I'm
a binge television series consumer, and in my scarce free time I like to
squeeze in a few episodes of a new series I have recently picked out. Through
out this semester I have been able to finish Breaking Bad and the first season
of Orange is the New Black. While viewing these shows I have noticed a
difference in my consumption while watching these shows over the course of the
semester. In the beginning of the school year this was a great way to turn off
my brain and fall into the story unfolding in front of me. As the year
progressed I was no longer that mindless consumer anymore and transformed into
a rhetorical critic. I began to notice how each character plays to their gender
role or to their stereotype.
I feel that feminist/ gender criticism is my
biggest strength as a rhetorical critic. I have always been aware that it is
more difficult for a woman to have a higher up position in an organization, so
there are fewer representatives. After finishing this course and conducting a
classroom lesson on the subject of gender roles in the media I can better grasp
how television shows direct a certain character to act. For example in Orange
is the New Black it tells a story of an educated, privileged, white woman who had
to turn herself into an all girls correction facility for a crime she committed
ten years ago. These women in the jail play different gender roles depending on
their sexual preference and rank in the hierarchy within the prison. Also you
would thing that this is a feminist series but actually it is doing just the
opposite. The women inmates are all begin guided and disciplined by male guards
who display masculine qualities. I can visibly see patriarchy, the ideology
that privileges male and masculine identities over female and feminine norms, that
played out in the first season of Orange is the New Black.
