This was my media studies homework on exploring how a character has changed over the years. I quite liked it so I'm going to post it on here. Hope you enjoy!
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This stereotypical character has been around for years but has recently evolved due to factors such as feminism. It can be said that it used to a very exaggerated character and it was strongly based on an old fashioned and rather sexist views of women. The damsel is distress would be very attractive , weak emotionally and physically. She always required a strong man to save her and then she would typically fall for him. This is one stereotype that is trying to be destroyed in the films of today.
The damsel in distress was always presented as very weak and never independent . She was highly emotional and very fragile. When the feminist movement began , this changed. Women in real life began to break down barriers. They fought for their rights and rote their own stories for the world to know that they were sick of being treated as weak. Today, we see women face difficult situations and battle them with great emotional strength. On television , women compete in various sports that require great physical strength . Women couldn't do a lot of things because of men before but as soon as they broke the barriers they proved that they are just as strong as men. Men seemed to have forgotten that women give birth to children. Did you know that the pain off giving birth is equal to the pain of burning alive? Yet, women could still be presented as weak? How shameful.
Furthermore, women can now save themselves not that they didn't have the ability to do it before but simply because time has changed and women are now more in the spotlight in a way that doesn't degrade them. In recent movies such as Moana and Frozen , the main characters are strong independent women who saved themselves and broke social barriers even further. This is such a positive thing to happen because it teaches young girls to never depend of anyone to save them, to be fierce and independent and even more importantly to chase their dreams. In the past, female characters we presented as inadequate to do whatever they wanted to pursue in life.
Characters such as Rapunzel and Snow White awaited a man to save them an d what i s even worse is if no man came to save them , they would be alone forever or even stay dead. It all implied that without a man in their life women were no capable of living life which makes absolutely no sense and provided bad role models for young girls. Today , women are presented as more than capable and the film now ends with many of the characters not married to a man that would have just met.
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Anyhow, the world is still changing and hopefully more positivity is to come. It isn't about who's better, to me its about equity and equal opportunities. Nobody should be degraded. Let's make the world better and break negative social barriers.
