Media Representation Of Homosexuality

Every day, we are exposed to a variety of media texts. Whether this be via the internet, a mobile phone, television or through face to face communication, just to name a few. We assume certain ideological social views which we embrace through media representation and social interaction and this in turn shapes how we think about the world. This is called ideology (Bainbridge, Goc & Tynan, 2015 p. 234). An ideology is a socially built assumption of the world, an idea or a belief that is generally believed within a social structure. Ideologies vary from culture to culture, however they are not individual beliefs, they are beliefs of groups. An ideology can be changed overtime through the use of power and repeated media representations designed

As a society, a nuclear family is represented as a mother, father and two or three children (Staricek 2011, p. 87-88). This ideology is slowly changing through the representation of homosexuality in programs such as Modern Family, where homosexual couples are now being represented as a modern family albeit not completely nuclear. “Representing such a couple poses a threat to the dominant ideology of family’’ (Staricek 2011, p. 87-88). However through discourse cultural ideologies of nuclear families are slowly changing to be now more excepting of homosexuality and embrace homosexuality as an ideology within itself. An example of this is the legalisation of ‘same-sex’ marriages around the world. There are currently 62 countries including all the states of America that have legalised ‘same-sex marriage (Australian Marriage Equality.Org 2015). This represents a dramatic swing in society’s common ideology of love. Moore (2012, p. 21) states “what matters about marriage has shifted over the decades”. Gone is permanence, or social structure and order in relation to having children. Society is now moving towards freedom of expression, is less concerned that biological parenting is significant to children and in turn moving towards a new modern nuclear family such as the homosexual couple of Cameron and Mitchell in Modern

Pop culture, or culture based on ordinary people rather than the educated elite, is rapidly changing in politics as the world moves away from opposition to gay rights and moves towards the willingness to support homosexuality as equality to heterosexuality (Douglas & Clark 2015). It is fair to say that homosexuality in the media, is based on stereotypical ideologies of what homosexual men and women look and act like.When we see homosexuality in the media, particularly television programs and movies, we are often witness to a very feminine gay man, or a very butch gay lady (Jones & Gelb 2007). This representation of homosexuality is not an honest representation of gay society. The use of over the top effeminate men and masculine butch looking women to describe the gay and lesbian community is an ideology that many are now opening their minds to a discourse of representation in the media of homosexual individuals who do not fit the stereotype. Examples of non-effeminate homosexual men are Ricky Martin and Australian Football player Ian Roberts. These men portray masculinity and do not fit the stereotypical gay man represented by the media. Likewise, Australia’s Portia de Rossi does not fit the stereotypical butch looking lesbian