Gauntlett's theory of indentity.

There are two parks to David Gauntlett's theory. The first part is that the audience get a sense of their own identity through the media products they consume in their day to day lives. this can involve films, TV programs, magazines or News papers. His idea is that the person who consumes these types of media get an idea of who they are and who they want to be through how the media presents these things. An example of this is if a young boy watches a football montage on YouTube. that montage may give ideas on how he wants to play football and what skills he wants to try and perfect himself. Gauntlett believes that in the past the media was more simplistic through how men and women were stereotypically presented to the world. Men were usually shown as strong, tall working men while the women were shown as housewives who do things like cleaning and cooking. However, in the modern day and age Gauntlett believes that the diverse through how the way gender is presented has changed. It is more different and challenging for people to realise. 

To a high extent I do agree with this statement because many different movies, TV shows and magazines represent women and men in an ideal way (self-portrayed). David Gauntlett used examples such as Spiderman 3 and Knocked up as evidence to how the media play a role in the shaping of individual self-identities. The whole idea to Gauntlett’s theory is that there is a more openness to gender roles in media. This can involve traditional gender roles now being more diverse than ever before. Many famous male roles in popular UK TV shows. A huge example of this is Doctor Who, through how they have had a male actor as ‘Doctor who’ but in the recent season there is now a women acting as ‘Doctor who’. This highlights that media changes as the years go on. Many shows are now swapping genders to please the media as in the modern day there are many people requesting equality between women and men.  

The difference between sex and gender is that sex refers to someone, whereas gender describes the characteristics that a culture delineates as masculine and feminine. Gauntlett notes that everyday actions reinforce and reproduce a set of expectations. It is this set of other people's expectations which make up the 'social forces' and social structures'. We can use these to construct aspects of our identity, to fit in with other collective identities or feel alienated if we appear different. Gauntlett discusses that it is because of this faith in the way we 'expect'; things to be, that some people are so shaken when others challenge the taken-for-granted consensus about how, for example how men and women behave. This all highlights that the world may not be ready for change through how people portray themselves to the world.