Analysis of Miss Representation Miss Representation, a documentary directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, addresses one of the most pressing issues in today’s society: the representation - or, as implied by the title, misrepresentation - of women by the media. In the documentary, Newsom discusses the effect the portrayal of women in the media has on every aspect of the lives of women in America - from women’s perceptions of their bodies to their ability to participate in government. She uses quantitative data, her own story and the stories of other women, famous and not, and various aspects of the visual track to successfully communicate her message that the media’s portrayal and treatment of women is harmful and must be changed in order for …show more content…
Newsom’s use of pathos in Miss Representation is primarily effective because both the documentary in general and the pathos are aimed at a specific target audience: parents and women of all ages. The documentary is aimed at people who have experienced or will experience many of the issues addressed, or, like Newsom, want to try to fix the issues for future generations. By telling her own story and experiences with the pressures of the media (and, by extension, her motivation for making the documentary), she appeals to the older women watching the documentary, many of whom have or know someone who has had similar experiences. She also interviews several teenage girls who have first hand experience with the pressures of today’s culture in order to demonstrate, especially to younger viewers, how the media affects everyone in ways that a viewer might not even connect to the media on her own. Newsom’s use of testimony also establishes ethos throughout the documentary. Many people brush off documentaries and articles like Miss Representation as unfounded propaganda, so in order to combat this Newsom chose to interview people that Americans know and, for the most part, trust - like Katie Couric and Condoleezza Rice. The testimony of people as successful as them about the sexism they’ve endured and the ways they see the media affecting our culture lends authority to the …show more content…
Two of the main ideas of the documentary, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any,” (Miss Representation) and “You can’t be what you can’t see,” (Miss Representation) are presented as black text on a white background, with nothing to distract the viewer from the quote and the idea it represents. Every time a new aspect of the main idea is introduced, like the media’s effect on female participation in government, statistics appear onscreen without anyone talking over them. This forces the viewer to focus on the reality of how unequal our society is and how much of that inequality is a result of the media’s portrayal of women. Newsom also uses the visual track effectively to give examples and evidence for each of the points she or someone interviewed in the documentary makes. For example, at the beginning of the documentary, the focus is on the unrealistic portrayal of women in the media and how that affects women and girls in real life. As Katie Couric talks about how “we are conditioned to believe this is what women should look like so even people of average size have body dysmorphic disorders” (Miss Representation), pictures of extremely thin models and actresses are shown, sometimes juxtaposed with women who have more average body types in order to make the viewer realize how thoroughly we as a society