The End

This week, my project partner, Liz, and I presented our project on the "Representation of Women and Minorities in 'Best Picture' Winning Academy Award-Winning Films."

We looked took the movies that won best picture over the last 10 years and by loosely using the Bechdel Test (which involves having movies where there are at least two women, who talk directly to each other, about something other than men) we looked to see if the best picture movies had women, who were not the love interest, wife or girlfriend of a male, and minorities in lead roles.

By looking that the last 10 movies that won best picture we found that the majority of them had white males as cast in the leading roles. Only 3 of the movies, (Chicago, Million Dollar Baby and Crash) had women in leading roles and only 1 movie, (Crash) had both women and minorities in leading roles.

We also looked at the top grossing films for the last 10 years to see if the average movie goers were drawn to movies that might have minorities or women cast in the lead roles, but the top grossing films were all white males in the leading roles.

I thought our presentation was really interesting because I didn't realize how many movies that I had seen that were mainly comprised of white males in the lead roles. When I do see movies that have a woman cast at the main character, she is often naive and ditsy...that's romance comedies for ya.

I notice things we have learned throughout the semester a lot more now, then I did when the semester first started and I have really enjoyed this class. It has opened my eyes to things I didn't really take notice of before.