GENDER

1. Representation of Gender

2. Starter Activity
• Beth?

3. Key Questions
• What actually does representation mean?
• What does stereotype mean?
• What does ideology mean?
• Who is Laura Mulvey and why am I learning
this?
• How is gender generally
portrayed/represented in the media?

4. Today’s menu
• Beth’s Starter
• Men
• Women
• TV Drama clip/s
• Timed paragraph/s
• Beach Ball

5. Representation
• Describes the signs that stand in for and take
the place of something else.
• It is through representation people know and
understand the world and reality through the
act of naming it. Signs are manipulated in
order to make sense of the world. (Barthes)
• To look like or resemble.
• To stand in for something or someone
• To present a second time to re-present

6. What does this mean?
• This means that media texts are intentionally
composed, lit, written, framed, cropped, capti
oned, branded, targeted and censored by
their producers, and that they are entirely
artificial versions of the reality we perceive
around us.

7. So why do we pay attention to these
biased interpretations of reality?
• It is important to note that without the
media, our perception of reality would be very
limited, and that we, as an audience, need
these artificial texts to mediate our view of
the world, in other words we need the media
to make sense of reality. Therefore
representation is a fluid, two-way process:
producers position a text somewhere in
relation to reality and audiences assess a text
on its relationship to reality (your job).

8. Signs
• Signs make help us decipher what exactly is
being re-presented. Signs are the smallest
piece of meaning we can use to decode
meaning. Almost anything can act as a
sign and more than one sign makes up a
code. For example:
• Glasses + bowtie + pocket protector
= Nerd

9. Signs and Codes you need to use
• Mise-en-Scene
• Sound
• Editing
• Camera shots, angles, movements and
positions.

10. Why is understanding Representation
Important?
IDEOLOGIES!!!
• Cultural beliefs or a way of looking at things.
• Often thought of as common sense.
• Things we believe are true but aren’t
necessarily true.
• Media creates and nurtures these ideas creating
possible false truths for us to identify with.

11. Textual Analysis
• Literally means analysing text and in our case
the text will be a 5 minute clip from a
television drama.
• Denotation and Connotation.
• What lies beneath the text. What ideologies
are being created or reinforced?
• How are they portraying the world and
different social groups?

12. Find a partner.
Write a list down of all the ways in which you
believe gender can be represented.

13. Gender
The representation of men and women.
Gender is perhaps the basic category we use for
sorting human beings, and it is a key issue when
discussing representation. Essential elements of
our own identity, and the identities we assume
other people to have, come from concepts of
gender - what does it mean to be a boy or a
girl? Many objects, not just humans, are
represented by the media as being particularly
masculine or feminine - particularly in
advertising - and we grow up with an
awareness of what constitutes 'appropriate'
characteristics for each gender.

14. Representation of Women
• Feminism has been around for over 30 years yet media
representations of women are worryingly the same.
Representations of women across all media tend to
highlight the following:
• beauty (within narrow conventions)
• size/physique (again, within narrow conventions)
• sexuality (as expressed by the above)
• emotional (as opposed to intellectual) dealings
• relationships (as opposed to independence/
freedom)

15. Representation of Women
• Women are often represented as being part of a
context (family, friends, colleagues) and
working/thinking as part of a team. In
drama, they tend to take the role of helper
(Propp) or object, passive rather than active.
• Often their passivity extends to victimhood. Men
are still represented as TV drama characters up to
3 times more frequently than women, and tend
to be the predominant focus of news stories.

16. Representation of Women
• Women are often represented as being part of a
context (family, friends, colleagues) and
working/thinking as part of a team. In
drama, they tend to take the role of helper
(Propp) or object, passive rather than active.
• Often their passivity extends to victimhood. Men
are still represented as TV drama characters up to
3 times more frequently than women, and tend
to be the predominant focus of news stories.

17. Representation of Women
• The representations of women that do make it
onto page and screen do tend to be
stereotypical, in terms of conforming to
societal expectations, and characters who do
not fit into the mould tend to be seen as
dangerous and deviant.

18. Representation of Women
• America seems to expect its women to behave
better than their European counterparts -
British viewers adored the antics of Patsy &
Edina in Absolutely Fabulous, but these had to
be severely toned down (less swearing, NO
drug taking) for the US remake, High Society
(which was a flop).

19. Representation of Women
• Discussions of women's representation in the
media tend to revolve around the focus on
physical beauty to the near-exclusion of other
values, the lack of powerful female role
models, and the extremely artificial nature of
such portrayals, which bear little or no
relation to the reality experience by women
across the planet.

20. Representation of Men
• 'Masculinity' is a concept that is made up of more
rigid stereotypes than femininity. Representations
of men across all media tend to focus on the
following:
• Strength - physical and intellectual
• Power
• Sexual attractiveness (which may be based on the
above)
• Physique
• Independence (of thought, action)

21. Representation of Men
• Male characters are often represented as isolated, as
not needing to rely on others (the lone hero). If they
submit to being part of a family, it is often part of the
resolution of a narrative, rather than an integral factor
in the initial balance.
• It is interesting to note that the male physique is
becoming more important a part of representations of
masculinity. 'Serious' Hollywood actors in their forties
(eg Willem Dafoe, Kevin Spacey) are expected to have a
level of 'buffness' that was not aspired to even by
young heart-throbs 40 years ago (check out Connery in
Thunderball 1965).

22. „New man‟
• Post-industrial
• Might not be bread-winner
• Stay at home Dad?
• Accepting of women bosses
• Loss of traditional masculinity
• Less hairy chest, more sensitive side
• Not afraid to cry
• Still inwardly strong

23. Metrosexual
• Mix of metropolitan and sexual
• David Beckham is metrosexual poster boy
• Groomed, well-dressed, well-heeled
• Designer label
• Urban/ Young/ Capitalist/ Consumerist
• Buff, moisturiser, etc
• Well off. Job in the City/media/bank/
• Presentational attributes associated with
homosexuality

24. The Male Gaze
• Laura Mulvey “Visual Pleasures and
Narrative Cinema” 1975
The concept of gaze is one that deals with
how an audience views the people
presented.
For feminists it can be thought of in 3
ways:
• How men look at women,
• How women look at themselves
• How women look at other women.

25. Features of the Male Gaze
• The camera lingers on the curves of the
female body, and events which occur to
women are presented largely in the context of
a man's reaction to these events.
• Relegates women to the status of objects.
The female viewer must experience the
narrative secondarily, by identification with
the male

26. Feminism
• Tuchman (1978) representation of women in
the media is “symbolic annihilation” (absence
or underrepresentation)
• Meehan:Men fear women who are
independent therefore independent women
are shown as bitchy, unfulfilled, unhappy and
dangerous.
• Machismo and hyper-masculine characters are
highly popular and successful in films etc

27. Group Activity
• In small groups you will be given a focus area.
• First of all you will write notes alone
• After the second viewing you will share your notes
with your group
• You will then write a timed paragraph responding to
the question
• We will repeat this exercise until you have analysed
for all the areas and completed a full essay.
• Remember the marking criteria…

28. Marking Criteria
Consistent evidence from the extract
offered.Offers frequent relevant
examples from the extract
Frequent and Accurate use of
media terminology
Clear analysis of how the technical
aspects are used to
construct the particular representation
Understanding of the constructed
nature of representation
10
Terminology
20
20
Use of Examples
Analysis/Explanation

30. Recap & Plenary
• Beach Ball