The '1996' tv drama Dialziel and Pascoe gender is represented in many different ways creating different effects on the audience. The episode i am analysing is called 'a clubbable woman'. This is a older drama, therefroe gender is represented very differently compared to the modern day.
The dialogue is the first and most obvious way that gender is represented. this is due to the women characters having short lines or in most circumstance very little line to say at all, the rest of the screen time being taken up by the male characters along with the dialogue.
As a generalisation of the females textual references throughout the episode, they were subtle, quite and usually only about themselves and spoken only to other women, where as the men, used very aggressive language often only announcing obscenities or slander towards the female characters. This made me as the audience feel very uncomfortable listening to the men speak, but it made me feel very angry that they spoke like that to make themselves seem more important and more attention grabbing.
Camera angles were also used to represent gender mainly by capturing women in a high shot, this makes the audience feel as if the men are looking down upon them making them inferior to the male characters. The men were often shown in a low angle shot as it makes them look taller, and the audience are made to feel that the female characters are made to look up to the male characters.
This under states that the men are powerful and worthy of the females to look up to them, and it makes the women look small and inferior compared to the males.
Next the way the characters portray the written personality about their characters shows gender again. During one scene one female is standing at a bar and is surrounded and swamped with gentle men flirting with her.This is stereotypical as the woman is again made to look like the flirt, the one who is desperate for the attention she is gaining, whether it be by acting like a 'floozy' or wearing very tight and low clothes.
Again women are made to look inferior to the men in this tv drama as during the scenes at the police office, there is no women at all actually portrayed as a police officer, but they are portrayed as secrateries, again lower than the male police officers, who are the ones worthy of women again working under them in social positions and job equality.
Editing is used to represent gender by having less shots of women and change to men as quickly as possible after the women have spoken. this again shows the inequality between men and women during this drama making the men take up more screen time and women less.
Mise-en-scene is used to show gender by using props.
Props such as tracksuits and waistcoats, these show the men a either smart and well educated or messy but not someone to be messed with, so strong.
The women wear dresses which is feminine, as you cannot imagine a woman fighting others in a dress. this shows them as uncapable and irrelivent when it comes to strength.
Also the men will always have short haircuts, and the women have long hair.
This is a clear distinction between man and women because in those days, men prided themselves on being manly, and women would'nt choose to have short haircuts.
In conclusion, i think the most effective way of representing gender is Mise-en-scene.
This is because the costumes and haircuts make you unconciously decide if the character is a man or a woman.
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