Review of 21 Jump Street experience

I just saw the movie 21 Jump Street yesterday. Every single preview ahead of the movie (there were about eight of them) had references to women as "bitches" and "whores", and almost exclusively depicted women who were in their early twenties, looking very hot, with minimal clothing, and showing us there are scenes where it looks like the girls take it off, or other provocative and/or humiliation scenarios. The movie I was there to see was Rated R, but definitely caters to teens and young adults. There were also children in the audience, accompanied by over-17 people. One of the previews was for an upcoming sit-com on ABC called "Don't Trust the B____ in Apt. 23".  Seriously. This is going to be a TV show during primetime on a major network.  You can check out the wikipedia link at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Trust_the_B----_in_Apartment_23

21 Jump Street should honestly have an NC-17 rating - for extreme violence, some horrific images of extreme gore, and what I would call XXX, very adult language, throughout the entire film. It is all done in a comic context, and it is a good movie in all other respects, and very funny, and I seemed to be the only one in the audience with any sensitivities to it. It traumatized me to watch it, and I would have walked out and gotten a refund had I not been with a friend on her birthday.

The problem is not just that women are depicted in very limited, narrow, and consistent ways in film - such as in all the previews I saw, often depicting their sexuality and, more recently, humiliation to women scenes. It is that the same message is thrown at us continually from every source - from TV commercials, to comedy shows on TV, to night time dramas, to late night talk shows, to film, to Internet, to video games, to phone apps.

Humans are sensitive machines. We absorb the messages we see and they do influence our brainwaves and the turning on/off of genes, and our collective (and individual) psyche and attitudes. These messages are influencing the next generation of men and women. Already what is considered acceptable and mainstream to show in media is a direct result of what the last generation grew up with: a lot less parental supervision, a lot more media sexualization of women, and women themselves taking "ownership" of this type of portrayal.

Lots of people seem to be able to say, "Yeah that's a film, or that's TV. It's not reality". But now days, reality and media are much intertwined and it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate the two. This will only be worse for children, who don't have the context and frames of reference that adults have, with regard to what is reality and what is make believe. If you see it everywhere, in everything, doesn't that MAKE it reality?

Women are letting this happen by keeping silent about it, or worse, not even being terribly bothered by it. I actually polled about 25 people coming out of the film 21 Jump Street. Absolutely EVERY person in the theater (except the "in shock looking" 8-year old girl I saw) came out LOVING it, saying it was hilarious and really good. Even the women. Not one single woman that I asked took issue with the film.

I believe this is because many Americans are simply just not critical thinkers. Our media is one of the strong influencers training us to be that way. Most people learn how to do critical media analysis in college. Many women are just busy with family, job, daily life and haven't had access to a media analysis class. And many teen girls are busy with diet, fashion, image, simpler things than media analysis. Which is why I feel it is really important we start educating kids in junior high and high school about media.

Just as a side-anecdote, after one woman came out of the theater and told me she loved it, thought it was great, had no problems with the film, I made the comment, "you must not be a feminist then." And her response was, "No, I'm not". As she and her young son walked away, I heard her son (about 10 years old) ask, "You aren't a what?"

At least he's interested. That gives me some hope anyway.