TELEVISION! presented by Dj european Dj
videoed by Nadia Buyse
According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years watching television. The television was created to further communications of a modern society. Years later we are left to wonder what exactly is the television communicating? The programming brought into our homes by television producers and media conglomerates are some of the first images that most americans are exposed to, what do these images trigger in the emotional development of children? What do these images do to perpetuate negative gender roles?
- 59 percent of parents say their 4-6 year-old boys imitate aggressive behavior they've seen on television
Zero to Six: Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers and Preschoolers. Kaiser Family Foundation, 28 October, 2003.
- 66 percent of children (ages 10-16) surveyed say their peers are influenced by television shows
- It's Just Harmless Entertainment…Oh Really? Parents Television Council. http://www.parentstv.org.
• When asked to choose 3 television role models, 80% of boys choose male personalities, while only 16% chose a female. Conversely, 57% of the girls choose males and 59% choose a female role models. Further, 43% of the boys choose only males, while
only 25% of the girls choose only females.
Overall top 3 role models: Will Smith, Bart Simpson, and Tim Allen.
• 49% of the children polled watch music videos daily.
• Sixty-two percent of the characters in music videos are male 54% white and 42% African-American. Males are nearly three times as likely as females to appear in videos with a primary theme of social protest or bravado, while females are four times more
likely to appear in videos featuring a primary theme of love/romance.
• Over one-quarter of the videos include some degree of attention to female breasts, legs or torsos. Almost two-thirds of videos feature females as props, characters who are used by the central performer in the course of his/her actions or who appear as
background. While female props are likely to be semi-nude (25%) as to be dressed in revealing clothing (25%) male props used in 40% of the videos tend to be fully clothed most of the time (75%).
(statistics taken from http://www.mediawatch.com)
TELEVISION! presented by Dj european Dj is a satirical look at the gender roles presented to the American public via television.It is a multi media performance appropriating
television shows and programming formats to create dialogue about gender stereotypes in mass media. This examines what it means to be a woman in the media and how that woman could be interpreted by the average viewer. It is the first video performance created by playwright, video artist and musician Nadia Buyse AKA DJ European DJ. It is a mixture of Electronic music , multi media performance, puppetry and dance.