The Representation Of Gender Within Film And Television Texts Essay

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.

In contemporary film women's roles in films have varied quiet considerably between genres, geographical placement, and between

Film provides audiences with specific constructions of male, and female, which draw on the prior assumptions and associations the viewer holds about gender. Various female tropes reoccur in films, such as the ‘spinster’, the promiscuous woman, the housewife, and the virgin. These stereotypes reinforce pre-existing societal norms and ideas that can often be harmful and undermine the complexity of women. Traditionally, these tropes occur as a result of a lack of development of female characters and the frequent depiction of women through the lens of the ‘male gaze’. This results in more passive female characters who, it appears are simply there to be “looked at and displayed”

A gender reading is perhaps one of the more basic ways to view a text. Gender inequality is a prominent issue not only in society, but also in films. In modern day society, we have reached a time where feminine expectations are no longer for women to be traditionally delicate, dependent, and weak. Instead they

Most of us are born with an assigned biological sex, however how we choose to perform our gender is up to us (Eckert and McConnell- Ginet). In the case of television shows, how characters perform their genders is up to the script writers. Media, specifically television shows, plays a sizable role in creating and enforcing gender norms because of its wide range of influence. Many popular television shows tend to exaggerate gender roles by making actors either overplay or underplay the gender that goes with their assigned sex. While the actions of the characters play a large role in these dramatizations, their phonology, syntax, and semantics also play a role. In conversation below, an excerpt from How I Met Your Mother, these linguistic elements describe to what extent the characters perform their respective genders.

Since the 1940’s, movies have predominately portrayed women as sex symbols. Beginning in the 1940’s and continuing though the 1980’s, women did not have major roles in movies. When they did have a leading role the women was either pretreated as unintelligent and beautiful, or as conniving and beautiful: But she was always beautiful. Before the 1990’s, men alone, wrote and directed all the movies, and the movies were written for men. In comparison, movies of the 90’s are not only written and directed by women, but leading roles are also held by older and unattractive women. In this paper I will show the variations and growth of women’s roles in movies from the 1940’s though the 1990’s.

Reading Chapter 11: Gendered media reminded me why I majored in communications. The media has such a significant influence on all our lives. I wanted to be a part of that influence and to ultimately help turn the way society portrays people. The media’s influence can get into a person’s subconscious, and unwillingly it will control how we think and what we view as important. I would like to think I am not effected by the media, but I am. I tend to not settle for local news, I always make the effort to stay current on what is going on a global scale through different media outlets. With the rise of fake news I am constantly forced to question these sources and the agenda behind these new stories. It hurts me that in the United States we focus

An Annotated Bibliography for The Main Cause In Negative Gender Stereotypes and Traditional Gender Roles:

The first research entitled “The representation of gender roles in the media - An analysis of gender discourse in Sex and the City movies ” was constructed by Therese Ottosson and Xin Cheng in 2012.

“ You cannot talk about genre without talking about gender.” Initially, this would appear to be a simplistic statement. On closer analysis, however, one fact becomes evident. It is the representation of gender which informs the genre of the text. Ismay Barwell , in her essay ‘ Feminist perspectives and narrative points of view’ states that “ Every text is gendered since every act of narration…..involves a process of selection….and the nature of that selection implies certain values” ( p.99). She makes the point that “ The desires, attitudes and interests which guide any choices made must be either male or female”( p.98 ). It is within this frame of reference, that the two texts will be analysed.

The judgments we make about people, events or places are based on our own direct impressions. But for most of the knowledge, we rely on media. The media actually re-present the world to us. However, the media only shows us some aspects of the world, ignoring the rest. So basically, the media chooses what is to be shown and what is to be discarded (Andrew Pilkington and Alan Yeo (2009)). . In this essay, I will explain what stereotypes are and primarily give an example of a famous men’s magazine called ‘nuts’ and explain how these stereotypes are created by print and the digital media and what are their impacts on people.

Redbook magazine are devoted to selling products ranging from shoes to shampoo. The entire magazine only has only 210 pages. Approximately 6-8 min of every half hour television show is produced by ad agencies. Americans are bombarded with advertisements. We see them everyday in many different forms and through different mediums. Advertisers study America’s population through a systematic breakdown and analysis of our likes and dislikes in relation to our differences. These differences include gender, sexual orientation, economic status, location, race, ethnicity, and more. Advertisers have substantial knowledge of what appeals to each of these demographics and how these demographics will respond to

Stereotypes have become a prevalent issue in our media. They, without our knowledge, prevent us from moving forward as human. In this essay, I will discuss the effects of stereotypes in media on gender roles, religion, and race.

In society we have a lot of women actresses. Some tend to play the motherly type, some play the manipulator type and some even play the victims of abusive relationships. No matter what women seem to be coming up in the industry of movies in more ways than before. The three movies I have chosen to analyze in my critique are Heartbreakers, Baby Boy and Stepmom. These three movies all have women in them that either play a major role or the main role. All their roles are very different in character and none of the women in these three movies play a similar role.

In society, women are often perceived as the weaker sex, both physically and mentally. In modern times women have leveled the playing field between men and women, and feminism is a highly discussed topic, but for years, women faced discrimination and prejudice both in life and in the workplace, due to their sex. This way of thinking flooded into the world of film. In their works, the authors of each of the various sources address the limitations and liberations of women both on and off the screen in nineteenth century Film and Cinema. Not every source is completely filled with information related to the research topic, but they do cover and analyze many of the same points from different perspectives. Prominent points addressed in each