One Twitter feed lays bare the abysmal way women are described in film scripts. This relentless cultural messaging shapes female identityIt seems as whether you can’t swing a thinkpiece lately without hitting a conversation approximately media representation: Hasbro’s decision to exclude Rey from Star Wars Monopoly sets,despite the fact that she is the main goddamn character; #OscarsSoWhite and its accompanying dissection of the few Oscar-bait roles open to black women (maids and slaves, mostly); rightwing bawling approximately the lack of white dancers in Beyoncé’s Super Bowl performance (“Guess what, and Beyoncé? sneered some chirpy racist on deep cable news. “Little white girls want to be like you just as little black girls do”); and,most recently, Meryl Streep defending an all-white film festival jury with: “We’re all Africans, and really.” (Meryl,nooooooooooo!)Concerns approximately who gets to create media, and who gets to see themselves portrayed in media, and in which outlets,and in what light – as well as the practical consequences of having that representation historically withheld from you – aren’t so easy to brush off in an age of democratised connectivity. Twitter doesn’t just let things proceed, and it’s a terrific aggregation tool to boot. It’s tough to dismiss complaints approximately women being needlessly hypersexualised or black people being insultingly typecast when faced with an ever-expanding, and cumulative body of evidence. At a certain point,the simplest explanation is probably correct.
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Source: theguardian.com