Representations of gender in the past

Key Summary

In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, only 20 to 35 per cent of characters were female , by the mid 1980s , there were more women in leading roles but still there were twice as many men on screen.

The were equal proportions of men and woman in situation comedies- although of course, the gender roles and the humour could still be traditional and sexist, despite this statistical parity- whereas in action adventure shows, only 15 per cent of the leading characters were women. A decade later a 1987 study found female characters to be the most common in comedy programes.

Marrige, parenthood and domesticity were shown on televsion to be more important for women than men.

Female characters were unlikely to work escpcially not if they were wives or mothers and even when they did this work was typcially not seen on screen.

Men were much more liekly to be adventrous, active and victorious , whereas women were more frequently shown as weak, ineffetucal, victimised, supportive, laughable or merely token females.

They are underrepresented in televsion fictional lfe they are symbolically annihilated

T.v was stubborn with game shows not bothering to change thier degrading and trivialsing views of women, sports programming remaining the preserve of men, and news programme accused of tokensim or window dressing by including some women in key postions whilst retaining a male dominated culture.

Althogh lois lane in superman is a sucessful reporter for example it is stll the heroic man who leads the story and saves the world.

The films almost always focused on the male heros , these men typically made the decsions whicch led the story and were assertive, confident and dominant. Women had important roles in many films but were far more likely than men to be shown as frightened, in need of protection and direction and offering love and support for the male characters.

The role of a woman in a film almost always revolves around her physical attraction and the mating games she plays with the male characters. (A quote by sharon smith from her book women and film 1973)

Kathi Mario said in her book published in 1991 that women are not only given less screen time, when were up there on the screen we are likely to be portrayed as powerless and ineffectual.

Susan faludi wrote in her book undeclared war agasint women also in 1991 that women were part of a wider blacklash against women liberation and womens careers. She also noted women being reduced to mute and incidental characters or banished altogether.

Hegemonic or Pluralistic

The hegeomnic model is a system where one group is dominated by another. The dominating group achieves its domination by winning popular consent through everyday cultural life. They include Ideologies which are considered mythic, i.e. they seem to be natural or common sense to know. The pluralist model is when power is exercised by the mass of the population, rather than by a small elite group. Representatives in big powerful sectors therefore have to act in a way that is pleasing to the majority.

I believe in both theories because i agree with the hypodermic model however i swing more to the pluralistic model because i consider myself more active than passive and challenge what the media powers distribute.

For instance some of the representations of characters on soaps from ethnic minorities aren't specificly right and i challenge those stereotypes that seem to appear so regularly in modern times. However I do agree with the conspiracy that the media is controlled and distributed by a selection of higher powers and the ruling classes setting out ideologies and false consciousness to follow in societybut overall im a pluralists.

key points made

The media defines lads as modern and fashionable young men who are not afraid to admit they enjoy porn, women, sex, heavy drinking and sports.

Photographic images which make up the majority of the content of all three magazines loaded, fhm and playboy , depict and represent women as the prototypical object of sexual desire, presenting the idea that a womans purpose is to look appealing and attractive to a watching male population.


The front cover is the ultimate selling pull for a magazine to gain a greater readership and therfore has to stand out to the audience in order to gain sales and make money.

The slightly open lips act as an index for the womans willigness to partipcate in sex. The image is extremely provocative and works on the insinuation of a sexual encounter between the model and the reader.

Former editor of loaded, james brown , has descirbed the magazines as all about having the best fucking time of your life. He defends the magazine from critics accusing it of containing sexist material, altering and changing attitudes in society, by arguing that it is simply "Enjoyable entertainment"

However implicity the magazines hold an overridding emphasis on penetrative sex and repeatedly represent women as the weaker gender who were made only to make mens life more enyoyable and entertaining.

The imagery of the tradiotnally beautiful female, who is attractive, thin , and well groomed also explicitly puts a pressure on women to conform to what the male population finds attractive

This relates to the "hypodermic needle" theory that audience are passive and are easily influenced by what they see and hear in the media, suggesting that media has a strong link with power.

A second theory the uses and gratifications theory would suggest that mens lifestyle magazines make men view women as sexual objects for thier own gratification. Proposing instead that audiences are not totally passive and use the media in different ways to achieve different gratifications.

The imagery found within modern lifestyle magazines is comparable to that found within playboy, using a variety of camera shots and angles to enhance the stereotype represented.

There is little text to accompany the pictures, which suggets implicity that women are only to be looked at and thier success in life will be decided by thier appearence. This ideology is determined as the feature focuses entirely on the naked model.

Analysis of clip

Their is a lot key lighting, and back lighting withing a very dark scene to emphasise the power that storm has in the scene and what she is creating for the city of L.A, the mixture of a pretty much dark mise en scene and key lighting hammers home the impact she has on the city as the resulting image looks very bad for the city. The lack of non-diegetic sound shows the directors intentions are to try and make storm seem as devastating as possible with the carnage on show made all the worse by the sound that she has created. The overall gloomy grey blue dual colour con notates the intimidating and scary feeling amongst the residents, after all they would not be running around scared their going to die if it was a hot and sunny day. The facial expressions and actions of them running and swerving their cars indicate their feelings towards the storm and potenial lethal effects it could have on them.

This part has a lot of light and dark contrasts that go with the pace of the shots, these features are mostly throughout when their are flying objects . Theses contrasts of light and darkness could portray the binary oppostion of humans being good and mutants being evil or the other way around Storm who is the central character in this scene is given a powerful representation with the city massacre she creates but also gives off an impression she is an angry irrational character who lets her emotions get the better of her but it is not displayed what her actions where motivated by in this particular scene. The producers of this text are marvel who have been producing films for years Marvel characters have been adapted into films including the Spider man, blade and X-men trilogy the Fantastic four film series, Dare Devil.

In this particular scene it diplays a hybrid genre of action and sci fi with the effects that are used to portray storms power gives it a sci fi feeling but the speed and intensity of it gives off the action vibe. Based on the differing codes and conventions that are portrayed in it it suggets which codes our for which genre like flying, sepcial effects, updateded almost furturistic technoligy and powers that storm characters poses

Females and storm specifcily are being represented as being strong , powerful and empathtic with her actions, no longer is the appearence amongst actresses so blatantly exposed as her personailty sines through her actions. Also it shows usual everyday people as weak and vunerbale compared to thier mutant opposites.

The audience for this trailer is realaticly young people speficily middle aged teens going onto people in thier 20s who are lovers of this type of genre. The majority are ones that have grew up watching x-men in comic books so have fond memories of it while they where growing up and have an interest in watching the film version to view the similarites and differences of the two and to see whether the films hype lives up to the comic books.

The patriarcal idea is completely tossed away in this scene has both men and woman seem powerless to stop the onsluaght while the one who is causing all the mayhem is indeed a female Its a linear narrative with only one event happening no hint of a dual or any flaskbacks or intergrating event while the storm is happening. A lot of binary oppotions are raised in the scene like good- evil, light and darkness of lighting and the mayhem and calmity during and at the end.