Representation Of Female Characters Research Articles

What Does It Mean to Be a Girl? Teachers’ Representations of Gender in Supplementary Reading Materials for South African Schools

Education reform, including methods to create greater gender equality, is an ongoing process in post-Apartheid South Africa. Using an African feminism theoretical framework and a critical content analysis approach, we examined the representation of female characters in a subset of supplementary reading titles created under an international development project. Through constant comparison of prepositions in the books, our findings indicated that the authors of these books (South African teachers) depicted females in complex, multifaceted, and, at times, contradictory roles. These panoramic roles created by the authors appeared to be situated in the very practical and lived experiences of children in South Africa. This study has implications for curriculum development in international settings.

Representasi Tokoh Wanita pada Kisah Fiksi Kriminal: Serial Televisi Sherlock BBC (2010)

<p>Sherlock BBC (2010) is one of the latest adaptations of Sherlock Holmes. By using the modern era as its sett ing, Sherlock off ers something different compared to previous Sherlock Holmes adaptations. This research focuses on the representation of female characters on Sherlock according to an issue that already chosen which is women and crime. The theories and concepts which are used on this research are gender construction in Victorian Era, the concept of femme-fatale and crime fi ction characteristics. I argue that there are some substantial diff erences of female characters’ representation in Sherlock compared to the original story. Despite those diff erences, female characters in Sherlock are still represented in a similar manner as the crime fictions characteristics in which women are always put in an inferior position and<br />the one who need men’s help.</p>

Changes in the Representation of Female Characters in Modern Indonesian Novels: From Sacrifice and Obedience to RevoltForeign

Changes in the Representation of Female Characters in Modern Indonesian Novels: From Sacrifice and Obedience to RevoltForeign

The Deviating Voice from the Visual: Representations of Female Characters and Feminist Criticism in the 1990s’ Anime

The Deviating Voice from the Visual: Representations of Female Characters and Feminist Criticism in the 1990s’ Anime

Seen through his eyes: The representation of female characters in Béla Bartok's stage works

The question of gender representation in Béla Bartok's (1881-1945) stage works is discussed through the prism of cultural studies, with reference to the intellectual, social and political atmosphere in which the composer shaped his ideas. In this sense, it is provocative to question how the stereotyped images of women influenced/merged with Bartok's personal view on women, or is it, maybe, possible that one intimate conception of female characters, reflected the composer's specific relationship toward women? The treatment of the female character will be shown through the analysis of the plot and key scenes in Bartok's stage work.

Ponga una mujer en su vida: ficción de producción propia en TVE (2005-2006)

TV fiction in Spain experimented a great impulse in the first five years of the 21st century, something that was especially obvious in public television at the time when socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, strongly committed to the cause of equality, came to power. Around the same date, some U.S.-produced TV dramas marked a turning point in the representation of female characters, offering new possibilities for women, as was the case of Sex and the City or Desperate Housewives. This paper defends the thesis that the year 2005, particularly significant in Spain due to the number of series produced for the public TV channel, is an example of a meeting point between the two variables that results in a larger presence of women protagonists on the small screen. The focus is placed on two series shot in that period, “Con dos tacones” and “Mujeres”, and it develops a study of TV fiction and gender representation based on the contributions of feminist epistemology. The (re)signification of U.S. dramas will offer uneven results: although one of the series chosen for the corpus is a positive exception in the midst of all the other fictional products with female protagonists, the other one follows the mainstream of local productions, those that instrumentalize female subjectivity more as a tool to ridicule than to empower women.

Gendering National Imagination: Heroines and the Return of the Foundational Family in Shanghai during the War of Resistance to Japan

During the War of Resistance to Japan (1937–45), the cultural scene in Japanese-occupied Shanghai took on a “feminine” quality, as female leads dominated stage performance and film screens. This essay seeks to engage this gendered phenomenon through examples of Ouyang Yuqian’s wartime play Peach Blossom Fan (Taohua shan) and the film Mulan Joins the Army (Mulan congjun). Borrowing affect theory in conjunction with the gendered perception of modernity, the author argues that these representations of female characters, on the one hand, highlight the subjective projection of male intellectuals motivated by intense feelings of shame and anger, which constitutes a feminized national imagination encountering the colonial Other. On the other hand, such representations continue the May Fourth project of enlightening and liberating woman from the conventional family while reintroducing the concept of the nation in the family setting and proposing the foundational family as the basic unit of the new nation.

Locating Anti-Fandom in Extratextual Mash-Ups

Locating Anti-Fandom in Extratextual Mash-Ups

Female Grotesque: Orly Castel-Bloom and the Israeli Woman's Body

Despite the egalitarianism at the heart of its founding socialist ideals, Israel’s society has been shaped by a decidedly masculine discourse. Some women authors respond to this reality by trying to assert a place for women and their bodies through the representation of female characters who are strong and independent. Others, however, choose to disregard the contours of the discussion altogether, moving beyond them to create a radically new bodily discourse. This essay argues that Orly Castel-Bloom’s representation of women’s bodies, in light of the Bakhtinian conception of the grotesque, constitutes the creation of a new critical aesthetics of the body. The innovative corporeal idiom that emerges from Castel-Bloom’s oeuvre does not merely reject an existing ideal of the Jewish Israeli body but actually seems indifferent to it. Instead, it makes use of certain tropes that are relevant beyond the particular Israeli context to illuminate the encounter between the woman’s body and the world, among them abjection, excess, hunger and plasticity. The maternal also plays a role in the construction of this narrative of the body, not only by disrupting familiar Israeli father/son configurations, but also by illustrating the chilling con sequences of the incompatibility of motherhood with the violent public realm. The aesthetics of the grotesque offers interpretive possibilities for acknowledging that the violence of contemporary society—in its demanding ideal of femininity, in its brutal interpersonal relations, and in its wars and other political traumas—is always written on the woman’s body.

Good Girl Art – facing images of women in David Mack's Kabuki

This article suggests that the eroticized representation of female characters in graphic fiction in general, and female superheroes in particular, can be discussed in productive ways if we trace the double meanings of visual and verbal representation in David Mack's graphic novel series Kabuki. Kabuki can be seen to address the ‘Good Girl Art’ tradition into which it inserts itself and to use this tradition to open for a reconfiguration of pre-determination of female roles. By looking at the way in which visual and verbal signs can be negotiated from within, our reading of Mack's work enables us to expand the theoretical tools with which we approach and understand the mysteries of contemporary graphic fiction. By making it possible to read ‘Good Girl Art’ in terms of univocity, Kabuki offers enabling modes of agency in the midst of the gendered inscriptions of graphic fiction.

Beyond the stereotypes: Mary Lavin's Irish women

This paper discusses Mary Lavin's place within the Irish literary tradition by means of an analysis of her representations of female characters. It argues, first, that Lavin's short stories depart from the short story tradition in general and the Irish short story tradition in particular by failing to subscribe to the cultivation of the romantic outsider and focusing instead on family relations and social responsibilities. Second, Mary Lavin's marginal position in a feminist or female literary tradition is explained through her unwillingness to portray women as victims and through the absence of a clear critique of patriarchy in her work. The paper then tries to characterise the relationship between individual and society in Lavin's short fiction in a more positive way, by focusing on the notions of individual fate and personal responsibility, which turn out to be crucial to Mary Lavin's philosophy. This philosophy is first discussed explicitly in a reading of the story ‘Happiness’ and ‘The Widow's Son’ and subsequently shown to lie behind the oppositions and dilemmas in several other stories. Finally, the article demonstrates how Lavin manages to realise her Nietzschean belief in an Amor Fati in some of her most positive female characters through a clever use of imagery and point of view, without thereby succumbing to sentimentality or cliché.

From Page to Stage: A Review on William Shakespeare’s As You Like It

IN CELEBRATION of the University of the Philippines’ Centennial, the duly recognized academic theater organization in Diliman, Dulaang UP, presented in September 2007 English and Filipino versions of As You Like It ( Paano Man Ang Ibig ), a romantic comedy written by the eminent playwright of the Elizabethan stage, William Shakespeare. The Filipino version was the translation of the late National Artist for Theater and Literature Rolando Tinio. The play was presented at the Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero Theater, Palma Hall Building. This theater review touches in part on feministic images used by Estrella in her postmodern day interpretation of Shakespeare’s As You Like It and juxtaposes the debatable issue on the representation of female characters in Elizabethan Theater.

Mujeres y revolucin en tres pelculas espaolas de los noventa

This article analyses three Spanish films made during the 1990's by three male filmmakers: Ay, Carmela (1990) by Carlos Saura, Land and Freedom, (1995) by Ken Loach and Libertarias, (1996) by Vicente Aranda. The three films are set during the Spanish Civil War and are concerned with the rewriting of recent Spanish history. The article focuses on the representation of female characters in these films. The three films echo the rapidly changing roles of women in Republican Spain in 193738 and they attempt to portray female characters as subjects and not objects. Nonetheless, this article argues that not all three films succeed in depicting women as discourse-mastering subjects: while Loach only uses the female characters as an instrument to document Spanish history, Aranda further places gender issues at the heart of his film. However, it is Saura who actually manages to represent a strong and independent female character as a subject with a discourse of her own.

Women in the African Epic

Women characters play various roles in African epics, including heroic roles, but audiences and scholars generally fail to note and appreciate the full extent of these roles, focusing, instead, on male characters and their actions. The experiences and actions of men get more attention than those of women. Notions such as heroism are seen and understood from a male perspective. These biases are built into research tools such as the motif indexes and the hero pattern. This paper outlines these problems, offering a critique of how we hear or read stories, and advocating a new approach, founded on new critical and conceptual premises, such as the idea of female heroism. Though focusing on epics, this paper incorporates comments on women in folktales, based on the premise that folktales are a key part of the groundwork on which epics are based, in terms of both structural elements and the representation of female characters and roles.

A New Ontology for the Female Subject: The Rise of the Flat Character in Stories by Solvej Balle and Kirsten Thorup

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the way the literary convention of the “flat-character” is re-imagined, in Kirsten Thorup’s story “Crazy Marie” and Solvej Balle’s “Alette V.,” as a feminist trope that disrupts modern fiction’s clichéd representations of female characters. The flat-character, a term coined by E.M. Forster, is an undeveloped figure designated to embody “a single idea or quality.” Based on the poetics of Erin Mouré that theorize the preposition as the woman’s sign: “because in the language it has no power, & can’t exist alone,” the essay compares the value of the flat character in the hierarchical organization of the story to the place women have occupied in social and literary discourse. By shifting our focus to the power structures at work in language and the laws of art, the female flat character becomes more complex: she now works as a disruptive liminal figure between female stereotypes and multiple representations of female subjectivity.

Equal Time in Prime Time? Scheduling Favoritism and Gender on the Broadcast Networks

This study examines the relationship between broadcast network scheduling practices and representation of women on screen and behind the scenes in the 7999-2000 prime-time season. Drawing on previous re- search of scheduling practices and organizational theory, the researchers posited and found that programs airing on the weblets (WB, UPN) employ greater percentages of women on screen and behind the scenes than the big three networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) or Fox. In addition, women working behind the scenes on the weblets correlated with higher representation of female characters when compared to the big three networks and Fox. Moreover, weblet programs featuring women on screen and behind the scenes enjoyed more favorable scheduling practices than those on the big three networks and Fox. The authors concluded that the weblets provide a more hospitable environment for women than the more established networks.