Editor’s Introduction: Learning from Movies About Women, Patriarchy, and Resistance

Abstract

This is the second and final issue in a series on the ways in which movies and television dramas orient our perceptions of social and economic issues. Other issues were planned, but this year ( 2022) is my final year as editor-in-chief of AJES. New editors will pursue ideas of their own. This issue is devoted to film and TV narratives that challenge the roles assigned to women. To engage with this topic in a meaningful way requires a recognition of the limits of objective analysis. Dramatic fiction captures elements that elude positivist research. At a minimum, art can provide insights that provide new avenues of empirical research. Science involves both the objectivity to minimize the bias in the outcomes of an investigation and the subjectivity to make judgments about what constitutes a topic worthy of investigation. Positivist research, when isolated from self-conscious subjectivty, is only half the story. Disinterested research-what C. Wright Mills called "abstracted empiricism"-lacks the power of conviction.To analyze gender roles and other issues that evoke strong emotional reactions requires methods that take into account the reflexivity of the investigation. Questioning gender roles throws identity into question for a large portion of the world's population. It is absurd to imagine that this topic can be examined exclusively in an objective framework. The analysis of dramas that challenge gender constructs raises questions about our own lives. The source of knowledge thus shifts from object to subject. Knowledge that arises out of direct experience can capture the conflicts, contradictions, and subtleties that positivist, data-driven methodologies often lack. Direct knowledge also draws upon facets of experience that are often left out of formal accounts in which the corporeal existence of the author seems to disappear.Because gender issues are emotionally charged, making films or TV series that challenge viewers is quite difficult. The very