Latinas' image on Spanish-language television: a study of women's representation and their self-perceptions
Year: 2003
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This dissertation investigates how Spanish-language television networks in the \nUnited States represent Latino women and how women from Latino heritage \nevaluate those portrayals. Facing a paucity of studies about Spanish television \nprogramming and the Latino television audience in general, this project constitutes \nan early step in understanding how a particular group of immigrants and U.S.-born \nLatinas interact with their own ethnic media. This is a twofold study that focuses on \nthe talk shows El Show de Cristina and Laura en América broadcast by Univision \nand Telemundo respectively, and on the narratives of 27 women interviewed in the \ncity of Austin, Texas, between 1999-2002. The main objective of the analysis is to \nsee how the categories of gender, race, ethnicity and class are enacted in the \ntelevision text and in the audience responses. The research is informed by a \ntheoretical blend of feminism, critical and cultural studies, and it is also grounded in \nPierre Bourdieu's theory of practice. His concept of “field” is used s a theory and as \na method to understand the current economic and structural changes in what is \nlabeled here as "the field of Latino television." The overall conclusion of the study \nis that Latinas have a conflicted relationship with the Spanish-language television. \nThey like specific programming such as news and telenovelas, but they criticize \nother television genres such as talk shows, humor and entertainment programs and \nwould like to see that Latino networks improve the quality of the programs and \nwomen's portrayals. Respondents contested the oversexualized representations of \nLatinas and criticized the violence enacted in the talk shows. They argued that the \nimages embarrass and offend them. These findings closely follow some of the \npatterns found by DeSipio (1998; 1999) and Dávila (2001) in their studies of the \nrelationship Latinos have with the Spanish language television. The violence \nenacted in the talk shows is theorized according to Bourdieu's theory of symbolic \npower. Class, in material or symbolic terms, operates as the main marker of social \ndistance in respondents' evaluations of the talk shows. Latinas used class to distance \nthemselves from the panelists presented in the shows, to devalue the contents \noffered by the networks as being directed to others, and to contest the homogeneous \ndefinition of Latinos offered by the Spanish-language television.
Authors: Rojas Cortez, Viviana del Carmen
Language: English
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2118090681