Once again, white males win

An interesting new study by Nicole Martins and Kristen Harrison, discussed at Jezebel, finds that watching TV affects the self esteem of kids. Essentially, it increases the self esteem of white boys and decreases the self esteem of girls and black boys. Beyond the simple lack of depictions of females and nonwhites (are TV shows any better than movies at passing the Bechdel Test?), the authors discuss the fact that when individuals from these groups are depicted they are typically seen as one-dimensional. As I’ve discussed in the past, movie (and likely television) studios still see the idea of projects centered on nonwhites or nonmales as risky. It turns out that not featuring characters like these is also risky.

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Movies with a twist

Recently, this quotation in a review of Angelina Jolie’s new movie, Salt, caught my attention: “Had a man played the lead role, which was originally written for Tom Cruise, Salt would have come off as dated and predictable. With a woman—with this woman—all the invincible-spy clichés feel fresh and fun again.”  The idea, it seems, is that a hackneyed movie is not hackneyed if it comes with a twist.  Based on this video describing the Bechdel Test (briefly, whether a movie has more than two named female characters, whether they talk to each other, and whether they discuss something other than men), it appears that when Hollywood has completely run out of ideas all they will need to do is change a few main characters from men to women in order to be hailed as innovative.

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