Here is another article on the media and violence, but this one with a feminist twist. What do you think about the modern tendency of movies and television shows to portray women as fighters? Does this have a positive or negative effect on their self-image and on society as a whole? Could this be the reason for an increase in violent crimes committed by women?
It has been proved that the number of violent incidents involving female offenders has increased. According to New Zeeland researchers, aggressive „kick-ass“ women in the media cause the increasing female violence. I agree on with the New Zeeland researchers and as a cause I see beautiful women characters in movies like Beatrix Kiddo from Kill Bill or Lara Croft linked to power and aggression. These strong females definitely make an impression on other young women watching them in television. Females have a tendency to make them their idols and want be similar to them. This includes copying the violent and aggressive behavior they show. I do think that to a certain extend society can blame the moviemakers for this. They create an illusion of violent women being heroes and make fighting acceptable in movies. Young women are inspired by the thought of becoming powerful and therefore attractive. This inspiration and idolization of female characters is most likely to have a negative effect on their behavior.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think that women should be fighting or showing violence. In fact, globally don’t think people should be violent. On the other hand, when it comes to this issue of violent behavior, it is more accepted for men to show aggression that for women to show it. I think this because of the physical outlook and strength of males. Women are mentally stronger, and should show their metal strength rather then their physical one. I share the opinion of Mr. Simmonds about “women being socialized to be more equal and fill a lot of roles previously filled by males.” Wanting equality between men and women may also be the root of the problem with women showing aggression. Women don’t want to be treated by society differently than men, and might think that by being more aggressive they will gain the equality. In conclusion, I don’t think that men or women should be aggressive to each other. Of course, fighting and showing violence in some situations it is necessary, but physically attacking people without any good reason is not acceptable and I think that women should definitely not act in such a way.
Nina, do you think the aggressive women mentioned are feminists? I see no reason to think their actions were fighting for emancipation. And now, we may agree that moviemakers use violence frequently in films, just as we discussed lately, as an effective market trick. But doesn’t anybody think that those are mainly men acting aggressively in films – and TV news?
DeleteI can’t deny Lara Croft and Milla Jovovich are my secret idols. But what do media show us on the other hand? Bad guys threatening, intimidating, fighting, shooting each other, torturing and raping - violence at every step, in every drama, action film or thriller. I am convinced that men are still being presented as the tough guys and women mostly as submissive objects of desire. But I hope many women do not want to be presented this way.
I mainly disagree in the point that women are not expected to use their physical strength and moreover, that violence is more accepted for men. I suppose it is just that aggressive behavior shown by women is precedence. In fact, I don’t think the examples used in the article are very severe ones. Let me quote the most funny statement from the article “many [women] had taken to more aggressive physical behaviour such as punching and kicking compared to scratching and hair-pulling.“ Ha-ha-ha. Look at Brejvik. He’s a single example of how men can lose sanity and turn into ideology-motivated mass murderers. I believe this seldom happens to women. Such cases are certainly an issue for greater concern and instant actions to prevent them.
I would ask the most fundamental question. Are game and film heroines to blame for the few examples of violent crimes committed by women? Or are they assumed to stand behind the whole increase in female youth violence? I don’t think so. I believe there are other, more significant factors, such as domestic violence, that contribute to the overall increase in publicly committed violence. By the way, why would they always want women to behave according to some traditional stereotype? Have we no right to get loose from the chain - just as men do? I know I sound to advocate those criminals too much. I agree that setting up an institution for women violence prevention is a good idea. However, I can’t help myself but it sounds to me as if they too wanted to hold women under control. I still feel that men are a further more severe threat to society than young women are. But don’t let me dispute.
The article seems to look for any possible, however biased, way of proving that they are right and that the amount of female violence really is increasing. They did mention that the numbers are marginal but never gave a thought to whether it isn’t just coincidence that the numbers of 2010 were higher than those of 2009. While we’re at that, where are the 2011 statistics? It is quite possible that the number of aggressive acts carried out by women decreased the following year and the author didn’t mention it for the sole purpose of proving his point. I find this article very suspicious and speculative not only because I’ve never heard of such a trend before, but also because they are blaming games and TV for the increase, where the effects of these sources of entertainment are a controversial topic alone. Women have equal right to men to be portrayed in television shows and films as fighters and for the most part, the increase of violence amongst women in TV has had little effect on the actual women watching the shows. Basically, every woman is different and although they might be portrayed differently as a whole, the way males will view individual women won’t be affected.
ReplyDeleteI definitely disagree with Nina – on several parts of what she said. Firstly, in nobody should powerful be considered attractive and only women of doubtable intelligence would even think that way. Furthermore, I highly disagree with the thought that women are mentally stronger than their counterparts. In fact, women tend to have mental breakdowns more often than males and are known to be much less emotionally stable as a rule of thumb. Yes, the numbers that the article did provide are incontrovertible but it’s the numbers that weren’t mentioned that are missing. I am almost certain that thanks to Earth’s swiftly increasing number of inhabitants the number of women in New Zealand also increased by a larger percentage than the number of violent acts by women (162 cases), rendering this article almost pointless.
I definitely disagree with Samo that the violence in TV and video games are not influencing women to be more violent. I am not saying that it is the only reason why women are behaving violently and doing the crimes, but I am pretty sure it is a factor which is partially influencing them to do so. I also do not deny that every woman is different, and we cannot generalize them and consider as a whole, but I am saying that violent TV shows and video games definitely do support women in being more violent. However, I agree with Samo that women have the equal right to men to be portrayed in television shows and films as fighters. What I am saying is that neither women nor men should be viewed in such a violent way in TV shows or video games.
DeleteFurthermore, I disagree with Samo when he said that women have mental breakdowns more often than men. I think that every person is different and we cannot generalize like this. I am not saying that women are stronger than men, but I just don’t think that women have mental breakdowns more often and that women are less emotionally stable than men. A man can be as emotionally unstable as a woman, it does not depend on the gender.
This comment on comment is a response to Rasto’s comment.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I also completely distrust the statistics and so-called proof that was given in the article for proving the point that there is an increase in the number of women involved in violence. As the guys already mentioned, this article was published on the March 30, 2012, and yet, the article provides statistical data from 2009 and 2010 (referring to it as “the most recent figures”), excluding the year 2011. The only reason why the author of the article would do this is that the new data did not fit into their story. In my opinion, women are not becoming any more physically aggressive than they used to be. They may be becoming more bold and outgoing in society in general (because society is beginning to consider women as completely equal to men), but these traits do not come hand in hand with physical violence.
Even if it were true that women are showing more signs of aggressive behavior, this article argues that it is because of media that it has become this way, which I completely disagree with. Although the images of strong heroines in media could have a some effect on the actions of teenage girls, I believe this effect would firstly be temporary (after the wave of obsession over some TV show would pass, so would the desire to act like the heroine) and secondly, more importantly, I do not think it would be as evident and strong as to cause a girl to “hit a 73-year-old Auckland dairy owner in the head with a hammer to steal chocolate bars and cigarettes.” There must be some deeper hidden issue within the mind of an individual that is capable of this, because if watching even the goriest movies made people do things like this in real life, then I think that the world would be much worse off in every single aspect. I believe that there had to be something wrong with the upbringing of the person or she lived through a seriously traumatic event that damaged her mental health.
Furthermore, I also want to point out that no matter how physically strong women are depicted as in movies, the heroine is usually fighting for some good cause (this is generally true for all heroes). Whenever I read books or watched movies with female heroines in them, the thing about them that inspired me and made me look up to them the most was not their physical strength but their strong, usually stubborn personality, motivation to keep fighting for something good that they believed in, and the fact that they were equal to the men in their abilities.
As I found out in the article, according to the researchers from New Zealand, women are becoming more violent. There are a great numbers of events, when women attacked or assaulted someone, often from no reason.
ReplyDeleteThe reason why women are turning more violent is obvious; the society in which we live is getting more and more violent. Therefore also the people are becoming more violent. We cannot expect people to ignore what is happening around them. People are trying to adapt to the new way of living. The society is often influenced by the media such as internet or television. In addition, many women started to play videogames, which are often extremely violent. Therefore, women may think that the female characters in videogames or movies are the ideal models of women, and the female consumers are trying to be similar to the incredibly sexy and good-looking female characters that are mentally and physically tough. In addition, according to Dr. Swift, girl fighting is often highly sexualized by the media and males themselves.
A long time ago, women were more discriminated, and the society believed that women meant something less than men. Women had less important roles in the society. Nowadays, women are becoming more emancipated and more equal to men. They often have the same job opportunities as well.
Violence is a very important social issue, because it is hard to prevent it. The amount of violence among people has increased suddenly. People see violence everywhere around them, and even though they may consider it as a bad thing, it is subconsciously impressed in their minds. There is no way how to prevent ourselves from violence. It is shown to people in movies, internet, videogames, etc.
In conclusion, I think that portraying women as strong fighters (resembling all the men qualities) is a bad thing. In my opinion it has a negative effect on women’s self-image. I think the society shows women as stronger, and this could be viewed as violence. In my opinion, society makes women more violent.