To what extent can it be said that British soaps address and dramatise the class and gender realities of the lives of their audience?
Throughout the history of public service and commercial television the mainstay of its success and a massive ratings winner, none more so than in the latter 25-30 years of its existence, has been the immense popularity of soap operas. Soap operas have become a fundamental and now traditional part of British life. Every channel has at least one or more soaps which are pivotal to there existence. BBC 1 for example continually justify their license fee charge through the popularity of prime time soap opera Eastenders, concerning the working class people of London\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s east end. ITV 1 and Channel 4 gain massive amounts of revenue through their primetime soaps of Coronation Street and Hollyoaks respectively. Coronation Street is also sponsored by Cadburys, and so along with Hollyoaks and other Commercial channels, must gain a continual and loyal audience in order to justify advertisers’ placement of their commercials around the program and the vast sums of money that is spent on that particular time slot. It has been continually argued that the soap opera in general is a \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"woman\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s genre\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\" and that and its appeal is only really understood and appreciated by the female gender. I have chosen to outline the certain dramatic devices soap operas employ to keep its target audience content.
The Family A central argument that stems from the initial question of whether or not soap operas can be defined or judged to be fundamentally a woman\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s genre of television is the associations of the family and the intrinsically links of parenting and maternal ties. In all of the contemporary soap operas of today the focus is consistently about families and their troubled lives behind closed doors. Eastenders for example uses the family as a pivotal vehicle in conveying their somewhat unconventional storylines in an immensely exciting life. Eastenders\\\\\\\\\\\\\\' Albert Square wouldn\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'t be able to achieve some of the storylines that it has without the likes of the Mitchell\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s, the Fowlers and the Slater\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s along with the fact that channel fives flagship soap is named Family Affairs, which effectively tells you about what it is based upon.
Mother Figures
Again this area of argument about whether soap is a woman\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s genre is the link from the family in association with mother figures. Eastenders is a prime example of the role as Barbara Windsor is the powerful mother in her role as Peggy Mitchell and Wendy Richard plays the advice giving mother role, Pauline Fowler.
This essay will discuss how national attitudes towards the working-class and the impoverished are represented in American Television. The purpose of this paper is to comprehend that television shows are not solely designed to entertain consumers but also contain a hidden agenda whose task is to protect certain ideological perspectives and therefore constant framing strategies take place. The paper will commence the analysis by discussing how males and females are represented in the television show Friday Night Lights, secondly it will look at the
The differences in family values are shown in modern sitcoms. "Gilmore Girls" is a sitcom that demonstrates values of gender and children roles that are significantly different to those in 1950s. From Lorelei and Rory, they show that family organization is not always the father working, mother looking after children. Through the plot of each episode, financial, racial, other general problems such as Rory's school and relationship are actually shown and realistically too. Every family is different, different race and classes have different families. Today, we do not watch shows to copy their ways of living and we do often share the same values. Therefore this shows significant changes in family values from the 1950s sitcoms to today's sitcoms.
Looking at theatre reviews and books such as Stephanie Jordan and Dave Allen’s Parallel lines: Media Representations of Dance and Ramsay Burt’s The Male Dancer: Bodies, Spectacle, Sexualities. I will find out more about the history of homosexuality in theatre and how DV8 defied the law to produce shows with gay themes despite it being illegal to promote such themes in the UK during the 80’s and early 90’s.
Phillip Bell talks about the rise of Australian ‘soaps’ in his article, for example Neighbours which began in 1985, he talks about how the show deals with ‘Australian’ issues. (Bell Phillip, ‘Television’), this isn’t necessarily true. In fact many of the storylines in Neighbours are taken from American soaps like Day of our lives or Bold And The Beautiful. Our screens are increasingly filled with disturbing storylines which continually push the boundaries of human depravity.
In conclusion, this show focuses on many aspects, particularly gender roles and sexism. Although this show could have more diverse characters, it focuses on male and female stereotypes very well. I appreciate that there are several strong female characters who aren’t afraid to stand up for themselves and perform typically masculine
The media has a stereotypical way of constructing the role of women. Taking this into account what Desperate Housewives does, is to give a gender role, which is more positive and “not phallocentric” when it is compared to other shows. The show might not be as accurate to how genders are constructed but it does expand on the idea that media has developed it own type of stereotypical women. The TV program shows how women can construct their reality in several different ways, doing gender in different ways. They are not just housewives, girly women and shopaholics; they have more in their identity than their gender.
It is very common for several TV shows or movies to reflect real life society, depending on what genre. Game of Thrones, a TV adaptation of George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series depicts our society very well; despite the fact that it takes place in a fantasy medieval-like land, called Westeros. This show puts an emphasis on both gender and sexuality, with men being dominant in that society while women are often referred to as the inferior. It also includes several double standards for men and women and comprises compulsory heterosexuality. The show also heavily focuses on class and social stratification: the differences between two of the main classes in the
Though Modern Family claims to represent the new family realities of this millennium, it seems to be caught in the fifties because none of its maternal characters have any means of employment. At the head of the family is the patriarch Jay Pritchett and his wife Gloria Pritchett. Gloria is Jay’s much younger sexy Latina second wife. Following Jay and Gloria is Jay’s gay son Mitchell Pritchett and his partner Cameron Tucker. For the show, Mitchell and Cameron represent the new and modern interpretation of the traditional American family. However, to make them fit into the traditional family oriented sitcom that is Modern Fam...
The everyday practice to be discussed in this paper is a common media pattern, particularly the perpetual characterization of specific gender roles in the media through the use of television commercials.
Relationship Between Soap Operas and Reality TV Dating Shows Tania Modleski’s “The Search for Tomorrow in Today’s Soap Operas” proposes that the unique appeal and function of soap opera lies in (a) the viewer’s ability to inhabit the text’s prescribed spectatorial position of ‘the good mother’, and (b) using the archetypal ‘villainess’ to displace one’s own repressed anger and powerlessness. It can be argued, using Modleski’s analytical perspectives on the interpellated spectatorial positions of soap operas, that a new genre of television programs (namely the reality dating shows) function in a similar way. An examination of Modleski’s thesis renders these statements more likely. Modleski argues that soap operas are essential in understanding women’s role in culture.
Goldman, Emma. The Social Significance of the Modern Drama. Berkeley. Edu, n.d. Web. 09 May 2012.
Do you know the guiltiest pleasure of the American public? Two simple words reveal all—reality TV. This new segment of the TV industry began with pioneering shows like MTV’s The Real World and CBS’s Survivor. Switch on primetime television nowadays, and you will become bombarded by and addicted to numerous shows all based on “real” life. There are the heartwarming tales of childbirth on TLC, melodramas of second-rate celebrities on Celebrity Mole, and a look into a completely dysfunctional family on The Osbornes. Yet, out of all these entertaining reality shows arises the newest low for popular culture, a program based on the idea of a rich man or woman in search of the perfect marriage partner. The Bachelor, and its spin-off The Bachelorette, exemplify capitalist ideology founded on the Marxist base-superstructure model and establish the role of an active American audience.
Logan Hill’s article “13 Rules for Creating a Prestige Television Drama”, on top of being funny, demonstrates that once considered ‘revolutionary’, prestige television dramas have now become formulaic. Within the context of the class on difficult men, the first rule described by the article is particularly relevant: “start with an anti-hero”. To do so, you should “make him middle-aged”, “give him a health problem and a traumatic memory”, “make him great at his job”, “make his business a microcosm of the American Dream”, “give him a secret”, and “make him a woman”. The television shows studied this semester do follow these rules and so does the show that I suggest to add to the watching list, Masters of Sex, yet another period drama featuring a difficult man as a main character, William “Bill” Masters.
The question of medias influence on society and its cultural framework has often been debated upon from leading theorists to anyone with any form of media connections, but to contemplate that a character in Coronation Street or Eastenders can have an influence on an audience members attitude, beliefs or interpretations of society is a very simplistic and debatable version of the truth. The media does influence, but using more diverse and subtle roles of impact. Some theorists suggest that it is even a case of society influencing the media and not the more widespread and presumed version...
According to D Gauntlett (2008), Media and communications are a central element of modern life, whilst gender and sexuality remain at the core of how we think about our identities. In modern societies, people spend more hours for watching television, look...