Be Your Own Hero

But don't forget to show others the way.

Create reflections of what you wish you could've seen growing up.

I just finished Miss Representation; amazingly wonderful.  This is a documentary that I think is important to check out and to find others like it and to create others like it.  (Extra plus to me, it's incredibly well-made)  Pointing ou issues of internalized misogyny and media bias are incredibly important to me.  I also, believe that the main way to fight against this is to point it out and make as many people aware of it as possible.  This documentary does this and for that I am incredibly thankful.

A couple others I'm planning to check out soon: Killing Us Softly, Tough Guise, and Spin the Bottle

I do have one problem with it that I would like to point out, because it worries me that the solution presented in the film will become what people latch onto and fight for.  The solution presented is that because of many studies linking current criminal/violent behavior to media being unregulated, in order to fight against gender/racial bias, we need to first put in place regulations on said media.  As a filmmaker and as someone who finds film censorship(regulation) interesting, I have read quite a bit on the subject of film and television censorship.  I am aware that the publication that I have read are most likely biased against censorship for obvious reasons.  However, I am also hyper-aware of the fact that we do have some regulations and barriers put in place today, which in general are partially controlled by media companies that answer to advertisers and so on.  These regulations, specifically the MPAA and FCC are already biased with their regulatory decisions towards women and sexuality, not necessarily the sexualization of a character.  I truly believe that if the government were to officially say that they are going to regulate the media, that we would end up with worse media that is further biased towards women/race/sexuality than we currently have.

For reference, watch This Film Is Not Yet Rated (a not-as-well-made documentary, but entirely valid study of media's route of 'voluntary' censorship), The Celluloid Closet (amazing documentary of homosexuality portrayed in media before the 90s), "Indie Sex" (a three-part study of the sexual bias of gender and sexuality in media), and read The Face on the Cutting Room Floor (an older book on the regulations implemented before the MPAA).  There are probably plenty of other reference material, especially reading-wise, I just recently finished The Face on the Cutting Room Floor so it is fresh in my mind.