Thursday, April 4, 2013

Final Project Proposal (Ruslan Ivanov)

            The project I have decided to accomplish is going to take a form of a video presentation. My goal is to create a dynamic short clip, that is specifically oriented to women. Hopefully, I will succeed in creating an influential piece, which is also informative.   In this clip I will try to touch upon the issue of women objectification in TV and Internet advertisements and how it’s affecting our society. However, I’m not going to only point out specific commercials for its obvious sexism; I will try to juxtapose both most sexist ads and those that were found to be non-sexist. In addition, I will interview several women with different backgrounds and compare their answers on questions related to gender hierarchies. I believe, having real (non-actor) characters in the project will make this video more attractive to an average female viewer and hope many of them will be comfortable to identify with the characters as well.
            Duration of whole presentation should not be longer than 5 - 8 minutes, therefore, I’ll try to stay on point and concentrate only on the main issues.
First part of the video is introduction (1 to 1.5 minutes). General info on how women objectified, some examples of short sexist commercials and little bit of history of feminism transforming advertising.
In the second part of the video I will introduce three to five female characters with different backgrounds. These women will be asked questions such as but not limited to:

  • Do you think women are equal to men?
  • Do you find today’s advertisements offensive?
  • What is the woman’s role in today’s society?
  • What is the man’s role in today’s society?
  • Are you happy with your body?
  • When you were a little girl, what did you want to be as an adult?
and other relevant questions. The reason I picked those questions is that , most likely, some of the interviewees are going to respond with answers that are still representing sexist stereotypes of a woman, who is a housewife, flawless beauty, skinny model or simply a little girl, who dreams to become a princess.
The third part of the project is analysis of the answers provided and contrasting them to today’s images advertised on the TV and the Internet. This type of approach will help me to prove the thesis of this project, which is to show how much we are affected by media and how damaging it is to our female population and society overall.
      Last part of the video is the conclusion with the positive ideas on how we can stop the pervasive cycle of sexist advertisements, followed by few examples of commercials that do not objectify women sexually nor carry subliminal messages of how they supposed to act or look like. Finally, a strong statement by one of the influential rights activist or feminist will conclude the video urging to get involved in the process of creating a truly equal and therefore healthy society.

Few of the sources that will be used for the development of the project:

    • Some examples of ads that actually show real-looking women—of diverse ages, ethnicities and body types—taking an active role in the world.    

    • Article about how feminism transformed advertising     

    • Comercial that hired a plus size actor to advertise their product

    • Comercial where women portrayed as strong or even stronger than men

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