Construction And The Tactics Of Deconstruction Of Female Gender Identity In The Mass Media Field

The traditional ideas on gender was built and consolidated on the basis of living beings determinism and duality system. Starting from the stand of society's constructing gender, the gender theory put forward criticism on the traditional ideas. Gender researchers consider that it is still the male field who obviously occupies the mass media field and it is the actualities that the mass media is always closely related to social ideas and facts that support, aggravate and reproduce the separation of social gender and the prejudice to the female in the social estate culture. In China, beginning with the World Women Conference in 1995, the researches about media and gender develop. However, the total amount or the depth of such researches is quite limited, and the results are too weak to form a system. The study on the relationship between female and media still belongs to the frontiers in the journalism and communication field or in the female studies. From the aspect of social gender standpoint, this paper will reveal the roles which the mass media plays in constructing the traditional ideas on gender with the principle of combing theory and text analysis. Moreover, it will try to seek a way to deconstruct the power of ideology with the expectation that the results of this study may promote and develop concern for gender and media in the academia.The body will be divided into three parts:I The relation between gender and the mass media.In this section, the paper introduces the main views about the gender theory and the relation between media and gender. As to the gender theory, it will distinguish the concepts of sex and gender from the English original words "sex "and "gender", thereby disintegrating the root of duality antitheses-biological determinism and revealing the theoretical foundation of women oppression. Taking it as the analyzing category, Feminism queries the hypothesis and prejudice to women in each field and wages the criticism and challenges to the traditional ideology. As to the relation between media and gender, it will point out the important influence and constructing power in society through the definition of media. The both sexes images appearing in the media expose the essence that the constructing way and words power encourage women to acquiesce subordinate in the patriarchy society. The mass media turns out to be a tool of the main ideology in the operation of cultural system.II Construction of female gender identity in the mass media. This part discussestwo points. The first is "being distorted", which means the female's images appearing in media. The second is "being spied", which describes the female's power status in media. The former begins with the Althusser's ideology theory and indicates the mass media is an important channel of ideology's reproducing the relation power, which means through a series of distorted reappearances the mass media annihilates women symbolically. It can be particularly represented by the phenomenon of media's neglecting and discriminating women or other stiff impressions. Based on Foucault's theory on power words, the latter exposes that the both sexes words in the mass media are limited by the patriarchy ideology structure and usually standardized by the normative male orientation and eyes with the result that the female is in the object position-"being seen". In the main forms of the mass media such as movies, televisions and advertisements, that has been represented specially.III The female's resistance and subversion to gender identity. This part will be elaborated from three respects: Firstly, the possibility of the female's resistance. Based on the Gelansy's hegemony theory, this part shows it is contradictions and struggles that are the essential ways of the ideology's existing. The mass media is such a position as includes differences, contradictions and struggles, among which there is concern about women's status and introspection of the traditional ideas on gender. Particularly, various attention paid by the women's programs in the national mass media c...