Film Explores How TV & Film Sell Women As Meat

Women Bodies (Il Corpo della Donne)

Directed by Lorella Zanardo, Marco Malfi Chindemi, Cesare Cantù

This project took off as a matter of urgency.  It all started with the observation that women–real women–are an endangered species on television, one that is being replaced by a grotesque, vulgar and humiliating representation.

We sensed the enormity of this loss: the erasure of women’s identity is happening right before our eyes, but without a proper reaction, not even from women themselves.

This led us to select television images that share a common manipulative exploitation of the woman’s body, to let people know what is happening–not only people who never watch television, but especially those who watch it but “don’t see.”

Our aim is to ask ourselves questions, and to pose questions about the reason behind this erasure, a real “pogrom” of which all of us are silent spectators.  Our project grants special attention to the erasure of adult faces on television, to the use of plastic surgery to erase any sign of the passage of time, and to the social consequences of this erasure.

Although this is about Italian media images, it really applies in the rest of Europe and the US.

You can visit the website (in several languages) to find out more about this film and the filmmakers.  Most of the site is in Italian, including the blog, which is updated frequently.  Perhaps if we can send them a few requests for English translations, they may oblige.  :-)

You can email Lorella Zanardo at lorellaz@ilcorpodelledonne.net.

Link with Il Corpo delle Donne in Facebook.

h/t to Gender Masala