Movies, gender, and social change: the hollywood romance film

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.

KEYWORDS:

• gender
• films
• romance
• feminist film theory
• social change

Supplementary material

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Notes

1. For an analysis of this film, and the notion of the Jezebel seductress, see Jeter (1981).

2. The emergence of the modern romantic comedy has been dated to the late 1980s with films like Roxanne (1987) and When Harry Met Sally (1989). Following the huge successes of Pretty Woman (1990) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993), however, the appeal of such films to contemporary audiences had been established beyond question (Dowd & Pallotta, 2000; McDonald, 2015).

3. Love Story (1970) tells the story of Jenny Cavalieri, a brilliant Radcliffe student and daughter of a Baltimore baker, who turns down the opportunity to continue her musical training in Europe in order to work as an elementary school teacher in order that her husband, a disinherited scion of a wealthy Boston family, can continue his law school program.

4. Each of the eight stereotypes (four masculine stereotypes and four feminine stereotypes) were coded from zero to two, with two indicating a dominant and persistent aspect of that quality in the character, while one indicating an occasional presence, and zero suggesting an absence of that quality. Averages of each of the eight characteristics thus ranged between zero and two, with most scores bunching around 1.0.

5. Viewers also bring their own experience to the theatre, with the result being the possibility that responses to the film can vary depending upon the usual status characteristics of social class, race, age, and of course gender. There is also a question concerning the duration of whatever effect the film may produce in the audience member. Upon leaving the theatre and returning to one’s everyday life, the realities of that everyday existence can overwhelm the glimmer of new understanding gained from a viewing of the film.

6. In September 1991, at the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel, a series of sexual assaults involving more than 100 United States Navy and U.S. Marine Corps aviation officers were committed against 83 women and seven men. Prompted by a compliant filed by then-Lieutenant Paula Coughlin, the Department of Defence investigated the assaults and charged a number of officers with minor, non-judicial, punishment, mainly for conduct unbecoming an officer and making false official statements. No officers were disciplined for the sexual assaults (McMichael, 1997).

7. Across the many wars fought by the United States, no woman has ever been awarded this highest combat medal. It is this lack of recognition of women’s wartime efforts that makes the story narrated in Courage Under Fire a compelling one.

8. The presence of women in the combat arms has long been a contentious issue (MacDonald, 2019). Since the scandals that beleaguered the U.S. military in the 1990s, advances have been made in integrating the military force. In 2017 the U.S. Army began to integrate women into two previously all-male infantry brigade combat teams, one at Fort Bragg and one at Fort Hood. Since then, the Army has fully gender-integrated units on Forts Hood, Bragg, Bliss, Campbell and Carson, and in 2019 began integrating units on Forts Stewart, Riley, Polk, Drum; Joint Base Lewis-McChord; Vicenza, Italy; and Vilseck, Germany.

9. Adding to her own estimable story, Capt. Kristen Griest – commissioned as a Military Police officer – has broken through another barrier to women’s advancement in the military, having become the U.S.Army’s first female infantry officer.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James Dowd

Arialle Kaye Crabtree (B.A. Applied Sociology, B.S. Political Science, North Carolina State University; M.A., Ph.D. Sociology, University of Georgia) is affiliated with the Gender Studies program at Mississippi State University. Her research areas include gender and sexuality, social movements, culture, and qualitative methodology. Her current research focuses on sexual assault prevention on college campuses using a social movement framework.

Bryan C. Cannon (B.A. Psychology and Sociology, M.A. Sociology, Western Kentucky University; Ph.D. Sociology, University of Georgia) is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Franklin & Marshall College. His research focuses on the interactional mechanisms that underpin social inequalities. He examines how these interactional mechanisms contribute to the reproduction of the social order and how they can potentially be used to challenge it.

James J. Dowd (B.S. Sociology, St. Peter’s College; M.A. Sociology, the University of Maryland; Ph.D. Sociology, the University of Southern California) is Professor Emeritus at the University of Georgia. His current work includes an analysis of various film genres. Other ongoing research includes a generational study of U.S. Army general officers whose careers began during the Vietnam War.