ABSTRACT

With a sample of over 250 films released in the U.S. from 2000 to 2014, and with the benefit of over fifty years of feminist film theorizing on the issue of the characterization of women in both Hollywood and foreign films, our analysis investigates whether a particular film genre – romance movies – has begun to provide a diverse range of depictions of its female characters or has it continued to favour a stereotyped understanding of woman as subservient to the men in their lives. The central focus of our analysis concerns the ways in which romantic couples exhibit behaviours that the sociological and psychological literatures describe as either ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’. In addition to summarizing these data, we also describe at length a number of films that illustrate the various gender stereotypes. We conclude our analysis by addressing the thorny question of whether and how Hollywood movies could lessen the extent of sexism and gender inequality in Western society.

摘要

我们以 2000 年至 2014 年在美国上映的 250 多部电影为样本，并借助 50 多年来对好莱坞和外国电影中女性特征问题的女权主义电影的理论研究，我们的分析调查了一部特定的电影是否类型——浪漫电影——已经开始提供对女性角色的多样化描述，或者它是否继续支持对女性在生活中从属于男性的刻板印象。我们分析的中心焦点是浪漫情侣表现出社会学和心理学文献描述为“男性化”或“女性化”的行为方式。除了总结这些数据外，我们还详细描述了一些说明各种性别刻板印象的电影。