New Knowledge on Topic:

                Now that I've finally honed in on exactly what I want to research, I was able to find a lot of different articles and writing on the female role in film. I read a scholarly "Conference" written in 2008 on gender stereotypes in popular film and tv. I knew going in that I would already have a good idea about everything they were saying. It started with information about the current state of gender inequality and went on to say "In fact, research on television reveals that the participation of women writers and producers increases the percentage of females on screen."(Smith) I honestly didn't need to be told that 'research' proved his to know that it's true, but as I read further I discovered things that I hadn't known. "Females are more likely than males to be depicted as parents (52.2% vs. 40.4%) and in a committed relationship (59.9% vs. 47.4%) in motion pictures."(Smith) Though this is something that can be assumed, it's interesting to see numbers attached. Another study said that "Females were over five times as likely as males to be shown in sexually revealing clothing, which was defined as attire that enhances, exaggerates, or calls attention to any part of the body from neck to knees."(Smith)
As I searched for more material on it, I found an article on Newstatesmen.com entitled 'I hate Strong Female Characters'. Reading on, I found that this journalist, who happened to be a women, had some interesting ideas about modern concepts of female strength. She wrote "We need get away from the idea that sexism in fiction can be tackled by reliance on depiction of a single personality type, that you just need to write one female character per story right and you’ve done enough."(McDougall) I think this is a way of confronting contemporary falsehoods that plague film and other industries. Reading this helped inform me about a lot of new movies coming out where gender ratios are wildly unequal and female roles are being written in a way that for a women to be "strong", she must in some way emulate a man.

(Smith): http://www.seejane.org/downloads/GDIGM_Gender_Stereotypes.pdf
(McDougall): http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/08/i-hate-strong-female-characters

New Research Question:

After much thought, my new and (semi)improved research question is:

How are women portrayed in the film industry based on the roles they play in movies and how do certain characters classify and stereotype females?

5 Research Questions:

1. How has the role of women changed over time in film?
This question is relatively broad and kind of covers a huge expanse of research. It could be good to have a wider question so I wouldn't miss anything within the subject. I could learn more about either female directors and filmmakers or I could turn it in a more actress/character driven idea.

2. In what way are women portrayed negatively within film?
I think this questions more quickly addresses subjects and ideas that I want to pay attention to in my research. If I clean lean in the direction I want the paper to go in my research, I can focus on exactly what I want to demonstrate in my paper.

3. What is the role that women have in the film industry and how has it changed overtime?
This question doesn't immediately create a bias in my research like my last one and also has the broad subject range, again enabling me to cover different aspects involving women within the entire film industry.

4. Are female directors, filmmakers, and producers not equally represented in the film industry?
This question would hone in on the moviemaking aspect of film and would probably give me a lot of information and specific names to work with. I think I'd be more interested in this subject because I am hoping to be a filmmaker and I feel like I could learn about things that actually apply to me.

5. How are women portrayed in the horror genre and is it overwhelmingly negative?
I thought this one would be an all around better question for me to work with because this is a more focused concept. I find that the horror genre holds a lot of stereotypes that I could delve more into and open ideas on objectification and fetishization.

What I've learned:

After reading up on my topic of “Feminism and Film”, I found that there is a lot of information out there. What I really wanted to focus on was the “feminist counter-cinema” and exactly what that meant. I came upon one feminist film theory article from theorist Anneke Smelik. Smelik wrote that this counter-cinema movement was one with avant-garde aesthetics and a focus on breaking the ‘classic film narrative’. Smelik also went on to say that ‘feminist counter-cinema did not only pertain to fictional film, but also to documentary’. I think this is an interesting idea, and I like the concept that ‘feminist documentary should manufacture and construct the ‘truth’ of women’s oppression, not merely reflect it’.

I’m very intrigued by the different levels that the feminist counter-cinema holds. I haven’t read or studied much on it and would love to narrow my sights onto this specific area. I also learned that this counter-cinema is only a tiny part of the films that women have made since the mid-1970s.  I learned more about the idea of the male gaze in a lot of early cinema, especially western movies, and how female’s spectators either had to assume the masculine gaze or identify with the ‘slot of passive femininity’. Learning more about the female hand in making movies and changing how movies are perceived made me start to consider if I should focus on that part of feminism and film.

• http://www.annekesmelik.nl/TheCinemaBook.pdf

50 Questions on my Topic:

1. When was the birth of cinema?
2. Who is credited with it's creation?
3. When did feminism become "big"?
4. Who led feminist revolutions (multiple people, different times)?
5. Are movies made by men more popular?
6. What is feminist counter-cinema?
7. Do female directors get turned down more often then men?
8. Are big movie more likely to have a male protagonist?
9. Are movies given a better budget if they have a male protagonist?
10. Are female characters viewed as less important than male characters?
11. What are some movies that promote inequality between genders?
12. What are some movies that promote equality between genders?
13. What are some movies that draw attention to societies injustices to women?
14. What are some female produced/directed/written movies that have won big awards (oscars, etc)?
15. What are some male produced/directed/written movie that have won big awards?
16. What was the first movie with a female lead?
17. Who was the first woman to win an award for best director?
18. Who was the first woman to win an award for best actress?
19. Are there movies made about feminism?
20. Who was the 'first' proclaimed feminist director?
21. What was the first all female cast in a movie?
22. What are some feminist film theories?
23. Who are some feminist film theorists?
24. Is there a genre of film more prone to display gender inequalities?
25. What are some cinematic tropes that play into female belittlement, etc?
26. Is there more male-on-female violence than female-on-male violence in today's movies?
27. Are females represented differently in film in different places in the world?
28. How are woman sexualized in modern cinema?
29. How has the role of women changed in society over the past century?
30. How are women fetishized in movies?
31. Do today's movies created unattainable standards for real life women?
32. Are most movies targeted towards the male viewer?
33. Are male audiences more important to revenue?
34. Does sex really sell when it comes to movies?
35. Is male nudity or female nudity more likely to get censored in films?
36. Do films shame women by killing off or punishing the promiscuous female(s) in the movie? 
37. Are female characters just tools in the film?
38. Do male characters mean more in the movies?
39. Is feminism viewed as a negative idea/topic?
40. What are some sexist cliches that cinema uses?
41. Is the media facilitating the sexism in cinema?
42. Is modern cinema simply recreating the inequalities that are in our actual society?
43. Is Hollywood more scared to lose money that to change their values to support equality?
44. Does the gender of the director effect the popularity of the movie? 
45. How can feminist counter-cinema change today's films?
46. Is female sexuality taboo in today's cinema?
47. Are many women not allowed/hesitant to voice opinions, thoughts, etc. about modern movies?
48. Do female demographics matter less than male demographics at the box office?
49. Are women too 'comfortable' with the current state of affairs(having to do with gender equality)?
50. Do films with a mostly female cast do better or worse than films with a mostly male cast?

Females in Pop Culture

I'm really interested in the way females are portrayed in popular culture, and even more specifically, movies. I think a lot of common misconceptions about gender are fueled by movies, TV shows, and literature. Many of the ideas of women all the way back to the 1950's and further have not really changed, and a good many people think we have "progressed" when in actuality we have just changed the way we go about addressing and facilitating inequality. In today's self-proclaimed 'matriarch', having to do with the number of women enrolled in college and employed as upper-level management et cetera, are woman just pawns to media, sitting back because we feel we've hit a brick wall on our search for equality? Is the recent trend of court cases about woman's rights sparking a flame for a revival in bra burning? I'm intrigued by women's role in media and pop culture and how the female gender is shown.

I think a lot of what I'm interested in relatively researchable, but I'm keen to narrow it down to just the female role in film. I would be interested in approaching that in many different ways, not only how the female characters within the film are objectified/praised/etc., but also how the female hand can shape the portrayals (as in how to female directors/screenwriters/etc. change the picture). I think focusing down onto film and its subsidiary topics involving women.

The question I leave for myself is: If I am to further research females in film, should I narrow the topic even further? Will I get a better outcome from just focusing on horror films? Or just focusing on the 'girl-next-door' character that plagues cinema?