“Vampires and Vixens” written by Alison Happel and Jennifer Esposito is an article written to educate and advise readers of present feministic and post-feministic controversy veiled in today’s media, specifically in the movie ‘Twilight’ directed by Catherine Hardwicke. The two authors express their concerns about the film by addressing the film itself, the teachings of popular culture, post-feminism, and sexualized violence. Even though the article “Vampires and Vixens” did contradict itself several times by showing feministic themes in Twilight and did not provide a plan to resolve Hollywood’s feministic issues, it greatly explains how post-feminism is a wrong ideology. This is because Happel and Esposito give examples of the patriarchy in
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The article states, “it is often through popular culture that people gain knowledge about groups to which they do not normally have access.” So, all kinds of media shape the thinking of society. The reason the article was written was to show the importance of these issues that we have come to accept such as the patriarchy. According to Cynthia Enloe in “The Curious Feminists”, “patriarchy is the structural and ideological system that perpetuates the privileging of masculinity” (Enloe 4). Media, practically Twilight is teaching kids that women can be objectified and used in terms of sexual violence, which of course is young people wrongly. This led many people to think like a feminist which according to the WGSST 1110 week two presentation involves someone being committed “to social justice and rejection of inequality, particularly attentive to gender.” Recently, sexual assault has been on the rise. Every two minutes’ sexual assault is committed, which adds up to one in six becoming a victim of sexual …show more content…
Throughout the movie, Bella is deemed a feminist and in one of the scenes, Bella tells her friend to ask a boy to the dance which she does and from this, we can see the movie does promote a sense of girl power. Despite this, there are numerous occasions in which women are objectified and deemed lesser than men. For example, after shopping at a bookstore, Bella comes across a group of young men whose intentions seem to be sexual and instead of saving herself from the situations with her strength and intelligence, her boyfriend Edward comes to the rescue. Another example from the movie is simply the fact that the movie is about a young woman falling in love with a man that is violent and wants to kill her. As we learned in our week three ruminations for WGSST 1110, factors such as gender play a role in creating a person’s privilege which is the advantages a person may have over another. In the case of Twilight, Edward, a male, is given more privilege based on his sex and is deemed more powerful and logical than Bella, a female. Because of this evidence from the movie, it is clear to see Hollywood still is structured around patriarchy regarding their ideologies of love, sexuality and gender
The article states, “it is often through popular culture that people gain knowledge about groups to which they do not normally have access.” So, all kinds of media shape the thinking of society. The reason the article was written was to show the importance of these issues that we have come to accept such as the patriarchy. According to Cynthia Enloe in “The Curious Feminists”, “patriarchy is the structural and ideological system that perpetuates the privileging of masculinity” (Enloe 4). Media, practically Twilight is teaching kids that women can be objectified and used in terms of sexual violence, which of course is young people wrongly. This led many people to think like a feminist which according to the WGSST 1110 week two presentation involves someone being committed “to social justice and rejection of inequality, particularly attentive to gender.” Recently, sexual assault has been on the rise. Every two minutes’ sexual assault is committed, which adds up to one in six becoming a victim of sexual …show more content…
Throughout the movie, Bella is deemed a feminist and in one of the scenes, Bella tells her friend to ask a boy to the dance which she does and from this, we can see the movie does promote a sense of girl power. Despite this, there are numerous occasions in which women are objectified and deemed lesser than men. For example, after shopping at a bookstore, Bella comes across a group of young men whose intentions seem to be sexual and instead of saving herself from the situations with her strength and intelligence, her boyfriend Edward comes to the rescue. Another example from the movie is simply the fact that the movie is about a young woman falling in love with a man that is violent and wants to kill her. As we learned in our week three ruminations for WGSST 1110, factors such as gender play a role in creating a person’s privilege which is the advantages a person may have over another. In the case of Twilight, Edward, a male, is given more privilege based on his sex and is deemed more powerful and logical than Bella, a female. Because of this evidence from the movie, it is clear to see Hollywood still is structured around patriarchy regarding their ideologies of love, sexuality and gender