Gender Roles in visual media

Gender Roles in visual media

Visual media, such as television, movies, advertisements, and magazines provide entertainment for billions of people every day. If these images are seen enough, they can hold some sort of influence in the human mind, especially in that of a developing child.   Because the television is so commonly accessible and because our society is increasingly becoming more media-saturated, the question arises whether the presentation of men and women in visual media formats, will ultimately affect the way we view gender roles, and change the way we interact with each other socially?
“What’s Happening on Music Television, a Gender Role Analysis” by Rita Sommers Flanagan analyzes the manner in which men and women were portrayed in music videos, using a symbolic interactionist perspective.   The test group watched 40 videos featured on MTV, and rated them in 30-second intervals.   Their findings showed that “men appeared on screen twice as much as women, men engaged in significantly more aggressive behavior, women behaved in more implicitly sexual behavior, and were often the object of aggressive sexual advances” (Flanagan).   This provides excellent examples on how men and women are portrayed in a different, and commonly overlooked media format.   This study not only showed that women are commonly objectified in music videos by male artists, but are even objectified in the lyrics and actions of female artists.   The study also shows that this trend is common among all genres of music, races, and sexual orientation (Flanagan).  
In the case of movies, gender roles are imminently present.   “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” by Laura Mulvey, a symbolic interactionist study on the position of female characters in narrative cinema, narrative cinema being defined as fictional films telling a story, not a documentary format.   She states that women are used in films as an “erotic object,” and are used to “signify the male desire” (Mulvey, 837).   This implies that...