Passage One

1．For most writers within cultural studies，masculinity and femininity are not essential qualities of embodied subjects．Rather，they are understood to be matters of representation．Sexual identity is constituted by ways of speaking about the disciplining bodies．This theme of representation is a trope^[50]of cultural studies that is also manifested in the study of gender within popular culture．

2．A good deal of feminist writing in the field of culture has been concerned with the representation of gender and of women in particular．As Evans(1997)comments，in the first place there was a concern to demonstrate that women had played a part in culture，and in literature in particular，in the face of their omission from the canon^[51]of good works．This was coterminous with a concern for the kinds of representations of women which had been constructed;that is，“the thesis that gender politics were absolutely central to the very project of representation”．

3．Early feminist studies made the realist epistemological^[52]assumption that representation was a direct expression of social reality and/or a potential and actual distortion of that reality．That is，representations of women reflected male attitudes and constituted misrepresentations^[53]of“real”women．This is known as the“images of women perspective”．However，later studies informed by poststructuralism^[54]regard all representations as cultural constructions and not as reflections of a real world．Consequently，concern centers on how representations signify in the context of social power with what consequences for gender relations．This exploration of“women as a sign”we may call the“politics of representation”．

4．The concept of the stereotype occupies a prominent place within the images of women perspective．A stereotype involves the reduction of persons to a set of exaggerated，usually negative，character traits．Through the operation of power a stereotype marks the boundaries between the“normal”and the“abject”．Krishnan and Dighe(1990) argue that affirmation and denial were two main themes evident in their study of the representation of women on Indian television．The affirmation they describe is of a limited definition of womanhood as passive and subordinate，that is，being tied to housework，husbands and children．The denial is of the creativity，activity and individuality of women，particularly in relation to work and the public sphere．They report that men in television fiction were the principal characters in much larger numbers than women(105 men to 55 women)．Further，while men were represented in a range of occupations，most women(34)were depicted as housewives．Each of the principal characters was described on the basis of 88 polar opposite personality attributes and analysis revealed that the most common characteristics ascribed to men and women were as in the following table．

Table:Attributes of masculinity and femininity on Indian television

(Rewritten from Chris Barker，Cultural Studies:Theory and Practice，pp．306-308)

Questions for Understanding

1．To what degree do you agree with the observation that women are omitted from the literary canon?

2．In what ways do the early feminist studies about the cultural representation of gender differ from those of later theorists?

3．Why does the writer of the passage believe that the cultural representation of gender is“politics of representation”?

4．What is the stereotype of representation?

5．What are the stereotypes of male and female characters on Indian television based on the study of Krishnan and Dighe?Do you see similar stereotypes on Chinese television?