#16 Sexual Objectification in Movie Posters

Upon sharing the work featured in my previous posts, I have decided to use the information and research gathered to collect images evidencing the areas discussed. On reflection, I believe I have got a bit ahead of myself at this point in the project and need to build on the foundations before moving forwards. The idea is to collect imagery that evidences the research conducted previously on the project. For example, if I am looking at the sexual objectification of women in film, I need to collect screenshots showing specific cases where this occurs. As a result, I can build mood boards of these images and pair them with their correlating themes.

My initial thought was to start with an article I came across in the early stages of the project. The article discusses how Twitter users have grouped DVD covers/movie posters due to their similar designs. I am interested in the two categories named 'Sexy Legs' and 'Headless Women'; however, I may include a few images from 'Red Dress'. I hope to use these posters as a starting point for my collection.

Sexy Legs. Lee Steffen - Twitter. (January 14, 2020).

Note. North, L., & Tymulis, D. (2020)

The 'Sexy Legs' images seem like an obvious choice for a project such as this. Many of the pictures have the women wearing either extremely short shorts/skirts or simply in underwear. We have no idea who this women are or can understand much about her as all we can see are bare legs. In this case, she becomes merely an object that is central to the poster design. In many cases, the characters in the background are looking at the female figure. These characters add a second layer of voyeurism, the first being us as the image's audience and the second being the characters in the pictures. However, as we cannot see where the female actress is looking, we cannot confirm that this is voyeurism for the characters at the back as she may be looking directly at them. Either way, these women are displayed as an image purely so the audience can view her body. It would be interesting to understand some of the plots and note whether this cover is even relevant to the films in question. In some cases, I can see why the choice has been made from some of the films titles, but in others, I am not so sure. Another thing to consider is if these films could be great examples to grab some screenshots from as they may contain scenes that could be useful to pair with my research.

Headless Women. K Rodning - Twitter. (January 15, 2020).

Note. North, L., & Tymulis, D. (2020)

The posters of the headless women seem to pair well with my ideas around removing the face to remove identity. However, these images give us more information than the sexy legs as we can assume that maybe a couple of these women are women of action while one of the women is pregnant, so we can assume she is a mother. One of the focus areas in quite a few of the images is the chest area. In Revamped, for example, the cleavage is highlighted by the typography used on the cover. I would argue the female figure has been used as an object for the cover rather than a display of a character within the film.

Red Dress. Lee Steffen - Twitter. (January 14, 2020).

Note. North, L., & Tymulis, D. (2020)

Drawing on the works from Berger (1972) and Mulvey, a few of the images in the Red Dress section seem to use voyeurism and scopophilia within the cover design. In many of the older posters, the women are positioned to display their bodies and be relatively submissive. The slit in the red dress revealing some leg seems to be common as well.

The next step is to build on this collection further and maybe pull out specific images of interest from the Twitter screen grabs. As I do this, I will pair the images collected with the relevant research.

Bibliography

Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing. Penguin Books.

Mulvey, L. (1975) Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Screen, 16(3), 6-18.

North, L., & Tymulis, D. (2020). Twitter Thread Shows There’s 20 Types of Movie Posters And Now We Can’t Unsee Them. Bored Panda. https://www.boredpanda.com/types-of-movie-posters/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic

Sturken, M., Cartright, L. (2009) Practises of Looking: an Introduction to Visual Culture. (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.