Missrepresentaion

Symbolic Annihilation

Missrepresentation, the documentary directed by Jennifer Newsom, covered how women are seen and treated in the United states today and a big cause of this is how the media portray women and misrepresent or don't represent them at all. An important detail talked about in the documentary was symbolic annihilation. Many women aren't shown as leaders in the media and the actresses and other women portrayed by the media are shown as playthings and toys who aren't deeper than the surface. Because real women aren't represented it leads to symbolic annihilation. Symbolic annihilation is when a group is not featured in the media and start to wonder what part they play in this culture. Because they don't know what part they are meant to play or what they are meant to contribute they look towards the media and how they portray their group. In this case women see other women represented as needing to be beautiful, to be mothers, to not hold positions of power and to be catty, competing with other women instead of supporting each other. This ends up giving the women the picture that they are not to be anything more than that so they don't run for president or become CEO of a company and in turn the United States misses a over half the population's contribution to society. Missrepresentation can be watched on netflix.