Miss Representation
Miss Representation, a documentary by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, explores the limiting portrayal of women in the mass media and its consequences. The documentary begins with the significant fact that young people use the media for over ten hours a day, which is more time than they spend performing any other activity, including sleeping. The media has the power to shape our identities and, as a consequence, the way we represent gender matters.
The media’s representation of women as flawless and perfect is more extreme than ever, computers are used to remove every blemish from every image and give models unnaturally perfect bodies.
Miss Representation also explores the notion that advertising is designed to make people feel inadequate and that this inadequacy is used to sell products. Advertising and the media in general, is saturated with images of impossibly thin and beautiful models because this encourages the purchase of beauty products. These feeling of inadequacies felt by women due to these false images make them far less likely to believe that their voice matters in politics or positions of power, and therefore less likely to run for office or strive to reach levels in professional realms. The documentary also looks at how important it is to see empowering representations of women in the media.
The Assignment
This major term three assignment will be a group project (groups 1-4) compiled into 4 separate parts.
· the first will be a response to the essential questions (and selected study questions)
· the second will be a quote analysis
· the third will be a demonstration of how specific media aimed at children initiate these ideas
· the fourth will be a chance for you to provide an example of something you found that supports the claims made in the film.
The project will be viewed by the class when it is completed but it is not a presentation. I will be highlighting specific aspects of each project and we will go through them as a class.
Part one
- Respond to all the essential questions and then choose three of the study questions to respond to.
Essential Questions
1. What are the different types of media?2. What is the role of the federal government, if any, in regulating the media and the Internet?
3. What impact does the media have on a female’s ability to see herself as a leader and obtain a leadership position?
4. What is the effect of the opening scenes montage that juxtaposes photographs of famous women & objectified women & credits? Is this an effective opening?
The opening scene showed- Susan B. Anthony – Paris Hilton – credits—Eleanor Roosevelt—bimbo shot—Rosa Parks—reality TV show fighters—Shirley Chisholm—Gloria Steinem—Sandra Day O’Connor—Nancy Pelosi—Hillary Clinton--
5. How do these statistics of teenage media consumption compare to you individually? What type of media do you feel is most influential on how you see yourself? Do you believe your media consumption plays a factor in how you treat others? If so how?
· Typical breakdown of the average teenagers media consumption per week-
· 31 hours per week TV
· 17 hours per week music
· 3 hours movie
· 4 hours magazines
· 10 hours online
· 10 hours and 45 minutes of media consumption per day! That’s more than sleep!
Study questions
1. What does Miss Representation suggest about the way women are represented in the media?
2. In terms of representation of women, what is the problem with mainstream Hollywood films?
3. What sort of stereotypes are used to represent female leaders?
4. What does Caroline Heldman argue about representations of women like Lara Croft which, on the surface, may appear empowering?
5. During prime time television, what age group do the majority of female characters belong to? Why do you think this is?
6. What does Jennifer Pozner claim about the representation of women on reality television?
7. Why would advertises want the viewer to feel inadequate?
Assessment-
6.1 go beyond initial response to give more thoughtful interpretations by questioning, connecting, evaluating, and extending
Experiencing difficulty with content and concepts / Developing knowledge of content and concepts / Proficient knowledge and understanding / In-depth knowledge
and
understanding
1
Limited / 2
Developing / 3
Proficient / 4
In-Depth
Degrees of NOT MEETING / Degrees of MEETING
6.2 support personal response to the issues, themes, and situations in texts and give personal examples and evidence from text with increasing sophistication
Experiencing difficulty with content and concepts / Developing knowledge of content and concepts / Proficient knowledge and understanding / In-depth knowledge
and
understanding
1
Limited / 2
Developing / 3
Proficient / 4
In-Depth
Degrees of NOT MEETING / Degrees of MEETING
Part 2
- Choose 2 of the quotes below. Respond to the question attached to each one.
Quotes:
“You can’t be what you can’t see.”
1.
What does this quote suggest about how representations of powerful women are, largely, absent from the mass media? What does this quote mean to you?
2.
Do you believe this double standard is unfair? Why do you think these attitudes about the roles of women still exist?
3.
Why do you think Americans would be surprised by this?
4.
What message do you feel is being delivered when women are being portrayed in this light? How does this support existing stereotypes?
5.
Why? What impact would this change have on the stories being told through Hollywood?
6.
How would this make them feel disempowered? Why would this prevent them from becoming leaders?
7.
Who do you feel is currently, ‘piloting the plane’? How should the media change in order to awaken people?
Assessment-
9.3 understand that ideas can be represented in more than one way and experiment with many forms
Experiencing difficulty with content and concepts / Developing knowledge of content and concepts / Proficient knowledge and understanding / In-depth knowledge
and
understanding
1
Limited / 2
Developing / 3
Proficient / 4
In-Depth
Degrees of NOT MEETING / Degrees of MEETING
8.5 integrate interesting effects in their writing (feelings and thoughts, detail, correct inconsistency, avoid extraneous detail, language choice, vocabulary, and phrasing)
Experiencing difficulty with content and concepts / Developing knowledge of content and concepts / Proficient knowledge and understanding / In-depth knowledge
and
understanding
1
Limited / 2
Developing / 3
Proficient / 4
In-Depth
Degrees of NOT MEETING / Degrees of MEETING
Part Three
In part three you must in some way represent the notion that gender roles, negative stereotypes of women, and unrealistic body images are presented to young boys and girls at a very early age. You have the option to represent this answer any way you want. Some ideas would be a video montage, a collage on a word document, a series of articles that support the idea, a poster, self created memes, etc… The idea is that you are able to show that through toys, young stories, early childhood development cartoons, etc that these created realities for women start very young. Disney characters and stories are a good place to start.
Assessment-
10.3 use various technologies for the purpose of communicating (video, email, word processing, audiotape, Internet)
Experiencing difficulty with content and concepts / Developing knowledge of content and concepts / Proficient knowledge and understanding / In-depth knowledge
and
understanding
1
Limited / 2
Developing / 3
Proficient / 4
In-Depth
Degrees of NOT MEETING / Degrees of MEETING
10.5 collect and combine information from several sources (interview, film, CD, text)
Experiencing difficulty with content and concepts / Developing knowledge of content and concepts / Proficient knowledge and understanding / In-depth knowledge
and
understanding
1
Limited / 2
Developing / 3
Proficient / 4
In-Depth
Degrees of NOT MEETING / Degrees of MEETING
Part Four
False Realities
In this section you are to be creative and do some research. You must find a way to expose the truths through the many lies given by mass media. Photo shop is just one way we are given false truths that women need to be flawless and perfect. You must first do your research to find examples of this practice. Video, articles, images, memes, etc... Then answer the questions below.
1. Why do advertisers go to such depths to provide us with such fake representations of women that they might as well be a cartoon?
2. What affect does this have on their audience?
“You never see the photograph of a woman considered beautiful that hasn’t been digitally altered to make her absolutely, inhumanly perfect,” Kilbourne explains. “Girls are being encouraged to achieve that ideal at younger and younger ages all the time.”
Assessment-
7.1 evaluate print and media texts for bias
Experiencing difficulty with content and concepts / Developing knowledge of content and concepts / Proficient knowledge and understanding / In-depth knowledge
and
understanding
1
Limited / 2
Developing / 3
Proficient / 4
In-Depth
Degrees of NOT MEETING / Degrees of MEETING
7.2 evaluate the relevance and reliability of the content presented
Experiencing difficulty with content and concepts / Developing knowledge of content and concepts / Proficient knowledge and understanding / In-depth knowledge
and
understanding
1
Limited / 2
Developing / 3
Proficient / 4
In-Depth
Degrees of NOT MEETING / Degrees of MEETING
7.1 use a range of strategies as a language learner
Experiencing difficulty with content and concepts / Developing knowledge of content and concepts / Proficient knowledge and understanding / In-depth knowledge
and
understanding
1
Limited / 2
Developing / 3
Proficient / 4
In-Depth
Degrees of NOT MEETING / Degrees of MEETING