This week (partially due to an assignment for a different class), I watched Bombshell. It’s a movie that looks into the sexual harassment scandal at Fox, related to the lawsuit against Roger Ailes that Gretchen Carlson started. Bombshell is depicting the struggles of Gretchen Carlson, Megyn Kelly and, the fictional character, Kayla Pospisil. They are all victims of sexual harassment and sexism who are put in an impossible position where they have to choose between their dignity and their profession, seemingly unable to break the vicious cycle. ![]() An interesting aspect about the movie is that it passes the Bechdel test (as evidenced by the conversation between Kayla and Jess about what kind of stories Fox looks for, there are at least two named women who talk to each other about something other than men), but at the same time it is definitely not an example for representation. As a whole, the main cast of the movie comprises of Caucasians – people of color were not part of the plot in any noticeable way. Further the women in the show were predominately the closest representation of the “mythical norm” a woman could possibly be: young looking, very beautiful, thin, white, well educated, wealthy. This is likely due to the nature of the story, where Roger Ailes is portrayed as a businessman who built Fox to be as successful as it is with the help of aesthetics (i.e., women with long legs, wearing skirts or dresses and high heels, sitting behind glass desks, meant to entice the “male gaze”). Yet, this is still a very unrealistic representation of how most women are. Further, the movie both depicts, and in many ways, reinforces the patriarchal system. First, throughout the movie men are the ones in power, while women’s interests come second. This could be illustrated both through the story line about Megyn Kelly and her confrontation with Donald Trump. In this instance Fox sided with Trump and strongly encouraged her to absolve him of guilt, no matter how much his actions contributed to her suffering. Further, the conflict surrounding Gretchen Carlson is another depiction of the power imbalance – whenever she expresses dissatisfaction with how she is being treated, she is told to “learn to play with the boys”, “a manhater” and a number of other disparaging adjectives. Finally, patriarchy is shown strongly at the end of the movie when it is revealed that while Fox paid $50 million to the women who were sexually harassed, they also paid $65 million as a severance package to their harassers. In fact, at the end of the movie it was once again a man stepping at the top position at Fox, even though the scandal was connected to the abysmal ways women there were treated. While the movie tried to follow the real events, there were also a number of creative aspects within it, but none of those led to a depiction of female empowerment where the women prevailed – at the end, Gretchen Carlson was paid off and silenced, Megyn Kelly was stuck in a position she never wanted and Kayla (the fictional character in the story) simply left the fight and what she once described as her dream job.
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AuthorMaggie Zlatanova Archives
May 2021
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