Great... now movie posters are sexist?

[Esquilax]

That's all true.  I said the poster is violent and I don't know if children should see the poster just because it's violent.  But I don't think it's much worse than the Simpsons when Homer chokes his son until his tongue shoots out of his mouth nearly every episode.  I watched it and it didn't bother me but I don't know if it's wrong.

Leaving aside the obvious rebuttal- that the Simpsons has, on multiple occasions, pointed out that that action is indeed abusive and horrible- there's also a difference of depiction: one is an act of slapstick violence performed by cartoon characters, the other is a live-action, seriously framed piece of violence, that raises very real parallels to actual domestic abuse, performed against a female figure that, not to put too fine a point on it, is often overtly sexualized.

Does that make it worse? Yeah, kinda. I've seen the movie, I know how that scene works in context, but out of that context, as a piece of advertising for the film, there's an important question that needs to be asked: why is it that an image like this, with all the parallels that could be drawn, even if they aren't deliberately made, being positioned as a thing that will make people want to see the movie?

My point is that this isn't discriminating against either sex.  It isn't saying all men are violent, this is just a violent man who is included in the film and that woman happened to be choked by him towards the end of the film, the poster isn't meant to represent all women or say that the violence is good.

But we're not talking about discrimination. We're talking about representation and what this particular ad represents. What does it say that A: imagery associated with- even if not directly invoked- domestic violence can so easily appear on posters, and B: that this is the image chosen to entice people to see the movie? Now, there are arguments for either side of that, some I find compelling and some I don't, but what cannot be denied is that what appears in our media influences what is normalized in our culture, and that there's merit to questioning what this particular piece of media does in that context.

It's not a matter of the poster overtly suggesting that all men should be like that, or that women should be abused, or whatever, but of how the ubiquity of that imagery might bend the way people approach the subject matter. What happens to a culture that uncritically allows the shadow of violence against women, and specifically particular types of violence against women that are common in reality, to become so trivial that they appear on movie posters without even a sidelong glance?

If you're going to be making the case for considering the movie's context, then it's equally fair to consider the cultural one.