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.

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.

Kelly, Pospisil, Carlson and Carr as well as other women come forward about their accusations. Carlson informs Ailes that she has recorded conversations to support her claims, yet she is withholding them from Ailes’ lawyers so to undermine his credibility. Ailes was defeated and fired by Fox co-creator Rupert Murdoch. Ailes settles Carlson’s lawsuit and an apology from Fox, but the agreement contains a non-disclosure agreement. Eventually, Fox paid the victims $50m though Ailes and O’Reilly received $65m in severance.