It has been said that media representations often reflect the social and political concerns of the age in which they are created. Discuss.

Media representations have been changing over decades, changes such as for females post feminism and for males becoming the female gaze. When media texts representations were created, they were created around current affairs and cultural traditions for instance post world war two led to the emergence of the suffragettes, females who burnt their bras for more freedom and value in society. This then gave way to the representation of females as the femme fatale in such films such as ‘double indemnity’ which showed females in control and superior in some way leading men on to end up either murdering them.

Gender has also changed over the years, as Gerda Lerner says gender is ‘ a costume, a mask, a straight jacket’ which connotes that gender isn’t reality, it’s what is constructed. In a certain way it can be argued that the media has created gender which the public follow as the media acts superior, as the public are ‘subordinated groups accept the ideas, values and leadership of dominant groups’. It can be argued that media construct representations that don’t follow the times they are created in. For example 9/11 and the London bombings didn’t change the representation of Muslims in films as fills before these events represented Muslims as extremists who were a threat to western society. Films such as Four Lions still see Muslims as extremists and bring comedic side to the representations.

Females have gone through a large amount of change through time; representations of females have changed from being subordinated by men and view voyeuristically to becoming superior and given more freedom.