Den mest inflytelserikaste historieförmedlaren : En tematisk analys om hur män och kvinnor porträtteras i spelfilmer med andra världskriget som tema

The aim of this study is to find out how four films with a historical plot about the Second World War, created in the last ten years portray men and woman. The work has been based on a historical-cultural framework to see how popular-culture films are a good way of working in history teaching. The films that have been used in the study is: The Imitation Game, Narvik, Darkest Hour and Dunkirk. These films have been analyzed with gender theory and central concepts to answer the questions about how men and women are portrayed in the films. These concepts are “the gender system”, “the male norm” and “gender-contracts”. These concepts suggest that there has always been a separation between men and women, and masculinity and feminity, which should not be mixed according to the society. These concepts have mainly been used to emphasize that men and woman had different roles during the Second World war, based on the fact that women have always been subordinate to men. Women were seen as both weaker in body and mind, which affected the roles and jobs women were allowed to have. The result of the work shows that the films convey history where norms, expectations andstereotypes of men and women are presented based on those that were accepted in the society of that time. The result also shows that these films, and other, can with good reasons be used in history teaching where students both gain historical knowledge about the events that the films depict, provide knowledge of how norms, expectations and stereotypes for men and women have been shaped and developed throughout history and trains students to gain source-critical abilities, which is linked to the school curriculum that states what students should learn about in the history subject