Women In Refrigerators [WiR]: violence against women in contemporary western cinema
Keywords:
archetypes, narrative devices, visual representation
Abstract
The concept of "Women in Refrigerators" (WiR), coined by Gail Simone in 1999, refers to the narrative practice in which female characters are killed, harmed, abused, or stripped of agency to advance a male character's storyline. This trope appears recurrently across literature, theater, television, comics, video games, and especially cinema. As cinema constitutes a dominant narrative medium in contemporary cultural consumption, its patterns of representation significantly influence and reshape social reality.
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CAMPBELL, J. (1998), El héroe de las mil caras: Psicoanálisis del mito, Fondo de Cultura
EARP, J. (2010). The Mean World Syndrome: Media Violence & the Cultivation of Fear. United States, Media Education Foundation. Económica.
FANTASY TELEVISION, Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought York University, Toronto, Ontario.
FERNÁNDEZ CHRISTLIEB, P. (2011), Lo que se siente pensar o la cultura como psicología, Santillana.
FLORES, V. (2019). “Mecanismos en la construcción del Amor Romántico”. La ventana. Revista de Estudios de Género. Vol. 6, Núm. 50, pp. 282-305. ISSN: 1405-9436. https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1405-94362019000200282
HARALU, L. (2021). Madwomen and mad women: an analysis of the use of female insanity and anger in narrative fiction, from vilification to validation. (Tesis de licenciatura. University of Louisville). The University of Louisville´s Institutional Repository. https://ir.library.louisville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1360&context=honors
KESLER, J. (2008). "Why film schools teach screenwriters not to pass the Bechdel test." The Hathor Legacy. Consultado en octubre de 2014 de http://thehathorlegacy.com/why-film-schools-teach screenwriters-not-to-pass-the-bechdel-test.
LACAN, J. (1955) The Seminar Of Jacques Lacan Iii: The Psychoses, Karnac Books.
MULVEY, L. (1975). "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Screen 16(3): 6-18.
PASTOR, M. (2010). “El marianismo en México: una mirada a su larga duración”. Cuicuilco, núm. 18, pp. 257-277. https://www.scielo.org.mx/pdf/cuicui/v17n48/v17n48a13.pdf
PONCE-DÍAZ, R. (2013) [El Artefacto] Ergonarrativas y la construcción ficcional a partir de lo ausente. UAEMEX.
POZNER, J. (2010) Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV. Seal Press.
SARKEESIAN, A. (2010). “I’ll Make a Man Out of You”: Strong Women in Science Fiction and
SIMONE, G. (1999). "Women in Refrigerators." Consultado en octubre de 2014 de http://www.unheardtaunts.com/wir.
VAN DIJK, T. A. (2005). “Ideología y análisis del discurso”, Utopía y Praxis Latinoamericana, 10 (29), abril-junio, CESA, Universidad del Zulia, Maracaibo, pp. 9-36.
VIÑAS, D. (2002, enero). Historia de la Crítica Literaria. 1a Edición. Editorial Ariel, S.A.
WALTERS, S. D. (1995). Material girls: making sense of feminist cultural theory. Berkeley, Regents of the University of California.
Published
2026-04-01
How to Cite
PONCE DÍAZ, R., DÍAZ SANTILLÁN, X., & ÁVILA GONZÁLEZ, I. (2026). Women In Refrigerators [WiR]: violence against women in contemporary western cinema . Utopía Y Praxis Latinoamericana, 31(113), e195586. Retrieved from http://www.produccioncientifica.luz.edu.ve/index.php/utopia/article/view/e195586
