According to a study performed by Faculty Fellow Stacy Smith, Hollywood movies directed by African Americans are significantly more likely to include African-American characters with speaking roles than movies not directed by African Americans. The report, co-authored by project administrator Marc Choueiti, also found that only one of the top 200 movies from 2007 and 2008 was directed by an African-American woman, according to the "Black Characters" report. "Black Characters" also quantifies the continuing, although slightly diminished, sexualization of black female movie roles versus black male movie roles. [Full article]……
Tag: ssmith
Smith in Newswise – Sexy Socialization
"These findings are troubling given that repeated exposure to thin and sexy characters may contribute to negative effects in some female viewers," Faculty Fellow Stacy Smith told Newswise. Smith studied society's sexualization of teenaged girls in film and in the corporate environment of Hollywood. "Such portrayals solidify patterns of appearance-based discrimination in the entertainment industry."……
Stacy Smith on roles of women in film
Faculty Fellow Stacy Smith served as the lead researcher in a report studying the early sexualization of teen girls. Smith and her team analyzed the top 100 grossing films of 2008 to find correlations about the attitudes of teenagers to their older peers and the perception of women in film. USA Today featured an article on Smith's work, and can be read below. ———————————————————————- Film study: Men talk and women show skin by Nanci Hellmich When it comes to movie roles, women tend to be seen and not heard. An analysis of the 100 top-grossing movies of 2008 shows that……
Smith on Annenberg Radio News – Women in media
Faculty Fellow Stacy L. Smith was interviewed on USC's own Annenberg Radio News. In conjunction with International Women's Day, Smith was interviewed about the role of women in the media, and how the lack of females behind the lens in Hollywood is having negative effects on young women growing in America today…….
Smith in FishbowlLA – “Gender roles”
Stacy L. Smith, Faculty Fellow, presented her research on "Gender in Media" at the Skirball Cultural Center in December. Smith's research examined the female role models that appear in family films and the frequency in which female characters appear in these movies. According to the Geena Davis Institute, 400 of the top grossing films released between 1990 and 2006 were analyzed. At that time, the ratio of male-to-female characters was determined to be 2.71-to-one. The article can be found on FishbowlLA…….
Stacy Smith in Newsweek
Faculty Fellow Stacy Smith was featured in a Newsweek article about female presence in children's film. Smith, along with her colleague, Marc Choueiti studied 122 family films and found that only 29.7% of the characters were female. Smith's study was commissioned by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, which has been compiling data on women in film…….
Stacy Smith in Snarky’s Cinemachine
Research conducted by Faculty Fellow Stacy Smith was cited in a blog post by Snarky's Cinemachine on action hero franchises…….
Oscar’s cracked glass ceiling
The Los Angeles Times featured a study by Faculty Fellow Stacy L. Smith. The LAT reported: "The population might be more than 50% female, but actresses nabbed only 29.9% of the 4,379 speaking parts in the 100 top-grossing films of 2007, according to a recently released study by Stacy L. Smith, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communications & Journalism at USC. Only 2.7% of the directors on those films were women, but when they did step behind the camera, the percentage of female characters jumped dramatically, to as high as 44.6%, compared with 29.3% when the director was……
CCLP essay published in Shriver Report reveals gender bias in media
Fellows from the Center on Communication Leadership & Policy have authored an essay in a report released October 15 by award-winning broadcast journalist and author Maria Shriver. Shriver is working in partnership with CCLP and the Center for American Progress on an ambitious research project examining how women's changing roles are affecting government, businesses, faith communities and the media. Findings are being released in The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything. It "outlines how these institutions rely on outdated models of who works and who cares for our families, and examines how all these parts of the culture have……