Linguistic gender congruity differentially correlates with film and novel ratings by critics and audiences.

The film and publishing industries are fraught with gender disparities, with men overpowering nearly every sector of these domains. For instance, men are not only paid more than women in the film industry, but they also outnumber women in positions such as director, screenwriter, and lead acting roles. Similarly, women often resort to assuming gender-neutral or male pseudonyms to increase their prospects in the publishing industry. This widespread gender inequality in the film and publishing industries raises the question of how writers' gender relates to gendered language and narrative receptions. Two archival studies examined whether gender-linked language relates to film (N = 521) and novel (N = 150) ratings, and whether those associations differ as a function of writer gender or the expertise of the rater (professional critics and lay audience members). Results demonstrated that female screenwriters and novelists used a more feminine style of writing, whereas male screenwriters and novelists used a more masculine style of writing. Lay audiences gave more positive ratings to films and novels by writers who used a more gender-congruent writing style, in contrast with professional critics, who gave more positive reviews to films by writers who used a more gender-incongruent writing style. Our findings substantiate past research regarding the differing tastes of lay audiences and professional critics in addition to lending insight into subtle social dynamics that may sustain gender biases in the film and publishing industries.

Illuminating nursing's shadow side through a Jungian analysis of the film Fog in August.

Fog in August is a German film based on Robert Domes' historical novel of the same name. The film provides a fictionalized account of the institutionalization and eventual killing of children and adults labelled as a burden on the State and unworthy of life. On one level, this is a story of good versus evil, where innocent patients are manipulated by callous doctors and nurses. At a deeper level, however, it is possible to read the characters as more complex and such a reading gives an insight into the paradox of how a genocidal policy was able to be systematically implemented by health care professionals who had previously taken an oath to provide care to all people. Carl Jung argued that powerful stories, told across generations, contain mythical archetypes that help drive the plot and convey beliefs about humanity. The aims of this paper are to explore Jungian ideas within Fog in August that help the historical story it is based on resonate with viewers today, and demonstrate how the application of these insights can help health care professionals more fully understand morally distressing events and, as a result, support and improve the safety of patients.

Nurses in Star Trek: The fictional role of the nurse in Star Trek.

Nurses worldwide have striven to establish nursing as a profession, autonomous but complementary to the medical profession. Literature as far back as the Renaissance demonstrates an overall derogatory attitude toward the nurse's role. The modern notion of the nurse working side by side the medical practitioner continues to be overshadowed by the heroic medical doctor. This paper will discuss Christine Chapel and Alyssia Ogawa, who arguably are the only two nurses on board Star Trek's Enterprise, given prominent roles. In various and multiple episodes, their roles reveal a recurrence of the subservient attitude to the medical practitioner. Yet, there seems to be a shift toward a more multi-disciplinarian approach a century later in the ST time-line. The general concept of the nurses' role is similar and parallels real life - a role subsumed by and subservient to the medical doctor.

Brokering the core and the periphery: Creative success and collaboration networks in the film industry.

In collaboration-based creative industries, such as film production, creators in the network core enjoy prestige and legitimacy that are key for creative success. However, core creators are challenged to maintain diverse access to new ideas or alternative views that often emerge from the network periphery. In this paper, we demonstrate that creators in the network core can increase the probability of their creative success by brokering peripheral collaborators to the core. The argument is tested on a dynamic collaboration network of movie creators constructed from a unique dataset of Hungarian feature films for the 1990-2009 period. We propose a new way to capture brokers' role in core/periphery networks and provide evidence that being in the core and at the same time bridging between the core and the periphery of the network significantly increases the likelihood of award winning.

Of Letters and Lists: How the MPAA Puts Films Recommended for LGBTQ Adolescents Out of Reach.

The film ratings system employed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has been criticized by LGBTQ critics who claim the system discriminates by holding queer content to a higher ratings standard than content in other films. The MPAA argues the constituency for its ratings system is parents in traditional families who may find queer themes inappropriate for their children. Paradoxically, a number of organizations serving adolescents identifying as LGBTQ or as questioning their sexualities have created lists of recommended films, many of whose MPAA ratings make them virtually off-limits to teens unless their parents approve. Cyberspace is also populated with lists of films recommended for teens regardless of their sexuality and gender identity. This article compares ratings distributions for lists of films recommended for queer teens and those recommended for mainstream teens and finds evidence of negative impact on access by queer teens to potentially helpful film content.

Medical gazes and meteorological metaphors: representations of dementia in contemporary motion pictures.

BACKGROUND: For the last two decades, there has been a surge of major motion pictures dealing with the topic of dementia. This trend reflects and at the same time informs and shapes an increasing public awareness of dementia as an individual ethical and sociopolitical issue. MAIN BODY: This contribution examines from an ethical perspective how contemporary motion pictures deal with the topic of dementia and thus contribute to forming our moral awareness of the phenomenon as such and our ways of dealing with those affected. It focuses on an analysis of the conceptual premises and aesthetic imagery relevant in the cinematographic representation of dementia. As the analysis will show, viewing a film as a film about dementia may presume a medicalizing perspective. Furthermore, cinematographic images and metaphors are powerful devices for articulating thoughts and feelings about the elusive and ultimately ineffable experience of dementia. At the same time, however, they can also have problematic implications. CONCLUSIONS: Given the lack of knowledge and widespread fear, stigmatization and exclusion, health policy can and should use cinematographic approaches in order to enhance public understanding of dementia and empathy with those affected. At the same time, however, public health agencies and educational institutions making use of the persuasive power of film need to pay closer attention to the images and messages constructed, their aesthetic functioning and their ethical implications and social consequences.

Development and validation of Indian Affective Picture Database.

Since culturally salient stimuli for emotion recognition are scarce in India, we developed and validated a set of 140 coloured pictures of six basic emotions along with a neutral expression. The expressions were posed by four expressers, two males and two females, with mean age of 25.25 (SD 3.77) years. The expressions were captured from five different angles keeping the background uniform. These pictures were shown to 350 undergraduates who labelled the emotion and rated their intensity. The mean biased hit rate was 93.02 (SD 7.33) and mean unbiased hit rate was .519 (SD .015). Within subjects ANOVA revealed significant main effect of emotion (F(1, 6) = 7.598, p < .001). The t-test value (23.116, p < .001) shows that the given emotion was identified correctly by participants beyond chance factors. The mean intensity rating was 5.94 (SD .77). Overall, the results reveal that the pictures are a valid set of affective stimuli.

Genius begins at home: Shared social identity enhances the recognition of creative performance.

The present research examines the extent to which the recognition of creative performance is structured by social group membership. It does this by analysing the award of merit prizes for Best Actor and Actress in a Leading Role for the international award of US-based Oscars and British-based BAFTAs since BAFTA's inception of this category in 1968. For both awards, the exclusive assessment criterion is the quality of artists' performance in the international arena. Results show that US artists won a greater proportion of Oscars than BAFTAs (odds ratio: 2.10), whereas British artists won a greater proportion of BAFTAs than Oscars (OR: 2.26). Furthermore, results support the hypothesis that these patterns are more pronounced as the diagnostic value of a quality indicator increases - that is, in the conferring of actual awards rather than nominations. Specifically, US artists won a greater proportion of Oscar awards than nominations (OR: 1.77), while British artists won a greater proportion of BAFTA awards than nominations (OR: 1.62). Additional analyses show that the performances of in-group actors in movies portraying in-group culture (US culture in the case of Oscars, British culture in the case of BAFTAs) are more likely to be recognized than the performances of in-group actors in movies portraying the culture of other (out-)groups. These are the first data to provide clear evidence from the field that the recognition of exceptional creative performance is enhanced by shared social identity between perceivers and performers.

Portrayals of character smoking and drinking in Argentine-, Mexican- and US-produced films.

The aim of this study was to assess film character portrayals of tobacco and alcohol use in US and nationally-produced films that were popular in Argentina and Mexico from 2004-2012. We performed a content analysis of these films (n=82 Argentine, 91 Mexican, and 908 US films, respectively). Chi-squares and t-tests were used to compare characteristics of characters who smoked or drank by country of movie production. Then data from all countries were pooled, and generalized estimating equation (GEE) models were used to determine independent correlates of character smoking or drinking. There were 480 major characters for Argentine-, 364 for Mexican-, and 4962 for US-produced films. Smoking prevalence among movie characters was similar to population smoking prevalence in Mexico (21%) and Argentina (26%), but about half in the US (11%), where movie product placements are restricted. Movie smoking declined over the period in all three countries. Movie alcohol prevalence was 40-50% across all countries and did not change with time. Demographic predictors of character smoking included: being male, 18 and older, having negative character valence. Movie smoking was not associated with lower SES. Predictors of character drinking included: being age 18 and older and positive character valence. Smoking and drinking predicted each other, illicit drug use, and higher scores for other risk behaviors. This suggests that policy development in Mexico and Argentina may be necessary to reduce the amount of character tobacco and alcohol use in films.

Comparison of tobacco and alcohol use in films produced in Europe, Latin America, and the United States.

BACKGROUND: Studies that have evaluated tobacco and alcohol portrayals in films have mainly focused on US films. Our aim is to describe tobacco and alcohol portrayals in nationally produced films from six European and two Latin American countries, and compare them with US produced films. METHODS: A sample of 337 nationally produced and 502 US produced films, consisting of top grossing films from 2004 to 2009 in each country, was content coded for presence of tobacco or alcohol and seconds of tobacco or alcohol use. Logistic and linear regression models were estimated for all films and youth-rated films (Ages 0-14) to assess cross country differences in tobacco and alcohol content, with US films as the reference category. RESULTS: Domestically produced films from several countries were more likely than US films to contain any tobacco use both overall (Iceland (OR = 9.29, CI: 1.22-70.89), Italy (OR = 3.58, CI: 1.72-7.43), Argentina (OR = 5.06, CI: 2.13-12.03), Mexico (OR = 4.87, CI: 2.17-10.90)) and for youth-rated films (Germany (OR = 2.24, CI: 1.21-4.16), Iceland (OR = 13.79, CI: 1.80-105.5), Italy (OR = 5.31, CI: 2.54-11.1), and Argentina (OR = 6.9, CI: 0.88-1.34)). Models for alcohol showed few differences compared to US, regardless of rating. Linear regression models for seconds of use in films with tobacco indicated that only Argentine films had more seconds of smoking than US films, regardless of the rating category. For films with alcohol use, Mexican films had higher seconds of alcohol use than US films. CONCLUSIONS: Smoking was more commonly depicted in films produced outside the US, however there were few differences in the means for smoking screen time in films that contained smoking. This may be partly explained by the prohibition of tobacco product placement in the US. Countries should consider banning paid placement of both products and eliminating subsidies for films with content that promotes tobacco and alcohol use.

Parental desensitization to violence and sex in movies.

OBJECTIVES: To assess desensitization in parents' repeated exposure to violence and sex in movies. METHODS: A national US sample of 1000 parents living with at least 1 target child in 1 of 3 age groups (6 to 17 years old) viewed a random sequence of 3 pairs of short scenes with either violent or sexual content from popular movies that were unrestricted to youth audiences (rated PG-13 or unrated) or restricted to those under age 17 years without adult supervision (rated R). Parents indicated the minimum age they would consider appropriate to view each film. Predictors included order of presentation, parent and child characteristics, and parent movie viewing history. RESULTS: As exposure to successive clips progressed, parents supported younger ages of appropriate exposure, starting at age 16.9 years (95% confidence interval [CI], 16.8 to 17.0) for violence and age 17.2 years (95% CI, 17.0 to 17.4) for sex, and declining to age 13.9 years (95% CI, 13.7 to 14.1) for violence and 14.0 years (95% CI, 13.7 to 14.3) for sex. Parents also reported increasing willingness to allow their target child to view the movies as exposures progressed. Desensitization was observed across parent and child characteristics, violence toward both human and non-human victims, and movie rating. Those who frequently watched movies were more readily desensitized to violence. CONCLUSIONS: Parents become desensitized to both violence and sex in movies, which may contribute to the increasing acceptance of both types of content by both parents and the raters employed by the film industry.

YouTube as a source of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patient education: a social media content analysis.

The aim of the present study is to conduct a social media content analysis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patient education videos on YouTube. A systematic search protocol was used to locate 223 videos. Two independent coders evaluated each video to determine topics covered, media source(s) of posted videos, information quality as measured by HONcode guidelines for posting trustworthy health information on the Internet, and viewer exposure/engagement metrics. Over half the videos (n = 113, 50.7%) included information on medication management, with far fewer videos on smoking cessation (n = 40, 17.9%). Most videos were posted by a health agency or organization (n = 128, 57.4%), and the majority of videos were rated as high quality (n = 154, 69.1%). HONcode adherence differed by media source (Fisher's exact test = 20.52, p = 0.01), however with user-generated content receiving the lowest quality scores. Overall level of user engagement as measured by number of "likes," "favorites," "dislikes," and user comments was low (median range = 0-3, interquartile range = 0-16) across all sources of media. Study findings suggest that COPD education via YouTube has the potential to reach and inform patients; however, existing video content and quality varies significantly. Future interventions should help direct individuals with COPD to engage with high-quality patient education videos on YouTube that are posted by reputable health organizations and qualified medical professionals. Patients should be educated to avoid and/or critically view low-quality videos posted by individual YouTube users who are not health professionals.

Are movies with tobacco, alcohol, drugs, sex, and violence rated for youth? A comparison of rating systems in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and the United States.

BACKGROUND: This study aimed to determine between-country differences and changes over time in the portrayal of youth risk behaviors in films rated for youth in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and the United States. METHODS: Content and ratings were analyzed for 362 films that were popular across all four countries from 2002 to 2009. Country-specific ratings were classified as either youth or adult, and Generalized Estimating Equations were used to determine between-country differences in the presence of tobacco, alcohol, drugs, sexual content, and violence in youth-rated films. Within-country differences in this content over time were also assessed, comparing films released from 2002 to 2005 with those released from 2006 to 2009. RESULTS: In the US, films rated for youth were less likely to contain all five risk behaviors than in youth-rated films in Argentina, Brazil, and, when the "15 and older" rating was considered a youth rating, in Mexico. All three Latin American countries "downrated" films that received an adult rating in the US. Nevertheless, tobacco and drug use in youth-rated films declined over time in all countries, whereas moderate to extreme alcohol use and violence involving children or youth increased in all countries. CONCLUSIONS: Tobacco and drug use have declined in popular US films, but these behaviors are still prevalent in films rated for youth across the Americas. The apparent success of advocacy efforts to reduce tobacco and other drugs in films suggests that similar efforts be directed to reduce alcohol portrayals.

Violent film characters' portrayal of alcohol, sex, and tobacco-related behaviors.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the extent to which movies popular with adolescents feature characters who jointly engage in violence and other risk behaviors. We hypothesized that violent characters engage in other risk behaviors equally often in films rated appropriate for children over 12 (PG-13) and Restricted (R)-rated films. METHODS: Content analysis of a sample of top-grossing movies from 1985 to 2010 (n = 390). We coded movies for the presence of at least 1 main character who was involved in violence and either sex, tobacco, or alcohol use within a 5-minute movie segment and throughout a film. RESULTS: Approximately 90% of the movies contained a segment with a main character involved in violence, and ~77% of the films had the same character engaging in at least 1 other risk behavior. A violent character was portrayed most often partaking in alcohol-related and sexual behaviors. G and PG movies had less co-occurrence than PG-13 or R-rated movies, but there was no statistical difference between PG-13 and R-rated movies with regards to violence co-occurring with other risk behaviors. These trends did not vary over time. CONCLUSIONS: Popular films that contain violent characters also show those characters engaging in other risk behaviors. Similar rates of co-occurrence between PG-13 and R-rated films suggest that the Motion Picture Association of America ratings system is not sensitive to the joint portrayal of violence and alcohol, sex, and tobacco-related risk behaviors. The on-screen clustering of violence with other risk behaviors is cause for concern and worthy of additional research.