Discourse & Identity I & II (Discussion)

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Television emphasizes four components of feminism:

  1. "Image of women" feminist criticism
  2. gendered viewing (ethnography)
  3. gender identity
  4. third-wave feminism

Group 1: Explain the basic principles of the "image-of-women" approach to analyzing TV. If you were an analyst using that approach, what would you have to say about the episodes of Designing Women and The Real World and the Justify My Love music video?

Group 2: Explain the basic principles of the "gendered viewing" approach to analyzing TV. If your group were using that approach, what would you have to say about the episodes of Designing Women and The Real World and the Justify My Love music video? How would you analyze the actual viewing of these television texts last week? Use your group itself as a test case.

Group 3: Explain the basic principles of the "gender identity" approach to analyzing TV, specifically Judith Butler's idea of gender identity as "performative." If you were an analyst using that approach, what examples of this would you draw from the episodes of Designing Women and The Real World and the Justify My Love music video? That is, cite an example of women performing gender roles in each of these three television texts.

Group 4: How was the Thomas-Hill controversy a key to the rise of "third wave feminism"? Explain its basic principles and how it differs from the second-wave feminism. How might third-wave feminism apply to TV analysis? If you were an analyst using that approach, what would you have to say about the episodes of Designing Women and The Real World and the Justify My Love music video?

All groups

  1. Ann Kaplan writes, the video for “Justify My Love” “forces the spectator to question the boundaries of gender constructs and the cultural constraints on sexual themes and sexual fantasies" (Television, 13.35). Explain. Do you agree or disagree?

http://www.tcf.ua.edu/tvcritgallery/main.php/d/180-2/Fig13-14_justifymylove_000013.jpg

Casts

Real World

  • Julie
  • Heather
  • Becky
  • Andre
  • Norman
  • Kevin
  • Eric

Designing Women

  • Anthony Bouvier (Meshach Taylor)
  • Mary Jo Shively (Annie Potts)
  • Allison Sugarbaker (Julia Duffy)
  • Carlene Frazier Dobber (Jan Hooks)
  • Julia Sugarbaker (Dixie Carter)

Bibliography

  1. Jeremy G. Butler, Television: Critical Methods and Applications (NY: Routledge, 2011).

External links