In recent years, there has been a gender shift in crime dramas on television. In the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, the viewer saw the lead characters to be heavily male dominated with a woman thrown in for mostly sex appeal. Nowadays, most crime dramas are either gender balanced or even female dominated. As this shift has occurred, many new issues began to spawn. Having female lead characters in these types of dramas allow younger female viewers to see that females are capable of working in a usually heavily male dominated workplace and hold positions of power and leadership. However, women in these roles seem to be giving an unrealistic image of women in this type of work environment. While crime dramas can provide young female viewers with strong female role models, the unrealistic image portrayed by these female leads often undermines the realities of motherhood and being a woman in the workplace.
Many current crime dramas give younger female viewers female role models in professionally powerful positions. Law and Order: SVU commonly casts their district attorneys and judges with women. In addition, the characters often are portrayed as independent and strong women as they battle against tough male opponents. For too long, women have been portrayed in television as either being the “woman behind the man” or as needing to use her sex appeal in order to be powerful. Another crime drama, Criminal Minds, has casted females in roles such as the director of the FBI’s Behavior Analysis Unit, agents who also worked undercover in the CIA, and as international secret agents. All of these characters have, for the most part, been portrayed positively. An adult is aware that in the real world women in powerful positions is not fiction; and, wom...
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...only be professional but to do a good job. The viewer has also seen female characters in this genre battle addictions to substances such as either alcohol or prescription medications. Of course, station executives want storylines that are exciting and interesting. They need to not only catch viewers, they especially need to maintain the viewer throughout the season and, ultimately, for seasons to come. Portraying women realistically may result in some boring television.
The shift in casting more female leads in crimes dramas has overall been a positive thing in the television industry for younger viewers. However, their roles and how they are portrayed must be taken with a grain of salt. They are portrayed unrealistically for an interesting storyline. It gives young viewers a false impression of women and how they manage a career, motherhood, and relationships.
Erin G., 2010, A Woman Doing Life: Notes from a Prison for Women: The Southwest Journal of Criminal Justice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. vi, 202, Vol. 8(2)175.
Led by Laura Mulvey, feminist film critics have discussed the difficulty presented to female spectators by the controlling male gaze and narrative generally found in mainstream film, creating for female spectators a position that forces them into limited choices: "bisexual" identification with active male characters; identification with the passive, often victimized, female characters; or on occasion, identification with a "masculinized" active female character, who is generally punished for her unhealthy behavior. Before discussing recent improvements, it is important to note that a group of Classic Hollywood films regularly offered female spectators positive, female characters who were active in controlling narrative, gazing and desiring: the screwball comedy.
Miss Representation, a documentary film produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom released in 2011, presents a contemporary issue which is the misrepresentation of women’s portrayal in mass media. The media is powerful in shaping audience’s belief in how to be feminine. Women are expected to be beautiful, attractive, and even sexual on the media to attract audience’s attention. Also, the film points out the existence of social system in which men are considered more powerful and dominant than women. Finally, the film tries to increase the awareness of female real value including capability, educational achievement, and leadership. Consuming the media wisely to eliminate gendered stereotypes can help young women build their confidence and be successful.
Making Them Feel Like a Natural Woman: Constructing Gender Performances on The Maury Povich Show
These crime shows reinforced the notions that women are victims and men are perpetrators. In the one episode where a man was the deceased, he was not a victim of a crime but rather an unfortunate accident. Both Law and Order episodes reinforced the stereotype of male aggression and that women are victims of sex crimes. Both episodes did show the strength of female victims of sex crimes but still overly sexualized them as objects due to the types of books they published and because they were impoverished or considered low class. In terms of power-positions, men and women were represented relatively evenly in both shows.
usage. Television shows and movies that have a strong female lead role who are also not
Advertising has become increasingly popular with television shows like Mad Men that have allowed audiences to gain a new insight into the growing art form during the 1960s. It helps that the show has featured strong female characters like Peggy and Joan. These strong females have had to work their way up the ladder in the advertising world during a time of change. However, these women have key character faults that seem almost improbable and lead viewers to believe that women have only been able to climb the advertising ladder through sex and deception. Furthermore, the notion women may only be able to achieve an executive role through less than desirable tactics have been reinforced within the storyline. However, this is not exactly the
Another problem that arises when studying the violence against women on TV and in movies is that of how the incidents occur. In the same study conducted by the Parents Te...
The documentary Miss Representation describes the struggle of female leadership. It is based on the way the women look, the way they carry themselves, and the way they brutalize themselves to fit in with others. This documentation allow different women to tell their ways that the media have slashed them, and allow others to stand up for women. Women portray themselves to fit as the image that has been altered with to get it to look that way. Margaret Cho explains that her show All American Girl was cancelled because she had problems with the network who aired the show because they constantly said was not thin enough. That is a prime example of today's problems with pursuing your dreams as an actor or pursuing your dreams as a model. You have to change your physical features to fit in, and if you do not you won’t get in.
In the criminal justice field, many studies are focused on the effects of media’s portrayal of crime. The definition of media has included TV news, TV dramas (Law and Order,NCIS, etc), and newspapers. Chiricos. Padgett, and Gertz (2011) and Romer, Hall Jamieson, and Aday (2003) included local versus national TV news watching in their study. Both studies found that increase in viewership of news media increased fear of crime. One found that local news had more of an influence on fear of crime than national news (Chiricos, Padgett, & Gertz, 2000).
Pearson, P. (1998). When she was bad: How and why women get away with murder. New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc.
The influence of the media on women is not unknown, but it was especially prevalent in the 1960s. According to David Croteau and William Hoynes, both professors of sociology, “Media images of women and men reflect and reproduce a whole set of stereotypical but changing gender roles” (quoted in Mahrdt 1) and, as society changes and opinions are altered, television shows adapt. However, the television show Mad Men is unique because it does not show life today, but the life of the 1960s. It shows what life was like for the women who lived during a time when the “feminine mystique” controlled society.
Traditionally, there has been little research on or interest in the impact of female crime in modern society. In addition, juvenile crime rates are on the rise, which combine for a void of research or information on female juvenile offenders. In general, crime rates for women offenders have risen since the 1990's. Increasing numbers of young women are also offending at higher rates. In a 1996 U.S. Department of Justice Report, the number of arrests of young women had doubled between 1989 and 1993. Twenty percent of all juvenile arrests were committed by girls, an increase of 87 percent. However, according to The National Study of Delinquency Prevention in Schools, males are far more likely to admit to criminal involvement than are females. For example, 12 percent of males and 4 percent of females reported carrying a hidden weapon other than a pocketknife in the past year (Wilson, p.150). There are several theories for this rise in crime proposed by modern feminists, including that the introduction of women into traditional male roles prompted women to commit increasingly dangerous and violent crimes. However, this paper will rely on Meda Chesney-Lind's theories from The Female Offender.
Holland, J. G. (2008). The Feminization of the Community Corrections Work Force. Corrections Today. 70. 4: 44-47.
However in this essay, I am going to analyse what is the enduring appeal of crime drama for a television audience through a close analysis of crime theory, the narrative as well as the gender of the crime drama genre. I will illustrate my analysis with three detailed examples of Oz (1997-2003), 24 (2001-2010) and The Bill (1983-2010).