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Miss Representation Documentary Film Analysis
FILM SUMMARY
The 1848 Seneca Falls Convention was the first women’s rights convention ever held in the United States. Billed as a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious conditions and rights of women in the United States, it attracted widespread attention and inspired a number of other conventions around the country.
More than 150 years have passed but modern-day American women still face many of the same issues. MISS REPRESENTATION, inspired by the impending birth of Director Jennifer Sibel Newsom’s daughter, focuses on the continued over-sexualization of women in the media, to the detriment of portraying them as figures of substance and power.
Newsom contemplates the world into which her child would be born, aiming to understand just who the teacher is in the modern-day schoolroom. The damning evidence she unearthed – that an unregulated media is the head instructor leading today’s youth – spurs Newsom to unveil the mechanizations behind media portrayals of gender. How can an American female leader hope to meet the international community when female play things, digitally retouched to a standard of unachievable perfection, are veritably the only role models being offered today’s girls?
Interviews with powerful and influential women in politics, entertainment, and news, along with their male counterparts, are peppered with statistics sure to shake even the most hardened disbeliever. While MISS REPRESENTATION posits that continued negative portrayals of women in the media make the disproportionate political and pay landscape unsurprising the film does offer a host of options for achieving equality between the sexes.
 
Opening Discussion questions
What does the word feminism mean to you?

  1. Were you raised to view boys and girls as equals, or were you taught that girls were subordinate to boys?
  2. Do you think the world’s superpowers are ready for more female heads of state? Why or why not?
  3. Do you feel there are intrinsic characteristics that make women women and men men, or does society teach the sexes to act according to certain stereotypes?
  4. Can a woman be both beautiful and intellectually powerful? Or does she need to sacrifice one for the other?

Miss Representation Questions (Please type your responses to SIX of the following questions):

1. How does the media influence our individual beliefs and our culture norms?
2. How does what we see shape our beliefs about ourselves and about others?
3. How do we overcome the media’s negative messaging?
4. Describe what “objectification” means, and then describe what that means in advertising.
5. Describe some gender stereotypes. What are the positive and negative effects of these stereotypes? How do these stereotypes of femininity and masculinity limit girls and boys?
6. What new things did you learn from what you watched? What stood out to you?
7. What contradictions do you see between the real girls/women around you and the way they are represented in the media?
8. What about the contradictions between real boys/men and the way they are represented in the media?
9. Who benefits/profits from the way women are represented in the media? Who loses?
10. Why do you think media corporations use stereotypes to sell their products?
11. Do you think the government should create more rules for media companies? Why or why not?
12. How can you change the way media does business?
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