Mythologization of the woman and her image in the discourses of postmodern mass culture

• Main Author: Nataliia Novokshonova
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Publishing House "Grani" 2020-08-01
• Series: Granì
• Subjects: gender; mythologeme; visualization; consumerism; ideology; high culture
• Online Access: https://grani.org.ua/index.php/journal/article/view/1512

The intellectual context of the early 21st century, defining new topics and subjects of research, is de facto blurring the boundaries between high and low culture, emphasizing mass culture as a phenomenon that appears to be a means of seeking distractions in the real world. In the problematic field of postmodernism, mass culture represents how an ordinary person describes himself/herself as an individual in temporal and local dimensions. When contemporary culture represents a woman in the mainstream media, a woman is by definition the primary object of creating mythologemes, usually related to the goals of consumerism. Of great importance is that the illusory world created in the imagination deforms the existing world view in which femininity is still more often represented as a biological quality. The goal of the paper is an interdisciplinary analysis of the issues of gender mythologization in postmodern philosophy and culture. The above-mentioned demonstrates the need for applying the principles of systematic analysis with a focus on hermeneutical interpretation of texts of mass culture. It should be stressed that femininity and embodiment in their combination hold a specific place in the postmodern culture; the latter is vividly represented in all genres of mass culture: both in television shows and series (Netflix, HBO, NBC, MTV) and on the wide screen. This goes to prove the phenomenon of unprecedented visualization used in different genres of mass culture. On the presumption that the heroine of mass culture in the early 21st century is an artifact, the authors of feminine artifacts are continuing to use the dominant myths of patriarchal culture, with certain changes. Therefore for the emergence of new dynamics in the mythologization of femininity, it is important to disburden women of the fear of patriarchal masculinity. Today this problem is solved in the artistic field of mass culture in its highest echelon of gender myths and mythologemes (C. Buckley, A. Monro, M. Atwood, L. Moriarty et al.).