Gender in TV Drama
The representation of gender is portrayed in many different
ways across all aspects of media. The type of media with the largest variety is
TV.
Many different stereotypes of male and female characters are
used to give a certain element to add to the TV drama. For example a common
stereotype for a dominant man in a TV drama would be someone who is physically
athletic and attractive to a female. In the majority of TV dramas and other
forms of media a female is shown as being weaker compared to the male
characters and usually ends up falling for one. It is rare in media that a
women character would be dominant and not need a male to accompany her or fall
in love with her at one point in the drama. Many people believe this affects
real life, males thinking they are dominant and females thinking less of
themselves.
Laura Mulvey came up with the term “Male Gaze” that shows
how women are represented in media purely to please men. Many TV dramas show
this in the form of many characters across many shows, in these shows the
female characters aim to please a certain male character by being overly sexual
by using facial expressions and gestures. An example character of this could be
Rebecca Bowman from Banshee, who regularly aims to please Proctor by sexual
means.
The opposite of these characters would be dominant male
characters that the women are shown to want to please. The male character is
often supposedly attractive, powerful and dominant over females. These
characters also can affect people’s views on society. Men may think they have
to be attractive in order to make a women like them or they may start to treat
women as objects as the supposedly “good looking” characters on the television
do. Many characters across media are
represented like this, such as ‘Jax’ from sons of anarchy that is attractive
and seems to be a dominant male character that appeals to women.
Many see the dominance towards male characters in TV as being sexist and that it reflects in the way women see themselves
Many see the dominance towards male characters in TV as being sexist and that it reflects in the way women see themselves
I'd have liked to see more examples from TV drama, and a greater consideration of the links to other areas of representation.
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