Sexism in Tommy Wiseau’s film "The Room" and its YouTube reviews

Abstract or Introduction

In this paper the role of gender in the reception of Tommy Wiseau’s film "The Room" will be discussed. In particular I will analyse how four YouTube review channels react to how the female main character Lisa is treated by the film. The focus of my research will be the comic value these reviewers find in Lisa’s actions with the goal of revealing some of their sexist or misogynistic assumptions about gender by what they find humorous. In order to do this, firstly I will discuss and describe the main scenes I will look at more closely and explain why they seem problematic from a gender, humour and film studies perspective. The first scene this paper focuses on shows a conversation where Lisa tells her mother that Johnny hit her. In the second scene, a story of a woman that has been beaten is recounted and, finally, in the last scene Lisa is made responsible for Johnny’s death. Secondly, I will introduce my chosen YouTube channels: CinemaSins, Channel Awesome, I Hate Everything and FanboyFlicks and then observe how they perceive the chosen scenes and whether they ignore the scenes and Lisa’s treatment or not. Additionally, I will compare these channels by looking at how they view and describe Lisa in general. As a last step I demonstrate that some of the reviewers I chose ignore the scenes and Lisa’s treatment in general. Based on my discoveries, I assume to find sexist standards in the majority of the channels, especially when they ignore or find humour in scenes in which Lisa is mistreated.