E-Book, Englisch, 270 Seiten
Gymnich / Ruhl / Scheunemann Gendered (Re)Visions
1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-3-86234-662-2
Verlag: V&R unipress
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
Constructions of Gender in Audiovisual Media
E-Book, Englisch, 270 Seiten
Reihe: Representations & Reflections.
ISBN: 978-3-86234-662-2
Verlag: V&R unipress
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
Fachgebiete
- Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften Medien & Gesellschaft, Medienwirkungsforschung
- Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
- Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften Medienphilosophie, Medienethik, Medienrecht
Weitere Infos & Material
1;Inhalt;6
2;Gender in Audiovisual Media: Introduction;8
3;Part I: Gaze – Body – Voice;22
3.1;Revisiting the Classical Romance: Pride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones’s Diary and Bride and Prejudice;24
3.2;Ways of Reclaiming Masculinity: Reactions to the ‘Crisis of the White Man’ in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, Sam Mendes’ American Beauty and David Fincher’s Fight Club;46
3.3;Re-Imagined Bodies and Transgendered Space: Sites for Negotiating Gender in the Shrek Movies;60
3.4;The Female Voice in Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives: Voice-Over Narration in Contemporary American Television Series;80
3.5;American Television Series;80
4;Part II: Gender and Genre;104
4.1;(En)Gendering Laughter: The Representation of Gender Roles in the Sitcom;106
4.2;The Changing Construction of Women in Crime Series: The Case of Tatort;138
4.3;What are Men Made of ? Fictions of Masculinity in Western Movies: Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon (1952) and Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005);160
4.4;‘A World Without Gender’? – Robots, Androids and the Gender Matrix in Films and TV Series;182
4.5;Performing Gender in the Music Videos of 50 Cent and the G Unit;204
4.6;Independent Women? Feminist Discourse in Music Videos;228
4.7;Film, Urban Legends and Gender – The Subversive Play with Urban Legends in Urbania (2000);254
The Female Voice in Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives: Voice-Over Narration in Contemporary American Television Series (S. 79-80)
Stefanie Hoth
I. Introduction: Voice-Over Narration in Television Series
Voice-over is a constitutive part of many audiovisual formats, such as news, documentary films, commercials and sports commentaries. Although television series “usually have a ‘voiceless’ narrator, and thus normally do not give rise to the illusion that there is a ‘person’ or persona telling the story”,1 some TV series make frequent use of voice-over narration, often achieving diverse and complex functions in this manner. Voice-over narration has over the past decades been used in various series and is for example a constitutive part of the TV series The Wonder Years (1988 – 1993), in which a distinctly adult male voice relates the story of his younger self.
The log in the five Star Trek series is always presented via the voice-over of one of the characters;2 in the 1980s cult show Magnum (1980 – 1988) the protagonist frames the story of each episode with his comments. In the series A-Team (1983 –1987) each episode starts with the same words, spoken by the main character. Other television dramas only make use of voice-over narration in single episodes, thus loosening the customary structure of the show and challenging the viewer with this change of perspective.
3 Sitcoms such as Friends (1994 – 2004) and The Nanny (1993 –1999) apply voice-over narration every now and then in order to verbalise a character’s thoughts or feelings, as a form of interior monologue, thereby creating a comic or ironic discrepancy between what is said and what is thought. Although voice-over narration in fictional audiovisual narratives is anything but an occasional aberration, the implications which the corporeal presence of a narrating voice,4 and in our case a female voice, has for the narrative have long been neglected:5 “[D]espite a decade of attention by a few narratologists, the categories of sex, gender, and sexuality have remained on the margins of narratological inquiry”.
Especially in the past fifteen years female characters seem to have dominated voice-over narration almost completely – and very successfully :7 In the Golden Globe winning drama seriesMy So-Called Life (1994 –1995), 15-year-old Angela Carter relates the trials and tribulations of adolescence in diary-form. Shows like Ally McBeal (1997 –2002) with its unconventional way of depicting the eponymous protagonist’s feelings and thoughts followed suit and blazed the trail for no less successful series such as Sex and the City (1998 – 2004), or, more recently, Desperate Housewives (2004-) and the hospital drama Grey’s Anatomy (2005-).8 In comparison to the voice-over in the latter, which is rather conventional and