Kevin Boyd

CMS 498

Introduction

• Media in the plural – no such thing as “the media”,

which assumes there is one controlling entity

– All media communicates gender, and gender influences all media

• Contradiction – Gender norms are reinforced, yet

at the same time people are allowed to work weaknesses in the norms and challenge assumptions

• Media provides recurrent story structures through which people understand who they are and where they fit into society

Economics

• Media messages are governed by economic processes

• Commercial television was the first economic medium

• Ads sell products to audiences, and in turn corporations sell audiences to advertisers

Power

• Influences all components of identity: gender, race, class, nationality, etc.

• The driving force of changing the norms of female beauty is media representations of beauty

• Media is simultaneously: – A commodity

– An art form

– An ideological forum for public discourse about social issues and social change

Hegemony

• Is not all powerful – Presumes possibility of resistance and opposition

– Must be maintained, repeated, reinforced, and modified to respond to and overcome forms which oppose it

• Maintains hegemonic understandings of gender while creating gaps and fissures in representations of gender – Characters who go against or challenge norms are

generally surrounded by characters who do not

– Characters who don’t meet gender norms are usually still attractive • Unattractive characters are generally characters who are “bad”

Hegemony cont’d

Theodor Adorno & the Frankfurt School

• Media has a hegemonic hold over people

• Media creates a false consciousness which allows people to thing they have control over what they view

John Fiske & cultural studies

• People don’t mindlessly consume media messages, but actively and creatively engage with them

• Media messages are polysemous (open to a range of different interpretations at different times)

– Individuals determine meaning of messages, not media

Polyvalence and Oppositional Readings

• Celeste Condit suggests using polyvalence (having a multitude of valuations) instead of polysemy

• Audience shares understanding of denotations, but disagrees about the valuations of the denotations

– Disagreements produce different interpretations

Interlocking Institutions

• Media are mechanisms through which other institutions (family, religion, work, education) are represented and constructed

• Media are resources for people’s sense of self and modes of expression

Differences Among Women

• Intersectionality is key

– Media socializes women towards femininity, but “the degree to which this message is internalized varies depending on factors such as race, nationality, and sexual orientation”

• Women are held to a standard of beauty attainable by very few, and possibly no one, considering the amount of editing used on images

Similarities Between Women and Men

Marketed to Women Marketed to Men

The ideal female body marketed to women is not the same as the ideal female body marketed to men

Similarities Between Women and Men

Marketed to Women Marketed to Men

The male body which is marketed to women is not the same as the male body marketed to men

U.S. (White) Hegemonic Masculinity in Mediated

Communication

Power = Physical

force/control

Defined through

occupational achievement

The man is the breadwinner of

the family

Symbolized by the

frontiersman and

outdoorsman

Heterosexually defined

Media Content and Media Effects

Media Content

• “[A]ttempts to quantify what is in mediated products.” (pg. 243) – Number of women and men

in TV programs

– Number of violent acts in children’s programming

– Number of sexually explicit acts in prime time

Media Effects

• Attempts to qualify the effects of the media content numbers – Does the relative absence of

women in programming influence perceptions of women’s credibility?

– Do violent acts in cartoons translate to children acting violently?

– Do sexually explicit acts increase the tendency for some men to rape?

Media Depictions of Rape

• Women are portrayed as victims (deserving or undeserving)

• Men are portrayed as perpetrators or saviors

• 1970’s TV focused stories about rape on the male protagonist seeking to avenge the rape, rather than the focusing on the female who experienced the rape

The Gaze(s)

Ways of Seeing • John Berger’s Ways of Seeing • From the Renaissance on, men

were presumed to be the viewer • The invention of the camera

changed how people see • Men act, women appear • Limits:

– The ways of looking are unique to Western art

– Predates changes in the way men’s bodies are presented in advertising

– Acting and appearing is a false duality, as women’s appearance involves a lot of action

– Generalizes how people look at art and how people look at each other

The Gaze • Laura Mulvey • Suggests the cinematic “gaze” is

male • Suggests cinema not only

reinforces a woman should be looked at, but also builds the way she is to be looked at

• Limits: – Identifies a single and universal

“gaze” – Assumes the media alone affects

the spectator, ignoring the spectator’s education, socialization, peer pressure, etc.

– Ignores intersectionality

An Oppositional Gaze

• bell hooks (1992) • In order to develop an

oppositional gaze and a critical consciousness, one must – “consider the perspective from

which we look, vigilantly asking ourselves who do we identify with, whose image do we love” (hooks)

– Recognize the degree to which one participates in culture

– Transition from “social critique” to “political action”

– Recognize the way which contemporary media engage in commodification