🖂 Corresponding author:

Jl. Ahmad Yani, Pabelan, Kartasura, Surakarta 57162, Jawa Tengah, Indonesia

E-mail: a320170138@student.ums.ac.id

p-ISSN: 2252-6323

e-ISSN: 2721-4540

RAINBOW Vol. 11 (1) 2022

Journal of Literature, Linguistics and

Culture Studies
https://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/rainbow

Against sexual harassment in workplace as seen in Bombshell movie (2019)

Wahyu Lucky Abiet 1 🖂, Yeny Prastiwi 2
1,2

Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Muhammadiyah University of Surakarta, Indonesia

Article Info Abstract

Article History:

Received

11 February 2022

Approved

28 April 2022

Published

30 April 2022

This article aims to empower woman to fight sexual harassment in workplace as seen in

how characters of the film find out what steps were taken in the Bombshell movie (2019) in

fighting sexual harassment by Roger Ailes, the CEO of FOX News that based on actual

event that happened on 2006. To reach the aim of the study, the author uses qualitative

method, and uses the liberal feminism theory of Tong (2009). The data sources were taken

from the movie itself and several previous article that have been published between 2011 -

2021 which have been selected according to the topic discussed. The results of this research

are, there are several ways shown by some of the characters from this film in fighting sexual

harassment, in physical resistance, Gretchen shows it by the way she dares to report the

lewd acts committed by Roger Ailes to the authorities. Meanwhile, the fight against verbal

sexual harassment is shown by Megyn Kelly's character who firmly opposes the oppression

of women which done by Trump, when he is present on her talk show, and the second is

shown through Megyn Kelly's dexterity in motivating victims to get up and speak up about

Roger Ailes' bad habits.

Keywords:

encourage woman,

motivation, movie,

sexual harassment

How to cite (in APA Style):

Abiet, W., & Prastiwi, Y. (2022). Against sexual harassment in workplace as seen in Bombshell movie (2019). Rainbow : Journal

of Literature, Linguistics and Culture Studies, 11(1), 50-56. https://doi.org/10.15294/rainbow.v11i1.50774

INTRODUCTION

Artwork is one of the effective media to send

messages to the audience. Film is one of the most

popular works of art by the public. A film or movie

is a collection of moving images that tell a story

and can be watched by the audience through a

television or cinema screen (Merriam-Webster,

n.d.). Films have various genres, some of them are:

horror, romance, sci-fi, comedy, family, and many

more. In a film, filmmakers usually include a moral

message or moral value depending on the topic

raised in the film, one of which is a message against

sexual harassment.

Sexual harassment is an unwanted,

threatening sexual act and often involves an abuse

of authority differentials (Howald et al., n.d.).

Sexual harassment can happen anywhere and can

be experienced by anyone, whether it men or

women. It is not only in the form of a physical act,

it can also be verbal by telling rude jokes, bad

comments, cat calling and visual by showing

pornographic images or videos. Sexual

harassment can cause trauma for the victims,

victims can feel like they are being bullied,

humiliated, and can experience prolonged stress.

(Burn, 2019). The effects of the trauma that arise

if not treated immediately can interfere with other

aspects of the victim's life, such as the work aspect,

the trauma causes severe stress that interferes with

tenacity and discipline in doing a job, in women

case, sometimes they leave from work and even

mailto:a320170138@student.ums.ac.id

Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Culture Studies, Vol. 11 (1) 2022

p-ISSN: 2252-6323

e-ISSN: 2721-4540

worse they end their life (Doss & Mukherjee,

2014).

Sexual harassment can occur in the

workplace due to the lack of knowledge of

employees in dealing with it (Aman et al., 2016).

For that, we need a rule that regulates discipline in

work, and the punishment that will be given if

someone violates it. If the rules are implemented

correctly, then the negative things in the workplace

will decrease and even disappear. If a sexual

harassment case arises from a company, the

negative impact is not only on its employees but

also the company itself, the company's image can

be tarnished because of the case, to prevent that,

the company must immediately make rules (Ali et

al., 2015).

Some movie directors have raised sexual

harassment issue into their project, they are: Seth

Gordon with his movie, Horrible Bosses (2011),

Barry Levinson with the film called Disclosure

(1994), Colin Higgins with the film titled Nine to

Five (1980), Niki Caro with her film North Country

(2005), and much more (Vogel, n.d.)

In 2019, one of the movie that discusses the

issue of sexual harassment is Bombshell (2019)

which was directed by Jay Roach. The film is

inspired by true events that took place circa 2016

on FOX News, United States. Bombshell (2019)

starring several famous Hollywood movie stars,

some of them are: Margot Robbie as Kayla

Pospisil, Charlize Theron playing the role of

Megyn Kelly, Nicole Kidman as Gretchen

Carlson, John Litgow as Roger Ailes, and many

more. This movie has been nominated for several

prestigious film awards in the world, including 73rd

British Academy Film Awards, 77th Golden Globe

Awards, 26th Screen Actors Guild Awards and the 92nd

Academy Awards (IMDb, n. d). This film tells about

the tenacity of a group of women who loudly speak

up about what they experienced while they were

working at FOX News, they dared to say that they

were victims of sexual harassment by their CEO,

Roger Ailes.

Febriansyah in tirto.id explain that

Bombshell (2019) is a movie that telling story about

A group of women, who want to expose the

scandal that happened in the Star Fox News and

trying to prove that women can work equally with

men without any pressure and cleaning the

workplace from sexual harassment (Febriansyah,

2019). They started a fightback against Roger

Ailes, the chairman of Fox News because of sexual

harassment and arbitrary actions that happened to

her.

In conducting this research, the researchers

use several references from previous study range

from 2011 – 2021 to reach the aim of the research.

Because references to the issues that raised from

this film are still difficult to find, the researchers try

to find previous studies that are relevant to the

topics that raised in this article. The first article is

talking about patriarchy, Christ explained, the

patriarchal system is a system where men are the

most dominant gender and can control women,

and have the right to personal property. (Christ,

2016). In a subsequent study, McLaughlin et al.

explains why the bosses of a workplace sometimes

act arbitrarily to their workers, those act can

happen because they think that employees are the

lowest class of a company that they can take

advantage of (McLaughlin et al., 2012).

In the following journal, Handayani stated

that there are two legal protections from the

government that can be utilized by the public,

namely: preventive legal protection and repressive

legal protection. Both of them can be used

optimally by the community to prevent and protect

them from any interference from crime

(Handayani et al., 2019). Another journal by

Dumpratiwi explains about the steps that can be

taken by someone to raise someone from the slump

due to the act of sexual harassment they have

experienced (Dumpratiwi, 2020).

There is a gap between this previous studies

and this study, in the previous studies, they only

mention several reasons about why and how the

victim experience sexual harassment in workplace,

meanwhile, in this study, the researchers elaborate

them and provides some representation how to

counter sexual harassment in workplace through

Bombshell movie (2019). There are two steps how to

against sexual harassment in workplace, the first is

through physical act, and the second one is through

verbal act.

Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Culture Studies, Vol. 11 (1) 2022

p-ISSN: 2252-6323

e-ISSN: 2721-4540

METHODS

In order to achieve the objectives, this

research uses qualitative methods. This study uses

the liberal feminism theory. The data sources in

this study are from: (1) the Bombshell (2019) movie,

as the object of the study and (2) published articles

that have been selected according to the topics

discussed. To collecting the data, the researchers

use several steps as follows: (1) The researchers

watches the movie repeatedly to fully recognize the

whole story of the movie, (2) The researchers write

all of the important things in the movie that match

to the topic. After collecting the data, the

researchers analyze the data that have been

collected before by using the relevant theory,

which is liberal feminism by Tong (2009),

especially sexual harassment. The analysis started

by selecting several scenes that are appropriate to

the topic to be discussed, then correlated with

liberal feminism theory.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Sexual harassment is a shameful behavior that

violates human rights, besides that, sexual

harassment does not only in form of physical acts,

cat calling and rude jokes is also an act of sexual

harassment (Hersch, 2015). Sexual harassment is

an action that must be resisted, because this action

can have bad effect on the victim, such as:

prolonged stress, depression, and even attempted

to suicide. According to Tong (2009), sexual

harassment including sexual oppression from

social system and sexism are immoral, because it

can limit people freedom and underwhelming their

social life nor their mental health. Therefore, there

must be some efforts so that this heinous act can be

lost and the perpetrators can be punished according

to the applicable regulations.

Against Sexual Harassment in Workplace based

on Bombshell movie (2019

Workplace should be a quiet place and free

from any distractions, because it is a place where

people focus on working to earn wages to meet

their daily needs. However, sometimes the

workplace can also be a nightmare for some

people, they can get pressure at work, bad

treatment from other employees or even from their

superiors, the worst is being a victim of sexual

harassment in the workplace. Sexual harassment

can be in the form of physical or verbal actions, this

also applies to fighting it, physical or verbal

methods can be used in fighting sexual harassment.

Physical Resistance Against Sexual Harassment

in Workplace

In fighting sexual harassment, physical

action is very necessary because the effects of this

action can be directly felt by the perpetrator. One

example of physical action against sexual

harassment is reporting the perpetrator to the

authorities so that the perpetrator can be processed

immediately in accordance with applicable law.

Report The Perpetrator to The Authorities

Patriarchy is a social structure where men

dominate and can control women, including

private property (Christ, 2016). Meanwhile,

according to Maulida (2020), patriarchy is a

cultural structure which think that men are

superior than women. In this system, women are

considered as gentle, obedient creatures, in

contrast to men who are considered to be in full

power, able to do everything, and know

everything. Patriarchy is everywhere, in schools,

universities, workplaces, government and so on.

For so long this has existed in society, the

patriarchal system has been said to be a normal

thing that occurs in society. In the Bombshell film,

the patriarchal system is described by the

characteristics of Roger Ailes, who controls all

divisions of Fox News. He has employees who are

very obedient to him, and if anyone does not want

to follow his orders, then the employee will receive

the consequences, the punishments can be range

from relocation of the work division to punishment

of dismissal.

In a patriarchal system, women are often

seen as easy targets for men, things such as

persecution to acts of sexual harassment are often

experienced by women. This happens because men

think that they are the most powerful gender.

Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Culture Studies, Vol. 11 (1) 2022

p-ISSN: 2252-6323

e-ISSN: 2721-4540

(Wall, 2018). According to research conducted by

Vagins and Gatta (2019), female employees do not

dare to report acts of sexual harassment because

they are afraid that they will receive more vicious

retribution from the perpetrators, such as losing

their salaries, up to unilateral dismissal. In some

workplaces there are still using patriarchal systems

and sexism, where they consider women to be

considered as weak creatures and normalize sexual

harassment (Davies et al., 2019). In this film, this

is proved by the number of women who are

became the victims of sexual harassment by Roger

Ailes. Because of the patriarchal system that has

been attached to society, the female employees did

not dare to rebel against Roger, and in the end

there was one woman who dared to speak about

the disgraceful actions carried out by the CEO of

Fox News, the woman named Gretchen Carlson.

In the figure 00:14:44, revealed that

Gretchen is very angry and disappointed to see

Roger Ailes as CEO of Fox News still abuses

power and demeans female employees by

exploiting their bodies, with consciously and

bravely she filed a lawsuit against Roger on

concerns of sexual harassment. She hopes that with

this lawsuit, she can stop any bad behavior of

Roger Ailes, including acts of sexual harassment

and abuse of power that he did.

Figure 1. (00:14:44)

Nancy : What do you want out of a lawsuit?

Gretchen : What do I want? I want this

behavior to stop.

According to McLaughlin et al. (2012),

lower level employees are often being the object of

abuse of power by people who have positions

above them (McLaughlin et al., 2012). This is

clearly seen in this film, when Gretchen, a

presenter who complained about her interviewees

cat calling her when she hosted a talk show, instead

of trying to relaxing Gretchen down, Roger made

fun of Gretchen, as if she was a woman who hates

men, easily offended and bullied by men.

Therefore, she loudly indicted Roger to the

prosecutor's office in the hope that he could stop

committing these despicable acts. In addition to

low-level workers, factors that can cause sexual

harassment in the world of work are: victims who

are younger, the number of male workers in the

workplace, so that they are more domineering, and

superiors bosses, so they think that they are the

more experienced and they can oppress the

younger ones (Hersch, 2015).

Reporting the perpetrators of sexual

harassment to the federal is a good thing, because

if all the evidence and testimonies from witnesses

can incriminate the accusations given to the

perpetrators, the perpetrators will be given a

commensurate punishment according to the

applicable law. Every human being has human

rights, and it is the right of everyone to report if

they experience an unpleasant incident as a result

of the mistakes of others and get legal protection

from the authorities. Legal protection is divided

into two, namely preventive legal protection which

aims to guarantee protection for every citizen in

society and repressive legal protection which aims

to guarantee protection to every citizen who has

reported a crime so that they are safe during the

investigation process (Handayani et al., 2019).

Based on data from 2016 – 2018, women are

still frightened to file a lawsuit to the perpetrators

of sexual harassment in the workplace because

those who are the victims are mostly lower-level

workers, and the perpetrators are their superiors,

who easily abuse their power by forcing his women

employees to follow or obey all the orders he gave

(Keplinger et al., 2019). However, after there was

a lot of news about the victims who dared to talk

about this issue, many women were then agreed to

voice their feelings and file a lawsuit against the

perpetrators of sexual harassment. Moreover, with

the existence of social media, victims can easily

post stories or chronology that they experienced

and then go viral so that their posts are heard by a

wide audience and become a boomerang to the

perpetrators. Keplinger et al. in his research also

Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Culture Studies, Vol. 11 (1) 2022

p-ISSN: 2252-6323

e-ISSN: 2721-4540

said that the victims of sexual harassment,

especially women trust organization to talk about

their experience more than when they talk to their

friends (Keplinger et al., 2019). Women trust

organizations because organizations have lawyer

and legal policies that can ensure their safety and

privacy Organizations also updating their policies

regularly to reduce the scope of perpetrators of

sexual harassment and provide comfort and

empowerment to victims (Burn, 2019).

Verbal Resistance Against Sexual Harassment in

Workplace

The second way to fight sexual harassment

is through verbally. This can be done by making a

declaration against sexual harassment, motivating

victims to rise from the adversity and pressure they

experience, and several other ways.

Against Women Oppression through Speech

In the figure 00:08:32, it can be seen that

Megyn Kelly publicized Donald Trump, as one of

the presidential candidates were disrespecting

women by underestimates them, even they are

likened to animals.

Figure 2. (00:08:32)

Megyn: Mr. Trump, one of the things people love about

you is you speak your mind and you don't use a politician's

filter. However, that is not without its downsides. In

particular, when it comes to women. You've called women

you don't like "fat pigs," "dogs," "slobs" and

"disgusting animals.

From the dialogue above, when

interviewing Trump, Megyn asked Trump about

his habit of shouting women that he doesn't like

with inappropriate names. This question has made

Trump angry, and the next day he attacked Megyn

by writing a hate speech on his Twitter and

mobilizing people to follow her.

The incident above is often found around

the workplaces; it happens because of the culture

of sexism that is spreading among superiors in a

workplace. They often abuse their power to fulfill

their own desires, such as bullying their employees

and even to some acts that disgrace their

employees, such as sexual harassment.

Motivate Other Women

Maturity is a period in which every human

being looks for his identity by blending in and

adapting to society or organizations. Sometimes,

in organizations, people can experience any kind

of social problems, such as bullying and

harassment which can cause someone's mental

condition to be unstable, it can also happen in the

world of work, at that time, motivation is needed

so that they can be strong and get back up to live

their life.

There are several ways that can arouse

victims of sexual harassment, namely: (1) The

culture of the surrounding environment, (2) The

ability to understand yourself, (3) Giving

motivation either from yourself or others, (4) being

grateful that you don't find anything worse than

this (Dumpratiwi, 2020). In this film, it can be seen

through the figure when Megyn encourage other

women to speak up about their experience.

In the figure 01:17:59, Megyn investigated

for several victims of sexual harassment by Roger

Ailes and interviewed them, as well as: Juliet

Huddy, a prior Fox News anchor and Kayla, an

employee of Fox News.

Figure 3. (01:17:59)

Megyn : Juliet, did Roger ever...

Juliet : No. I heard things, but nothing firsthand.

Megyn : Good

Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Culture Studies, Vol. 11 (1) 2022

p-ISSN: 2252-6323

e-ISSN: 2721-4540

Figure 4. (01:20:41)

Megyn : Listen, I wanted to ask you... I wanted to ask

you if Roger is harassing you.

Kayla : How did you know?

Megyn : We find each other.

Kayla : You too?

Megyn : Long time ago.

Kayla : Wow.

In the dialogue above, Megyn started

looking for victims of sexual harassment by Roger,

starting with talking to Juliet, her colleague,

followed by meeting her junior, Kayla, and some

other women. She also encourages the victims to

stay strong and dare to speak so that Roger gets

punished for everything he did. According to

Ponterotto (2014), today, women are victims of

marginalization, abuse of power, and excluded as

less important in several fields, such as rights,

opportunities, and freedom. This figure showed

that Megyn want to motivate other women to unite

and encourage them to dare to speak about no

workplace harassment. Women should not be the

object of sexuality and discrimination by men.

The victims of sexual harassment can

experience prolonged psychological trauma, such

as stress and feeling depressed. Some victims can

experience severe stress because they can't control

their frantic thoughts (Mushtaq et al., 2015).

Depression can also harm ourselves, because it can

lead to anger at ourselves, blame ourselves, and

question our identity (Houle et al., 2011). As well

as psychological trauma, victims can also

experience a decrease in their enthusiasm for life

and enthusiasm for work. Sometimes they feel that

they are shunned by their co-workers, betrayed by

their own company because the company is not

doing its best to prevent sexual harassment in it

(Barr-Walker et al., 2021). All of those side effects

can be decreased by motivate the victims, so if we

find someone who are a victim of sexual

harassment, we have to accompany and motivate

them, not ignoring them

CONCLUSION

Sexual harassment is an act that we must

fight together, because it has a very bad effect on

the victims. There are two forms of fighting sexual

harassment, namely physically and verbally. In

Bombshell (2019) movie, physical resistance is shown

in the scene where Gretchen files a lawsuit against

Roger Ailes on charges of sexual harassment.

While the fight against sexual harassment through

verbally is shown in the scene when Megyn Kelly

asks Trump who is present on her talk show about

the truth that Trump calls women he doesn't like

with inappropriate names, the second is shown in

the scene where Megyn asks the victims of sexual

harassment who are sexually harassed. carried out

by Roger Ailes and motivated them to dare to

speak and testify about what happened to them.

This is in accordance with Tong's (2009)

explanation, women can get their rights in the civil

sector and are able to co-exist with men in public

work.

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