Gender Microaggression Motif In Films Featuring Steven Kanumba

Abstract 

This study examines gender archetypes prevalent in purposively selected films featuring Steven Kanumba as the protagonist or antagonist. It also explores the spaces occupied by female characters, articulating the contexts of their social existence and the outcomes of the roles assigned to them within cinema narratives in comparison to those of men. The study further interrogates whether these social mappings engender bias, any form of hegemony or subjugation, and consequently adumbrate aggressive trends between male and female characters in their diegetic world. The research is qualitative, and data analysis focuses on the concentric positioning of male and female characters within the narrative’s social framework. It is an evaluation of whether these films edify ascendancy by characters of either gender and how such quasi-conflicts reinforce or confront domination in the social continuum. From this engagement, the study specifically examines through collocation analysis if such social interactions constitute microaggressive tendencies. Theoretically, this study adduces to Masculinity theory whose gender stance is hinged on re-thinking, inter alia, male-ascendancy and systems that perpetuate it. It also alludes to Derald Wing Sue’s behavioural psychology from which the concept of microaggression is derived. Finally, it invokes the contemplations of postcolonial scholars like Edward Said; and feminist scholars like Simone de Beauvoir, Laura Mulvey, Kate Millett and Judith Butler’s feminist strand, whose aesthetic stance evince social suppression of the less powerful members of the society.