representation of women

Utilising one of the approaches to representation from the lecture programme, analyse a media product. How useful is this critical method? In this essay I am going to investigate the feminist approach to the representation of women in the soap opera. Television soap operas are long-running serials traditionally based on the close study of personal relationships within the everyday life of its characters. Soaps are a consistent set of values based on personal relationships and …

…in the genre and indeed society . But Fiske argues that soaps do hold some ‘benefit’ for the oppressed woman, “While it may not challenge that patriarchal domination in any direct or radical way, at the very least it consistently whittles away at patriarchy’s power to subject women and at best it provides both a masculine-free zone from which a direct challenge may be mounted and the self-esteem that such a challenge would require.”(p197)