Overview of representations of gender in the media - 1990 to present.
-Magazines, newspapers and adverts all contain images of women and men that might feed or challenge our ideas about gender.
Women and Men on TV
Gunter (1995) & Elasmar (1999)
-1950's, 1960's and 1970's - 20-30% of characters were female, by 1980 there were more women in leading roles, but there were still more men.
-Miles (1975) - equal proportions of men and women in situation comedies, even though gender roles could be seen as sexist.
-1987- study found female characters to be common in comedy programmes(43%)
-Gunter(1970's)- found marriage parenthood and domesticity were shown on TV to be more important for women than men
-McNeil - Female characters were unlikely to work, especially if they were wives or mothers, and when they did, it wasn't seen on screen.
-1970's- men as dominant characters and the decision makers on TV
Overall-(Gunter 1995)
-Men likely to be ore assertive or aggressive while women likely to be passive.
Men: adventurous, active and victorious
Women: weak, ineffectual, victimised, supportive, laughable or 'merely token females'
Consequences were highlighted by Gaye Tuchman in a article "The Symbolic Annihilation of Women by the Mass Media" (1978)
-TV claims women don’t count for much. Underrepresented
-Women that were shown to be working were portrays as "incompetents and inferiors"
-Men were shown to solve emotional and practical problems - leaving women with little value in the TV world.
-Mid 1980's took women seriously, and women’s issues
-TV remained stubborn and didn't change their "degrading and trivialising views of women"
-1980's - women’s roles as police and crimes increased
-TV detectives investigate, rape, and sexual abuse made a difference. (Cagney and lacey, the Bill, Juliest Bravo)
-Rape stories seen to build drama around the feminist critique of police attitudes
-1950's most popular films focused on male heroes. Men typically made decisions, assertive, confident and dominant.
-Women had important roles - frightened, in need of protection and direction and offering love and support to the male lead characters.
-1960's - Gender roles id not differ greatly from the previous decade
-1970's - Leia Star Wars(1977) was good at shooting storm troopers, but she was also the prized princess that the heroic boys had to rescue, and win the heart of.
-1980's - Ripley become stronger in Aliens(1986) and Sarah Connor was courageous in The Terminator(1984)
-Character of Indiana Jones, typical macho action-adventure and on the other hand he is tender to women
- Women's roles were more complexity. Raiders of the Lost
-Feminist critics, Marjorie Rosen "the cinema Woman is a Popcorn Venus, a delectable but insubstantial hybrid of cultural distortions"
Rosen charted the changing representations of women in
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