Essay: Misrepresenation of Males in the Media

Why are men always the bad guys? Movies are a great example of this phenomenon as most of the time, the villain will be a man. If you google top 20 movie villains only one will be a female. Pretty much every bad guy in a movie is delusional, violent and willing to do anything to win. It’s not only action movies that do this, many children’s shows represent the prominent villain as a male. Doing this wrongly represents men as a violent group always causing trouble. Even news articles are guilty of this, the heading of a CNN article by Danny Cevallos directly says that males are more dangerous.
Good day and welcome to the conference of Misrepresentation in the Media. A range of groups of society will be examined to see how they are misrepresented on television, film and advertisements. Today I will be discussing how men are commonly represented as dangerous and how societies attitudes and beliefs of society surrounding men have been impacted by popular culture and social media. For example, Frollo from the The Hunchback of Notre Dame, is an uncooperative and terrifying villain who gave a gypsy an ultimatum of either sleeping with him or burning her alive. Remember, this man is in a children’s movie.
It’s not as simple as it looks, although it is an option, being a man doesn’t mean being a brutally immature and violent person. For too long, men have been represented as the bad side of men, the occasional side, the side which doesn’t really know what its doing. It is true that men are more xenophobic than women and men can be more inclined to disagree, but what isn’t true is that these things always lead to violence and destruction. Even if anger does lead to this, flaunting it wont help. Why not show the happy, helpful side every now and then. This image is what everyone sees and what everyone believes. People will see that destroying everything in your path is a viable option when really, it isn’t.
Paragraph 3 of the CNN article shows this misrepresentation very clearly, “Actually, the question should really be: Are younger or older males more of a threat?” This plainly proves that men really are being misrepresented as the article doesn’t even bother to consider that others are a threat, not just men. According to a study by Steven Stosny, a Doctor of Philosophy, male anger can come from a feeling of failure and inadequacy, this means that men who are angry and are violent and destructed could just be simply scared. This issue is not just in movies, many TV shows and even books represent men in this disgusting manner and it needs to stop. When other men see this, they think it is normal and ok. This is bad as the constant misrepresentation convinces people that it is how you should be.
Die hard, a popular action movie franchise is another prime example of misrepresentation of men. After analysing the film, I was disgusted to find that this Christmas movie’s ‘good guy’ had to ruthlessly murder 10 people to get the job done. This man was supposed to be the hero, the one everyone idolises. But he’s a serial killer. When people watch the movie they see this man running around with a gun shooting and killing everyone in his way. This is ruing societies view on males, as you might say not all men are like this, but almost every man in the movie tries to kill another. This makes males seem like the mass murderers that they aren’t.
Overall, it’s clear that we desperately need an overhaul of the representation of men in society due to all these factors. No longer should any man have to worry about being associated with a serial killer and be accused of anything just because they are a man. I its exceptionally important that everyone, especially film producers, this message that good guys should actually be good as societies view on males is suffering under the strain of misrepresentation.