8 pages

Chapter 8

Pictures, porn and pop

The power of mediated communication and effects on our lives

· Hypodermic needle/ direct effects theory: viewed mass audience as passively and directly consuming mediated messages.

· Minimal effects model: argues that consumer were only minimally affected by mediated messages, and that they selectively exposed themselves to media messages and selectively retained those messages that reinforced or were consistent with behaviors, attitudes, and values they already heald.

· Uses and gratification theory: active users of media, consumers are motivated to use various media and what gains, rewards, or gratification they receive from such consumption. 

· Agenda setting research: media create pictures in our heads, proposed that media does not merely report, reflect, or dramatize what is important in society. They actually guide what we think is important. 

· Cultivation theory: suggest that media consumption, especially heavy TV viewing, leads individuals to perceive the world in ways that are consistent with television portrayals.

· Cultural studies: more interpretive and intuitive… “How media and cultures are died to the actual patterns of communication in daily life”

Advertising: Selling a product or selling sexism

· Courtney and Whipple produced a list of trends and female gender stereotypes prevalent in advertising

· Depicted as sex objects more often in sleepwear, underwear, and lingerie than in professional clothing

· Young girls and women portrayed as passive and in need of men’s help and protection

· Kitchen and bathroom product representatives

· Personal hygiene products

· Serving men and boys

· More depicted in family and home oriented roles than in professional roles

· Being obsessed with physical attractiveness

· Fear depictions of older women than older men

· Fewer depiction of minority women than men

· Fewer women than men advertising expensive luxury products

· Few in for sports

· Overtly critical of feminist rights and issues

· Women of color are presented poorly in quantity and quality of the roles.

· Slight shift in research

· Mager and Helgeson analyzed American magazine ads over a 50 year period, and found a trend “towards objective role portrayals of women daily equal to men”.

· Dove campaign

· Criticism that women in the campaign tended to be in good shape, none are extremely think or significantly overweight… and none are physically disabled.

· Commodity feminism: co-opting of feminists language and imagery in order to create an association between a product and the desire for women’s liberation.

· Women smoking as a sign of freedom, adventure and youthfulness, when in fact they products actually enslave, age, and ultimately kill people

· Ramno and himbo depictions: the image of men in advertising is either that os a solo conqueror of all he sees or a male bimbo. 

· Stud Corboy

· Jock who can perform in all sports

· Handyman, who can fix anything

· Young and hip

· Handsome ladie’s man

· Kind and grandfatherly

· Professional, knowledgeable

· Couch potato man

· Blue collor worker

· Androgynous

· Kid who needs a women to save him

· Dismemberment ads: where bodies are separated into parts or body parts are shown immersed in or emerging from inanimate objects… 

· Emphasizing women’s sexuality or vulnerability

· Fowler and Thomas (2015) found that

· Men were less likely to be depicted as leading characters in ads than in times past

· Male roles in ads became more congruent with changing gender roles in society

· Men as father

· Included more depiction of men with idealized physiques, counter to the trend in he U.S. culture of increasing male obesity

· But, ads that show men barely clothed with perfect bodies and everything can encourage men to think of themselves as sex obejects. 

Lessons from the small screen

· Convergence: merging of media content across various platforms

· Does the media merely reflect what is happening in society or actually creating the issues and trends that then become relevant in society…

· Some also believe it is just exaggerated portrayals and overly dramatized situations are nowhere near the realities of common life.

· Manipulated reality or constructed fiction

· Mock macho sitcom: television situation comedy with a central theme of mocking or making fun of a middle-aged man’s anxieties

· Playful Patriarch: male leading character in a sitcom who is typically a devoted husband and father, but who often admits he doesn't understand women.

· Heteronormative: they represent heterosexuality as the norm or predominant form of huan relations, even though gay friends, family members, and coworkers are now almost a staple of scripted tv

· Research indicate that a transgender person’s family relationships and family members’ reaction to the transition are critical to a successful process of identity reformation

Lessons from the bug screen: Film and Gender

· I was a better man with you, as a women, than I ever was as a man. I’ve just got to learn to do it without the dress”-Tootsies

The communicative power of pronography

· More women are victimnized than men in pornography

· Destructive and degrading pornography

· If you suppress women’s sexuality , you actually oppress them.

· Censoring sexual expression actually would do more harm than good to women’s rights and safety

· Some pornography is defineately bad

· Child pornography, toxic waste… 

· Hardcore pornography: depicts or describes intercourse and or other sexual practices

· Soft-core pornography: implied but not fully explicitly acted out on a screen or displayed. 

· Today pornography is so seamlessly integrated into popular culture that embarrassment or sureptitiousness is no longer part of the equation...they are instantly accessible and distinction between soft and hard may be meaningless. 

· Pornographic materials that depict male dominance and female degradation have been found to arouse male viewers

· Pornography consumption linked with en committing acts of sexual domination over women 

· Less likely to intervene as a bystander to stop an act of sexual violence

· Higher level of intention to rape.

· More likely to belive in rape myths

3. Women secretly desiring to be raped

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