Media representations of body, gender and sexuality – an analysis of the TV Show Orange Is The New Black

Abstract

The media crosses, defines and completes our daily interactions. At school this has not been any different. However, due to lack of theoretical-practical appropriation and little didactic visibility, some media artifacts, when associated with the pedagogical aspect, can be negatively generalized as villains and cause of indiscipline. Starting from these ideas, as well as from our experiences in school, together with the assumption of some controversial issues / taboos in current discourses, this article will analyze the excerpts from the American series "Orange Is The New Black", accessed often by school-age youth and adolescents. In order to do so we will use the French Discourse Analysis (DA) for discussing how the themes sexuality, body and gender are represented in the series, besides analyzing how these representations can influence the construction of meanings about such themes. We will also try to verify if there is a possibility of learning from the media in the scope of Science Teaching, in a more contextualized approach to sex education. The series presents social contents, which can be discussed in the classroom for the study of cross-cutting themes, especially in relation to sexual education and in the themes sexuality, body and gender, in an alternative to the biological-hygienist approach, from other aspects such as human and sexual rights.

Keywords

• Mídias
• Sexualidade, Corpo e Gênero
• Educação Sexual
• Análise de Discurso.