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bombshell

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Bombshell is about woman who work at fox news who are sexually harassed by their boss Roger Ailes.

As such, this film provides a narrative of INSTITUTIONAL SEXISM, in the same way that we could look at other stories that are concerned with other institutional prejudices – racism, homophobia, Islamophobia etc. In other words, this film presents a version of the story of INSTITUTIONAL SEXISM and MISOGYNY. It suggests a link between the presentation / representation of the female form and the ideas of a ruling patriarchy (Fox News, specifically Roger Ailes) and perhaps explains why we are presented with the stories we are presented with and how those stories are presented to us.

Roger Eugene Alies:

Roger Eugene Ailes (May 15, 1940 – May 18, 2017) was an American television executive and media consultant. He was the chairman and CEO of Fox News, Fox Television Stations and 20th Television. Ailes was a media consultant for Republican presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush, and for Rudy Giuliani’s first mayoral campaign. In July 2016, he resigned from Fox News after being accused of sexual harassment by several female Fox employees, including on-air personalities Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly. Shortly afterward, he became an adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, in which he assisted with debate preparation.

Sexual Harassment:

Sexual harassment is a type of harassment involving the use of explicit or implicit sexual overtones, including the unwelcome and inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favours. Sexual harassment includes a range of actions from verbal transgressions to sexual abuse or assault. Harassment can occur in many different social settings such as the workplace, the home, school, churches, etc. Harassers or victims may be of any sex or gender.

In modern legal contexts, sexual harassment is illegal. Laws surrounding sexual harassment generally do not prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or minor isolated incidents—that is due to the fact that they do not impose a “general civility code.” In the workplace, harassment may be considered illegal when it is frequent or severe thereby creating a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim’s demotion, firing or quitting). The legal and social understanding of sexual harassment, however, varies by culture.

Institution

institution

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As a way of linking some of the ideas that we covered in terms of Feminist Critical Thinking towards the 4th KEY CONCEPTUAL AREA OF A LEVEL MEDIA STUDIES: INSTITUTION, let’s look at Bombshell (2019, Dir. Jay Roach) a story based upon the accounts of the women at Fox News who set out to expose CEO Roger Ailes for sexual harassment. Follow this link for a brief summary of the plot.

As such, this film provides a narrative of INSTITUTIONAL SEXISM, in the same way that we could look at other stories that are concerned with other institutional prejudices – racism, homophobia, Islamaphobia etc. In other words, this film presents a version of the story of INSTITUTIONAL SEXISM and MISOGYNY. It suggests a link between the presentation / representation of the female form and the ideas of a ruling patriarchy (Fox News, specifically Roger Ailes) and perhaps explains why we are presented with the stories we are presented with and how those stories are presented to us.

You can understand misogyny (the poor representation of women in the media) in the same way you can understand racism, homophobia, ultra-nationalism and other forms of casual stereotyping, bias and prejudice, that is, through TEXTUAL ANALYSIS and the notion of REPRESENTATION.

Feminist Critical Thinking, Institution, Uncategorized

Bombshell

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this film provides a narrative of institutional sexism, in the same way that we could look at other stories that are concerned with other institutional prejudices – racism, homophobia, Islamophobia etc. In other words, this film presents a version of the story of INSTITUTIONAL SEXISM and MISOGYNY. 

Roger Ailes, the CEO of FOX News, has sexually harassed many of his employees and they spoke up about it.

Feminist Critical Thinking, Institution

BOMBSHELL

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Bombshell is about woman who work at fox news who are sexually harassed by their boss Roger Ailes.

Sexual harassment is a type of harassment involving the use of explicit or implicit sexual overtones, including the unwelcome and inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favours.

After being exposed by a multitude of woman and the the Paul Weiss firm, Ailes is fired by Foxs co-creator Rupert Murdoch. In the end a lawsuit is made and Ailes is fines £20million. As well as this fox news paid 50million to the sexually harassed woman, sadly however Ailes and O’Reilly get $65 million in severance.

Feminist Critical Thinking, Institution

insitution

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You can understand misogyny (the poor representation of women in the media) in the same way you can understand racism, homophobia, ultra-nationalism and other forms of casual stereotyping, bias and prejudice, that is, through TEXTUAL ANALYSIS and the notion of REPRESENTATION.

As such, this film provides a narrative of INSTITUTIONAL SEXISM, in the same way that we could look at other stories that are concerned with other institutional prejudices – racism, homophobia, Islamaphobia etc. In other words, this film presents a version of the story of INSTITUTIONAL SEXISM and MISOGYNY. It suggests a link between the presentation / representation of the female form and the ideas of a ruling patriarchy (Fox News, specifically Roger Ailes) and perhaps explains why we are presented with the stories we are presented with and how those stories are presented to us.

Again you can see a visual representation of this in Bombshell, for example, Roger Ailes talks about the media as ‘the most competitive industry in the world’, which means consent to a number of suspect practices – ranging from sexual favours (Roger Ailes and others at Fox News) to eating liberal food or wearing a hoodie (Mrs Ailes working practices as a publisher)! And don’t forget the opening sequence which clearly places Ailes at the centre of corporate and government power – Murdoch, Trump, Reagan, Bush etc.

Feminist Critical Thinking, Institution

bombshell

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A story based upon the accounts of the women at Fox News who set out to expose CEO Roger Ailes for sexual harassment.

Why is “Bombshell” rated R? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “sexual material and language throughout.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes a couple of implied sex scenes between a husband and his wife, between two women, many references to sexual assault and harassment in the workplace and descriptions of the types of harassment that occurred over many years, and many women wear low-cut and tight-fitting dresses throughout the movie that reveal cleavage and legs to the mid-thighs; many arguments in a work environment, threats of violence, and descriptions of a toxic work environment; and at least 40 F-words and other strong language

Feminist Critical Thinking, Institution

Bombshell

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FOX NEWS

Fox News Requires Employees to Report Vaccination Status - Variety

The Fox News Channel, commonly known as Fox News, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owned by the Fox Corporation. Fox News provides service to 86 countries and overseas territories worldwide, with international broadcasts featuring Fox Extra segments during ad breaks.

ROGER AILES

Former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes is dead - ABC News

Roger Ailes (May 15, 1940 – May 18, 2017) was an American television executive and media consultant. He was the chairman and CEO of Fox News, Fox Television Stations and 20th Television. He was a media consultant for Republican presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush, and for Rudy Giuliani’s first mayoral campaign. In July 2016, he resigned from Fox News after being accused of sexual harassment by several female Fox employees, including on-air personalities Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly. Shortly afterward, he became an adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, in which he assisted with debate preparation.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT

IndustriALL sexual harassment policy | IndustriALL

Sexual harassment is a type of harassment involving the use of explicit or implicit sexual overtones, including the unwelcome and inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favours. Sexual harassment includes a range of actions from verbal transgressions to sexual abuse or assault. Harassment can occur in many different social settings such as the workplace, the home, school, churches, etc. Harassers or victims may be of any sex or gender.

Sexual harassment by an employer is a form of illegal employment discrimination. For many businesses or organizations, preventing sexual harassment and defending employees from sexual harassment charges have become key goals of legal decision-making.

PLOT OF ‘BOMBSHELL’

Charlize Theron explains why Bombshell is more than just a movie
Bombshell (Jay Roach, 2019)

After co-moderating the 2016 Republican debate, Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) faces numerous insults from Donald Trump, who is upset because she asked him about his offensive comments toward women. Under pressure from the network, and after receiving death threats and unwanted paparazzi attention, Kelly eventually reconciles with Trump.
Meanwhile, Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) is removed as co-anchor of the popular ‘Fox and Friends’ show, and is transferred to a less popular show. Inundated by sexist comments on and off the air, including by Roger Ailes (John Lithgow), Carlson meets with lawyers who explain that Carlson’s contract prevents her from suing the network, but she can sue Ailes personally.
On her first day on ‘The O’Reilly Factor’, Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie) meets co-worker Jess Carr (Kate McKinnon), and the two sleep together. The next day, Ailes begins sexually harassing Pospisil. Pospisil begins to tell Carr about what happened, but Carr says she cannot get involved.
Carlson is later fired, ostensibly for her on-air support of the federal assault weapons ban, and decides to sue Ailes. When the news breaks the next day, Ailes denies the allegations and Kelly admits to her core team that Ailes sexually harassed her when she started at Fox. In the following weeks, despite a number of other women voicing their public support against Ailes, Kelly conspicuously refuses to make a comment on Carlson’s accusations.
After more women accuse Ailes, Kelly starts to find other women at the network. Kelly visits Pospisil, and the two confide in each other. Kelly advises Pospisil to come forward, and after consulting with Carr, she does. Through her attorneys, Carlson later informs Ailes she has recorded conversations to support her claims, deliberately withholding them from Ailes’s lawyers in order to undermine his credibility. Defeated, Ailes is fired by Fox co-creator Rupert Murdoch (Malcolm McDowell). Ailes settles Carlson’s lawsuit for $20 million and an apology from Fox, but the agreement contains a non-disclosure agreement. Fox eventually paid the victims of sexual harassment $50 million, while paying Ailes and O’Reilly $65 million in severance.

Feminist Critical Thinking, Institution

Bombshell: media institutions A CASE STUDY

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Task 1: Make a post that outlines this film

As a way of linking some of the ideas that we covered in terms of Feminist Critical Thinking towards the 4th KEY CONCEPTUAL AREA OF A LEVEL MEDIA STUDIES: INSTITUTION, let’s look at Bombshell (2019, Dir. Jay Roach) a story based upon the accounts of the women at Fox News who set out to expose CEO Roger Ailes for sexual harassment. Follow this link for a brief summary of the plot.

Bombshell | 2019 | R |

content-ratings

link for guidance

Why is “Bombshell” rated R? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “sexual material and language throughout.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes a couple of implied sex scenes between a husband and his wife, between two women, many references to sexual assault and harassment in the workplace and descriptions of the types of harassment that occurred over many years, and many women wear low-cut and tight-fitting dresses throughout the movie that reveal cleavage and legs to the mid-thighs; many arguments in a work environment, threats of violence, and descriptions of a toxic work environment; and at least 40 F-words and other strong language

LINKING WITH PREVIOUS THEORIES:

You can understand misogyny (the poor representation of women in the media) in the same way you can understand racism, homophobia, ultra-nationalism and other forms of casual stereotyping, bias and prejudice, that is, through TEXTUAL ANALYSIS and the notion of REPRESENTATION.

We ave also looked at the work Jean Kilborne from the Media Education Foundation. As well as the idea of the ‘Male Gaze’ articulated originally by Laura Mulvey, but developed later by others, such as Feminist Frequency.

Male-Gaze-003Download

However, prejudice may also occur beyond the level of text and can be identified as operating at a systemic INSTITUTIONAL intersection of race/class/gender <> power. Such ideas are proposed by Sut Jhally in his work for the Media Education Foundation – ‘Dreamworlds’ which looks at the role of MTV and music videos as a form of institutional / corporate sexism and misogyny

As such, this film provides a narrative of INSTITUTIONAL SEXISM, in the same way that we could look at other stories that are concerned with other institutional prejudices – racism, homophobia, Islamaphobia etc. In other words, this film presents a version of the story of INSTITUTIONAL SEXISM and MISOGYNY. It suggests a link between the presentation / representation of the female form and the ideas of a ruling patriarchy (Fox News, specifically Roger Ailes) and perhaps explains why we are presented with the stories we are presented with and how those stories are presented to us.

In other words, it helps to explain the ideas of Louis Althusser in that the ruling ideas emerge from elements of the Ideological State Apparatus (look at the connection between Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump etc) and those ideas shape who we are, what we could be, want to be etc by a mechanism that he calls INTERPELLATION. For a visual representation of this watch the sequence in Bombshell where we see how the presenters are encouraged to dress and the way in which the choice of camera angles are used to reinforce this particular dress code.

Again you can see a visual representation of this in Bombshell, for example, Roger Ailes talks about the media as ‘the most competitive industry in the world’, which means consent to a number of suspect practices – ranging from sexual favours (Roger Ailes and others at Fox News) to eating liberal food or wearing a hoodie (Mrs Ailes working practices as a publisher)! And don’t forget the opening sequence which clearly places Ailes at the centre of corporate and government power – Murdoch, Trump, Reagan, Bush etc.

Arguments presented against sexism and misogyny (ie the hegemonic struggle re: Gramsci) are raised through Feminist Critical Thinking and we have looked at early feminist movements as well as 2nd, 3rd and 4th wave feminist critics. We have even looked at theories of gender representation that look beyond binary gender values (male/female), which can termed as intersectionality, which first emerged as Queer Theory.

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Feminist Critical Thinking, Institution, Representation, Theory

feminism notes

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1st wave feminism 

‘sexism was coined by analogy with the term racism in the American civil rights movement in the early 1960s. Defined simply, sexism refers to the systematic ways in which men and women are brought up to view each other antagonistically, on the assumption that the male is always superior to the female‘. 

2nd wave 

‘the feminist literary criticism of today is the product of the women’s movement of the 1960’s’ 

Indeed feminist critical thought became much more prominent and pronounced during the counter cultural movements of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, which heralded, among other changes: the facilitation of of birth control and divorce, the acceptance of abortion and homosexuality, the abolition of hanging and theatre censorship, and the Obscene Publications Act (1959) – which led to the Chatterly trial. Nevertheless, 

This period is often termed second wave feminism – after the first wave of feminism, which was galvanised by organisations such as, the British women’s suffrage committee (1867), international women’s committee.

In contrast, ‘at the beginning of the 1970’s the Women’s Liberation Movement set great store by the process of consciousness raising’, ‘influencing everyday conduct and attitudes.’ and ‘exposing the mechanisms of patriarchy, that is, the cultural ‘mind-set’ in men and women which perpetuated sexual inequality’ . 

3rd wave 

Third-wave feminism began in the early 1990s, it was a response to the generation gap between the feminist movement of the 1960’s and ’70’s, challenging and re-contextualising some of the definitions of femininity that grew out of that earlier period. In particular, the third-wave sees women’s lives as intersectional, demonstrating a pluralism towards race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender and nationality when discussing feminism. 

According to Barker and Jane (2016), third wave feminism, which is regarded as having begun in the mid-90’s has following recognisable characteristics: 

  • an emphasis on the differences among women due to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion
  • individual and do-it-yourself (DIY) tactics
  • fluid and multiple subject positions and identities
  • cyberactivism
  • the reappropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ for liberatory purposes
  • sex positivity

3rd wave- Niomi Wolf:

3rd to 4th wave feminist critical thinking

The shift in critical feminist studies that reconciles exploitation against empowerment illustrates the shift in feminist thinking towards the 3rd Wave of feminist thought, see for example, groups such as Third Wave Foundation.

However, a 4th wave feminism also looked to explore these contradictory arguments and further sought to recognise and use the emancipatory tools of new social platforms to connect, share and develop new perspectives, experiences and responses to oppression, ‘tools that are allowing women to build a strong, popular, reactive movement online‘ As such, from the radical stance of #MeToo to the free the nipple campaign, which Miley Cyrus endorsed and supported (which may encourage you to re-evaluate your initial reading of her video Wrecking Ball above), the use of new media technologies has been a clear demarcation for broadening out the discussion and arguments that are played out in this line of critical thinking.