{"id":333,"date":"2014-04-01T22:04:55","date_gmt":"2014-04-02T02:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/?p=333"},"modified":"2017-10-31T22:05:30","modified_gmt":"2017-11-01T02:05:30","slug":"geena-davis-represent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/2014\/04\/01\/geena-davis-represent\/","title":{"rendered":"Geena Davis, Represent!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Geena Davis received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University and the Bette Davis Foundation last Friday evening, March 28. The ceremony marked the opening of \u201cGeena Davis: Actress and Advocate,\u201d an archival exhibit detailing Davis\u2019 Academy-award winning career in film, as well as her advocacy for equal gender representation in media.<a href=\"https:\/\/hoochiewoman.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/04\/geena_davis_at_the_2009_tribeca_film_festival.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-1651\" src=\"https:\/\/hoochiewoman.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/04\/geena_davis_at_the_2009_tribeca_film_festival.jpg?w=212&amp;h=300\" alt=\"Geena_Davis_at_the_2009_Tribeca_Film_Festival\" width=\"212\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Davis, 58, graduated from Boston University\u2019s College of Fine Arts in 1979 to pursue acting. She won an Oscar for Best Actress ten years later for her role in \u201cThe Accidental Tourist.\u201d She is also known for her work in \u201cBeetlejuice,\u201d \u201cA League of Their Own,\u201d \u201cStuart Little,\u201d and was nominated for another Academy Award in 1992 for her character in \u201cThelma and Louise.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI always wanted to play characters who were in charge of their own fate,\u201d said Davis in a press conference at the event. \u201cWhen [\u201cThelma and Louise\u201d] garnered such a big reaction from women it made me think much more consciously about what the women in the audience would think about my characters.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Davis started the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media in 2004 after watching family movies with her daughter, who\u2019s now twelve, and noticing a severe under-representation of female characters. The non-profit research entity studies gender representation in film and television, particularly media aimed at young audiences. It works to reduce stereotypes of women by bringing attention to disparities in family films. Research from the last decade showed fewer than 1\/3 characters in family films are female, and more than 95% of C-suite characters are male.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it\u2019s incredibly important, the images of women that we see,\u201d said Davis. \u201cIf we\u2019re showing kids female characters that are stereotyped, sidelined, or highly sexualized or not even there, we\u2019re sending a message to kids. It\u2019s basically saying that women and girls aren\u2019t as important as boys.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The institute is now the leading source of research on gender depictions in media. In 2013, it partnered with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality for a global study that will be presented at the Second Global Symposium on Gender in Media in the Fall of 2014.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe ratio of male to female characters in film has been exactly the same since 1946\u2026 things just haven\u2019t changed,\u201d said Davis. \u201cI\u2019m hoping that finally this last year where \u201cHunger Games\u201d was number one and \u201cFrozen\u201d was number four, we actually might get some momentum.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Geena Davis received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University and the Bette Davis Foundation last Friday evening, March 28. The ceremony marked the opening of \u201cGeena Davis: Actress and Advocate,\u201d an archival exhibit detailing Davis\u2019 Academy-award winning career in film, as well as her advocacy for equal &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/2014\/04\/01\/geena-davis-represent\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Geena Davis, Represent!<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7073,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[65],"tags":[463,464,465,19,466,467,468,469],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7073"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":334,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions\/334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/hoochie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}