Individual Theoretical

project
Gender politics Media
Magazine: issue 64 February
2010
By Kelechi Asilonu

Background information on
article

The article focuses on gender roles shown

in two dystopian futures, The Walking
Dead and also Hunger Games.
Walking Dead is a 2010 American horror
drama television series developed by
Frank Darabont, based on the comic book
series of the same name which looks at an
ex police officer surviving in the new world
full of the undead.
Hunger Games is a 2012 American
dystopian science fiction adventure film
directed by Gary Ross and based on the
novel of the same name which focuses on
a character from the poorest district and
how she survives in a arena full of deadly
people and monsters that all want her
dead.

Survival
The survival film is a film genre in which one or more
characters make an effort at physical survival. It often
overlaps with other film genres. It is a subgenre of the
adventure films.
Survival films are darker than most other adventure
films which usually focuses its storyline on a single
character, usually the protagonist. The films tend to be
located primarily in a contemporary context so film
audiences are familiar with the setting. This then means
the characters' activities are less romanticized.
Both of these media pieces have aspects of survival in
a dystopian environment. This means the characters are
constantly acting to stay alive because of the hardships
and struggle in there situation. There are multiple
examples of this in the walking dead like when rick runs
away from zombie hordes to survive.

Theme of gender
The article I looked at is called gender politics of survival in
The walking dead and The hunger games. Which explores how
gender is portrayed in these two pieces of media. They also look
at roles and gender norms seen in the moving images.
In the pieces of media woman and males are often represented
differently because of stereotypes in the real world. Males are
often represented as strong and powerful while females are
shown to be weak and in need of aid.
The article highlights how the men in the walking dead are
seen to be sexist and how the woman are depicted as weak and
are constantly being rescued by the male characters. This may
be viewed as bad but this is normally they case for survival
movies as protagonists are often strong dominate male
characters as they are seen to be the strongest and fittest,
highlighting the fact only the strongest survive in these films.
The article also looks at how gender is shown in the hunger
games. This is much more positive as the main character is a
female who has to survive. She has to learn to fight and kill but

Representation of woman
As seen in the article the representations of women have changed in the media.
In the walking dead woman are seen to be weak and need to be looked after in
the disaster environment but contrasting this the hunger games shows that
there ability to adapt and be clever in situations shows them to be on the same
level as men when looking at survival
Women are also represented in many other ways in the media. They can also
be shown to be sexualised in news and music. Examples of this is looking and
people like niki mainj. She is overtly sexual, her videos contains nudity and
provocative dress and she talks about sex and other taboo subjects. Even
though she does this she is still a powerful figure in the eyes of woman as she is
her own boss and doesn't stand down when she believes she is wrong.

Women can also be depictive as manipulative

and social aggressive. In films such as James
bond females are often used to get James bind
to do something or draw him in and gain
control. This is also a negative way women are
being depicted in the media. They can also be
shown slandering other people are saying rude
things to undermine and psychological hurt
other people.

Changing representation

The representation of women have

changed in recent years to move away
from the negative representation of
women. The hunger games and other
films do this well. The hunger games
made a female protagonist that
everyone routes for in there movies,
she is powerful and strong and even
leads her home town to result and go
against the government. She is very
clever and can even kill which subverts
the representation that women are
overly emotional. Marvel films like
Avengers also have started to do this. A
character in the avengers called widow
is key character that the avengers use
to battle
andcommon
defeat enemies.
She uses
Even
though
representations
of females are being changed slowly
her
abilities
to
fight
and
lead
people
there are still many things that could be changed like there overtly sexual
and sheand
also
saves But
males
the
clothing
makeup.
evenfrom
though
there are still things to be done the
team.
representation
of women have changed with the times moving away from how
older generations viewed women.

Feminism
Feminist theory is a major branch of theory within sociology
that is distinctive for how its shifts focus away from the male
viewpoint and experience. In doing so, feminist theory shines
light on social problems, trends, and issues that are otherwise
overlooked or misidentified by the historically dominant male
perspective within social theory. Key areas of focus within
feminist theory include discrimination and exclusion on the
basis of sex and gender, objectification, inequality, power and
oppression, and gender roles and stereotypes.
This is something that would drastically change how people
are represented in the media as the audience may have
changed there perception on how they view people. This adds
to the fact that stereotypes portrayed in movies must change
to fit the viewpoints of the audience.