Female Representation in Pop Culture Media (Free Essay Example)

My research focuses on female representation in pop culture media and its impact on sexist ideals. The pop culture media I will be analyzing is anime. In the US anime is categorized as Japanese animation/cartoons. Since the first anime Astro Boy aired in January 1, 1963 on US television the genre has become more popular for US audiences.  And like other pop culture media the representation of female characters has changed with the rise of feminism. In my research paper I argue that while female representation has improved there is still apparent benevolent sexism that perpetuate sexist ideals. Through my research I came across a thesis study titled “Walk Feminine, Talk Feminine: A Critical Textual Analysis of Femininities, Performances, and Representations” by Reslie Cortez. I found the source helpful to my research by providing me with information and points, some of which I hadn’t thought about. 

In the source Cortes examines the ways femininity is preformed and how it interests with race, class and sexuality. Cortes focuses her examination on the anime Bleach and Samurai Champloo. She utilizes critical textual analysis, queer of color critique, and historical materialism to complete her study. Utilizing all three allowed her to analysis the content of the text and “address gender performances within the intersections of race, class, and ethnicity, but also within a historical and political context that addresses capitalist-consumer relationships.” This enabled her to look at the source from many different ways as there are many qualities that affect a person’s identity and gender performance. The intention behind the analysis was to see if anime can offer an opposing gender performance to conventional gender performances for gender queer characters. 

This source proved helpful by presenting me with ways in which I could prove points in my own paper. In particular Cortez considers the nonvisual aspects of the animes she chose to analyze. As to be able to discuss how femininity is performed by both genders. This is important because benevolent sexism will be present in more of the nonvisual aspects if it is to remain ambiguous. This may include the way a character acts. As for Cortez she chose to analyze the way language plays a role in the performance. As stated in the source characters in the anime Bleach “are feminizing their speech in a deliberate and discursive manner.” Through the form of different verb endings the characters are able to “ convey different levels of politeness or informality and become a part of gender performance.” (Cortez 26) Cortez even gives examples of the types of verb endings use allowing me the ability to pay attention to these things in the anime I am using. Moreover, I will be able to use Cortez’s findings of the words used in her animes to support my anime. 

Additionally, to being able to support arguments I may bring up in my paper Cortes discusses many points I hadn’t considered about the topic. These points are potentially important when discussing the anime of my choosing, therefore influencing my research. Additionally, they will certainly be important when looking at anime as a whole. For instance, she brings up a point about race/ethnicity. When explaining how she would be analyzing her sources she notices that she would need to combine different techniques in order to properly address the intersection of gender with different races/ethnicities. As stated in the source this is because “the material realities of queer of color are very different from those perpetuated by mainstream discourses, which is dominated by white middle-class queers.” (Cortez 18) While most animes have primarily Japanese characters there are some that contain characters of different race/ethnicities. And for different races/ethnicities there are different experiences with gender performance. Even the conventional gender performance changes for people of different race/ethnicities. For this reason, it is significant to discuss this as it will affect the type of sexist ideals the actions of certain characters might support. For characters of a certain race there may be more and different sexism.

Regardless of the sources usefulness in analyzing the aspects separately the source fails to discuss how the aspects work together. For instance, Cortez covers how language, character roles, characteristics, and appearance affect the performance of femininity separately but not together. This is a problem because anime is watched as a whole with the visual and nonvisual aspects working together to give the audience a coherent story. So, if I want to analyze the sexist ideals seen in anime as a whole, I will need to discuss how the aspects work together and intersect. To illustrate if I were to look at the appearance, they may give people of a certain role I may find a correlation between appearance aspects and roles. Like a character whose role is known to be innocent might not be as sexualized in their appearance even if they are of age as to keep their innocence intact. Additionally, a masculine female character might use masculine language and have a more “masculine role/job” as to defeminize her.  

Furthermore, I have to call in question the sources trustworthiness as it is a thesis. At the time the source is written the author is trying to obtain a master’s in communications studies. Since then, the author has completed a PhD in communication and published a work, also relating to anime. The author is easily searchable with a complete resume coming up in the search listing all her accomplishments and research interests. This is important because in her research interests are things that correlate with this source she wrote. Meaning she is most likely very interested, dedicated, and knowledge in the research.  All this make the source very trustworthy for the purpose that I need it. With additional source from other scholars this source proves very helpful to my research and paper. 

In conclusion I found this to be one of the most helpful sources during my research. The topic I picked isn’t well researched meaning I might have to look at nonacademic sources for further information. However, having sources like this one helps me to be able to back up as many points as I can with other academic research.