Eight
islander_girl
chapter_10.pptxThe Media as an Institution
A formal organization is a group of people who interact on a regular basis and have a set of explicit, written rules
Two different ways of approaching an investigation of gender and the media;
Investigate the structure of the formal orgs that are involved in the creation of media
Focus on media content and what people do with that content
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Gender of Media Organizations
In the world of advertising and marketing, women tend to face a glass ceiling and “higher ups” in media tend to be male
Screenwriters were historically women, but has transitioned to mostly male
Scheduling of TV shows tend to be based on gender assumptions, i.e.: soap operas
Market segmentation: a sales approach in which corporations divide a large and diverse market for a product into smaller segments based on characteristics like gender, class, and race -- creating many small, homogenous markets
Commodification: turning any object, idea, or behavior into something that can be bought and sold
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Media Power
Using gender in advertisements and marketing is powerful because they can tell us how to enact gender norms as well as reach consumers through the medium of core identity
Media power theory: describes the culture industry as a well oiled machine producing entertainment products in order to make a profit; culture is imposed onto people from the media
Culture industry: when culture ceases to be something that is made by “the people” rather, it becomes something that is imposed from above
False consciousness is an idea that comes from Marx’s theory of class relations; some institutions can exert enough power over the way people think to mislead them about the true state of affairs, and usually about relations of power in a society
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Audience Power
Audience power theory, on the other hand, says that the power to determine the popularity of any given media content lies in the hands of the people who are making informed decisions about what they like and what they don’t like
According the audience power theory we are not sheep, we are consumers capable of decoding and interpreting the media we see and hear to suit our own unique needs and lives then making decisions about whether that particular media is something in which we’d like to participate
Preferred meaning: production of media content takes place within a determining framework or power relations
Overspill of meaning: allows the possibility for viewers to create their own alternative or resistant meanings
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Facebook and Transgender
Facebook original started out without gender – “so and so changed their status”
This changed in 2008 due to the language barriers, in that most languages have gender, i.e. English has gendered pronouns “he, she”
However, transgendered people may not associate with the binary choice, so facebook made it so that gender can still be removed from a profile
The internet serves as a place to create one’s identity, but also makes it hard to escape gender in that often how we express ourselves on our profiles reveal our gender
Ex: women are much more likely to mention their boyfriends in their “about me” sections
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The Struggle Over Images
Much of the power of the media as an institution lies in the ability to create a particular vision of reality
Ex: how Arab people are depicted in the U.S.; or African American men
TV has a long history of depicting white working-class males as buffoons, or dumb, immature, and lacking in common sense, i.e. Homer Simpson
The intersectional approach to gender helps us see how these depictions show many different types of masculinity based on race or class
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Sexuality in the Media
“Sex” is the single most popular search term used on the Internet
Sexualization of women seems to be beginning at younger ages over the course of time
Midriff: a young women who intentionally uses her sexuality as a means of empowerment
Assumed connection between these images and actual behaviors of young women
Goth subculture shows that there are specific norms that allow women to be active in sexuality expression
Rules about spatial boundaries at Goth clubs
Goth women’s style of dress – tied to the safe space and being able to express their sexuality
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Soap Operas
Media power theory sees soaps as uncritically reflecting a status quo ideology about women’s subordinate place in society relative to men
Soaps propagate conservative messages about home, family and sexuality
John Fiske’s work shifted to how women see the stories and found that they often found pleasure in the disruption of the patriarchal status quo
Emphasizes a concern with how the audience and consumers of media make sense of the images – much more aligned with audience power theory
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Telenovela
Telenovela: serves as the ubiquitous soap opera equivalent, sharing soap operas’ emphasis on serial melodrama as well as the simultaneous popular success and critical disdain of soap operas, but often has a finite number of episodes
Telenovela de rupture: incorporates social and cultural issues in Latin America
Telenovela rosa: focuses on “heart-reading, tragic suffering” and portrays a fairly one-dimensional set of characters who are clearly good and evil
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Marianismo vs. Machismo
Marianismo is a cultural tradition of female superiority and the ability to endure suffering and self-sacrifice
Derives in part from the strong influence of Catholicism in Latin America and the ideal of spirituality and suffering portrayed by the image of the Virgin Mary
Machismo, on the other hand, is a cultural tradition of male dominance, particularly as it relates to matters of sexuality and family
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Masculinity and Video Games
The audience for the most violent games are primarily young men
Video games portray hypermasculine male characters and ultra feminine female characters
Kimmel finds that the games do not really have much effect, some research suggests agitation after playing but other research shows it is not maintained over time
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3 R’s of Video Games
Kimmel argues that video games reinforced:
Relaxation: an escape from the weight of adult demands and of the rules of social decorum
Revenge: against those who have usurped what you thought was yours
Restoration: gives a sense of control by giving the ability to decide what another person does, even if that person isn’t necessarily real
The last “R” of restoration is often seen as example of how video games allows men to feel they are restored to a state of power and privilege that they feel no longer exist in the real world
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Battle Over the Remote Control
Studies of TV watching behavior show the remote control as the “symbolic possession” of the men in the family
Men are generally less likely to combine their TV watching with other activities, while women treat it more as a social event
These differences often can help explain the dynamics of complaints men and women have about each other as TV watching partners
Among gay and lesbian pairs, one person still has main control, but find that there is a more conscious attempt to share
Walker notes that the power over the remote is an example of one way in which gender inequalities are acted out in daily life
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The Gender of Leisure
Leisure is generally seen by economists as the opposite of paid work, or what we do with our time when we’re not working jobs in the formal economy
Pure leisure: where the respondent records engaging in only leisure activities at that moment, with no secondary activities taking place
Contaminated leisure: when respondents combine one leisure activity with unpaid work activities, such as housework and childcare
Harried leisure: leisure that is widely distributed in short increments
Adult leisure: leisure spent purely in the company of adults
Family leisure: leisure spent with children
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