task 4

 How is media theory used in 2 media products and how these make the text appealing to an intended audience?

The Laura Mulvey Male Gaze Theory.

In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting the world and women in the visual arts and literature from a masculine and heterosexual point of view, presenting women as objects of male pleasure.

This Vogue front cover follows Laura Mulveys male gaze theory as the model is only wearing a bikini and posing in a way that would be found attractive to men. Male attention is therefore drawn to the model and therefore the magazine. 

  

Feminist Theory – Van Zoonen

In patriarchal culture, the way women’s bodies are represented as objects is different to the representation of male bodies as spectacle.

Gender is performative – our ideas of femininity and masculinity are constructed in our performances of these roles. Gender is ‘what we do’ rather than ‘what we are’. Moreover, gender is contextual – its meaning changes with cultural and historical contexts.

Van Zoonen disagrees with arguments that the internet, being based on collaboration, is a technology that is true and close to women and femininity. These views are too simple and based on the idea of an essential femininity, whereas there is a rich diversity of ways that gender is articulated on the internet.