I have learnt a lot on the lesson today that we need the media to make sense of reality, without the media, our perception of reality would be very limited. By giving audiences information, media texts extend experience of reality. Every time you see a wildlife documentary, or read about political events in a country on the other side of the world, or watch a movie about a historical event, you extend your experience of life on this planet. Movie producers telescope events and personalities to fit into their parameters, gender is perhaps the basic category we use for sorting human beings, and it is a key issue when discussing representation. It is undeniable that the media shapes our conceptions of what it means to be male or female, feminism has been a recognized social philosophy for more than forty years. Male characters are often represented as isolated, as not needing to rely on others (the lone hero), increasingly, men are finding it as difficult to live up to their media representations as women are to theirs.
