Camille Gross: Women in Film 24 April

            In a sociology course I took, I did a research paper on women representation in film. Looking back at the past few years, we see women becoming a more dominant character rather than being used as a mere plot device. Ghostbusters and Wonder Woman are just a few examples of action films where women are shown to be the ones getting the job done but have been met with criticism. Even though Dan Aykroyd, the mastermind behind the original Ghostbusters, was more than happy to see the 2016 Ghostbusters, people were very angry to see a classic rebooted, even though every few years I have to sit through another reboot of Spiderman.
Nulman’s “Representation of Women in the Age of Globalized Film” looks at a wide variety of films of different genres. For the most part, men were in powerful positions, such as being the president, while women were secondary characters or even just the love interest.
Behm-morawitz and Pennell write about how women in superhero films are overly sexualized. This claim is difficult because while some view the outfits worn by female superheroes as sexiest but women see it as empowering. These women are embracing their bodies and shedding of traditional modesty.
As a movie lover since I was a child, I cried when I watched the 2016 Ghostbusters. I didn’t realize how important representation in film was until that moment. Growing up, I had no female characters to look up to but it’s wonderful to see movies including women characters in positions of power.