Representation of Gender In Television

In media we looked at the representation of gender within TV dramas. In the lesson I learnt that gender is how your presented for example males are seen as more powerful in the eye of most media which in some/most cases is true but in reality its just a stereotype given to that sex. We learned that a stereotype is a generalized idea about a group of people.

The reason why its important to know this is because although in reality it can be equal, within media it usually isn't and because of this it is expected that in a film or TV show the man has to save the women. I found this interesting because it provides me with a chance to maybe alter that in our film opening. Obviously we don't have a hole plot to play with but you can show a lot about a subject in two minutes using the various techniques like camera angles.  More feminine males also are seen as less powerful, for example in the clip we watched from desperate housewives the man was crouched down by some flowers looking up at the male with the suit. This shows that men are more powerful when they are masculine than feminine.

Our task for the lesson was to analyse a clip of our choice looking at gender equality. I got into a pair with Mariella and we set to work choosing our clip. We thought that we should try and find one with a scene that challenges these stereotypes and whether overall it successfully did it or failed. We analysed Mes en scene, Camera angles, Sound and Editing to reach our decision and presented it to the class. Our clip was sherlock and we found that the women had more power than usual however showed all the typical traits for example she had more close ups because she got emotional and her love for sherlock caused her to fail.

Overall after looking at this it would cool to have a female lead however it could disappoint an audience who want a male lead.