Critical Analysis of Women’s Representation in TV Advertisements from a Cultural Studies Perspective

Abstract Through the interpretation of texts, and subsequent creation of social reality, mediated representations are often seen to be presented within the certain of ideological discourses that reflect the existing power structures. The main objective of this paper is to analyze television commercials with an emphasis on gender roles to decode the main elements of a dominant discourse (preferred readings) and representation mechanisms; and the elements' relationships with ideology, hegemony and power relations in reproducing a dominant discourse. Grounded in an interdisciplinary theoretical framework of cultural studies and critical studies perspectives, the two-layer analysis is used in this paper – a semiotic and critical discourse analysis of television commercials with an emphasize on gender roles and ideology. The results demonstrate that the TV advertisements selected in this paper represent dominant gender relations and reproduce traditional values. Furthermore, these representations illustrate a contradiction between society and media in gender roles.