The Reality Of Television Shows

It is often said that the media and the arts are an accurate reflection of any given community. This is especially true in American pop-culture, where television shows depict the various stereotypes attributed to men and women and the roles they play in society. House, a highly popular medical drama that revolves around Dr. Gregory House and his diagnostic team, is a particularly good example as it represents the true state of the traditional gender roles in American culture today by, both, redefining and reinforcing them over the course of the show.

However, it can be observed and said that they have always lived up to the image of “housewife” material or as a constant collaborator of a male role, instead of being the main character. According to Elasmar, M., Hasegawa, K., & Brain, M, on their essay the portrayal of women in the US prime television, “TV has portrayed females in many ways, studies have shown that women have been underrepresented and stereotyped in TV programs.” Women have been living under that invisible stereotype that has cornered them and does not allow them to grow professionally or socially. TV has been the master-mind behind a stereotype that has left women without the chance of demanding equality or credibility on shows, a stereotype that will always be mentioned and enforce if TV shows do not start producing real-world programs based on true stories or true qualities of

Television networks are continually expanding their programming slates, and many in the past have switched to a year-round programming schedule that makes the phrase “summer return” basically absolute. On every channel, in every magazine, every darken theater, we see the way pop culture limits women’s role- girlfriends, victims, hookers, corpses, sex bombs, and “teases,” but why? Television, for most women, was the first place where they were able to visually see themselves represented. And for quite a while, they didn’t see much besides the loving wife, the dutiful daughter, gossiping girlfriends, fashion models, and the occasional maid, granny, or nanny. In Where the Girls Are: Growing Up

The media plays a massive role in the construction of crime, this includes the reporting of crime, the sensationalisation of stories, over-representation of different social groups and age of offenders. Construction of crime is also through stereotyping both ethnicity and gender. It is sometimes argued that the media is an ideological tool that is used to distort reality from its viewers. Female killers are often considered as ‘oxymoronic’, as they are seen as contradictory. Females are generally seen as caring beings but once they commit violent crimes, they are judged based individual circumstances and it is not taken into consideration that they could just as violent as male offenders in their own right. In this essay, I will be focusing on the gender stereotypes in media, specifically focusing on female killers.

It is very well known to all that media is a big part of society today. It influenced how we see ourselves and the world to some extent. There are different types of media that is offered today, for example: TV, movies, radio, and newspapers. Within the different forms of media, women and men are represented in a certain way, all with different characteristics. In this essay, I will argue that there is similar gender stereotypes presented in the shows Modern Family and Every Body Loves Raymond, and how they differ from the show Full House.

Modern media has a massive audience with more than 115 million American household families owning a television (NewsWire). Everyday viewers devote time to watching programs and are intrigued by the attractive actors and the situations they encounter. Although these characters and their lives seem to be unbelievably attractive, many of the shows have stereotypical gender qualities. Regina George in Mean Girls frequently portrays qualities that are often seen as ideal ways for women to live, though a closer look reveals the limitations with these ideas.

The documentary “Miss Representation” delves into how the media and society. The viewer is exposed to how the media builds an expectation of how women should look and act. When the media portrays women as the perfect weight, height, and behavior for the target audience, it lowers the self-esteem of the females watching that cannot hope to compare to a fictional character. Men exposed to these types of advertisement and entertainment are taught to objectify women. It distorts societies and male expectations of how real women should look and behave. The documentary also discusses the lack of female protagonists in television and movies. There is a distinct lack of female heroines in our world today. This shortage further diminishes the hopes

The television show 'Modern Family' is such that places its emphasis on "female gender stereotypes to further promote a male-dominant family ideology." (Lehmann, 2011, p.2) Lehmann reports that the tendency of the mass media "to

Children and young adults in today’s society are constantly flooded with images of the “manly man” and the “girly girl” in mass media, and particularly in television. A television show, such as Law and Order: SVU may at first be seen as breaking gender norms. However, a closer look reveals the gaping, horrendous wound of modern hegemony. In the episode of “Terrorized” alone, hegemonic views of the working mother, the overly protective male, the female victim, and the man’s iron fist when it comes to law and order are all showcased. Law and Order: SVU not only showcases modern hegemonic views, but highlights and glorifies modern male and female hegemonies.

Gender representations in television bear immense weight within society as they either: reproduce or critique societal values, address injustice or uphold mainstream beliefs, and perpetuate stereotypes or initiate change. Today, the problem with gender representations in the television medium is not a lack of visibility of women, as multiple genres include women characters, but rather the problem lies in the portrayal of women. Are the images of women displayed in a positive manner? Does the television medium accurately represent women? Although questions of accuracy and positivity in representations seem minor, these questions have major implications as people use television shows as windows for broader cultural practices. We must realize that the people we see on television programs

Television could create the wrong perceptions and stereotypes about genders, but it could also be used to educate people about feminism, especially the newest form of feminism, the Third Wave Feminism, through the influential pop culture. One of the most influential feminist series would be Sex and the City, which despite of its extravagant and unrealistic lifestyle, has shown what feminist can do and educated viewers of the possibility what women could be should they opt for untraditional options in

In recent years, there has been a gender shift in crime dramas on television. In the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, the viewer saw the lead characters to be heavily male dominated with a woman thrown in for mostly sex appeal. The shift from the stereotypical nuclear family, with a stay-at-home mom, has impacted many genres of television programing and exemplified in Paul Cantor’s “The Simpson: Atomistic Politics and the Nuclear Family,” when referring to the deviation from a historic ideal family “in fact [the breakdown] should be regarded as a form of liberation from an image of the family that may have been good enough for the 1950’s but is no longer valid in the 1990’s” (737). Popular television has extracted “women” from their “household”

Since the inventions of television and film, media influences have become extremely important in modern society with people constantly being inundated by images and messages that come from film, television, magazines, internet and advertising. Researchers and theorists such as Carol J. Clover and Jean Kilborne believe that the fact that people are going to be affected by the media is absolutely unavoidable. Films can act as guides to how people, particularly women, should act and look. Women in horror are typically shown as the ‘damsel in distress’ and are usually attacked by the killer after committing a sinful act like having sex or misusing drugs or alcohol. The females are

For close to a decade, the ethics behind the existence of reality TV have been questioned. While there are ardent viewers of reality TV, researchers and other scholars disapprove them, and claim that the world would have been in a better place. Reality TV shows, especially in America, are extremely profitable to media owners, and this has increased their popularity in the recent years. The main target audience for these shows are teenagers and women, who spend a lot of time discussing about them, even hours after the shows. Most of the reality shows in America and other parts of the world have common ideas. The most fundamental aspect of most reality TV shows is that they display people who go through embarrassing, painful and humiliating ordeals. This is what the reality shows expect their audiences to be entertained, and presumably laugh at the situations the people go through. For this reason and many more, it has been found that they are more detrimental than entertaining to the society, and therefore, the world would be in a better place without them (Pozner 89-91).

Today’s audience grabs hold of reality TV now a day. Looking forward week to week to watch these unscripted real life situation shows. In a way it 's becoming increasingly hard to avoid not watching. Some viewers see the TV show and tend to be attention seekers, and reality TV allows them to fantasize about achieving status through instant fame. Too much reality TV may lead viewers to idealize real world situations, like romanticizing dating. Like when Truman saw the girl in the library who was an actress and a fan of the show. He wanted to take her out sometime later that week, but she said it couldn’t happen because she knows what’s going on, but she had true love for him and asked to go out with him right then on a little date to the beach. As they went to the beach she was going to spill the beans and tell him everything. Then a man of the show in a car drove there to stop her acting like her father to get her before she ruined the show. It’s like most reality TV love shows on today people who audition for a show and know it’s scripted, but end up actually having a real feeling for the person.