Portrayal Of Women In Soaps

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in Harper's articles support the idea that women would be better off being married and keeping a home rather than going out into the high-powered world. Harper says that although a parallel structure is apparent in soap operas, the female character will usually fail or lose her power by becoming more sensitive and caring, or by being condemned to a life of misery and loneliness. Harper says that soap opera is a feminine form because of the no real beginning or end, the multiple characters and the concentration on domestic and personal issues such as relationships and the domestic setting. Harper cited Fiske's view that women can use their sexuality as a positive source of pleasure or a means of their empowerment in the patriarchal world. Harper also cited Fiske's view that the woman's power to influence and control the male can never be achieved, but it is constantly in progress. This implies once again that women can never ultimately be in full control.
Helen Ingham ...

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men. Even though soap operas do portray women in a more positive way than advertising and other forms of television, they still respect and conform to a broader mainstream of cultural demands. When women do have jobs in soaps, they are often unsuccessful or not attempting to pursue their careers. This shows that even a form of television targeted at a majority female audience contains subliminal messages reinforcing the dominant male ideology.
Our research supports these ideas from Harper and Ingham because we found very similar results from the textual and feminist analysis. Through our textual analysis, we found that Days of Our Lives went from equilibrium to disequilibrium to a ...

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