The media plays an important role in representing the various roles of the gender and it has been influencing everyone’s life on a daily basis in one or the other way. Media intensely impacts every person’s daily philosophies of gender roles and the impressions of gender characteristics. The gender roles depicted by the media for the male and female are quite visible in the advertisements and commercials. The men are shown to be working in an organization or completing the required household chores outside the house and do not support the other gender in other activities. The women are shown to be taking care of the house and looking after the kids. Due to the easy access of the Internet and the World Wide Web information is easily available in people’s lives. Gauntlett (2008) states that the material we see online is more likely to be the material we have requested specifically, but as online magazine and general entertainment sites become increasingly popular, and these merge with digital television, electronic media becomes yet another source of gender information.
Media is a wealthy source to evaluate and examine the various issues faced due to the gender roles. It is a known fact that the percentage of women is very less than men in the mainstream media. The male occurrence in the media’s judgment is obvious in a large number of television programs, movies, books, and video games. The recent times has seen a lot of changes in the manner the males and females are represented. There are many movies and films that have shown women in a helpless, challenging or in a more dominating role. This paper contains explanation about the movie Mrs.Doubtfire and how the gender roles are viewed in this movie.
The movie also shows unusual gender roles of male and female in the marriage. The expectation of the society is that the male must be a breadwinner and the female must be a caretaker; however in the movie the father (disguised as nanny) leaves everything to take care of his children and in turn his wife occupies a high position and supports the family financially that results in spending less time with her children. The movie also has homosexual and transsexual gender roles, and these characters are illustrated having feminine characters. This movie is an eye opener for the society to change the perception of the default gender roles. The movie clearly indicates that a happy and a loving family can be created when there is lot of love and understanding between both the genders. It shows the importance of both the genders in various roles. This movie can be watched by people of any culture as it contains all the ingredients to build happy family. Overall this movie is an accurate representation of the gender as it covers the various genders roles like being an independent woman, transsexuals, parental elements and homosexuals, and all the gender roles in this movie are strongly influential.
References
Gauntlet, David.,(2008). Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction. 2 Ed, Illustrated, Revised. Psychology Press.
