The main heroes and heroines of the most popular films from 1940-2019. Quantitative analysis
Quantitative analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24917/20811861.23.19Keywords:
box-office, gender, popular cinema, quantitative researchAbstract
The article is a quantitative analysis conducted on a sample of 800 of the most popular films from 1940-2019. The research material consists of 10 films that achieved the best box-office results in a given year. Then, based on the data appearing on the website www.imdb.com, a list was prepared including the first, first three and first six names that appeared when discussing a given title. The comparison of these names in terms of gender allowed us to indicate the dominance of male-centric narratives among the most popular films from 1940-2019, although the distribution of this dominance in individual decades is interesting. The study showed, for example, that the most popular films with female leads (30%) appeared in the years 1940-1949, while the least (5%) appeared in the years 2000-2009. What also seems interesting is the fact that out of the 800 films examined, there is not a single narrative with 6 main female characters, while as many as 55 films with 6 dominant male characters appeared in the list.
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