gender in social institutions: media
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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.