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Media as a factor influencing public perception
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For the last few decades it is argued to what extent popular fiction reflects such things as social changes in our society and topical debates. In this paper I will discuss to what extent popular fiction reflects debates about gender and sexuality. Moreover, I will look at the difference between postfeminism and third-wave feminism, afterwards I will more closely look at Candace Bushnell's book Sex and the City (1996) and relate the book's ideas about woman and woman's sexuality to postfeminism and third-wave feminism ideas. I will also look at cyber-feminism in relation to another chick lit - Helen Fielding's book Bridget Jones's Diary (1996).
In my opinion, popular fiction reflects almost everything what happens in the contemporary society or in the minds of people who are living in this society. Those could be debates about living on Mars, about specific crime or woman's role in society and her responsibilities. As it is not the high-quality literature, it can be written while the topic is still actual and that makes this literature genre so significant. To my mind, popular fiction also reflects debates about gender and sexuality to a great extent. Nevertheless, it can be seen more clearly in some specific Popular fiction genres than in others. McCracken (1998: p.6) argues: “Popular fiction, we might say, mediates social conflict. In other words, it acts as a medium between reader and world through which the social contradictions of modernity can be played out.” Chick lit as a genre emerged in the mid-1990s when Helen Fielding's book Bridget Jones's Diary (1996) and Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City (1996) which turned out to being a great success. In mid-1990s a great number of women all over the world were paying attention...
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...dget Jones's diary. New York: Picador.
3. Flanagan, M., and Booth, A. (eds.) (2002) Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture. Cambridge: MIT Press
4. Genz, S. and Brabon, B. (2009) Postfeminism cultural texts and theories. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
5. Kember, S. (2000) Cyber-feminism. In: Code, Lorraine (ed.) Encyclopedia of feminist theories. London and New York: Routledge, pp.124
6. Krolokke, C. and Sorensen, A. (2006) Gender communication theories & analyses from silence to performance. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
7. McCracken, S. (1998) PULP:Reading popular fiction. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.
8. Starr, C. (2000) Third-wave feminism. In: Code, Lorraine (ed.) Encyclopedia of feminist theories. London and New York: Routledge, pp.474
9. Whelehan, I. (2002) Bridget Jones’s Diary: A Reader’s Guide. New York: Continuum.
Rampton, M. (2008). The Three Waves of Feminism . Retrieved from The Magazine of Pacific University.
In this dissertation, ideological systems considered to limit the creation of Western female identity were explored through feminist discourse: Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve (1977) and Kathy Acker’s Don Quixote (1986). The former discussed the extent to which gendered identities are founded on biological difference and binary structures, looking at how these dichotomies work to confine female identity to a concept of fixed ideals. With reference to the work of Butler, Carter undermines essentialist views which limit identity, demonstrating through multifaceted and changeable characters that identity is constructed as opposed to determined. By engaging in multiple discourses, Carter’s characters reject conforming to regulatory norms, and are consequently revealed to be living out simulacrums, as Butler suggests all people do. The motif of the mirror was explored with reference to the work of Lacan and Mulvey, looking at how the novel presents female identity as contingent upon male desires due to society’s preoccupation with the phallus. Female identity is therefore constructed to appease masculine appetites, with the mirror revealing the discord between unified appearance and incoherent inner identity. The lack of female representation was discussed with reference to speech and narrative structure, with patriarchal systems of communication shown to exclude women from representation. Carter uses the dual perspective of Eve(lyn)’s narration to destabilize gender identity, revealing it as cleft and uncertain. Lee suggests that the incongruity of the narration also works to mount a critique of the role of the gaze, with the fact that Eve(lyn) narrates in retrospect hindering the reader’s ability to know whether the narrator ...
McCann, C., & Kim, S. (2013). Feminist theory reader, (3d ed.). Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.
Cyberpunk has been present on the literary scene for almost twenty years now, being the most trendy and mainstream sub-genre of science-fiction and, although announced dead by some critics, has not been replaced by any other science-fiction movement so far. But how should we define what cyberpunk is and distinguish it from what is merely cyberpunkish? Appignanesi points out that the major feature of the cyberpunk world is a "total intrusion of technology into human lives" (129) and this may be used as a sufficient...
Unlike things happened in the past time, in a world where there is information overwhelmed, we are supposed to live in a more equal situation between men and women. However, in fact, gender inequity has just developed a new form to exist online. Women still continue to suffer from oppression towards themselves. It’s like the shadow of violence along the way with women. What is more, since the Internet shapes the world more united, it is not a case of a particular culture or society, but the whole world that we can see holding against women. One of the most common form is judging women’s bodies on social media through the comments of fling abuses or sarcastic remarks.
Today, love, sex and romance are three main topics that presented in media as main themes discuss in contemporary popular culture. Social media is important in shaping audience value about feminism through the framework of contemporary media like films, magazines, plays, advertisements, TV shows, graphic novels, etc. The television show “Sex and the City” incorporates “pop feminism” that influences many lives of women. Sex and the City is originally talking about four single thirty-something women living in Manhattan. They are coming to New York in order to seek “love and labels” (Sex and the City). The main theme of Sex and the City is concentrating on contemporary American woman’s conception of sex, love, and romance. As we learned from lecture, sex, love, and romance have a history; they are different in different cultures; they are shaped by gender, class, race, ethnicity, nation, ability, and other differences (Lecture Notes). Sex and the City is focusing on modern American woman’s experiences and their thinks with sex, love, and romance. The four main women characters in Sex and the City represent diversity of gender, class, race, ethnicity, religion, age, able-bodiedness through their different experience and expectations of their life (Lecture Notes). Sex and the City represents that the feminism notions of sex, love, and romance are socially constructed, and this social construction of sex, love and romance are featured in these female characters’ personalities.
Devor, Aaron. “Gender Role Behaviors and Attitudes.” Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. 6th Edition. Sonia Maasik and
When it comes to post-colonial literature, most initially think about the colonization of other countries and how it has affected the natives. Though it is the most well known form of post-colonial literature, it is not the most wide-spread. By slightly altering the framing in which one looks at it, the idea that feminist literature by women from a patriarchal society is post-colonial literature begins to make sense.
The origins of Third Wave feminism are highly debated, as there is no clear commonality that this wave uses to differentiate between the First and Second waves that occurred prior. Emerging during the 1990’s, Third Wave feminism sought to build upon the achievements and ideas that were accomplished during First and Second wave’s, by increasing the significance and accessibility of its ideas to a greater spectrum of people.
Donna Haraway’s essay, ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ is an analysis of women and advanced technology in a postmodern world. Haraway uses various illustrations to focus on women’s relation to the technologically scientific world, she uses the metaphor of a cyborg to challenge feminists and engage in a politics beyond naturalism and essentialisms. She also uses the idea of the cyborg to offer a political strategy for the dissimilar interests of socialism and feminism. In her manifesto, Haraway describes a cyborg as a hybrid of machine and organism or a cybernetic organism, created by the advances in technology.
Lieberman, Simma. “Differences in Male and Female Communication Styles” Simma Lieberman Associates (undated). Retrieved February 25, 2010<
The article, “The Death of The CyberFlaneur” written by journalist Evgeny Morozov, discusses the social implications of technology. Morozov’s purpose is to inform the reader bout what a cyberflaneur was and how in 1998 some people believed cyberflaneur would progress and become known to many others. What is cyberflanuer, well cyberflaneur is a person who surfs the internet no intentions to finding something. Morozov demonstrates through ethos how cyberflaneur has declined. He utilizes a tone of credibility throughout his essay by quoting and naming important web sites and people.
Throughout the 21st century we have been immersed in a world in which is almost wholly dominated by the media. It is appropriate to say that many ideologies have been indeed challenged by the media, including the ideology of feminism, which I aim to focus on in this essay. Firstly, it is necessary to think about what the founding concepts of feminism actually are and how the ideologies of post feminism and antifeminism are using the contemporary media to question feminism. Texts such as Bridget Jones’ Diary and Desperate Housewives are fitting examples of how post feminism has penetrated through the media challenging feminism. Similarly elements of anti-feminism are evident when looking at films such as the new adaptation of Cinderella .
Fraser, Nancy, Nicholson, Linda J. `Social Criticism without Philosophy: An Encounter between Feminism and Postmodernism', Communications, Vol. 10, Nos. 3 and 4, 1998
Men and women have different life experiences, the writing of male and female authors will differ, as well. Some people believe that male authors are not able to write accurately from the female perspective or present feminist ideals because they have not experienced life as women. When writing about women it is possible that authors will describe them differently depending on gender and culture. But, there are cases were male authors can illustrate women representing the stereotypical female. To explore these issues, I have studied the representation of women in four novels: two novels from male writers, Henry James and Ernest Hemingway, and two novels by female writers, Kate Chopin and Sandra Cisneros.