Barbie (2023) was the highest-grossing film in 2023, attracting worldwide attention. The film's commercial success is undisputed, especially considering its several nominations and awards. The film points out important questions about feminism, which draws attention to the film's gender constructions. The Barbie doll, on which the film's characters are based, has been criticized over the years for promoting unrealistic beauty standards for women and girls. This study aims to critically analyze how gender is constructed in the film Barbie (2023), using multimodal feminist critical discourse analysis and social semiotic analysis. In addition, the aim is to examine if gender constructions challenge or maintain normative assumptions of gender and power structures. The theoretical framework incorporates Hall's representation theory, social semiotics, feminist critical discourse analysis, intersectionality, and Dyer's theory of stereotyping. Six selected scenes in the film are examined using analytical methods and the theoretical framework to discover discourses about gender and power. The study finds that gender is constructed in the film by reinforcing and parodying stereotypes. Furthermore, comedy is employed to reinforce and criticize gender norms. In addition, the film both promotes and challenges norms and stereotypes that construct gender and power structures. Although the film has a clear feminist objective and an explicit feminist message, its inclusion of intersectional perspectives is limited. However, the film takes significant steps toward challenging and igniting debate regarding gender constructions and power structures in film and media.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-532778 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Mildh, Felicia, Wennås, Elin |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för informatik och media |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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