Miss Representation is a 2011 documentary from Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a Stanford University graduate, that focuses on the underrepresentation of female role models in the media, and how that influences the way women seek to achieve goals in the real world. The film takes a classic documentary-styled approach to the transferring of knowledge, oftentimes displaying quotes and statistics on the screen as transitioning shots, while interviews with a variety of notable characters act as the content that moves the film forward.
Besides from the fact that this movie is a critically acclaimed, Sundance award winner, and that this film has a plethora of companies claiming it has helped them lessen sexual harassment, I chose to watch this film because it looks back on American political history to surmise why media has become so deregulated in comparison to the early 1900’s, and I believed it would be phenomenal supplemental information for me, since I will be unable to take the next semester of women’s history.
The basic premise of the film is that women are underrepresented in both American politics and American business, two pertinent forms of “power” in our country, and that we aren’t moving as fast as we could be in terms of equalizing power because there is a prevailing argument that women “have already come so far.” Both of these issues, Newsom argues, stem from the underrepresentation of three-dimensional women characters on television. Packed with mind boggling statistics on the true reality of what it means to grow up seeing nothing but sex on our screens, the film states that “Girls are learning to see themselves as objects.
American Psychological Association calls self-objectification a national epidemic: Women and girls who self-objectify are more likely to be depressed, have lower confidence, lower ambition and lower GPAs.” Furthermore, the film points out how incredulous the American people would be if they knew that “Cuba, Iraq, and Afghanistan have more women in government than the US does.” For a country that touts freedom as proudly as the US does, we would not like the idea that seemingly oppressive regimes still value women’s perspectives more than we do.
The ideology of the “order, liberty, and equality” structure was very clear throughout this documentary, which was my first tip off that it correlated to the course quite nicely. Historic events were visited a few times throughout the documentary as the filmmaker juxtaposed this new women’s rights movement with many in the past. Lastly, it was a documentary by a women with very strong opinions and strong biases against sexist media intake, and to watch this documentary was to watch a piece of history taking place, a piece of history as recorded through a woman’s eyes.
The one thing that truly stood out to me was the fact that the filmmaker interviewed everyone from Rachel Maddow to high school juniors, from Katie Couric to Condoleezza Rice. She made sure to cover workers in both private and public sectors, many of whom work in the public eye, but she also covered the newer generation of women that have definitively been altered even at such young ages.
In terms of whether or not I would recommend this movie for your course, I would. If you were to ask the same question for a graduate course, or even a course filled with women’s studies majors, I would not. It is just dramatic enough to grab the attention of the audience, however there were some personal opinions stated as facts, and it was very clear that the documentary’s subjects and creators were biased towards desexualizing women as a whole in order to make them more powerful. It never addresses the sect of women that claim their sexuality makes them feel more powerful, beautiful, and in control of their lives, both monetarily and personally.
One personal issue I had with the film was the fact that they were less than thorough when choosing movie clips to portray the one-dimensional woman archetype, picking clips from “Mean Girls,” a largely satirical movie that broke many barriers by having a nearly all female cast and crew. However, I would recommend it for a less film savvy audience.
