Tag Archives: Week 4

Women In Media (Week 4) MEDIA 6: Industries Workshop

Here we are in Week 4 and things are slowly moving along…
Today’s meeting in class was productive but a little harder than usual as almost half the group was away sick but I’ve kept them informed on what they missed out on.

Our first news is that unfortunately we have had our first rejection from a potential guest. Sue Maslin will be fly to the toronto film festival the day of our seminar! Which is such a shame but she did say that our theme was very important and she wished she could have been there….oh well back to the drawing board.
I put it out to the group who they wanted as a backup for Sue and everyone insisted on contacting Natalie Tran. For those who do not know Natalie, she is a very well known Australian Vlogger. The reason we spoke out to her is because she represents a newer media landscape (online video production) and also she is a freelancer in her work! So that is an interesting field that would be cool to have a representative from! She is also hilarious and a fantastic speaker. If Natalie cannot make it, our next backup will be Corrie Chen! She’s great because she’s a former student in the RMIT Media course, who went onto VCA and now is a filmmaker!

We are still yet to hear from Clementine Ford but fingers crossed we get a reply from Clementine soon, if she cannot do the seminar, we have decided for Clementine’s backup be Celeste Liddle! She is a journalist and a blogger and her work seems very interesting. A great representative for the journalists/professional writer kind of field in the Media Industry.

I am unsure how to approach the social media aspect for the seminar so I put it to the group who was there today, that may be interested in taking on the role of a different social media page for Heroines in Media and didn’t get a great response so I’ll go over that next meeting.

We are still also waiting on mock designs for our poster and again we didn’t get to really discuss other important elements to the seminar such as stage setup and food so I think thats something we really need to get onto next week as we soon will start running out of time….

Lets see how we go next week….

The Story Lab: Week 4 Reflections

In this weeks class we looked at the role of women in the ‘superhero’ story. I found this very interesting to discuss, as it combines two fantastic topics I enjoy, feminism and superheros! We looked at Wonder Woman and how she was created to represent a strong female role model that fights for love, peace and gender equality. I must say I was very surprised to learn that she was created by the American psychologist and writer William Moulton Marston in 1941,  seems very progressive for its time and has definitely lead me to a new found appreciation for her character as I’ve never really been a big fan of any other DC characters apart from Batman, I grew up favouring Marvel Universe instead…

yay positive female role models!

yay positive female role models!

Speaking of Marvel, we then moved on to look at the character Agent Carter, who is a part of the Marvel film universe in the Captain America films. We looked at the different mediums her character has travelled across, first starting in the Captain America film, then to the ‘Marvel Short’ and ending in her own spin-off TV series. Its interesting how she was portrayed across the three transmedia continuations. I would say she started of very strong, representing a female character that was not just a love interest which is fantastic to see in a genre that is so heavily dominated by males. As her character moves onto the Marvel short and the spin-off series, I would say her representation starts to go downhill, to the point where I would say her fight for equality becomes comical, becoming somewhat of a gimmick. I found this interesting quote online which I think makes a good point…

“While this response is obviously well-intentioned, the fervent focus on Peggy Carter’s gender (ABC’s tagline for the show is “Sometimes the best man for the job…. is a woman“) could be considered its own form of sexism, and could ultimately be damaging to the show’s quality. It brings to mind the much-researched sociological phenomenon of stereotype threat, where people from marginalized social groups experience anxiety from having their gender or race emphasized and ultimately perform worse in tests because of it.”
– H. Shaw-Williams, Screen Rant

 

Anyway I could rant about this for ages but perhaps I better leave it here….

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