Information and communication
technology (ICT) has affected a lot of field. One of the examples is the topic
that we posted last week – Education. Today, we will discuss about
entertainment. Entertainment was developed from our cultures, and it was
evolved by following the improvement of technology (Bates & Ferri, 2010).
For instance, the traditional drama which the actors perform on the stage
evolved to drama nowadays which used of the technology record down.
Nowadays, ICT is important for us as well as for the society, and it has changed the entertainment as it makes the entertainment become more enjoyable, convenient, easy and popular. Almost every types of entertainment were affected by the ICT (Kimathi, n.d). There have a lot of types of entertainment such as drama, movie, game, dance and so on. Among of those entertainment, film or movie, drama, music and game are actually get almost full benefits from the ICT and became mainstream. For example, the audiences can watch movie or drama from internet instead of go to cinema or movie store to buy it. It helps the entertainment industry to gain profit by using internet to reach the new market (Kimathi, n.d). In other word, ICT can helps to reach a large amount of people due to the usage of the internet has become heavier than before. While talking about the entertainment and film, it reminds us of an issue that raised by several celebrities from Hollywood. Jennifer Lawrence, an Oscar winner of 2012 was raised an issue about gender pay inequality (Smith, 2015). She claimed that she is being paid less than her male co-actor even though she is an Oscar winner. Except Lawrence, there have other many celebrities complained about the gender inequality treated by the industry. Thus, today we are going to discuss the gender inequality in entertainment, and if you ask me does the gender inequality treatment still existing in the entertainment? My answer will be definitely yes although now is in 21st century and the gender are more equalize than before.
First of all, film or movie is
becoming an important entertainment in our life, and it is a big business and
industry nowadays. However, most of the film are existing gender inequality.
According to Zurko (2013), he investigated the gender inequality in film from
the top 500 films with high budget which were produced from 2007 to 2012.
In the result, we can see that there was only 30% of
speaking character are women which means in other word, there have more than
60% of speaking character are actually men. Here we can know that women are
playing less important role in the high budget film, and the industries are
more focus on men. In fact, women are particularly concentrated in film genre
with smaller budget such as romantic, comedy, drama and music, compared to film
genre with large budget such as action, sci-fi and horror (Erigha 2014). A very
obvious example will be the transformers series. Megan Fox as the leading actresses
in the movie however she only be given very less script compare to Shia
Lebeouf, the leading actor of the movie. Not only women play less important
role, also they have to act sexually on the screen. According to the statistic,
28.8% of actresses wore revealing clothes and 26.2% of actresses have to get
partially naked. It showed many of actresses have to act sexually or exposed
their body more compare to men. It is due to woman has been stereotyping as a “sex
object”, when the sexy body appears in a movie, it can helps to attract
audiences to watch it (Chaudhry, Shehzad & Mohyuddin, 2014).
While in Malaysia, there is
different case with the above cases. Issues of gender inequality in Malaysia
film are not relating to body exposes, its due to Malaysia is a country that
declared Islam as the state religious. From the Quran, females are not allowed
to expose their "awrah" which intimate parts of their body. Thus, the local movie
that consists over sexy will be banned by the government. However, according to
Azmawati (2013), gender inequality still exists in local film. She stated an
example of local film named “Ombak Rindu”. In the movie, it portrayed as a wife
have to obey to her husband despite suffering in domestic violence. It featured
woman as weak, submissive and loyal to his abusive husband and this is what a
good wife have to do because of the cultural factors. When talking about
domestic violence, there have plenty of movies or dramas performed domestic
violence on women. No matter what language
it is, domestic violence on women such as rape scene, beating scene and murder
scene by often their husband or boyfriend are frequently exists in the film or
drama (Lorber, 2010).
On the other hand, pornography was
becoming more mainstream and more hard-core. From the helps of the ICT, people
are able to watch it through internet easily, and it made the pornography become
a large industry which earns 24 billion USD globally (Crabbe & Corlett,
2010). And yes, gender inequality does exist in pornography as well. According
to Crabbe & Corlett (2010), along with the popular of pornography, the
industry was demanded to produce more aggressive pornography which including
violence into the scene. In those scenes, mostly men are dominant and women are submissive and it delivers the mind set that women are sex object. Therefore, it
could makes the young generation expects that girls are open and willing to fulfill the demand from the guys without any hesitation.
In conclusion, although we are living in 21st century, and gender is getting lesser after the being females are educated. However, gender inequality is actually lasts longer than our expectation. As we know, ICT is a very powerful tool which can reach many people at the same time, thus, those issues that I discussed above keep on happen, the gender inequality or sexist message will reach many people due to the power of ICT, in the other word, it is actually helping to promote the gender inequality. It will cause the new generation or younger people to have a thought on this issue. Meanwhile, I personally disagree against those gender inequality issues that I have mentioned above. Furthermore, I think that those act should be prohibit. In my opinion, although man is physically more powerful than woman however it does not means that man will be dominant as according to the culture. Once women are educated they may probably stronger than what men have done. Thus, we human should respect on each sex instead of treat inequality.
In conclusion, although we are living in 21st century, and gender is getting lesser after the being females are educated. However, gender inequality is actually lasts longer than our expectation. As we know, ICT is a very powerful tool which can reach many people at the same time, thus, those issues that I discussed above keep on happen, the gender inequality or sexist message will reach many people due to the power of ICT, in the other word, it is actually helping to promote the gender inequality. It will cause the new generation or younger people to have a thought on this issue. Meanwhile, I personally disagree against those gender inequality issues that I have mentioned above. Furthermore, I think that those act should be prohibit. In my opinion, although man is physically more powerful than woman however it does not means that man will be dominant as according to the culture. Once women are educated they may probably stronger than what men have done. Thus, we human should respect on each sex instead of treat inequality.
Reference:
Lorber, J. (2010) Gender Inequality: Feminist Theories
and Politics. Retrieved from http://poliscifi.pbworks.com/f/lorber_feminisms_2010.pdf
Crabbe, M & Corlett, D. (2010) Eroticising Inequality:
Technology, pornography and young people. Retrieved from http://www.awe.asn.au/drupal/sites/default/files/Crabbe%20Corlett%20Eroticising%20Inequality.pdf
Erigha, M. (2015) Race, Gender, Hollywood:
Representation in Cultural Production and Digital Media’s Potential for Change.
Sociology Compass 9/1, p 78-79.
Azwan Azmawati, A (2013) Media and gender in Malaysia:
An endless battle. Media Asia ( Asian Media Information & Communication Centre),
40(3), p 211-214.
Chaudhry, W, Shedzad, Z & Mohyuddin, A (2014) Women
Body Exposure as an Entertainment in Pakistani Films: A Synoptic Survey of
Cinemas in Rawalpindi. Journal of Gender & Social Issues, 13(2), p 63-82.
Kimathi, K. (n.d.) Impact of ICT in Education,
Entertainment, Development, Governance/Politics & Industry. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/5066850/IMPACT_OF_ICT_IN_EDUCATION_ENTERTAINMENT_DEVELOPMENT_GOVERNANCE_POLITICS_AND_INDUSTRY
Bates, S & Ferri, A.J. (2010) What’s Entertainment?
Notes Toward a Definition. Studies in Popular Culture. Retrieved from http://pcasacas.org.seanic11.net/SiPC/33.1/33.1.pdf#page=9
Smith, N. M. (2015) Jennifer Lawrence expresses anger at
Hollywood’s gender pay gap. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/oct/13/jennifer-lawrence-hollywood-gender-pay-gap
Zurko, N. (2013) Gender Inequality in Film. Retrieved
from https://www.nyfa.edu/film-school-blog/gender-inequality-in-film/
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