Institutional Sexism in FoxNews and Movie “Bombshell” Advocates for Justice

Institutional sexism has been around for as long as women have been working.

FoxNews, to be precise, has been one of the corporations that reinforced sexism against the female workers. The movie “Bombshell,” focuses on this sexual misconduct that occurred throughout the years at FoxNews and educates us on how three main female figures fought against it.

It is important that this is heavily criticized and everyone that is an employee in a journalistic workplace recognizes the trauma and pain caused by male colleagues so that it does not carry on in other workplace environments. “Bombshell,” is a biographical drama starring well-known actresses Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie and Charlize Theron and it was released in 2019.

This is a movie that carries heavy themes, specifically, institutional sexism and women’s exploitation by men, mostly in a journalistic workplace. It was directed by Jay Roach and produced by Charlize Theron, Jay Roach, Charles Randolph and others. “Bombshell” is fully based on the Fox News scandal involving former CEO Roger Ailes, which was one of the many powerful, high-ranked men that used their power to manipulate women in the workforce and thus, traumatized them chronically.

Ailes and FoxNews was outed to the world when The #MeToo movement became popular in 2017 and changed the world. This initiated the beginning of women fighting back.

According to Christina Capodilupo in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Psychology and Gender, “Institutional sexism refers to gender discrimination reflected in the policies and practices of organizations such as governments, corporations, public institutions (schools, health care), and financial institutions. These practices derive from systemic sexist beliefs that women are inferior to and therefore less capable than men (Capodilupo).”

​One example of this type of sexism is the gender pay gap rate between men and women, even when occupying the same role.

"National statistics show that in the United States, on average, women make $0.77 for every $1 men earn (Capodilupo).”

According to Joni Sweet, “Systemic discrimination against working women in the U.S. has put them at a severe disadvantage since before the founding of the country. The colonies enacted laws that prevented women workers from maintaining control over their earnings as far back as 1769 (Sweet).”

In the 1960s, women started working. With the feminist movement that happened in the 60s, women began to join the workplace because World War II was forcing men to serve, thus the women had to take up the working role that the men were meant to be doing. Because of this, women were forced to start working so that they could take care of their families. After that, systemic sexism began to revolve around them at work. They were considered the inferior gender and still, to this day, are considered so by men.

Jay Roach intended, for this film, to present the actual events that took place at Fox News and expose the experiences of sexual assault that the women had to condone in the workplace. Jay Roach has offered an opportunity for women and men to live vicariously through the victims in the movie so that the audience can get a full understanding of the emotional and physical trauma they had to endure.

The audience intended for this is global, for all genders, ages and sexualities, but, of course, the targeted audience is male workers that work alongside women everyday. It is simply a story that needs to be recognized by everyone so that the way that people treat each other at work is with care.

The assault at FoxNews was mostly inflicted by, media giant, Roger Ailes as the women decide to expose him for his actions towards his employees and suing him personally for it. The movie is based in the Fox News Headquarters in New York City.

At the time the film was green-lit in 2017 (Jhunjhunwala), Roger Ailes, the man who was sued for the sexual allegations against him, had just died and the story had the chance to be told in a much more effective way on the screens of the people. In 2017, the #MeToo movement began its wide effect over society as Tarana Burke first started the movement back in 2006 on MySpace.

The hashtag went viral in 2017 and women all over the world, celebrities, minors, elder women, and women of all races, began to speak up with the #MeToo about the sexual assault they had endured all their lives.

This was the perfect time to begin filming a movie like this, especially when Harvey Weinstein at the time was also being accused of sexually assaulting models and actresses, and manipulating them into sleeping with him for a role or “for furthering their careers,” according to Vox.

Vox also mentioned in an article that, “Harvey Weinstein helped make #MeToo a topic of conversation across America, what has really changed?”(North) The irony also rests upon the actresses chosen for the roles in “Bombshell” as Charlize Theron was outspokenly a victim of Weinstein’s manipulations, hence, her effective and emotional performance in the role of Megyn Kelly in “Bombshell.”

This movie strives to show the importance of speaking up and not falling a victim to hungry men, especially at work. This movie offers the audience hope, courage, trust that they are not alone and women from the audience have felt included and heard because of this story. Jill Filipovic, stated in an opinion she wrote for CNN about the movie,

“Fox’s problem wasn’t a single bad man; it’s the toxicity of the company itself.” This is entirely true not only for Fox but also for many other huge journalistic corporations that have been allowing and causing systemic harassment.

The story of the movie, surrounding the true events, is focused on Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron), the woman looked up on the most at Fox News, one of the strongest women in the media world that even had the courageous capacity to question Trump publicly about his reputation with women. The woman that got the rest of them to speak up first was Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman), the one who stood up to Ailes and sued him personally. The movie rotates from one female of the three to the next and how each of their story relates to the rest of them and to the downfall of Roger Ailes.

Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson are two very real and very important women that fought against their male predators in their workplace. Kayla Pospisil, however, played by Margot Robbie, is a fictional composite created by screenwriter Charles Randolph. She was a combination of multiple real people, and the filmmakers behind the movie “spoke to about 20 people with a connection to Fox, including multiple women bound by confidentiality agreements,” according to THR. She is a representation of the real-life innocent girls that earn their first job, and she brings an emotional effect to the story because she is just like any woman that first starts off and is new to the manipulating hands of men. It makes the story all the more dramatic and brutally realistic.

Bombshell is a term used for a very attractive woman, so the title of the movie was purposely chosen to ridicule men’s use of words to exploit women. The title creates an irony and emphasizes on the sexism imposed by men, who identify most women with diminishing words like “bimbo,” which Megyn Kelly was called on Twitter in real life by Trump. Words like these are offensive slurs that insinuate the stereotypical role of a woman in society, which all their lives women have been fighting to steer away from. In this movie, we are shown how women are sexually harassed continually by their colleagues and their bosses, while also being manipulated into sexual acts for a promotion: acts that if they reject, they will most likely be demoted or, even worse, fired.

The female roles were perfectly cast for the parts and they were emotional, strong, hungry for justice, with a thirst for vengeance and a need to protect each other. Megyn Kelly (Theron) was hesitant to comply with Carlson’s (Kidman) wishes to accuse their boss of inappropriateness. However, after she saw Kayla Pospisil enter Ailes’ room at one of the scenes of the movie, she knew she had to stand up and help the younger generation in danger of going through what Kelly and Carlson had experienced and still do experience every day.

This was the most important scene of the movie when it didn’t just show the women’s need for justice but also how some women tend to be scared of fighting back, like Kelly was feeling before she decided to join Carlson into bringing Ailes down. Unfortunately, when women have to fight back for their rights, public humiliation and perhaps their job is all on the line, and so these women had to risk everything to bring this media giant down.

Audience reception for this movie was mostly positive as many famous newspapers and magazines, along with online platforms, critiqued it and encouraged people to watch this effective story. Critic reviews from Variety magazine have said that “Bombshell is a scalding and powerful movie about what selling, in America, has become. The film is about selling a candidate, selling yourself, selling the truth.” Another review by The Wall Street Journal said that this was “a movie with a compelling story to tell [that] turns into a blunt-force polemic.” Terri White from Empire also wrote that this is,

“One of the most compelling stories of the #MeToo movement [and] is told unflinchingly, empathetically and authentically, with Charlize Theron completely nailing the knotty character of Megyn Kelly.” This critique clearly links how the audience received the meaning of the movie with the political economy of the time the movie was released.

“Decades are often required to assess history, but filmmaker Jay Roach shortens the gap with this alarmingly accurate film about how women began to topple the gender power dynamic in 2016,” wrote Tara McNamara for Common Sense Media. On Rotten Tomatoes, Bombshell was given a 68% tomatometer, however, the audience score was spectacular with 5,000+ verified ratings, giving it a score of 84%.

They loved the acting, the costumes, the compelling storyline, the directing and fantastic cinematography. One thing that strikes in the reviews is how most men are inspired by this movie and someone named Matthew even said “A good look behind the veil, and a necessary film in the movement to create a safer, more respectful work place for women”(https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bombshell_2019/reviews). That’s exactly what is needed for society: to watch this movie and be inspired, see what goes on behind the veil and not hide the truth.

The movie’s directing was used efficiently and cleverly to evoke intense feelings from the viewers. The directing was on point, the camera crisp, clear and smooth on the actors’ skin and the music was complying with the emotion aimed to provoke. It had slow-fading music that made the transition from one scene to the next easy and unnoticeable. It needed more music at some crucial, emotional points but, overall, the soundtrack was an incentive to provoke feeling successfully. It had a lot of medium close ups with an eye-level angle on the actors’ faces with a clear focus on the main characters and the women were clearly the center and most important parts of the scenes.

However, the movie has been judged on missing some key factors that would have made it much more successful and effective. On Rotten Tomatoes, reviewers have commented that it wasn’t the representation of the events that they expected. A Super reviewer called “Alec B,” said that it was, “Not nearly as bad as I anticipated but still a painfully uninteresting examination of this scandal.” This shows that many viewers had higher expectations from this movie and it tends to fail in representing adequately the events that happened. Another super reviewer, however, called Marisol M, commented that,

“‘Bombshell's a different beast; it ignites rage, empathy, raised eyebrows, laughs, and uncomfortable truths over concerns that are still spilling into our everyday conversations.” It manages to evoke emotions in a vicarious way by allowing us to live through the characters’ lives.

The New York Times published a review on “Bombshell” on December 12th, 2019 by Manolha Dagris. The review is deeply positive, complimenting the cleverness of the title and questions interestingly enough the concepts of the movie like,

“So, how do you make heroines out of characters that some in the audience will see as deeply compromised if not outright villainous?” (Dargis, 2019) It compliments the stars’ “unimpeachable talent” the “filmographies and feminist cred.”(Dargis, 2019) “Bombshell” opens not long before the first Republican presidential candidates’ debate in August 2015.

Kelly moderated it with two other Fox News anchors, but she was the one who drew national attention because of her questioning of Donald J. Trump and what it wrought.

“You once told a contestant on ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees,” Kelly said. “Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?” (Dargis, 2019)

The movie successfully moves the audience and fuels a passion for justice. Both genders should watch the movie so that they become more aware of the signs of harassment and assault, but also the consequences that are carried out when inappropriateness and, worse, assault and abuse takes place. In total, more than 20 women accused Ailes by the end of the case and he was forced to resign from his job. Thankfully, the reaction of people after this movie has fueled even more thirst for justice and politically people are fighting for women’s rights harder than before.

Now, because of this awareness, hbr.org has said that “we saw that fewer women in our sample reported sexual coercion and unwanted sexual attention following the #MeToo movement. In 2016, 25% of women reported being sexually coerced, and in 2018 that number had declined to 16%. Unwanted sexual attention declined from 66% of women to 25%.”

Now that women are working much more, “Bombshell” is a great example of what women experience every day at work. There is still a gender pay gap between men and women and we all know which one is the minority gender. When women do earn high positions in their career it is through a lot of difficulty, through men and most of the times earn them by having to “satisfy” men in any way possible to give them the job.

Men always had the CEO positions so now in the 21st century where this is changing and amazing women are earning their right to powerful positions, movies like “Bombshell” have opened the world’s eyes to the reality of women’s lives and the difficulties they have had to endure that men never have had to. Men will never understand how truly horrifying it is to be a woman, they will never grasp what our identity consists of and what risks we have to take for our rights.

One very powerful scene in the movie was the elevator scene when three of the victims of Ailes had been invited to his office. Megyn Kelly, one of the oldest victims, alongside Gretchen Carlson, another one of his victims fired because she was determined enough to speak up, and the latest and youngest victim, Kayla Pospisil, the naive and young representation of innocence, all walked in the elevator side by side where they slowly realized they were all going to the predator’s floor. They all knew what that meant, what repulsive things he was famed for doing and what each one had to endure. It was the most dramatic moment of the movie and one that leaves a lasting impact until the end of it, and reviewers talk about.

From the way all three women look at each other, the trauma and sadness in their eyes, prove how destructive sexual harassment can be, which is tremendously horrifying and something that can only be fully grasped if experienced firsthand. Roger Ailes used his social class and power to manipulate the victims working for him and this isn’t something that only he did.

​Sexism, sexual assault and exploitation against women have been something men never really grasped the truth of how traumatizing their actions are. The manipulation, the pain, the trauma, the bruises, the fear, it all stays with a person and, unfortunately, our society is nowhere near fully changing this and making men understand how utterly wrong it is.

The #MeToo movement, in 2017, was one of the most important marks of our timeline for fighting for women’s rights and this was why the movie was so important when it came out in 2019. Sexism has been around since as long as women can remember. The societal stereotypes surrounding women have been a part of women’s identities for decades and the basic ones would be that women belong to the kitchen, that they are supposed to be the caretakers and the housewives while the men are supposed to be the breadwinners. Even the slightest act of assault can be wrong.

Men to this day may not understand that they can rape when they are in a relationship, that they can hurt without laying a hand on the woman, that they can traumatize when they are only interested in satisfying themselves. Women, thankfully, have been speaking up for years and the epitome of this has been the 21st century, and this movie portrays how far we’ve come as the end of the movie shows the justice that takes place against Roger Ailes, the representation of all men out there.

“Bombshell” has created a sense of community for women, one where they feel heard and encouraged to speak up. This movie does not hide the truth, it simply tells it and leaves it up to the audience with what they should do with that information. Thankfully, people have been following the #MeToo more than ever before and even favorite actors like Ben Affleck and James Franco were accused of assaulting women. It is important to recognize how traumatic it can be to be uncomfortable at a place where one is supposed to be at every day and most comfortable at.

The workplace should be the safest environment for women as they get to finally do what they love without having to be limited by female stereotypical ideas to be stuck at home. Now, women get the freedom they deserve, but men still have found ways to instill fear and trauma over women. Is it because they feel like we are not the same? Like women are not supposed to work, so they make their life a living hell? Is it a power issue, an ego issue or both?

If all the money and time in the world was given to me I would conduct a couple of experiments and create real-life journalistic workplace environments, where men and women alike are hired at multiple news corporations. I would create a couple with similar situations but with some differences that could affect the results. One corporation would have a female CEO, and all women and men would be paid the same depending on their position.

One corporation would have a male CEO, and women and men would be paid unequally, men getting paid more. One corporation would have a female CEO but women would be paid more than men. Then when the experiments are done, I would make sure that this in-depth study was controlled fully and to see how the men ended up treating the women depending on the pay and the gender of the CEO. Their phones would be checked to see what they said about their fellow female colleagues, and everything going on in the workplace would be watched.

There are many other factors that “motivate” men at work to harass, but these two: gender pay gap and gender of CEO are most likely the biggest influences on how the women are treated. I wonder if men would be more careful if they had a female CEO. How would their ego react at certain moments? I would also try to choose older men in some experiments and younger men in others to see which generation tends to be more educated and respectful in the sense of how they treat their female colleagues.

Another study would be made in actual, non-controlled journalistic settings like examining other actual news corporations. CNN would be the first one and all the males would be watched to see which ones tend to harass women. All of them would get a background check and their old social media accounts would be found, like Twitter, to see if they had said anything inappropriate to or about women before or acted inappropriately. The gamers of the bunch would be looked into the most because the ones playing video games are most likely to have negative attitudes towards women because of the representation of female characters in games. CNN male employees, of course, have been accused of sexual harassments allegations before.

According to CNN Business, NBC also had to fire their host, Matt Lauer, because of allegations against him in 2017. Mark Halperin sexually harassed women when he was directing political coverage at ABC News, so he was also accused and fired. At the same time, top editor at NPR was fired at the end of October 2017, after two women said harassed them. These alleged incidents are told to have happened two decades ago when he was working for the New York Times and the women were seeking jobs there. Glenn Thrush, NYT star political news reported in 2017 was also accused of inappropriate sexual behavior and was suspended.

To add, co-host of “CBS This Morning” was also fired on November 2017 after eight women accused him of sexual harassment. These are only a few of the powerful men in the journalism industry that have been outed and punished, so my aim would be to find more of them that are master manipulators and out them. This in-depth study is needed incredibly so that the #MeToo movement keeps on bringing justice to the table. We need to keep searching and watching and controlling the assault going on around women in the workplace because it won’t stop unless we stop them. “Bombshell,” was only the beginning, this in-depth study would end all of harassment at the workplace for good.

Now men tend to be more fearful and more careful of how they act around women, but of course, there will be for a long time the kind of men who believe they can get what they want and are invincible against the system. Events around the world have taken place because of this movie and in Greece, for example, there was a known scandal about actors on TV that the people loved and enjoyed watching. These men ended up being the most hated when women exposed them for being abusive, inappropriate, and offering them the job only if they would sleep with them.

We can see how hard women are fighting all over the world and it’s the effect of these events and movies like “Bombshell” that are changing the world and giving women a voice! The positivity surrounding the movie has brought along more wide-spread awareness about this topic and sexism will be around for a long time. Hopefully this generation of women, and the next generation and so on, will get to experience a much more healthier workplace environment. In the meantime, the fight is not even close to ending, and we need to keep acting in order to make change.