Gender representation in Moroccan media. The example of "Bissara Overdose"

Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Sociology - Media, Art, Music, Sultan Moulay Sliman University, course: Gender & Media, language: English, abstract: Media texts are constructions, conveying several meaningsEach media text contains intentions behind it ¿ for example to serve certain parties or agendas, to shed the light on minorities, and so on. A passive consumer of media will not be able to notice or realize the intentions behind media texts. Media texts include representations of people, thinks and ideas. It is wrong to consider representations as realities. Rather, producers select only aspects that are useful in achieving their objectives.

This paper is investigating how Hicham Lasri ironically represents gender in his web series in the same way Moroccan patriarchal discourse perceives it; his sense of irony and sarcasm exposes the defects of gender representation as well as gender perception in a Moroccan context. "Bissara Overdose" is selected as a sample. The reason behind selecting it is its impact on social media; the episodes were shared on several Facebook pages; the feedback was surprisingly positive for a patriarchal environment. Episode two of "Bissara Overdose" even won the price of best video in Maroc Web Awards 2017. "Bissara Overdose" is a text that aims at deconstructing gender stereotypes in gender representation.