Tomb Raider

In today’s society, the media has a very powerful influence upon people and how they choose to lead their lives. Whether it is a fashion trend or a new music genre; media relays a message and portrays it as reality. That is very important because quite often, the media will try to feed us information that can be very opinionated or sometimes completely false. A prime example of this is the way the media portrays women. The argument is basically saying the media places women under men. It categorizes women as means of advertisement, as “things” to be looked at by men. Also known as the "male gaze", this idea that men control the media and how it portrays women id clearly present in this movie. The "male gaze" is surely an issue, and is present in almost all of today’s popular forms of media.

A very clear example representing this issue was in a movie called Tomb Raider. In the reading, Ziesler mentions how there are very few action movies with the girl as the lead role. For the most part this is true, but there are still a handful of action movies where a female does earn the lead part. When analyzing Angelina Jolie’s role in Tomb Raider, it is not hard to realize that her character is deeply affected by this objectification of women. In the movie, there is hardly a single scene where she is not wearing tight, skimpy clothing. Her general appearance and attitude is obviously appealing to the male standard. In order to attract more men, and therefore many more viewers, Jolie is thrown into this role which is very misguiding and debatable. Her part in the movie, though, is surprisingly legitimate in my opinion. Throughout the story, she is consistently winning fights and whatnot (as most heroes do) and the fact she is a girl never really slows her down. Although she does a great job at playing the part and making a successful movie, it is apparent how the "male gaze" still had its affect.

Above is the movie poster for the film. As you can see, Jolie is wearing a very tight shirt paired with noticeably short shorts as well. It is truly a shame that one of the most seen advertisements for this film is just flaunting Jolie’s body. Especially after seeing the movie, one would have to admit that there are a decent amount of action scenes that surely could have made another trailer poster just as easily. That is, though, where the problem lies. Men will be that much more attracted to the idea of seeing the movie after seeing that poster. It is crazy what that simple change can do to help sales for the film. Honestly, that can make sense in only one way, from the advertising standpoint. Whether or not this movie were to flaunt Jolie’s body, that poster leads all that see it to believe the movie will contain a lot of emphasis on Jolie’s hot look. Unfortunately, this is the advertising angle movie producers use in hopes of raising popularity of the movie.

The idea that a lead role in an action movie should not be a woman is completely twisted. Women deserve every right to try for the part. As a head representative stated, though, movies with women as lead roles make less money. This is very important because the film industry is just that-an industry. In order for a movie to be worth filming, there must be some assurance that the movie will actually make money so that there is a profit. I guess to solve this case, they could simply pay the lead role less money than a man would normally earn, to balance out the loss of money. Of course, then, the argument that women aren’t getting paid as much as men would surely be brought up and would ignite yet another debate. Regardless, women should obviously have a fair shot at trying for action movies assuming they fit the role.