Postfeminism Perspectives in Female Portrayals within Peruvian Romantic Comedies Directed by Ani Alva

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-596-6_54How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Posfeminism; Romantic Comedies; Gender; Directors

Abstract

Romantic comedy is one of the most profitable and widely watched cinematic genres worldwide. It is characterized by depicting the pursuit of love through comedic situations, presenting this pursuit as the ultimate goal for everyone. This genre portrays models of masculinity and femininity, seeking to elicit an emotional response from the audience. In the postfeminist era, these narratives are transformed, reflecting social and cultural changes where women are more autonomous and have greater representation in society. With the emergence of more female directors, new narratives reframe the representation of women in Peruvian cinema. This trend, combined with postfeminism, promotes a new concept of empowerment, stripped of the political and transformative content of feminism. This article analyzes the representation of female characters in three romantic comedies directed by Peruvian director Ani Alva Helfer: No me digas solterona (2018), Medias hermanas (2021), and Soltera, casada, viuda y divorciada (2023). These films topped the national box office rankings in their release years and subsequently became available on streaming platforms. The research was conducted from an interpretive paradigm with a qualitative approach through a case study. A content analysis guide was applied to 21 selected scenes from the three films, and 10 female characters were analyzed. The main findings indicate that the new romantic comedies directed by women in Peru represent postfeminist attitudes of a sector of the population. The representation in these narratives only highlights issues affecting white, slim, heterosexual, urban, middle-class women from Lima who are sexual beings enjoying their freedom, having agency, rights, and autonomy. Despite experiencing social pressure from the persistence of traditional gender stereotypes, these characters do not question the patriarchal system, and their goals remain related to traditionally assigned female roles. Finally, this article contributes to the study of Peruvian audiovisual products from a gender perspective and opens new lines of research related to audiences to explore their impact on Peruvian female audiences.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Gonzalo Gutiérrez-Prado
AU  - Lorena T. Espinoza-Robles
AU  - Oscar. A. Aybar-Cabezudo
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/12/17
TI  - Postfeminism Perspectives in Female Portrayals within Peruvian Romantic Comedies Directed by Ani Alva
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Communication and Applied Technologies 2024 (ICOMTA 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 619
EP  - 629
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-596-6_54
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-596-6_54
ID  - Gutiérrez-Prado2024
ER  -