Lesson: Gender, Popular Culture and the Media

Lesson: Gender, Popular Culture and the Media SOC 86 Popular CultureRobert Wonser

Gender and the Media • According to the reflection hypothesis the media only give the pubic what it expects, wants, or demands. • In other words, the media content mirrors the behaviors and relationships, and values and norms most prevalent in society. Is the media’s reflection more like this or this?

However, far from passively reflecting culture, the media actively shape and create culture. • Ex: the nightly news – how much news can fit into 22 minutes?  they set the agenda for public opinion. “The way the media choose themes, structure the dialogue, and control the debate—a process which involves crucial omissions—is a major aspect of their influence.”

The Role of the Media • In addition to their role as definers of the important, the media are also the chief sources of information for most people, as well as the focus of their leisure activity. • Evidence indicates many media consumers (esp. heavy TV viewers) tend to uncritically accept media content as fact.

Symbolic Annihilation • Although there’s always intervening variables (e.g. kinds of shows, and behavior of real-life role models), the media do influence our worldview, including personal aspirations and expectations for achievements, as well as our perceptions of others. • Symbolic annihilation refers to the media’s traditional ignoring, trivializing or condemning of women.

The Male Gaze • The Male Gaze is the idea that women are portrayed in art, in advertising, and on screen from a man’s point of view, as objects to be looked at. • Fetishism of commodities takes on a whole new meaning

The Smurfette Principle • The tendency for works of fiction to have exactly one female amongst an ensemble of male characters, in spite of the fact that roughly one half of the population is female.

Speaking of Smurfette… What do all of these Smurfs have in common except one?

Should this be surprising when… The word ‘bacon’ is used more often than sexism and sexist?

Manic Pixie Dream Girl • The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) is a stock character type in films. Film critic Nathan Rabin, who coined the term after seeing Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown (2005), describes the MPDG as "that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures." • MPDGs are said to help their men without pursuing their own happiness, and such characters never grow up, thus their men never grow up. Lesson: Gender, Popular Culture and the Media

MPDG Lesson: Gender, Popular Culture and the Media

The Bechdel Test • Passes the test if: • 2 or more women in it who have names • they have to talk to each other • about something besides a man

Prominent Messages in TV • Women are less important than men. • Fewer women than men on prime-time TV (39% of all major characters) • Characters played by women tend to be younger and less mature than male characters and therefore less authoritative. • 65% of female prime-time characters are in their twenties and thirites12% are in their forties and 22% of male primetime characters are in their forties. • Young female characters are typically thin and physically attractive. • In general males are given more leeway in their appearance. 46% of women on TV compared with just 16% of men are thin or very thin.

Leading Men Age, But Their Love Interests Don’t Lesson: Gender, Popular Culture and the Media

Lesson: Gender, Popular Culture and the Media

Notice any pattern? Lesson: Gender, Popular Culture and the Media

Gender Messages on TV • There have been important changes in the portrayal of men and women in recent years. • Female: more likely (than before) to work outside the home, be strong and independent women who rely on themselves to solve problems. Shown interacting with other characters in an honest and direct way. • males: more likely to be shown as ideal husbands and do their share of housework. Even though they’re less likely to be shown doing it vs women (1-3% compared to 20-27%).

Portrayals of Women • Gender stereotypes still persist: Preoccupied with romantic relationships, shown on the job or not, defined by marital status or occupation, using romantic charm or force to get what they want. • Since the 1970s: the incorporation of women’s rights and gender equality themes, often presented from what could be considered a feminist perspective.

Women in TV and Family Films • A study, lead by sociologist Stacy L. Smith, analyzed 11,927 speaking roles on prime-time television programs aired in spring 2012, children's TV shows aired in 2011 and family films (rated G, PG, or PG-13) released between 2006 and 2011. Smith's team looked at female characters' occupations, attire, body size and whether they spoke or not.

The Results? • The team's data showed that on prime-time television, 44.3 percent of females were gainfully employed -- compared with 54.5 percent of males.

Women in TV and Family Films • Women across the board were more likely to be shown wearing sexy attire or exposing some skin, and body size trends were apparent: "Across both prime time and family films, teenaged females are the most likely to be depicted thin,“ • The ratio of men to women in STEM fields was 14.25 to 1 in family films and 5.4 to 1 on prime time TV.

Perhaps most telling are the percentages of speaking female characters in each media form: only 28.3 percent of characters in family films, 30.8 percent of characters in children's shows, and 38.9 percent of characters on prime time television were women.

What About Behind the Scenes? • Women comprised just 15 percent of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers and editors working on the top 250 domestic grossing films in 2007. A shocking 21 percent of films released in 2007 employed NO women in any of these roles. Zero films failed to employ a man in at least one of these roles.

Behind the Scenes • Women made up 26 percent of the creators, executive producers, producers, writers, directors, editors and directors of photography during the 2007-08 television primetime season.

Why are these statistics as they are?

What Girls and Boys See in Children’s Media • In television for kids, male characters appear at about twice the rate of female characters. • Animated programs in particular are more likely to portray male characters. • Females are almost four times as likely to be presented in sexy attire and twice as likely to be shown with a diminutive waist.

Children’s Media • In a study of G-rated films from 1990-2005, only 28 percent of the speaking characters (both live and animated) were female. • More than four out of five of the narrators were male. • Eighty-five percent of the characters were white.

Prominent Messages in Advertising: Body Clowning • Goffman: The ritualization of subordination in which women are portrayed in clowning and costume-like characters. • “the use of entire body as a playful gesticulative device, a sort of body clowning” is commonly used in advertisements to indicate lack of seriousness struck by a childlike pose (p. 50).

Clowning Then…

Clowning Now…

Charcot used the clowning to delegitimate so-called hysterical women, and Goffman saw such representations for what they are, a way to portray women as inferior, emotionally childlike, unserious. • Over 100 years later, images of clowning women are still used to reinforce gender discrimination and position females as inferior.

Women Laughing Alone with Salad • Because, why not? Lesson: Gender, Popular Culture and the Media

Photoshop The beauty secret used by all the top models? Fotoshop, by Adobe.

And What about Advertising? The ad on the left was the original ad. Complaints were made. The response? The ad on the right. Not quite sure they get it… Video about this ad Killing Us Softly 4 trailer

Lesson: Gender, Popular Culture and the Media