Gender Microaggression Motif in Films Featuring Steven Kanumba
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Date
2014-07-24
Authors
Mututa, Addamms Songe
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Abstract
This study will examine gender archetypes prevalent in purposively selected films
featuring Steven Kanumba as the protagonist or antagonist. It shall explore the spaces
occupied by women characters, articulating the contexts of their social existence and
the outcomes of the roles assigned to them within cinema narratives in comparison to
those of men. The study shall further interrogate whether these social mappings
engender bias, any form of hegemony or subjugation, and consequently adumbrate
aggressive trends between male and female characters in their diegetic world. The
research will be qualitative, and data analysis will focus on the concentric positioning
of male and female characters within the narrative's social framework. It will be an
evaluation of whether these films edify ascendancy by characters of either gender and
how such quasi-conflicts reinforce or confront domination in the social continuum.
From this engagement, the study will specifically examine through collocation analysis
if such social interactions constitute microaggressive tendencies. Theoretically, this
study will adduce to Masculinity theory whose gender stance is hinged on re-thinking,
interalia, male-ascendancy and systems that perpetuate it. It shall also allude to Derald
Wing Sue's behavioural psychology from which the concept of microaggression is
derived. Finally, it will invoke the contemplations of postcolonial scholars like Edward
Said; and feminist scholars like Simone de Beauvoir, Laura Mulvey, Kate Millett and
Judith Butler's feminist strand, whose aesthetic stance evince social suppression of the
less powerful members of the society.