How Does Male Readership Impact Character Portrayals in Contemporary Young Adult Adventure Novels?

Adventure fiction has traditionally followed a male protagonist in their search for selfhood and saviorhood. In the case of contemporary adventure fiction, authors are likely to follow the conventions of the adventure story in order to fit the genre’s stereotypes, which in turn reinforce gender stereotypes. This research paper discusses how contemporary young adult adventure novels typically perform within society’s narrowly defined perception of male readership. While the novels attempt to perpetuate powerful female roles, the male characters fit the fantasy of traditional, male adventure stories. After analyzing traditional stories such as Paradise Lost and Beowulf and modern novels such as Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, I conclude that there are disparities between the portrayal of male and female characters: from the main hero to the minor characters to the antagonists, young adult adventure novels tend to follow traditional tropes in order to satisfy male readers. Even if the authors subvert the patriarchal tropes by adding female heroines or helpful minor characters, the overall work of literature creates a fantasy world that reinforces the traditional roles and desires expected of young boys. In time, these portrayals could encourage male readers to act patronizingly or dismissively toward girls and women.

Expression Analysis of Big Mom Characters in One Piece Comic 89 (Badend Musical)

One Piece comics are about the world of pirates, and are the best-selling comics in history. Like most comics, One Piece comics consist of protagonist and antagonist. The depiction of One Piece comics is the same as the usual depiction of Japanese comics, namely using Mango style with narrative content and the use of black and white. Depictions of moments, image details and character expressions become important in black and white comics to bring the narrative to life. For character portrayals, comics look for alternatives to emphasize expression in their comic images. This research focuses on the analysis of one of the most antagonists in the one piece comic is Big Mom. This study aims to find out the characteristics of visualizing the expression of Big Mom characters in One Piece comics using visual language by means of wimba 4 (depiction). The research method used is Bahasa Rupa by classifying images of Big Mom's expression through a form language method. The results of the analysis showed a depiction of expression, using a detailed draw of lines on the eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouth. The way it is portrayed in Big Mom's expressions uses expressive depictions, distortions and lines. Expressive depictions use thick lines that give a wrinkle effect on the forehead, eyes, nose and around the mouth. Depiction of enlarged distortion, used on parts of the eyes, nose, mouth and teeth. The depiction of the line is used as a shadow and effect so that the antagonistic expression of Big Mom feels sharp.

Deracializing Representations of Femininity and the Marketing of Latinidad

Latinidad has been explained as a process, a set of ideas, or a symbolic space, situating it between a mechanism and a locale. Regardless of its exact articulation or constitution, a central feature of Latinidad involves its standing as a social construct; that is, an idea born from and developed by forces through social interaction. This chapter focuses on Latinidad not only as an identity, but perhaps more importantly, as an embodied experience that is mediated or at times driven by external influences. It focuses on Zoe Saldana, since within the world of Latina celebrities embedded within the US popular culture landscape, she embodies one of the more rare sets of circumstances and combinations of ethnicity, phenotype, and character portrayals to be found.

White Man’s Virtual World: A Systematic Content Analysis of Gender and Race in Massively Multiplayer Online Games

Based on previous research indicating that character portrayals in video games and other media can influence users’ perceptions of social reality, systematic content analyses have examined demographic trends in the way video game characters are portrayed. Although these studies have extensively documented character portrayals in traditional console and computer video games, there is a lack of content analyses examining character portrayals in the very popular massively multiplayer online game (MMO) genre. Such studies are needed because many characters in MMOs are customized avatars created by users, which may lead to different trends in character demographics. This content analysis examined representations of gender and race among 417 unique characters appearing 1,356 times in 20 hours of recorded content from four popular commercial MMOs, which was generated by five recruited users. Characters tended to be disproportionately male and white, with females and racial minorities appearing much less often. Implications for potential effects on users’ perceptions of social reality are discussed.

A Novel Idea: Portrayals of Lesbians in Young Adult Sports Fiction

Over the past two decades, sport media scholars have demonstrated that female athletes are portrayed in ways that trivialize and undermine their accomplishments as highly skilled competitors, thus denying them power. More recently, scholars in a related field of knowledge—homophobia in women’s athletics—have also addressed the various ways in which power is denied to sportswomen. Although scholars within both bodies of knowledge have investigated institutional structures, ideologies and practices by which men continue to monopolize sport, few studies have explicitly linked sport media scholarship to the literature on homophobia in women’s athlet. An additional limitation in both fields of knowledge is that analyses focused primarily on adult female athletes; examinations of adolescent females are virtually nonexistent. A final limitation is that the vast majority of studies have focused on print and broadcast journalism, thereby ignoring another influential medium, young adult sports fiction. Therefore, the purpose of our investigation was to extend the knowledge base in three ways: 1) to explicitly link two bodies of knowledge concerned with women’s athleticism--sport media and homophobia/heterosexism; 2) to focus on a population that has been sorely neglected; and 3) to investigate a rich new area of analysis-young adult literature-particularly as it relates to the presence, and characterization of, lesbians in sport.The sample consisted of novels meeting the following criteria: (a) published for a young adult audience, (b) featured a female athlete as protagonist, (c) had sport as a major characteristic of the story, and (d) and be published during or after 1970. Using a qualitative methodology, we examined themes and character portrayals related to the suppression and oppression of young sportswomen in general and lesbians in particular. More specifically, we were interested in whether manifestations of homophobia in women’s athletics (e.g., silence and denial) were present in the novels under consideration. Results indicated that a lesbian presence was subverted in numerous ways, ranging from explicit verbal attacks on female protagonists accused of being “freaks,” to more subtle, apologetic constructions in which female athletes were characterized as ultra-feminine. These findings suggest that the homophobic and heterosexist coverage given to sportswomen in print and broadcast journalism extends into young adult sports fiction.

Saturday Morning Television: A Profile of the 1974–75 Children's Season

An analysis of the behavioral content and character portrayals in children's Saturday morning television programs was conducted on two Saturdays representative of the 1974–75 broadcast season. A high amount of aggression was found on the commercial networks. In contrast, the public broadcasting network offered less than 25% of the amount of violence shown on the commercial stations. Of five categories of positive social behavior, only two appeared with meaningful frequency: altruism and sympathy/explaining feelings. Character analyses revealed bias, both in the frequency of appearance of different sex and racial/ethnic groups and in the character portrayals of those groups. The findings are discussed in terms of potential socializing effects on children.

Race, Sex and Social Example: An Analysis of Character Portrayals on Inter-Racial Television Entertainment

An analysis of character portrayals on inter-racial television entertainment with a focus on race, sex, and social example was performed. Nine regularly broadcast programs having bi-racial representation with at least one male and one female portrayal were selected and a total of 60 characters analyzed according to eight categories of interpersonal and self-control behaviors. White males were aggressive and persistent but non-altruistic and unable to resist temptations to break the rules of society, or repair the damage they caused to others. Black males were non-aggressive, persistent, altruistic, and more likely than any other group to make reparation for injury. White females were non-aggressive, likely to make reparation for damage to others, and altruistic; they displayed resistance to temptation but little delay of gratification/task persistence. Black women exhibited the same self-control pattern as white women and also were non-aggressive, non-altruistic, and not inclined toward reparation for damage to others. Their most outstanding behavior, though, was a high level of explaining feelings to increase understanding, resolve strife, and reassure others. The over-all pattern of findings is interpreted in terms of television's maintaining and fostering stereotypes.