Latinas' image on Spanish-language television: a study of women's representation and their self-perceptions
Abstract
This dissertation investigates how Spanish-language television networks in the
United States represent Latino women and how women from Latino heritage
evaluate those portrayals. Facing a paucity of studies about Spanish television
programming and the Latino television audience in general, this project constitutes
an early step in understanding how a particular group of immigrants and U.S.-born
Latinas interact with their own ethnic media. This is a twofold study that focuses on
the talk shows El Show de Cristina and Laura en América broadcast by Univision
and Telemundo respectively, and on the narratives of 27 women interviewed in the
city of Austin, Texas, between 1999-2002. The main objective of the analysis is to
see how the categories of gender, race, ethnicity and class are enacted in the
television text and in the audience responses. The research is informed by a
theoretical blend of feminism, critical and cultural studies, and it is also grounded in
Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice. His concept of “field” is used s a theory and as
a method to understand the current economic and structural changes in what is
labeled here as "the field of Latino television." The overall conclusion of the study
is that Latinas have a conflicted relationship with the Spanish-language television.
They like specific programming such as news and telenovelas, but they criticize
other television genres such as talk shows, humor and entertainment programs and
would like to see that Latino networks improve the quality of the programs and
women's portrayals. Respondents contested the oversexualized representations of
Latinas and criticized the violence enacted in the talk shows. They argued that the
images embarrass and offend them. These findings closely follow some of the
patterns found by DeSipio (1998; 1999) and Dávila (2001) in their studies of the
relationship Latinos have with the Spanish language television. The violence
enacted in the talk shows is theorized according to Bourdieu's theory of symbolic
power. Class, in material or symbolic terms, operates as the main marker of social
distance in respondents' evaluations of the talk shows. Latinas used class to distance
themselves from the panelists presented in the shows, to devalue the contents
offered by the networks as being directed to others, and to contest the homogeneous
definition of Latinos offered by the Spanish-language television.
Department
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