Reimagining female agency: Cinematic representations in the post-#MeToo era

The #MeToo movement, which gained almost global significance in 2017 following widespread revelations of sexual harassment and abuse in Hollywood, marked an important cultural shift in how gendered power dynamics are understood and challenged in contemporary society. As cinema both reflects and shapes cultural norms, this thesis explores how female agency is represented in films released in the aftermath of #MeToo, examining whether such representations have evolved in response to feminist discourse or continue to reproduce traditional gender norms under a new guise. The main research question guiding this study is: How is female agency represented in contemporary films, both mainstream and independent, released in the post-#MeToo era? To explore this, the thesis applies a qualitative thematic analysis on three critically acclaimed films that center female protagonists: Barbie (2023), Poor Things (2023), and The Worst Person in the World (2021). These films were selected to capture a range of production contexts, genres, and narrative styles, providing a diverse dataset to explore the evolving cinematic portrayal of women's autonomy. Grounded in feminist theory, gaze theory, and postfeminist media critique, the analysis explores how female characters are framed in terms of autonomy, decision-making, and personal transformation, how their actions are received and negotiated, and whether these portrayals align with individualistic postfeminist narratives or more collective visions of empowerment. The movies and their transcripts are analyzed using Atlas.ti to identify recurring themes related to agency. The findings reveal two dominant themes: (1) Female agency as a threat to patriarchal society that needs to be controlled, and (2) Female agency as a personal journey of self-discovery. While all three films center female protagonists with complex inner lives, the study finds that portrayals of agency remain entangled in tensions between empowerment and control. Even when women appear autonomous, their choices are frequently constrained by social expectations, power dynamics, or neoliberal ideals of self-management. Ultimately, the thesis concludes that while the post-#MeToo era suggests some shifts in cinematic representations, mainstream and independent cinema continue to negotiate feminist values within a postfeminist framework that rather limits the importance of collective action. This study contributes to ongoing debates about gender representation in media and the transformative potential of the representation of feminist movements within cultural production.