Gender and Media

Brian Vaden
VSAR 422
Presentation Abstract

The dictionary defines chick flick as follows:

 chick flick   n   1. A movie primarily of interest to females, often due to
content (love, friendship, emotional scenes) or cast (primarily females).
Examples include Steel Magnolias, The Truth about Cats and Dogs, etc. The term
is used frequently by males when talking about such films. ("My girlfriend
couldn't go out tonight because she's watching chick flicks with her
friends.")

 There are obviously two distinct types of movies that are generally made for
men or for women. For my presentation I will be comparing and contrasting
"chick flicks" and "guy movies". So far I haven't been able to find a
definition for "guy movies" so I'm going to use the opposite of the definition
for chick flicks. I will try to show the differences in typical scenes from
both types of movies, by showing clips of films from the two types of movies.
For chick flicks I will use scenes from "Beaches", "Steel Magnolias", and
"Dirty Dancing". For guy movies I will show scenes from a James Bond film, a
hero film (either sports or war, I haven't decided which yet) and a film with
plenty of gratuitous sex, like "King Pin". My intention is to highlight the
clearly different elements that go into the making of a scene in a movie that
is marketed for men or for women.
 I will use excerpts and/or quotes from class readings including Mulvey,
Masayesva, White, and Berger. I will also use information from other books and
websites to support my ideas.

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. 1977. Penguin Books.
Haskell, Molly. From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in Movies.
1974.
Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. 1975. Screen Magazine.
White, Patricia. Feminism and Film. 1998. The Oxford Guide to Film Studies.
http://www.geocities.com/online_slang_dictionary/slang/c.html#top
http://members.aol.com/KShaskan/chickflick.html
http://www.brubyrich.com/index2.html
Scenes from various movies.

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