No Cover Image

Book chapter 1549 views

Feminist Media Studies

Yan Wu Orcid Logo

Feminist Studies in the West, Pages: 139 - 163

Swansea University Author: Yan Wu Orcid Logo

Abstract

The development of feminist media studies has been under the influence of various schools of thought such as Liberalism, Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, etc.. This chapter aims to provide a brief historical review of Western feminist media theories from the ‘images of wom...

Full description

Published in: Feminist Studies in the West
ISBN: 978-7-300-13616-5
Published: People’s University Press Beijing 2011
URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa12361
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Abstract: The development of feminist media studies has been under the influence of various schools of thought such as Liberalism, Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, etc.. This chapter aims to provide a brief historical review of Western feminist media theories from the ‘images of women in the media’ approach originated from the second wave feminist movement to the contemporary discussion of gender performance, multiculturalism and diversification. Literature concerning media representation of women from the second wave deals with issues of gender stereotyping in a wide array of media forms. Early studies focus on the key role media plays in the establishment and continuity of sexist patterns in society. Women are in many ways misrepresented, marginalised, or even symbolically annihilated in popular media. Equally important during this period is the development of feminist audience studies which acknowledges the active, interpretive, and even resistant media consumption from female audience.Since the 1990s, postfeminism and third-wave feminism have introduced new perspectives such as the mobility of gender identity and personal empowerment into the feminist media studies landscape. Gender identities are regarded as non-biological and less fixed. Gender, as a performance, therefore is an outcome of culture and society. The contemporary feminist media studies is featured with gender trouble, sex positivity, transnationalism and diversification. This chapter concludes by underlining the socio-cultural relevance of Western feminist media studies to reader in contemporary China.
Item Description: In Chinese language
College: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Start Page: 139
End Page: 163