Librarians in the media

From the Library: The Librarian Stereotype on the Big Screen

Writing about The Librarian brought up a lot of things to think about, and one thing that I wanted to talk about was the genderization of the profession: look at the librarians in the video there, and then look at what they were doing: two reference librarians, a man and a woman, are asked questions. The woman is asked about the dating of Chinese bronzes; the man is asked to compile a bibliography of radar. Later on, the embedded hospital librarian, who is a woman, is able to compile a bibliography for a doctor (taking care to use the most lengthy and difficult term possible, because medicine is obscure like that). Naturally, she has to add that, “the words were difficult to pronounce!” There’s even a segment with a manager and the librarians around him, and it’s important to note that the manager’s male, while the majority of his employees are female.

Mary with a husband, and Mary without a husband. See a difference?

That then brought to mind other portrayals of librarians, notably Mary from It’s A Wonderful Life, who is shown in two different ways: one as a very feminine, social woman in the ‘main’ timeline where she’s married to her husband George; and one as a spinsterly, frumpish woman in the alternate universe where George wasn’t born. It seemed like a good place to start since It’s A Wonderful Life is a contemporary of “The Librarian,” and what with Christmas approaching faster than I’d like, It’s A Wonderful Life was on my mind. But then I did some brief searching, and then I found that someone else had discussed it more thoroughly than I ever could have, so I suggest you check it out.

Also, read the comments. This is probably the only time ever that I’ll suggest reading the comments, but there’s a lot of additional discussion going on there, and it’s worth a look.