Unless you died before consumable media or you live under a rock, pop culture is a phenomenon that everyone, regardless of their age, gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, encounters on a day to day basis. I can guarantee with confidence that at least 99.9% of every person on this earth knows something about pop culture. Pop culture is what molds our personalities and makes us the way we are. It is what we talk about to our friends, family, and strangers, and it is what many people around the world dedicate their entire lives to. Starting at a very young age, we take preferences for particular media. It could be books, film, television, music, fashion, or art, but we all begin our journey in life by liking something. It is with time that our interests grow and define us. In other words, the impact that pop culture has on us helps make us who we are. In this blog, I want to talk about women in films and TV shows that have had the most significant impact on pop culture. The reason I want to focus on women’s roles in media is that I want to advocate for equality and allow others to recognize how significant some characters are to our culture today.
The movies that I will be talking about include titles such as 13 Going on 30, Clueless, Legally Blonde, The Parent Trap, and 10 Things I Hate About You, to name a few. The reason that I picked these movies is that they achieved massive success and that they also tend to garner negative attention for being “too feminine.” I’d argue that there is no such thing as “too feminine” and that these titles have something valuable worth offering to their audience. For my first in-depth analysis, I will be talking about The Devil Wears Prada, directed by David Frankel and produced by Wendy Finerman.
Some background on me: I studied film and TV for three years in high school. During this time, I gained an obsession with cinematography and deciphering media by nitpicking what was presented on screen. My lesson from this time was that in a good film or TV show, everything happens for a reason and everything that is displayed is essential to the plot. The aforementioned applies to color grading, usage of props, costumes, lighting, editing, sound, you name it. Also, during this time, I made many short films, advertisements, and public service announcements, of which one won an award for Best Comedic Narrative. I believe that having firsthand experience with media allows me to critique movies. With that, I must admit that I am no expert and am merely an amateur who enjoys consuming media. Projects that I really like tend to stick around in my head longer than usual, where I can analyze them to completion.
—Ashna Sran, Film Blogger.
Ashna’s Bio:
Ashna Sran is a senior at Lewis University, majoring in Biology and minoring in Chemistry. She was exposed to filmmaking and film criticism early on in high school and has stuck with it ever since. Currently, Ashna is involved in water remediation research in the Chemistry department and she finds it very interesting. After getting her degree, Ashna wants to attend medical school and become a physician. She has wanted to become a doctor since she was very young and she is very excited about the next stage in her life. In her spare time, she loves to watch movies and TV shows, listen to music, and spend time with her family and dog. Her favorite titles include Knives Out, The Haunting at Hill House, New Girl, and A Quiet Place. She tries not to limit herself to a genre, so she likes to watch all kinds of movies and TV shows. Ashna hopes to learn more about visual media while writing her blog and hopes to expand her taste in movies and TV shows.