The Construction of Female Gender Images in Chinese Marriage TV Show

Abstract

Since the 1990s, Hunan TV’s “The Rose Date” and Shanghai TV’s “Meet on Saturday” have led the way to develop marriage programmes in China, bringing a new form to the traditional Chinese model of love and marriage. With the rapid evaluation of the economy and expansion of the commercial media, marriage shows are no longer about “marriage”, but have become a consumer culture, where the actresses and viewers consume and also are consumed. The mass media reshapes a new stereotypical image of women. Television, as a kind of mass media, accelerates the spread of this consumer culture and deepens the stereotypical image of women, based on its wide audience and fast dissemination. The prevailing consumer culture continues to shape our consumption habits, making it difficult to break this status quo in a short time. Based on Baudrillard’s theory of “consumer society”, this article explores the media image of women in contemporary Chinese marriage programmes in consumerism. From the perspective of the five basic elements of the communication process, it combs the relationship between the programme producers (media operators under the market mechanism) and the actresses (women taking part in the programme), the relationship between the media and the audience, and the impact of marriage programmes on the stereotyped image of women.