Power and Agency in modern films
Character portrayal analyses using computational tools

Connotation frames measure the implications verbs have on the characters they describe. For instance, someone who "accepts" something is implied to be more passive (negative agency) than someone who "assesses" things (positive agency). We collect the following two connotations for roughly 2000 verbs, through crowdsourcing:

• Power (vs. submissiveness) connotations capture implied authority differentials between the subject and the object of the verb. For instance, in the sentence "he implored the tribunal to show mercy", "he" is implied to be in a submissive position compared to "the tribunal", as signaled by the verb "implore". Conversely, in "he demanded mercy from the tribunal", "he" is described with much more authority over "the tribunal".
• Agency (vs. passiveness) connotation frames uncover the implied agency given to the subject by the verb. For example in "she searched for her prince", "she" is the driver of her own life (positive agency), which isn't the case in "she waited for her prince", where "she" much more passive.

In our project, we look at a set of ~700 modern movie screenplays, which contain both scene descriptions and stage direcions for characters ("narratives") and the words spoken by characters ("dialogue"). Screenplays are neatly formatted, allowing us to easily find which lines are spoken by or written about specific characters in the movie. Using a simple gender identification tool, we find whether characters in the movie were male or female.*

We then apply our connotation frame tool to these movie characters, giving each character four connotation scores (high power, submissiveness, positive agency and passiveness). For instance, think of a submissiveness score as measuring the amount of subordination displayed for a character in the screenplay. With scores computed for all characters, we used statistical tools to uncover bias in how much power and agency female and male characters have.

Through our statistical analyses, we found that women were consistently portrayed in more submissive positions and with less agency than men, in ways that reinforce gender stereotypes. We also find that men tend to speak more in imperative sentences (e.g., "Bring me my horse."), and women tend to hedge their statements more (e.g., "Maybe I am wrong.").

We also compare our connotation scores for each movie to its Bechdel rating, finding that movies with positive-agency, plot-driving women tend to fail the Bechdel test. Perhaps movies are less likely to contain a lot of positive-agency female characters. (similar observations inspired the Mako Mori test).