An Investigation Into the Construction of Gender in Crime Series Television Essay Example
An investigation into the construction of gender in crime series television.
This paper is going to deconstruct how gender is portrayed in crime programmes on popular television. Focusing on how female characters are represented compared to male characters also looking at examples and comparing these against the challenges of the normal conventions within the crime series genre. This paper is going to analyse shows where the female characters take the lead roles in crime television as well as the male characters. Programmes such as Prime Suspect (Granada, 1991) will be compared to shows such as 24 (FOX, 2001) and Dexter (CBS, 2006), which focus on male protagonists and are programmes that follow very masculine conventions.
Crime television shows several views on society. It can be used as a reflection of reality, representing the world as external to the text meaning that it is a depiction of someone’s view on society not that it is how society truly functions. But this causes problems when created. We ask, whose view of society is the crime series based on? This question causes different opinions. It could be the audience vision of what the current state of society is or, it could be the responsibility of the writers and producers of the programme to decide how society is represented therefore they need to be careful on how it is represented so that people do not take offence or disagree with the programmes images of the world that the show is set in. Another view that can be shown from crime series drama is whether its representation of reality is external but it in fact communicates to the audience through representation, realism of a world that is constructed of characters, settings and storylines that we as the audience may recognise. Representations and views within a TV programme are never innocent they always represent someone’s point of view. Mainly the producers of the show get to choose how the world of the programme is depicted.
Crime series
This paper is going to deconstruct how gender is portrayed in crime programmes on popular television. Focusing on how female characters are represented compared to male characters also looking at examples and comparing these against the challenges of the normal conventions within the crime series genre. This paper is going to analyse shows where the female characters take the lead roles in crime television as well as the male characters. Programmes such as Prime Suspect (Granada, 1991) will be compared to shows such as 24 (FOX, 2001) and Dexter (CBS, 2006), which focus on male protagonists and are programmes that follow very masculine conventions.
Crime television shows several views on society. It can be used as a reflection of reality, representing the world as external to the text meaning that it is a depiction of someone’s view on society not that it is how society truly functions. But this causes problems when created. We ask, whose view of society is the crime series based on? This question causes different opinions. It could be the audience vision of what the current state of society is or, it could be the responsibility of the writers and producers of the programme to decide how society is represented therefore they need to be careful on how it is represented so that people do not take offence or disagree with the programmes images of the world that the show is set in. Another view that can be shown from crime series drama is whether its representation of reality is external but it in fact communicates to the audience through representation, realism of a world that is constructed of characters, settings and storylines that we as the audience may recognise. Representations and views within a TV programme are never innocent they always represent someone’s point of view. Mainly the producers of the show get to choose how the world of the programme is depicted.
Crime series