ON THE SPECIFICS OF THE MASCULINE REPRESENTATIONS ON TELEVISION: IS GENDER EQUALITY POSSIBLE?

Abstract

The reflection of gender roles and stereotypes in mass culture has significant and far-reaching consequences for any society. Nowadays, mass culture is one of the main agents of socialization, which provides people with a certain set of norms and values. It plays an important role in the development and reproduction of gender norms and gender subjects, as far as socially constructed ideas of gender are reinforced by the dominant narratives. Deeply rooted in the traditional culture, gender models express themselves through mass culture. The support and television broadcasting of the model of hegemonic masculinity and the devaluation of femininity contributes to the internalization of these ideas by consumers of mass culture. This leads to the negative consequences both for the consumers and society perpetuating gender stereotypes and gender inequality, which is a huge loss of human potential for both women and men, and prevents them from creating their own projects for the future, from forming effective patterns of behavior that are in line with the contemporary level of social development. The article aims at studying the specifics of masculine representations on television.