Chapter 11: Media by Bethany Legere

MediaBy Bethany Legere

Tuesday, April 29, 14

Chapter 11: Media

• This chapter explores the interactions between media and gender by examining what media is and how it works.

• This chapter also looks at the different types of gaze people are experiencing when exposed to media.

• This chapter also notes that whom media show, and who use which forms of media, is sexed and gendered, as well as raced and aged.

• Lastly, they look at the two examples of how media constructs sex and gender. Broad trends in media include the sexualization of women and the re-securing of men’s masculinity.

• This chapter helps to turn our critical gendered lens on the media we watch and use.


What is Media?

• Media function as culture industries as they convey messages that generate demand for specific products; media influence how people dress, what they eat, what they look like, the games they play, the music they listen to, and the entertainment they watch. Media convey these messages in two ways: first, in the message content of the television shows, magazine articles, news items, music, and movies and, second, in the advertising that surrounds these messages.

• Media are coming in a wide array of forms in contemporary U.S. society: prints, paintings, television, movies, radio, newspapers, comics, comix, novels, zines, magazines, CDs, MP3s, podcasts, video games, blogs, videos, and Tweets, to name just a few. This doesn’t include commercial ads and other commercial applicatios. A variety of forms and content exists, as well as different economic types, including mass advertising communication and specialized communication.


Media and Economics

• Media products often are made for commercial profit.

• “Commercial television is first an economic medium” (Budd, et al., 1990, p. 172).

• “Television programming’s ideological role is not incidental to its status as a commodity but, rather, is thoroughly implicated in it” (Dow, 1996, p. xix).

• Class matters. Shows are targeted at demographic that spends money.


Media’s Power Over Gender

• In a policy statement, the AMA explained, “Such alterations can contribute to unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image - especially among impressionable children and adolescents.

• Although media images are not real, the effects they have on people are.

• Female beauty is one example of media power over gender.


Reality is Our Perception

• Media create false consciousness, making people believe they exert control over what they view (and what they think about what they view) when in reality they have little or no control. Some studies argue that people do not consume media offerings mindlessly but instead actively and creatively engage with them, “using ‘guerilla’ tactics to reinterpret media texts to suit their own purposes”. These studies believe media message are polysemous, or open to a range of different interpretations at different times. Meaning is not determined by the media providers but created individually by each person.


Media and Hegemony

• Hegemony is “Leadership or predominant influence exercised by one nation over others, as in a confederation”.

• The concept of hegemony is particularly useful when discussing media power. One way the predominant social group can make its beliefs appear to be common sense is through media representations that shape the cognitive structures through which people perceive and evaluate social reality (Dow, 1996).

• Media maintain hegemonic understandings of gender even as they create gaps and fissures in representations of gender.

• Media power is somewhere between these two extremes; Hegemony and Polysemy


Media and Hegemony (continued)

• Media, as an institution, shape the cognitive structures through which people perceive and evaluate social reality.

• Media hegemony is not all-powerful. It needs to be maintained, repeated, reinforced, and modified in order to respond to, and overcome, forms that oppose it. Thus, “hegemony, rather than assuming an all powerful, closed text, presumes the possibility of resistance and opposition” (Dow, 1996, p.14).


Media Polyvalence and Oppositional Readings

• Celeste Condit (1989) argues that instead of polysemy (multitude of meanings) researchers should use polyvalence (or multitude of valuations): “Polyvalence occurs when audience members share understandings of the denotations of a text but disagree about the valuation of these denotations to such a degree that they produce notably different interpretations” (p. 106).

• Different resources exist for different people to engage in critical readings.

• Condit (1989) explains a rhetorical approach to media criticism: “mass media research should replace totalized theories of polysemy and audience power with interactive theories that assess audience reactions as part of the full communication process occurring in particular rhetorical configurations” (p. 104).


Media Polyvalence and Oppositional Readings (continued)

• A rhetorical approach reminds that “audiences are not free to make meanings at will from mass mediated texts” because “the ability of audiences to shape their own readings . . . is constrained by a variety of factors in any given rhetorical situation” including “access to oppositional codes . . . the repertoire of available texts” and the historical context (Condit, 1989, p. 103-4).

• Not everyone is “equally skilled in responding to persuasive messages with counter-messages” (Condit, 1989, p. 111). Even though people could view media in different ways, they tend to produce similar readings, and these similarities reveal things about identity, gender identity included.


The Gaze

• The Gaze refers to the process in which the media constructs gender differences.

• Media establishes these differences by portraying men and women as they would appear in a masculine world, or with men as the audience.

• This establishes men as “actors” and women as “watchers” (according to our text and John Berger). In other words, the roles of men in media are seen as the main subject almost, where their behaviors are more important than women’s. Women’s roles are more passive, where their presence is that of an object that men are behaving in response to. This is seen even when a woman is a main character.


The Gaze

• This picture above, of a Dolce&Gabbana advertisement, is a great example of the media portraying men as actors and women as watchers.

• The girl here is seen as submissive and under complete control of the guys around here. The guys are all looking down at here, creating a sense of power difference.

• This scene below, of a music video, can be seen in many popular music videos.

• Just the lack of action by the girl creates gender differences, as well as her being naked.

• On the other hand, the man is doing all of the actions and is fully clothed.


The Gaze• Another interesting part of the Gaze is that it applies to genders even when the

roles appear to be reversed, such as the female holding a large part in a plot.

• This image shows a few very famous female Disney characters. These characters were in films that feature a plot focused around a girl.

• However these plots treat the woman like an object still, mostly an object.


The Gaze

• Another interesting part of the Gaze is the difference gender makes in the same image. When an image of a female is looked at and then a male replaces the female in the same exact image or pose, the gender specifics of that image or pose can be seen.

• This small exercise can show how media can be so gender specific and biased, as they would have a female pose in one way, but would never consider a male to do so. Doing this would go against social expectations and constructs of gender, thus reinforcing the gender differences already present.


The Gaze

• This picture features three male superheroes (The Green Lantern, Batman, and Superman). These are very popular superheroes and are largely present in many childhoods.

• In this picture however, these superheroes are posing like Wonder Woman, a very popular female superhero. The outfits are similar to Wonder Woman, besides the color schemes, and the pose is kept the


Who is Represented in the Media?

• Women are underrepresented in U.S. media, regardless of the form. Representations of male characters far outnumber women in children’s books, news, television shows, film, and video games. Whites also outnumber people of color in media representations. Even in the realm of social media, where people produce as well as consume, representational differences emerge.

• Women are also underrepresented in entertainment media.

• Minorities are also underrepresented in the media.

• Women are underrepresented in U.S. media, regardless of the form. Representations

• Video games also underrepresent women and minorities.


Conclusion

• Media is something that influences our views and opinions on everything whether we think it does or not. In order to keep this from happening, we must talk back to the media that tries to influence us, and stand up for what we believe in. Rather than sit back and let the media influence us. Awareness of what we are exposed to unconsciously is what is needed to reject these gender constructs.

• Change in the way things are represented does not completely free us from the influence media has upon the society, but it is part of a larger scheme for social change. While the contents of media are a large part of media’s influenced, the way we interpret this content (consciously and unconsciously) also plays a large part it the media’s influence.


Sources

• hegemony. (n.d.). Dictionary.com. Retrieved April 30, 2014, from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hegemony?s=t

• . (n.d.). . Retrieved April 30, 2014, from http://mediasavvygirls.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/provoke00008.jpg

• . (n.d.). . Retrieved April 30, 2014, from http://phoebeyintingchan.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/dolce-gabbana-fashion-wallpapers-3-wallpaper.jpg

• . (n.d.). . Retrieved April 30, 2014, from http://margotmagowan.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/pose1.jpg

• DeFrancisco, V. P. (2014). Media. Gender in Communication: a critical introduction (). : SAGE Publications, Inc.

• Chapter 11: Media Notes and Chapter 11: Media Powerpoint


http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hegemony?s=t




http://mediasavvygirls.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/provoke00008.jpg




http://phoebeyintingchan.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/dolce-gabbana-fashion-wallpapers-3-wallpaper.jpg






http://margotmagowan.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/pose1.jpg




Education

Chapter 11: Media by Bethany Legere