"Has the mediation of gender changed, does this reflect change in society?"

The representation of gender within the media has historically been shown through the use of stereotypes such as the male gender being portrayed as strong and powerful compared to the female gender being represented as emotional and as an object of sex. This can be seen in the Van Heusen advert which advertises their line of ties. The man is laying in bed while the woman worships him, this can be assumed as the woman is bringing him breakfast and is physically placed lower than the man practically on her knees bending to his will. The male character is dressed smartly with eye contact above the woman, which not only shows that the male figure is above the female gender but also promotes a powerful representation for the man. The slogan used in this advertisement "show her its a mans world" also confines to the stereotypical gender representation of the man being more powerful and important than the female. This shows the use of  Patriarchy, which ultimately means a society run by men for men because the men are being perceived as the stronger sex.




















There are currently controversial advertisement texts showing gender roles in both similar to the example above where gender roles have not changed and in examples that show that genders role representation has started to change and is the mist of that transfer. The first example of this is the man holding the woman over his lap in a position that would lead the audience to think that she is being submissive to the dominant male character showing that the representation of the different sexes has not changed and the male is in charge of the woman. This links to Mulvey's 'Male Gaze' theory where the use of an attractive female and dominant male model draws the male audience in making them believe that behaving and becoming the same as the male character i.e. strong, dominant, physically attractive, well dressed etc. will lead to them having a beautiful woman submissing to their will. However, other modern media texts suggest that there has been change to the representation of gender through time such as the second example. This example shows a woman walking men on leads like dogs, the men also being naked. This advert shows the female as holding all of the power and being the dominant sex. The men are quite literally dehumanised due to the fact that they naked and made to act as animals, this is done to further the dominance of the woman and create the image that the males are weaker and the sexual object.


Overall, I believe that the representation of gender, especially in the media, has changed slightly meaning that the collective identity has also evolved. Mediation, which is the term that defines media as being made up and distorted to suit the viewers and that everything we see on TV is Mediated to alter real life and therefore the producers show us what they want too. This links in with how the representation of gender has only slightly changed as different media platforms have different views on how gender should be consumed, leading to mixed messages being transferred.