to purchase.

La La Land (2016) is a musical full of romance, written and directed by Damien Chazelle. When Chazelle presented his script to Hollywood studios producers, their answer was a resounding “no”, as no other film of the genre had been a success since Chicago won the Best Picture Academy award fourteen years earlier. But Chazelle wouldn’t give up and decided to create Whiplash (2014), another jarring movie with spectacular performances that would surely please the jury of the Academy Awards. With the acclaim and profits obtained from Whiplash, he financed La La Land and proved the world how wrong it was about musicals. La La Land captivated an audience of millions, not only for its plot, but also for its music. Its immense success resulted in 14 Oscar nominations and six awards. Despite its $30 million budget, the film grossed $150 millions in the United States alone. Thus, La La Land managed to please the critics, prove its artistic value, and make money. These are four cornerstones that earned this movie so much success.

Why should we care about music video? Four reasons, I think. The first is its cultural centrality today. It’s one of our most popular forms of moving media. PSY’s “Gangnam Style” has 2 billion hits and Justin Bieber’s “Baby” has 1 billion, numbers approaching a mathematical sublime. It’s also the most viewed content on YouTube, with studies showing that music videos are the most common way for audiences to consume popular music, more than through cds, radio, iTunes, or blogs.[1] Second, its aesthetics have seeped into nearly everything moving and visual, from Transformers and Hunger Games to Bollywood, and television shows like Game of Thrones. Third, it’s a genre with its own conventions, ways of carrying a narrative, eliciting emotions, deploying performers, settings and props, and conveying space and time. I’ve written that YouTube can be thought of as a whoopee cushion, and post-classical cinema as a form that puzzles and pummels the viewer.[2] Music video’s specialty lies in conveying a brief state of bliss. It’s dependent on ephemeralities of color, movement, and sound. Like popular music, music video possesses motifs, rhythms, grain, and fine details that carry weight. It resides somewhere between advertising and art. Fourth, it’s a genre to think with. Music video, as delimited by MTV’s initial launch, is but 35 years old, but it has shape-shifted in response to dramatic technological, aesthetic, institutional, and audience pressures.

Sounds simple, right? Then it might be kinda shocking to find out that out of 2,500 movies, only about half pass the test. And to be clear, passing doesn’t mean the movie’s good or bad. Failing the test doesn’t mean the movie’s evil or anti-woman, or that passing makes it some sort of strongly feminist movie. It’s just to get people thinking about gender and how it’s presented in film. In fact, the example Bechdel gave as a film that passed the test was Alien, simply because Ripley and Lambert have a brief conversation about the alien. (Let’s ignore the fact that the alien was a walking penis-monster, as this was before the Xenomorphs had established sexes – the Queens weren’t introduced until 1986’s Aliens.)

The audience booed the Netflix logo, which appeared before the film started, and it then became clear the film was playing in the wrong aspect ratio.

Starting next year, all films that compete at Cannes are required to have a theatrical release in France, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The statement from the film festival doesn’t refer to Netflix directly, instead citing a “new operator” and “unseen situation until now,” and then emphasizing its own “support to the traditional mode of exhibition of cinema in France and in the world.”

Reflecting on the conversations about Doctor Who and gender that always flare up when the lead actor is leaving, showrunner Steven Moffat recently wrote in Doctor Who Monthly: “Science-fiction is notoriously male. You can tell that because everyone wears uniforms and marches around talking about rules. But Doctor Who has always felt to me rather female. It’s full of kindness and compassion and eccentricity and wisdom instead of violence.” His sentiments chime with the current state of sci-fi on telly, which has shifted its gaze from the male to the female.