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REPRESENTATIONS:

The construction of gender in popular cultureMelanie Schllhammer

2001

The titles of the Little Miss/Mr. Men books sum up the notions of femininity

and masculinity expressed in the stories.

There are Little Miss Tidy and Mr.Messy,

Little Miss Wise and Mr. Clever,

Little Miss Tiny and Mr. Small, LittleMiss Shy and Mr. Brave.

Little Miss Busy and Mr. Busy seemed to be the first equal couple on thebookshelf (not taking into account the difference in marital status).

Only at first sight, though: Little Miss Busy is as busy as a bee cleaning

the house from top to bottom and then from bottom to top, just tomake sure; she even dusted the bread and polished the butter.

Mr. Busy does things ten times faster as ever you or I could and helives in a verybusy-looking house which hed built himself.

Little Miss Busy is diligent and dutiful; Mr. Busy is fast, productive and efficient.

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Key questions1. How do the contemporary

media represent women indifferent ways?

2. How does contemporaryrepresentation compare toprevious time periods?

3. What are the socialimplications of differentmedia representations ofwomen?

4. To what extent is humanidentity increasinglymediated?

How do your texts representwomen? What themes/narratives/ discourses areconstructed for this group?

Compare your text to past textsin terms of question 1.

What effect do theserepresentations have on theaudience? What effect do theyhave on society?

Is media increasingly importantin the way we understand ourown identity and the identity ofothers?

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Contemporary Representations of

Women

Examples from TV, including advertising

and music videos.

Can you come up with categories of

women?

How are they conveyed?

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Accuracy of representations?

Is it possible to be wholly accurate?

Does society have a view on accuracy in

the media and who monitors it?

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A film representation of a character consists

of at least 4 factors:

The character: gender, ethnicity, age, sexuality and look

The collective cultural background and views of theproducer/director/institution

The audiences reaction to / reading of the character

Where and when the representation takes place

How far can we trust the representation that is beingmade an accurate portrayal?

In whose interest is it that this representation be made?How do we relate to this representation?

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Stereotyping

The expression stereotype has acquired a negative meaning, but Walter

Lippmann sees stereotyping as a necessary and useful social process.

He distinguishes three major functions of stereotyping:

1. Ordering process: categorisations, generalisations and typificationsare instruments of societies to make sense of themselves. Suchorderings are partial, but not always untrue, because partialknowledge is not false knowledge, it is simply not absoluteknowledge.

2. Short cut: stereotypes work like signs, they are simple, striking andeasily grasped, but still carry complex information.

3. Reference: as a sign, a stereotype refers to something we know inreality and associate certain ideas with. In referring to reality, realityis interpreted. In this sense, stereotyping is a projection of values

onto the world. Stereotypes are therefore defined by their socialfunction.

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Melanie Schllhammer comments

I agree with Walter Lippmann in that stereotyping can beuseful in communication as an ordering process or ashortcut.

However, even though partial knowledge is not falseknowledge incomplete information can influence ourperception of a person or a social group as a whole andthus create a false impression, although the informationgiven might be true.

I do believe stereotypes not only express generalagreements about a group in society, but also influence

our ideas about this group. How we are seendeterminates in part how we are treated, how we treatothers is based on how we see them, such seeing comesfrom representation.

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Lessons learnt from Gauntlett

The abundance of images of men and women in

mass media:

Unlikely to have no impact on our own sense ofidentity

But also unlikely to have a direct effectwe dont

simply borrow or copy identities from the media

In which ways might these images influence ourown sense of identity?

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Lessons learnt from Gauntlett

What messages the media suggests tocontemporary audiences about gender?

What is the impact of those messages?

Role of the media in the formation andnegotiation of gender and sexual

identities? How we conduct ourselves is affected by

these messages and experiences/narratives

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Lessons learnt from Gauntlett

Media shows us situations and relationships

from other peoples point of view can hardly

fail to affect our own way of conducting

ourselves and our expectations (and

judgements) of other peoples behaviour. Domestic / romantic dramas?

Magazines?

Movie heroes? Images of attractive people?

How are we affected by each? (see page 3 of introduction)

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Lessons learnt from Gauntlett

Men and Women today?

What do we learn about the reality andchanging attitudes?

Conclusion: Other peoples expectationsget in the way of individual choices and

achievements.

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Lessons learnt from Gauntlett

What does he have to say about

femininity?

Not necessarily the state of being a

woman (unlike men?)

Being feminine: just one of theperformances that women can choose to

employ in everyday life

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Lessons learnt from Gauntlett

Traditional qualities of femininityredundant?

Passivity, reticence, assuming thatauthority figures are probably right andyoure probably wrong

BUT traditional ways of thinking are stillpresent

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Media

Peddling same old, unrealistic or unfair

stereotypes?

Or

enabler of ideas and meanings, promotingdiversity and difference, which might lead to

social change? (Fiske, 1989)

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Testing how these representations are

received

Stuart Halls encoding / decoding theory messages are interpreted (decoded) differently from preferred to

negotiated to oppositional reading.

How do women today respond to female

representations in the media?

How could you test effect on audiences?

Use previous slides to work out what women are likely to say in your research.

Lead qualitative and quantitative research. Focus on: HOW they feel they are

represented; How these messages might affect them or impact on their own

sense of identity Do they feel part of a collective identity of women etc

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Someones blog post about Women in Advertising (NOTE not muchevidence is given for all these claims!) Examples of some of theeffects on women from representations in adverts

The companies have a moral responsibility also in the society. Thesecommercials have a negative impact on the society and leads to problems faced

for the common woman. The majorill effect is the pressure on woman to getthose near-perfect bodies. They get so pressurized that they take the unhealthyway to reach the set goals. They develop eating disorders; their health getsaffected which may sometimes result in irreparable damages. And those whonever make it to that point, face humiliation and get taunted by everyone aroundthem. This results in depression and other long-term psychological diseases.

According to researches and surveys conducted, most of the women vow thatcommercials lower their self-confidence and they visualize themselves asunattractive due to the image being portrayed of the perfect woman in ads. InAmerica, seventy-five percent of healthy females think that they are over-weight.Half of the woman population are on some kind of diet program and nearly tenmillion women suffer from serious eating disorders. The weight of a fashionmodel is twenty three percent less than an average weighed ordinary woman.

After all this exposure, women viewers identify themselves as the weaker sex.Some think that males decide their self-worth. Over exposure of women as sexobjects have triggered cases of physical assault and rapes. Majority of thewomen are taking the wrong way to get those stick figures, which are results indiseases, sometimes leading to death. And most of this is attributed to theadvertisements that pour into the lives of innocent people everyday. Marketingethics should be built to raise the status of woman in the society and give them

the due respect but not degrade them.

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The Matter of Images,

Richard Dyer

Three main characteristics of contemporary media representation:

1. Representation is selective: individuals in the media areoften used to replace a group of people. One member of thisgroup then represents the whole social group.

2.Representation is culture-specific: representations arepresentations. The use of codes and conventions available ina culture shapes and restricts what can be said ... about anyaspect of reality in a given place, in a given society at a giventime.

3.Representation is subject to interpretation: although visualcodes are restricted by cultural convention, they do not havesingle determinate meanings. To a certain degree, theirmeaning is a matter of interpretation.

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Gender Roles?

The expression role suggests a distinction between behaviour and the

real person behind. Although Judith Butler describes gender as anartificially constructed identity, the artifice does not mask some othertruth...Our performance of gender is artifice in the sense that it iscreated by us and not natural. We create the illusion of genderthrough our performance, but this does not imply gender can bechanged like a dress. Although gender is constructed, it is aninternalised role that, as part of our identity, becomes second nature.

Identity is a complex structure rather than a single homogeneous unity,

shaped by the influence of childhood, family, age and generation, body,

nationality and culture.

These different identities are not always in conformity with each other. Forexample, ones cultural identity can differ from their ethnic identity.

Gender is one of many identities, but it is crucial because it relates tomost of the others. Gender, childhood and family are linked becausemembers of a family usually take on different gender roles.

The appearance of gender in a society varies in relation to religion, culture orethnic background, and of course our gender identity is closely related to ourphysical appearance, our body, and the norms and standards it is expectedto meet.