The document discusses characteristics of gender representation in television. It focuses on soap operas and their portrayal of femininity through traits like disruption of status quo, deferred desire, emphasis on dialogue and facial expressions. Soap operas depict empowered women using their sexuality and pregnancy to achieve goals. They also show caring, nurturing men in contrast to aggressive male heroes in other genres. The document also briefly mentions representations of women in news and advertisements, and in reality shows.

1. Communication
Gender and
Society
Denisha
Harshani

2. GENDERED TELEVISION
Femininity

3. Soap Opera Form
Disruption
Deferment and Process
Sexuality and
Empowerment
Women in News
Women in
Advertisements

5. Brown (1987) list eight generic characteristic of
soap opera
1) Serial form which resists narrative closure.
2)Multiple characters and plots.
3)Use of time which parallels actual time and
implies that the action continues to take place
whether we watch it or not.
4)Abrupt segmentation between parts.
5)Emphasis on dialogue, problem solving, and
intimate conversation.
6)Male characters who are “ sensitive men”
7)Female characters who are often professional
and otherwise powerful in the world outside

8. • This infinitely extended middle means the
soap operas are never in a state of
equilibrium.
• The equilibrium of a happy, stable family is
constantly there in the background, but is
never achieved.
• The dominant ideology is inscribed in the
status quo, and soap operas offer their
subordinated women viewers the pleasure
of seeing this status quo in a constant
state of disruption.

10.  Deferment is equally important
characteristic in soap opera.
As Modleski , a soap opera “ by placing
ever more complex obstacles between
desire and fulfillment, makes
anticipation of an end an end itself”

11. • As Brunsdon argues, the pleasure in soap
opera lies in seeing how the events occur
rather than in the event themselves.
• The soap opera press often summarizes
future plotlines. By it readers knows the
events before they occur.

12. Deferment and process are enacted in talk
and facial expression.
The sound track of soap operas is full of
words, and the screen is full of close ups
of faces.

13. Porter suggests that “The face in close up
is what before the age of film only ever or
mother saw”
 According to Modleski “an important mode
of representation in feminine culture for a
number of reasons.
They provide training in the feminine skills
of ”reading people "and are the means of
exercising the feminine ability to understand
the gap between what is meant and what is
said.

14. Close ups also encourage women’s desire
to be implicated with lives of characters on
the screen.

15. Brown says “Soaps allow us to linger, like
the pleasure of a long conversation with an
old friend”

17. • Davies in 1984
argues that “soap
opera sexuality is
concerned with
seduction and
emotion rather
than, as masculine sexuality is, with
achievement and climax”
According to him soap operas shows
women’s body and sexuality use as
weapon against men.

18. The “good” male in the daytime soaps is
caring, nurturing, and verbal.
Women and men in the soap operas are
probably more equal than in any other
form of art or drama or in any are of real
life.

19. The “macho” characteristics of goal
centeredness , assertiveness, and the
morality of the strongest by it identify the
hero in masculine television and it tend to
be characteristics of villain.
The villains are typically very good looking
and are often featured in the press as
desirable “hunks” they are loved and hated,
admired and despised.

20. Similarly, the good, feminized men,
particularly the youngest ones, typically
have the strong good looks associated with
conventional heterosexual.

21. according to Brown “soap operas are
positive and empowering in the way they
handle sexuality and sexual pleasure.
Power of the female body to create is
given crucial importance.

22. Pregnant women as powerless over natural
events, women in soap operas use
pregnancy as power over the father of the
unborn child.
women characters use their bodies to
achieve their own ends.

23. The villain turns
traditional feminine
characteristics into a
strength.
Women use pregnancy as a weapon and
she uses her insight into people to
manipulate them. And she uses her
sexuality for her own ends.

24. Women in
News

26. Women in
Advertisements

30. Women in
Reality Show