Movies, gender, and social change: the hollywood romance film

With a sample of over 250 films released in the U.S. from 2000 to 2014, and with the benefit of over fifty years of feminist film theorizing on the issue of the characterization of women in both Hollywood and foreign films, our analysis investigates whether a particular film genre – romance movies – has begun to provide a diverse range of depictions of its female characters or has it continued to favour a stereotyped understanding of woman as subservient to the men in their lives. The central focus of our analysis concerns the ways in which romantic couples exhibit behaviours that the sociological and psychological literatures describe as either ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’. In addition to summarizing these data, we also describe at length a number of films that illustrate the various gender stereotypes. We conclude our analysis by addressing the thorny question of whether and how Hollywood movies could lessen the extent of sexism and gender inequality in Western society.