Killing Us Softly &Tough Guise

Watching these films was very hard, because it is such a horrible feeling to know that that is how your own society and culture view and value you. Killing Us Softly was particularly interesting to me, because the media's portrayal of women in ads has always bothered me, and I have seen its impact on women's bodies. The fact that the behaviors expected of women, to be submissive and 'below' men, is seen in ads with children, was very disturbing. I never really thought about just how much of an impact ads and the media have on people until I really thought about it after watching this. I liked how the media in Killing Us Softly linked into the portrayal of violence and masculinity in Tough Guise. It was very interesting to see how young men were describing masculinity, especially the independence factor. I have always thought that women included independence in their descriptions of a woman, much the way the men in the film were, but clearly, according to the film, two independent people of opposite sexes would not be a good idea. Women simply are not portrayed this way, and since these are the messages that people are getting about being a man or a woman, independence is not one that women are shown as having. Being a woman is all about being submissive and pleasing the men, according to the media, which is really quite sad. Being such a 'progressive' country, I would hope that our media would take that as well, and give alternate portrayals of women and men, but unfortunately, these images play into a fairy tale life that many young girls dream of. Much as I love Disney movies, they too play into the submissive, man-pleasing ways of the more recent media productions.