Through out the episode 'a clubbable woman' gender is represented in various ways producing different effects. This crime drama from 1996 would represent gender different than a piece of footage today as it is older and people have changed over the years.
The first way gender is represented is through costume (mise-en-scene), in this episode most of the men are sporting shirts and trousers (as many worked in offices at this time) where as the women are wearing dresses/skirts, hats and bags, this is showing gender as the trousers and shirt is masculine as it looks like work/business clothes and the skirt is feminine so the men feel attracted to them after a long day at work, also the Head of police regularly wears a double breasted coat when others are wearing normal jackets, this connotes power as he stands out and looks more regal/higher class, by a man wearing this coat and a woman not it shows the stereotypical feeling that men are generally more powerful than women.
Also characters are used to show gender (mise-en-scene). For example there is a scene at the pub where there is a large group of men surrounding a woman who is considered to be one of the most attractive there, this connotes gender as men are attracted to good looking women and instantly flirt with them. Another example of the use of character to show gender is when the woman walks into the police station, this is a counter hegemonic as at this time the police force and the criminals was mainly occupied by men (except secretary work) so by seeing the woman at the police station it connoted that she shouldn't be there as she seemed out of place.
Dialect (sound) was also a good way to show gender in this piece, a good example of this is that the women did not use offensive language a quarter as much as the men did an example of the language that the men used words such as bastard etc. This therefore connotes gender as women are always perceived as the nicer less rude gender. So by giving the males more offensive language to use it accentuates this point of view and therefore helps the viewer define gender just through the dialect of the characters.
Gender is also showed through camera shots and angles (camera). When a woman was in the frame (from close up to mid shot) the angle of the shot was high, but when a male was in shot it was low angle to connote power over the woman, which in the times when this footage was made men were the dominant sex and seen as stronger etc. So by placing the shot angles differently it connotes gender and helps the viewer refine gender and their social status through this.
Editing was not an effective way of showing gender in the footage. This there fore makes it inappropriate for me to utilise my analysis skills to form a constructive paragraph on the topic.
In conclusion the most effective way of showing gender within this footage is through mise-en-scene, this is because it gives visual aids to the viewer to actually determine gender of characters etc. The worst area of analysis would be editing as this gave no indication of gender throughout the piece.
