The Norwegian Tv-series Exit displays the lives of four rich financiers that has it all: money, careers, and families. However, they are bored and escape their family lives by the use of drugs, sex and violence. The Tv-series display badly treated women in various scenes, they are either prostitutes or housewives. Exit has been watched by 1,3 million people in Norway and been called “this year's most disgusting Tv-series” and “chock porn”. The attention and major reactions this Tv-series has been given led to this analysis of the power relations between men and women. This study examines how power is constructed in relation to gender, with a critical discourse analysis with semiotic elements. The theoretical framework includes theories concerning gender, power, master’s suppression techniques and The Male Gaze. The eight scenes that the empirical material was based upon demonstrates power relations and gender inequality: men are portrayed as powerful and women are portrayed as subordinated and/or as objects, rather than individuals. On the other hand, two of the men are portrayed as weak and passive in two of the scenes, this indicates that power is changeable. The male dominance is often exercised by the use of master suppression techniques like derision, objectification and imposition of guilt and shame. The male dominance exercised is legitimized by the gender system and by men’s financial advantage which gives them power over the women in the series. Aspects was also found which show the producers’ critique against the male characters' behavior. A risk, however, is that the critique does not reach the viewers and instead reproduces the critique that they want to communicate.

Though Sylvia Plath’s poems and novel undergo frequent scholarly research, her short fiction is often overlooked. Plath’s journals influenced her short fiction writing, and her stories reflected Plath’s lived experiences. Plath’s short fiction, like her other works, explore themes of identity and detachment. Each of her protagonists exist in a personal limbo, and they strive to find their identities and to fit the roles in which they occupy. This thesis focuses on “Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom,” stories from Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, and additional research from scholarly journals and biographies, with comparisons to identity struggles shown in The Bell Jar and The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. I found the catalysts for their identity crises stem from observations surrounding femininity, societal roles, and psychological wellness. Furthermore, this research shows Plath’s subjective writing habits and highlights her protagonists’ commonalities throughout her writing career.

I denna uppsats tittar jag på utdrag av Victoria’s Secrets och Savage x Fentys bildflöden på Instagram, för att med hjälp av en semiotisk analys se hur de representerar kvinnlighet som en del av deras marknadsföring. Syftet är att undersöka skillnaden mellan märkenas visuella varumärkesbyggande, och hur det står i samband till konsumenters personliga identitetsbyggande. Resultatet analyseras utifrån litteraturstudier i form av vald teori kring representation, genus, distinktion, klass och märkeskultur. I min slutsats kommer jag fram till att de två märkena använder sig av liknande tecken som är olika kodade för att referera till kvinnlighet, och därför genererar olika budskap. På så sätt utvecklar de två flödena kulturella särdrag som konsumenter kan ta till sig som en del av sitt personliga varumärkesbyggande. / In this paper I examine excerpts from Victoria’s Secret’s and Savage x Fenty’s feeds on Instagram with the help of a semiotic analysis in order to see how they each represent women as a part of their marketing. The purpose is to investigate the difference between the two brand’s visual branding, and how it correlates to consumer’s personal branding. The result is then analysed with the help of selected theories regarding representation, gender, distinction, class and brand culture. In my conclusion I conclude that the two brands use similar signs that are coded differently to refer to femininity, and thus generates different messages. The two brands thus develop cultural characteristics that consumers can adopt as part of their personal branding.

This essay investigates the character Rhysand from Sarah J. Maas’ popular Young Adult series A Court of Thorns and Roses through a feminist perspective. Maas’ series has gained popularity since the release of the first novel in 2015, yet there has not been much academic analysis of it. Instead, most analyses of the series have taken place online, on social media websites such as TikTok and Twitter. This essay focuses on Rhysand and aims to investigate how his masculinity, as well as power, is constructed, and how these notions work together in the way he treats the main female character, Feyre. The essay demonstrates that Rhysand’s masculinity leans more towards a traditional kind; that there is a link between power, violence, and pleasure for him; and that he actively enjoys utilizing his traditional masculinity and patriarchal power through objectifying Feyre in multiple ways. Lastly, it emphasizes the effect of Feyre’s narration – how it is through her focalization that Rhysand is characterized, and his masculinity, power, and objectification are mediated.

This essay focuses on a comparative analysis of costume and makeup presented in the two drag queen road-movies To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar! (1995) and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994). These movies have similar settings with a group of three drag queens traveling across the country to participate in their big show. The primary main focus of this essay has been to analyze the costumes and makeup that are worn by the three main characters in their drag in each film and what it can say about gender and performativity presented in each film. A semiotic analysis was used as a method to analyze selected sequences and Bordwell and Thompsons (2017) segment about costume and makeup as a part of mise-en-scene was used. The results from each movie were later compared. Other theories that were applied were Judith Butler’s theory (2006) about gender performativity, Richard Dyer (1999) on stereotypes and Laura Mulvey's theory (1999) about the male gaze. The results show that Too Wong Foo focuses more on conforming existing women's gender roles with costumes that could be connected to luxury brands in the connotation, while Priscilla has a more exaggerated approach that was likened to shows on Broadway in the connotation.  The individual project was based on a folder from Samiskt informationscentrum (SIC) and resulted in two short animated movies about Sámi in Sweden and Sápmi.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate The Woman with the Puppets by Isobel Gloag from a feminist perspective, to find how it challenge the male gaze and patriarchy. I also seek to understand how other female artists past and present compare to Gloag’s painting. The method is Panofsky’s iconology with modifications through Aavitsland’s thoughts of the grammatical structure that the composition holds. To reach social bearings upon the ability to generate this type of historical genre painting Bourdieu’s toolbox of capital, habitus and strategies has been applied. The painting is a feminist expression of the feminist discussions regarding marriage, equality and law that took place at the time of the paintings creation. Through the use of established norm with an ambiguity, female nude and male marionette puppets, the male gaze and patriarchy is challenged. Gloag is the only female artist of her time that has generated a history genre painting in a feminist spirit that challenges multitude of issues in one composition.

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Syftet med föreliggande alster var att undersöka huruvida utvecklingen av hur kvinnor exponeras i kommersiella sammanhang går hand i hand med postfeminism eller inte, och om det i sådana fall bidrar till att det fortfarande skapas kommersiellt innehåll utifrån den manliga blicken. Materialet som låg till grund för detta arbete var en av flera bilder från Bianca Ingrossos företag, CAIA Cosmetics, läppstifts reklamkampanj från år 2019. Metoden utgjordes, i grunden, av en semiotisk bildanalys, men med en sociosemiotisk dito som spets. Båda metoderna har likheter och har komponenter som går in i varandra, varpå båda, med utgångspunkt i en kvalitativ analys, spelade roller för mitt resultat. Analysen utfördes med följande forskningsfråga som grund: Hur förhåller sig postfeministisk teori och kommodifierad feminism till aktuell bild ur ett sociosemiotiskt perspektiv? Genom detta arbetes huvudteorier postfeminism, kommodifierad feminism och the male gaze – den manliga blicken – analyserades det valda materialet med kopplingar till pornografiskt bildspråk. Utfallet blev dubbeltydigt då kvinnan i bilden, utifrån applicering utav presenterad teori, både kunde ses som ett passivt objekt men även som ett aktivt subjekt. Makten i vald bild kunde alltså ses både som en kraft utifrån den postfeministiska individualismen samtidigt som det också kan tolkas som ännu ett fall av objektifiering av kvinnor i reklam. / The purpose with this essay was to examine whether or not the development of the exposure of women in commercial contexts correlates with postfeminism, and in such case, whether it contributes to the ongoing production of commercial content based on the theory of the male gaze. The fundamental material of this work was one of several images from Bianca Ingrosso's company, CAIA Cosmetics, lipstick advertising campaign from 2019. The method was, basically, a semiotic image analysis, but with an extending, socio-semiotic ditto as a complement. Both methods have similarities and have components that go into each other, which made both of them, based on a qualitative analysis, play important roles for the final results. The analysis was carried out based on the following research question: How does postfeministic theory and commodified feminism relate to the chosen image from a socio-semiotic perspective? Through the main theories of postfeminism, commodified feminism and the theory of the male gaze, the chosen material was analyzed with links to, and in comparison, with, pornographic imagery. The outcome was ambiguous as the woman in the image, based on the application of presented theories, could be seen both as a passive object but also as an active subject. The power in the chosen image could thus be seen both as a feminin force based on postfeminist individualism, while it, at the same time, also can be interpreted as yet another case of objectification of women in commercial advertising.

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Seriemediet inkorporerar lingvistiska och ikoniska tecken för att uttrycka etiska, moraliska, sociala och politiska budskap, vilka kan slätas över av en underhållande och tilltalande form. Detta gör mediet lämpligt för en retorisk analys. Ett omdiskuterat ämne inom seriemediet är dess gestaltning av kvinnor, å ena sidan i form av stereotypa könsroller och underrepresentation av verkligt intressanta kvinnliga karaktärer, å andra sidan sexualiserande porträtteringar, våld och övergrepp. Denna uppsats undersöker hur våld mot kvinnor gestaltas i mötet mellan olika typer av bilder och texter i ett och samma serieförfattarskap. Undersökningen genomförs med hjälp av Roland Barthes ”Rhétorique de l’image” (1964) och teorin om the male gaze som Laura Mulvey diskuterar i artikeln ”Visual pleasure and narrative cinema” (1975). Analysen inspireras av en komparativ metod beskriven av Lennart Hellspong i Metoder för brukstextanalys (2001). Uppsatsen granskar utdrag ur Watchmen, Batman: The Killing Joke och The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen av Alan Moore, en av vår tids mest ansedda författare inom seriemediet, också känd för att porträttera våld mot kvinnliga karaktärer.  Uppsatsens påvisade en ambivalens i porträtterandet av våld mot kvinnor i utdragen ur Alan Moores graphic novels, samt behovet av att problematisera såväl Alan Moores serier som Laura Mulveys the male gaze, men också möjligheten att använda hennes och Barthes teorier inom retorikdiskursens och seriemediets ramar för att granska hur samspelet mellan bild och text kan uttrycka olika typer av budskap och attityder.