Hollywood’s Female Action Characters: Detrimental Influences of Heroines’ Violence and Sexually Objectified Body Images on Female Audiences

Hollywood’s Female Action Characters: Detrimental Influences of Heroines’ Violence and Sexually Objectified Body Images on Female Audiences

Introduction

Filmic studies are usually instigated by a concern over the possibly corrupt effects that movies have on mass audiences. As a result of an increasing awareness for these hypothesized effects, cinematic industry today is replete with academic studies investigating the relationship between films and viewers. Nonetheless, even though empirical studies discovers the prevalence of unfavorable outcomes from movie characters’ inauspicious traits (Aubrey, 2006; Gilpatric, 2010; Greenwood, 2007; Smelik, 2009), an opposing view asserts that movies are just a form of entertainment which effects on viewers are insignificantly “negligible and transitory” (Fearing, 1947, p. 72). This claim further implies that the effects of negative attributes of Hollywood’s action heroines are ephemeral and trivial, yet have been immensely exaggerated. However, I shall argue that two prominent negative attributes of female characters in Hollywood action movies, namely violence and sexually objectified body images, in fact have significantly detrimental influences to female audiences.

Numerous filmic studies actually find evidences that exposure to movie characters’ inauspicious traits will indeed unfavorably influence mass audiences (Eschholz & Bufkin, 2001; Fearing, 1947). More profound research has also examined movie characters with unfavorable attributes, in particular the ill depicted Hollywood’s action heroines (Gilpatric, 2010). This is mainly due to the heroines’ employment of conspicuous violence and their portrayal of sexually objectified body images (Gilpatric, 2010; Greenwood, 2007; Neuendorf, Gore, Dalessandro, Janstova, & Snyder-Suhy, 2009; Smelik, 2009), two negative attributes which are believed to be detrimental to behaviors and attitudes of mass audiences. Moreover, research conjectures that audiences’ genders contribute...