In her first chapter ‘Feminine Pleasures, Masculine Texts: Reading The X-Files on the DDEBRP’, Rhiannon Bury examines the interpretations of television show The X-Files and also its actors among a female-centric private forum group. As an observation of a virtual space, there is a hybridity of speech and text (Turkle 1995, Mckee and Porter 2008, Hine 2000) that gives the methodology an ethnographic approach but with a textual focus. Using discussion threads and texts posts, which are backed up with data gathered from questionnaires and e-interviews, she focuses on performances of both normative and feminist heterosexual female identities in the context of how collective meaning is negotiated and produced out of the television show. Due to …show more content…
One is that Bury’s interest in online spaces and social practices resulted in a more involved ethnographic methodology. Though it might seem strange, it is argued that the interactivity of discussion groups and the conceptualisation of cyberspaces as social spaces makes them ethnographic field sites (Escobar 1996; Hine 2000). Instead of just gathering found data, Bury made a private list discussion group and jointly observed and participated in their forum for a year. She further supplemented this data with questionnaires and e-interviews, which are methods often noted for complimenting ethnographic research (Hansen and Machin 2013: 60; Hammond and Wellington 62). I believe such a mixed methods approach is understandable, and practical, as her research was initially for a doctoral degree, and then to be published as a book. Both cases require sufficiently large data to analyse.
Additionally, there are strengths in ethnographic research that I think better her research. One is that questionnaires (included in appendix of book) allowed for a greater context of her participants. Above all, Bury knew the community she was monitoring was not just dominantly but completely white middle class (21). Though not the focus of her first chapter, she develops her analysis to include bourgeois aesthetics, and (somewhat) white and middle-class femininity. Overall, it might also point to a limitation; a rich study of one fan identity but lack of broad perspective which could
In "Where the girls are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media," Susan Douglas analyses the effects of mass media on women of the nineteen fifties, and more importantly on the teenage girls of the baby boom era. Douglas explains why women have been torn in conflicting directions and are still struggling today to identify themselves and their roles. Douglas recounts and dissects the ambiguous messages imprinted on the feminine psyche via the media. Douglas maintains that feminism is a direct result of the realization that mass media is a deliberate and calculated aggression against women. While the media seemingly begins to acknowledge the power of
In Tania Modleski’s “The Search for Tomorrow in Today’s Soap Operas” she introduces that the rare appearance and function of soap opera in two ways. The first being the viewer’s ability to occupy the text’s recommendation of the viewers position of ‘the good mother’, and the second using the stereotype ‘villainess’ to displace one’s own bottled up anger and powerlessness. I will analyze these two functions by using Modleski’s perspectives on the positions of soap operas, how a new genre of reality television programs that are featured today function in a similar way.
¨There was a law against luke. Not him personally everyone like him, kids who were born after their parents already had two babies (pg 6)¨. Would you like a law against you? Among the hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix clearly shows that dictatorship is horrible. In this novel Luke is not allowed to leave the house or be seen. Luke leaves the house in cover and meets a girl the same as him she can't go anywhere so she tries to convince luke to rebel to be like regular people with her but he is to nervous. Luke shows the character traits of brave, jealousy and adventurous as he hides in the shadows.
In “The Victims” by Sharon Olds it describes a divorce through the eyes of the parents’ children. The first section is shown through past tense as the speaker is a child and the last section is shown in present tense with the speaker already being an adult trying to make sense of past events. The word “it” in the first two lines carries a tremendous weight, hinting at the ever so present abuse and mistreatment, but remaining non-specific. The first part generates a negative tone toward the father who is referred to as malicious by the mother who “took it” from him “in silence” until she eventually “kicked him out.” Through the entirety of the poem the children are taught to hate their father. Who taught them? Their mother showed them that their father was a villain and were taught to have no sympathy for him but “to hate you and take it” and so they did so. Although the poem never directly states what the father did to receive the family’s hated, the speaker gives examples as to why he is hated.
In the recent history, feminism and pop culture have become more closely entwined than ever before. This can be partially because of the growing interest in culture studies as an academic discipline, but it can also be explained by the fact that, there’s a whole lot more popular culture to watch. Pop culture has become our common language, a universal way of uniting the world. Pop culture is also a key route to making the concept of feminism both resonant and relatable. In this paper, I am interested in the relationship and connections between pop culture’s representations of women and girls and the depiction of feminism through the lens of pop culture. There’s a
On the same cable networks that act as the home for gay and lesbian television series, America finds its new woman for the new millenium: she’s smart, independent, gainfully employed, sexually confident, and, usually, she’s single. Television finally has room for a woman to fly on her own, without her minivan, Cub Scout den-mother meetings, or workaholic husband to feed and clean up after. The prime example for TV’s new “wonder woman,” is found in the four women of HBO’s Emmy Award winning series, “Sex & The City.” These
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1).” The love and respect for the outdoors is something everyone should value, many things promote this way of life, due to its extravagance and true freedom in this great creation. They can sometimes go to that outdoor place in books, poems, art, and even some news articles. Much of this world doesn’t get to see the other side of America; they don’t get to see the best part, the outdoors.
When one hears the terms “violence” and “horror,” one typically imagines horrible crimes and serial killers; rarely would one think of everyday suburban life. However, this is the exact landscape of violence depicted in Charles Burns’ Black Hole. In Black Hole Burns draws attention to the implicit assumptions about “normal” and “other” made in everyday life by exposing the objectification of women and through the male gaze. The male gaze is a phrase used in film and gender studies to describe the lens through which audiences view popular culture from a heterosexual male perspective. According to Laura Mulvey, the film theorist who coined the term, the male gaze is so ubiquitous that it often goes unrecognized and is considered the norm.
The first section of Gender and the Media addresses gender representations and the beginning of feminism. During the late 60’s and early 70’s, women’s rights movements were first introduced with the challenge of the media, prompting them monitor the way the media portrayed women. This portrayal starting in the late 1970’s has seen many transmissions since. Gil states: “I use the term feminism to signal a concern with enduring gender
Racial and gender stereotypes are vague assumptions that are generally negative in the novel, Forbidden by Beverly Jenkins. They are false beliefs abstracted by judgmental people based on a person’s gender or ethnicity. Each person has their respective thoughts, ambitions and passions despite their gender or race. These stereotypes are ignorant and do not define every single person. Most people realize that stereotypes are inaccurate, however they continue to make presumptions based on ethnicity or gender. The author of Forbidden, challenges racial and gender stereotypes by explaining how they are only crude generalizations which cause disruptions in society because of people’s belief that as long as they exist that they must follow them.
I have chosen to look at and analyse a television text. It is a TV drama aimed at a teenage audience called Skins. I chose this particular text as it focuses upon many different characters and scenarios in regards to sexuality and this forms a basis for analysis and evaluation. Skins also focuses upon Teenage sexuality, specifically, which I believe is a broad and interesting subject to analyse with many opportunities to elaborate.
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.
Dating back to the 1920’s mass communication mediums of film, television and print have all been means that act as powerful tools of propaganda and thus play an integral role in the lives of individuals. It is for this reason that it is often widely accepted that the media is to be used as a tool, which represents a common public interest. Men and women are represented through forms of media in different ways, which create images depicting stereotypical traits and characteristics. The problem brought fourth by this is concerned with the issue of gender or the ‘discourse’ of gender and how individuals perceive themselves (Gauntlett, 2008) As the media is such a big part of everybody’s lives, there is not doubt that when this powerful function is synthesized with the medium’s capacity to accentuate present day realities on our screens the result tends to elicit a dominant ideology; which in turn presents an argument for major ethical implications in regard to public stigma and subsequent prejudice. This essay shall critically consider gender representation in Sex and the City (HBO, 1998-2004) and the extent to which these characters challenge the patriarchal privilege.
Black Mirror’s “San Junipero” is an episode that, on the surface, seems to be a simple love story between two women, Yorkie and Kelly. They meet in the virtual town of San Junipero, a town that feels very real, but is essentially a simulation where they can be ‘uploaded’ when they ‘pass over’, their consciousnesses permanently stored in the cloud, alive in the virtual town. Both are still living but are close to death and are in San Junipero as ‘tourists’, allowed to test-drive life in the virtual town for a limited time. They fall in love and their whirlwind romance overcomes Kelly’s moral reservations about being uploaded and Yorkie’s reservations of being out with her sexuality. It also provides Yorkie a chance to live the life that she was denied because of the quadriplegia she suffered from an accident following her parents’ poor reaction to her coming out, that paralyzed her before she truly got to experience life. Hidden underneath the optimistic love story, however, are levels that suggest that regardless of its invisibility in this story, the patriarchy is still very much in control, symbolically oppressing them without even needing to be present.
The programmes which are actively rejected deal with what the women designate the ‘real world’ or ‘man’s world. ( ibid:98). In conjunction with the programmes which women reject, there are programmes which they choose to watch and to which they obviously relate.These can be defined as those which are related to their own lives, the programmes which can loosely be termed ‘realistic’.(Hobson, 1980: 101). However, is that the programmes which the women watch are differentiated specifically in terms of both class and gender. Overall the programmes fall into the categories of popular drama and light entertainment, and although it is obvious that the women reject news and the political content of current affairs programmes, it would be wrong to contend that they do not have access or exposure to news or politics. She concluded her finding by saying that between radio and television, radio which is transmitted every hour, is relatively accessible; it is also introduced by music which is recognizable, bright and repetitive and demanding of attention and that the programmes which the women watch and listen to, together with the programmes which they reject, reinforce the sexual division of spheres of interest, which is determined both by their location in the home and by the structures of femininity that ensure that feminine values are secondary or less ‘real’