Gender & Diversity in our Consumer Culture
Lecture 1: Introduction
Key Concepts:
- The social construct of gender
- Intersectionality
- Cultural studies approach to media – production, textual analysis, & audience perception
- Principles of media literacy
- The codes of gender – codes of femininity and masculinity (from the film)
Study Questions:
- Why do we study the media, in particular advertising?
- Why do we study how different people are represented differently in the media?
- What are the principles of media literacy?
- What is the goal of media literacy?
From the lecture
Our identity
- The ways we identify ourselves are shaped
- by our culture
- The images/representations surround us are part of our
- culture
- The images/representations shape our identity
- e.g., what to be a woman/
- man, of certain racial, sexual,
- class, national backgrounds
- Consumption practices shape our identity
Feminism
- Social/Political Movement
- to transform unequal power relations between
- women and men, also among women
- to bring about equality for all
women as change agents
gender as an entry point for analysis
Sex, Gender and Sexuality
- Sex
The categories of male and female. The Biological characteristics and of bodies placed in
these categories
, - Gender
The assignment of masculine and feminine characteristics to bodies in cultural contexts
- Sexuality
Human behavior classified or interpreted in
many different ways erotic, libido, heterosexual/homosexual, reproduction, desire, and
so on
Gender as an entry point of feminist
analyses
- a core facet of our identity
- process
- relational
Advertising as Cultural Pedagogy
- Teach us values, concepts of love and sexuality, of success and what is normal.
- Tell us who we are, who we should be, how we should treat each other
The Codes of Gender
- The codes of femininity
- The feminine touch
- The ritualization of subordination
- Lying down, the bashful knee bend, the head can’t
- Licensed withdrawal
- Infantilization
- The codes of masculinity
Gender as an entry point of feminist analyses
- Gender - Relational
- cannot be examined in isolation from other processes
- intersectionality
[definition] an integrative perspective that emphasizes the intersection of several processes,
like gender, race, socio economic class, sexuality, and nation, in historically, culturally specific
contexts
Central Principles in Media Literacy by Patricia Aufderheide
1. All media are constructions.
2. Media construct reality.
3. Audiences negotiate meaning in media.
4. Media have commercial implications.
5. Media contain ideological and value messages.
6. Media have social and political implications
,Representations
Marketing images, texts and sounds
- Media texts
- human made, socially constructed
- social constructionist approach
- NEVER reflect reality
- shape the ways in which we construct “reality”
- artifacts of a particular perspective
- value laden - political
Power
- Power shapes what representations we see and also do not see (inclusion/exclusion)
- Power relations - complex interactions between
- Power exerted by others on us
- Power we exercise upon ourselves to accept or resist the
- power exerted by others
- Media contain ideological and value messages
Inequality & Subordination
- Particular values and interests are embedded in media images, most often those of the
dominant group
- NOT all people and ideas are represented equally
- Inequalities and subordination are produced by privileging the values and interests of the
dominant group
A media literate questions
- Who created this message?
- Why?
- How and why did they choose what to include and what to leave out of this message?
- How is it intended to influence me?
- And more
Principles of Media Literacy – Stuart Hall
- Audiences negotiate meaning in media.
- Audience decoding
- how media is perceived by audiences may differ from the meanings encoded
- always multiple readings/interpretations
- KEY: Media literate - being able to produce alternative, oppositional meanings
The Codes of Gender
“to make what was invisible visible, so that we have a choice to make about how we want to
participate in the worlds we inhabit.” -> The main point of Goffman’s analysis summarized by Sut
Jhall
, The Goal of Media Literacy
- To help people become sophisticated citizens rather than sophisticated consumers
- to consider social construction of differences and its effects
- to resist media manipulation
- to appreciate and argue for alternatives to a dominant commercial media system
- A way of extending democracy
Lecture 2: Commodification of Gender and Otherness
Key Concepts:
- Commodity fetishism
- Commodification of gender & race
- Gender as commodity vs gender as process
- Eating the Other
- Imperialist nostalgia - an "imperialist" way of eating the Other
- The Jezebel Stereotype
Study Questions:
Willis
What does Willis mean by “gender as commodity”? Illustrate it with a concrete example from
your everyday life.
Why is “gender as commodity” problematic from Willis’s point of view?
Explain what Willis means by the following sentence: “Everything transforms but nothing
changes. This is a fitting motto for late twentieth-century capitalism, particularly as it is
embodied in the mass toy market” (p. 36).
Willis argues that the goal is to be able to recognize reciprocal social relationships in the act
of consumption (p. 34). How can this recognition support transformation of gender
relations? What strategies do you suggest to realize this goal?
How can consumption be a form of reciprocal social practice?
Hooks & Davis
- What does hooks mean by “eating the Other”? Pay attention to how Davis explains what it
means by using a concrete example.
Hooks means by “eating the other” that celebration of racial differences can become the
offering of the Other (where ‘the Other’ is portrayed as people with colour and different
race from white people). This “eating the Other” is one of many ways for the powerful to
assert their privilege. A concrete example of this is mentioned by Davis, the ‘black buddy’
movies where interracial friendships are portrayed, but are still holding on to the power
hierarchy.
- According to hooks and Davis, why is it problematic?
This is problematic due to exclusion, where power shapes what representations we, in this
case, do not see. Another problem is the denying of the events of the colonial past, where
