| |
| |
> Home
|
Women in TV, old and new stereotypes |
di Maurizio Bianco
Bimbos, bad careers, or being famous for being nude- female stereotypes within the media are hard to die. Recently however, the situation has improved, even if the risk is that of replacing the old stereotypes with new ones.
The dainty little miss of one time is now a singleton who eats men, the ugly –but-nice woman risks becoming an irresistable sex symbol and the housewife, who in the past, found it difficult to have a protagonist role, now has that role but is (at least a little) desperate.
This is borne out, only to cite a few more recent examples, in Mogli A Pezzi (Wives In Pieces), with Manuela Arcuri and Giuliana De Sio on Channel 5, which denies being similar to the style of Desperate Hosewifes and Sex and the city, and still ends up resembling these models; while on Damages, a legal drama on air on the satelite channel AXN, Glenn Close embodies (superbly) a women of determined success, inevitably icy and clinical.
But fiction is not the television genre which risks sterotypes most. In entertainment programmes the exhibition of the female body , even in afternoon programmes, passes through all ranges of the spectrum ranging from the glamourus, to soft-core, straight through to the trashy.
Fortunately, the same genre is always more populated with cultured ironic, and contemporary figures. There are those who have the force of Luciana Litizzetto, the intelligence of Daria Bignardi, the originality of Camilla Raznovich, the versatility of Paola Cortellesi or the mix of severe/nice stubbornness of Mara Maionchi, the talent scout of X Factor, class 1942, lover of young people and true revelation of the last season of the show.
So it’s not just scantily clad showgirls, even if that phase of the media is not finished-but at least, changing: Miss Cinema 1997, the ex-showgirl Mara Carfagna has become the Minster of Equal Opportunities. This is a significant fact, other than being curious and promoting interesting reflections on the growing debate between the “right of privacy” for the less respectable images of her artistic career continuously being re-used by all aspects of the media from newspapers to TV. A case which associates her with other women, like Claudia Koll and Edwidge Fenech, who have found success in different clothes, but to whom the morbidity of the media can not forget their prior lives.
Not even information programmes are immune from stereotypes, in-fact normally, a man will be consulted regarding an increase in prices, economic aspects and inflation facts, while a woman will be interviewed within her role as a housewife, while shopping in the aforementioned market. If the news is the boom of the flu virus, the person chosen to discuss the virus is almost always a male paediatrician, whereas the person who administers the syrup to the coughing child is always the mother. The man, in short, is a protagonist in the public sphere, the woman mainly in that of the private and family sphere.
In compensation, the male public, according to a study of the Osservatorio World Wide Trend published by “Diva e Donna”, said they preferred female journalists on TV, because they communicate in a more simple, efficient, accessible and above all less quarrelsome way in comparison to men. The favourites include Bianca Berlinger, Milena Gabanelli, Tiziana Ferrario Ilda Bartoloni, Cesera Buonamici, Maria Latella.
Female stereotypes are beginning to be addressed even in the steady world of cartoon characters. In the new game Wizard of Mickey, a fantasy saga in which Disney characters move between magic competitions and enchanted scenarios, Daisy duck, Minnie mouse and Clarabelle Cow abandon their stereotypes of eternal engagement to transform themselves into fierce magicians ready to beat every obstacle. Perhaps, they have already overcome the first.
|
|
|
Iscriviti alla Newsletter di TEA per essere sempre informato sulle nuove tendenze.
