Feminist Film Theory

In a patriarchal social order, masculinity is associated with superiority while femininity is

linked with inferiority, and while masculinity implies strength, action, self-assertion and
domination, femininity implies weakness passivity, docility, obedience and self-negation
(Schippers, 2007) as cited in (Fehrs, 2018). These common gender stereotypes that are
depicted in films can also come in characteristics such as: women are emotional and caring
while men are strong and the heads of the household (Krahn, 2015).
Feminist Film Theory came into being in the early 1970s with the goal of understanding
cinema as a cultural practice that represents and reproduces myths about women and
femininity. Informed by a poststructuralist perspective, feminist film theory moved beyond
reading the meaning of a film to analysing the deep structures of how meaning is constructed
(Naples, 2016). According to Hesse-Biber, Leavy and Yaiser (2004) as cited in Hemert (2013),
feminist film theory lens has also been employed to recognise the essential importance of
examining women’s experience. The purpose of a study of gendered images in popular film,
then, is to understand how traditional conceptions of femininity are either reinforced or
challenged in contemporary culture (Aja, 2015).