Constructing Gender in Hollywood and Lollywood Film Posters: A Comparative Critical Multimodal Analysis

Abstract

This study examines how femininity(ies) and masculinity(ies) are visually and textually constructed in film posters, comparing Pakistani (Lollywood) and Hollywood cinema. Sixteen posters, eight from each industry, were purposively sampled from the highest-grossing releases of the last decade, drawing on official studio promotional releases archived on IMDb and verified entertainment press coverage. The posters were analysed using the multimodal discourse analytic framework of Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) in combination with Fairclough's (1995) three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis, which situates the visual text within its conditions of production and its broader ideological context. The analysis attends to processes (action, reaction, and classification), gaze, social distance, framing, salience, colour symbolism, and the information value of composition. Findings show that Lollywood posters increasingly depict women as resilient and socially defiant figures confronting patriarchal constraint, while largely withholding the sexual objectification associated with the male gaze; Hollywood posters, by contrast, more often foreground women in professional and adventurous roles yet routinely subordinate them compositionally through reduced salience, spatial marginalisation, and oblique framing. Across both industries, action-genre posters remain the site of the most persistent gender asymmetry, with men consistently occupying superordinate positions in the visual taxonomy. The study contributes a comparative, cross-cultural application of multimodal discourse analysis to film marketing materials and offers a framework for future research into gendered visual ideology in global cinema.