Media Alexis Albert

“…media compose a complex set of production and consumption practices.”

“…the distinction between mass culture and high culture [is] itself a cultural production.”

“…all media communicate understandings of gender, and gender influences all forms of mediated communication.”

“…popular culture mirrors industrial factory processes, creating

standardized goods for consumption.” **#culture industries

235

(**Definition: The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages.) Twitter.com

Gender is marketed as a

product from birth. Media

promotes gender as something

to be sold. Gender differences

are highlighted in order to sell

‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’.

“Media products are ephemeral.”

aka “You’re either in or

you’re out.” (Project Runway)

“…contradiction is one of the characteristics of institutions.”

[Media holds]“…absolute control over gender identities.”

236

She’s in

Are they?

“…people’s reluctance to consider media an institution is because of its relative youth.”

“…media corporations sell audiences as commodities to advertisers.” (Budd et al., 1990, p. 172) #media economics

“…understanding media is one way to understand how power, an element of media as an institution, manifests itself.”

237-8

Media are the basis of the

social construction of

gender: existing, past, and

future. Media are

influential over all areas

of one’s identity; it is not

limited to gender.

What is

masculine?

“…they provide models

of what it is to be

feminine or masculine.”

237-8

“Media exert how

people do gender.”

“…shape the cognitive structures through which people perceive and evaluate social reality.” #hegemony

“…maintain hegemonic understandings of gender even as they create gaps and fissures in representations of gender;…the vast majority of characters tend to abide by traditional gender/sex expectations.”

“…still meet feminine/masculine standards of attractiveness.”

239

…plays on hegemonic ideals.

…creates standardized norms.

[Media can] “…create false consciousness, making people believe they

exert control over what they view,” while simultaneously they can,

“actively and creatively engage with [people].”

“…people can resist media influence.” #critical media consumers

“…the range and richness of the possible meanings depend on the

ability of audiences to produce them.” #polysemous vs. polyvalence

240

Audiences do not all read into media in the same manner. Each

individual can interpret media messages differently.

“It is easy to ‘acquire the codes necessary for preferred readings’; however, ‘the acquisition of codes for negotiated or oppositional readings is more difficult and less common’ (Dow, 1996, p.13), and transforming those readings into political action is the most difficult and least common of all. Because the acquisition of such codes requires work, on consequence is, ‘the tendency of such burdens to silence viewers’ (Condit, 1989, p.109).”

240-1 Many people fall into

gender norms because

it is “easy”. To break

free from those norms

requires a critical view,

and often creates

hardship for the

individual who

chooses to do so.

“Media interact with the institution of gender as they provide

mechanisms through which representations of work, family, education

and religion are communicated.” #interlocking institutions

“…media messages of gender both constrain and enable, modeling for

people’s often-unobtainable ideals of attractiveness, while also

expanding people’s limited understandings of their locations in the

world. Perceptions of masculinity and femininity change across time, and

records of those changes are found in media representations that both

push and resist those changes.”

241-2

“…mediated images of beauty submerge racial and ethnic

differences between bodies such that all women are held to a

single standard attainable not only by very few women but

perhaps not by anyone, considering the degree of airbrushing

used in magazine images (Bordo, 1997).”

“…the charge that advertising presents women as sex objects is

not a universal phenomenon.” #oversexed America

242

Hegemony promotes beauty

ideals. Michelle Obama’s “white”

hairstyles provide an example of her

abiding by the cultural preference for

non-ethnic beauty standards.

“Body image pressure does not come from people of another sex and the media they peruse but from the media targeted at people of that sex.”

“Media representations are one location where hegemonic masculinity is identifiable particularly in relation to sports coverage.”

Five characteristics of U.S. hegemonic masculinity (arguably, white):

(1) It defines power in terms of physcial force and control.

(2) It is defined through occupational achievement.

(3) It is represented in terms of familial patriarchy, in which the man is the breadwinner.

(4) It is symbolized by the frontiersman and the outdoorsman.

(5) It is heterosexually defined.

242-3

“People want to participate in the socially sanctioned and

idealized notions of masculinity and femininity.

During Michael Jordan’s heyday as a professional athlete,

men wanted to ‘be like Mike.’ Now, they want to be like

Brad, Tiger, Jude and Sean.”

Remember? Media is ephemeral

243

Are these men still popular? Do other men aspire to be like

them? Do they appear masculine?

“Women and minorities are underrepresented in U.S. media; …the

situation is not any better globally.”

“Women’s and minorities absence in media, and presentations of women

as sex objects, may create the perception that they are not agents of

action, capable of commenting on and acting in the world.”

“Quite simply, the medium of television constructs gender as it provides

young people with ideas about what is normative and expected.”

244-5 Women in media,

when represented at

all, are represented in

opposition to men

“…media are best understood through a study of their

representations and hence tend to ignore the process of

production and the role of the audience.”

“…they tend to treat the audience as passive an universal; they

assume that all audiences respond to images similarly and are not

capable of counterhegemonic readings of media images.”

245

“…[media] assume that one can

distinguish between good and bad

representations; they tend not to

recognize that representations are

contradictory (e.g., an image can be

sexually liberating and sexually

objectifying at the same time).”

“Media do influences people’s beliefs

and behaviors.”

245 Whereas some may find these images

humorous, or even true, many others

would find them offensive. Media

creates these interpretations for

individuals.

“…women are gendered and raced as deserving or undeserving victims; …men are gendered and raced as perpetrators or saviors.”

“…media coverage tends to only offer a fragmented understanding.”

“…the relationship between sexual violence and hegemonic masculinity… misdirect[s] attention.”

There is a “lack of attention to intersectionality in most media studies.”

“…’national discourse may transform women’s bodies into the symbolic battlefield of virtual conflicts (Stables, 2003, p.109)’. Media position women’s bodies as in need of being saved and ‘American masculinity as chivalrous’ (p.103).”

“…vivid depictions of rape potentially repeat, commodify, or eroticize the trauma.”

245-8 Even in advertising, the positioning of women is usually

weak, subservient to men, or helpless. Men are more often

posed with strength and in dominant positions.

“…visual media gender the practice of watching, create a legitimating

gender ideology, influence gender identity, and structure audience

expectations” #Ways of Seeing

“…the way the body is positioned, whether in paintings or in

advertisements, employs a series of codes that audiences can read,

even though they may not be conscious that they are decoding.”

“…recent advertising images of men create gender tensions; ‘men are

not supposed to enjoy being surveyed period. It’s feminine to be on

display’ (Bordo, 1999, p.173).” #evolution in masculinity’s meaning

“…most magazine readers gleefully engage in the willing suspension of

disbelief, accepting pictures as perfect reflections of the models”

248-9

Many women compare themselves

to altered or re-touched images they

see depicted in media, though these

images represent implausible or

even impossible bodies.

“…the way woman in to be looked at [in film]… reinforces the male

as active and the female as passive; the cinematic gaze is male.”

“Mulvey’s theory is criticized because she identified a

single, universal gaze.”

“Not only can multiple gazes exist, but Brenda Cooper

(2000) argues that one can find a rejection of the

dominant male gaze even in mainstream Hollywood films.”

(e.g. “…Thelma and Louise (1991) encourages viewers to identify not

with the males on screen but with the female figures who actively

mocked and challenged patriarchal conventions… men tended to see

the film as an example of unjustified male bashing, and women

tended to see it as commentary on women’s marginalized social

position… male and female audiences readings were polyvalent.”

250-1

“…being able to read or watch against the grain requires being able to identify the grain, and for that we have the writings of Berger and Mulvey to thank.”

“Recognition of ways in which audiences are gendered/sexed and raced contributes importantly to one’s understanding of the sexed/gendered and raced content of mediated communication.” #oppositional gaze

“Media’s positioning of the audience is not determinative as long as audiences are conscious of the media’s attempt to position them.”

251 To overcome the gendered norms, we must first

realize and accept that they exist.

bell hooks challenges individuals to “‘interrogate their

perspective’; otherwise, ‘they may simply recreate the imperial

gaze- the look that seeks to dominate, subjugate, and colonize’”

This stance “encourage[s] those with privilege to recognize that

privilege; …one should ask to whom and for whom does this

media representation speak?”

251-2

“People are ‘culture makers as well as culture consumers’.”

“An institutional focus makes clear that even those choices considered the most personal are influenced by larger social forces.”

“Being critically conscious of the degree to which each person is enmeshed in culture also encourages one to be conscious of the inevitable contradictions produced by media.”

“…an oppositional gaze necessarily moves from social critique to political action.”

“…an oppositional gaze is conscious of the way in which contemporary media engage in commodification- the selling of cultural, sexual, or gender difference in a way that supports institutionalized discrimination.”

252-3

“…prejudice and institiutional racism are not one and the same” (Yousman, 1992, p.387).”

“…restrictive media forms can be used for liberatory purposes.”

“Madonna provides a classic example. Madonna is best understood ‘as a site of contradiction,’ where her gender play simultaneously challenges and reinforces gender roles’ (Hallstein, 1996, p.123).”

“Norms become unmarked.”

253-4

Madonna has long since filled an

androgynous role, representative

of “gender-bending”.

^ Norms such as using the word

‘nurse’, versus the term ‘male

nurse’. This is against the norm, so

it is clarified.

“…gender is constructed through media representations, and media representations of gender are always in flux.”

“…the borders of gender are continually resecured by media representations in response to this change.”

“…even progressive representations of gender can resecure traditional understandings of gender.”

“…new technologies tend to replicate old gender dynamics.”

254

“…masculinity is the subject matter because social

forces have destabilized masculinity.”

“Previously, ‘men didn’t need lifestyle magazines

because it was obvious what a man was, and what a

man should do…”

“…women’s magazines are about the construction of

femininity and contain locations for transgressive

readings of gender.”

“…a common, consistent message is presented: that a

woman’s self-worth is influenced by her looks, clothes,

and accessories.”

“…girls learned to use the mass media to acquire

the skills of ideal femininity (Durham, 1999, p.212).”

255-6

Men and women try to imitate

beauty ideals from media to be

“masculine” or “feminine”.

“One should not lose sight of the fact that commercial media are just that: commercial. They sell products to audiences and audiences to producers.”

“…contemporary media possess a much more complex view of gender, this does not mean that the complexity is uniformly accepted and welcomed.”

“…one can study masculinity not only by studying actual men but also by studying discourse about masculinity in popular culture.”

257-8 Media is hard to ignore. We often do not even

realize the power it holds over us.

“…most dominant media images reinforce the gender binary of

heteronormativity.”

“…even though the politics of media are regressive, most people take

pleasure in going to movies, reading novels, perusing magazines, and

surfing the web. The danger is not that people do these things but that

they often do them uncritically.”

“…institutional-level change is require, and heightened consciousness of

media images of women and men, masculinity and femininity.”

260-1 If we seek to overcome a gendered/sexed media, we must

know that media creates gender/sex in as much as

gender/sex creates media. We must establish a critical POV to

see through a non-gendered lens.