Gender and Media

Representing, Producing, Consuming

Tonny Krijnen, Sofie Van Bauwel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000463583
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This thoroughly revised second edition provides a critical overview of the contemporary debates and discussions surrounding gender and mediated communication.

The book is divided into three parts: representing, producing, and consuming, with each section made up of three chapters. The first chapter of each section attempts to answer the most basic questions: 'Who is represented?', 'Who produces what?', and 'Who consumes what?'. The second chapter of each section draws attention to the complexity of the relationship between gender and media, concentrating on the 'why'. The third and final chapter of each section addresses the latest debates in the fields of media and gender, adding a vital layer of understanding of the topic at hand. Throughout, text boxes provide additional information on the most important concepts and topics, and exercises help bridge the gap between theory and everyday life media practices. The second edition has been updated in light of current developments with regard to gender, media technologies, and globalisation, including recent theoretical insights and examples.

This is an ideal textbook for students studying gender and media, and for general courses on gender studies, sociology, cultural studies, and women's studies.

Part I

Representing

DOI: 10.4324/9780429318474-2

Chapter 1

Who is represented?

DOI: 10.4324/9780429318474-3

Switching on the TV, we notice that RuPaul is not the only controversial character in terms of gender in popular media. Actress Jodie Whittaker as the thirteenth Doctor in Doctor Who (BBC); Grey’s Anatomy’s (ABC) Miranda Bailey, who is definitely female but displays a style of management that might be deemed masculine; Penny’s emphasised femininity featured in The Big Bang Theory (CBS); Nomi, a transgender character played by a transgender actress in Sense8 (Netflix); and many, many more, these are all examples of media representations that challenge gender norms in one way or another. While these examples suggest an enormous diversity in the representation of gender, there certainly are clear patterns to be distinguished that contradict this diversity. While none of the above characters’ gender (or sexuality) is a point of significant debate in the series featuring them, we see how Miranda Bailey is called “the Nazi” by her interns; how Penny is pictured as unintelligent and contrasted with the very intelligent, but highly unattractive character of Amy in the same series; and how Nomi is continuously rejected by her mother and needs to be saved by Will, a white, heterosexual male. These characters are then either ridiculed (e.g., Penny’s misunderstanding of the male protagonists’ work is a continuous source for jokes and puns) or even punished (calling someone a Nazi is a very negative statement, and a mother’s rejection is harsh). In this part, we will examine these and other patterns of representing gender in media. In Chapter 1, we present an overview of what representations actually are and what patterns we can distinguish in gender representations in different media types. In Chapter 2, we will address questions of what these patterns actually mean. In the last chapter of this part, Chapter 3, we will turn to complicating factors in contemporary gender representations.

Exercise – Bechdel-test

A fun example, and a quick test, of how to review gender representation in popular media is the so-called Bechdel-test. Designed by cartoonist Alison Bechdel, one of the characters in the comic Dykes to Watch Out For says she only watches movies if they meet three requirements. Since then, these requirements have been known as the Bechdel-test and form three easy steps to assess whether a medium provides us with a proper representation of women. Now think about your favourite movie or TV serial and answer the following questions:

1. Does it have at least two women in it?
2. Do they talk to each other?
3. Do they talk about something besides a man?

Of course, this test gives a simplified view on gender representations and it provides us with a normative view on what a good representation is. We return to the question of what is a ‘good representation’ in Chapter 2.

The representation of men and women, of masculinity and femininity, in media has been an important topic of feminist inquiries and academic research into media for over five decades. Realising that gender and its attached meanings are social constructs, feminist academics turned to analysing the representation of gender in the mass media as media were considered to be one of the sources in which meanings of gender were constructed. Even in contemporary academia, examining representations is a core business. In both cultural studies and more psychological approaches, a large body of work exists on gender representations in media. The notion of representation has a double meaning. On the one hand, representation refers to the representation of men and women in media, referring to questions that stress the disparity in the number of men and women present in media and the roles they fulfil. On the other hand, representation refers to the portrayal and imagining of gender, questioning how women and men are portrayed in media and the meanings attached to these portrayals. This dual meaning is routinely present in work on gender representations. Both meanings of representation relate to the premise that media representations have significant consequences for social, cultural, and political meanings of gender. A crucial question in debates regarding gender representation is how representations relate to reality. Stuart Hall (2013) distinguishes three categories of theories that attempt to answer this question: the reflective, the intentional, and the constructionist approaches. Academics, adhering to the reflective view on representation, postulate that the numbers of women and men present in media should mirror those in a given society. The intentional theorists promote a perspective that scrutinises what the producer of the representation wanted to say. Lastly, scholars that endorse a constructionist approach see representations as negotiations of meaning. From this point of view, the meaning of representation is not fixed in the representation itself; instead, it is co-created by its audience. Meanings are therefore dynamic. For example, the mother’s rejection of her former son Nomi’s gender can mean different things: a confirmation of one’s belief that being transgender is wrong and agreement with the mother; a feeling of discomfort with the mother’s demeaning remarks in combination with an understanding thereof; or anger at the mother’s cruelty towards her child and compassion for Nomi.

The reflective and constructionist views on representations are well researched (as we will show), while the intentional view is less common. The reason for the intentional approach’s unpopularity is that it poses a very arduous viewpoint; by scrutinising the content, the researcher concludes something about the producer(s) of that content without ever asking the producers themselves. In our view, research from the intentional approach leaves us with rather hollow and sometimes invalid results when only a content analysis is conducted – conversely, the reflective and constructionist views on representation each impact the kind of research conducted.

What are representations? – Different views, different research

Representation has a dual meaning. While the first representation refers to a numerical analysis of women’s and men’s presences in media, the second is more complex to understand. It involves the study of the ideologies of gender. Media are thus viewed as an arena for the struggle of cultural meanings. We might wonder how this works. How do representations of men and women relate to the cultural meanings of men and women in society? Stuart Hall, one of the most important cultural studies scholars on representations, formulates the relationship between representation and culture as follows:

To put it simply, culture is about ‘shared meanings’. Now, language is the privileged medium in which we ‘make sense’ of things, in which meaning is produced and exchanged. Meanings can only be shared through our common access to language. So language is central to meaning and culture and has always been regarded as the key repository of cultural values and meanings.

(Hall, Evans & Nixon, 2013: xvii)

Language, in this quotation as well as in this volume, is not understood as just the spoken and verbal words we use; instead, as Hall, Evans, and Nixon (2013) postulate, language uses signs and symbols to represent people, concepts, and ideas. Signs and symbols include, as well as words, images, musical tones, and even objects (p. xvii). Media products can thus be considered as texts communicating meanings. It is important to note that Hall speaks of shared meanings. As discussed in the introduction, media do not create meanings by themselves; the media industry and audiences are both a part of this construction.

Due to the dual understandings of the concept of representation, research on gender representations in media is manifold. We can distinguish different disciplines where psychoanalysis, semiotics, social psychology, and discourse analysis are the main approaches. Each discipline is marked by authors who did ground-breaking work in that particular discipline, a specific jargon – a set of theoretically laden words that refer to specific concepts, and a particular view on epistemological and ontological premises for research. Recently, we have seen more and more interdisciplinary studies on media and gender, combining insights from multiple disciplines. For example, Iwen’s (2015) study on the movie Shame combines Mulvey’s gaze theory (psychoanalysis) with Zizek’s ideas on desire and film and Foucault’s writings on sexuality (discourse analysis).

The first field, psychoanalysis, has its roots in film analysis. Using insights from authors such as Jacques Lacan, Laura Mulvey (1975) formulated the most important theoretical insights on gender and media: gaze theory. In her essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Mulvey discusses how a movie evokes the pleasure of looking at another person as an erotic object – called scopophilia. Movies then construct characters as objects for this pleasure, enabling a particular way of ‘looking at’ people, exercising the gaze. The gaze has the psychological effect that the object of this gaze loses some sense of autonomy upon realising that he or she is a visible object (Mulvey, 1975). Male characters in movies are more often bearers of the gaze, while female characters are more often subjected to it. Often this is formulated as ‘looking-at’ and ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ (Mulvey, 1975). Contemporary examples of the gaze are found aplenty, for example, in advertising. Look, for example, at these two stills from TV commercials for perfume (Figures 1.1, 1.2).

The male model – Mariano di Vaio (featuring in a commercial for K by Dolce & Gabbana) – looks straight at us, hence defying our attempt to make him the object of our pleasure. The female model – Charlize Theron (featuring in a commercial for J’adore by Dior) – looks away, offering us the chance to let our eyes wander over her body. One becomes an active subject by exercising the gaze, while, being submitted to it, one becomes the passive object. Women are presented as the ‘bearers of meanings’ and not as the ‘makers of meaning’ (cf. Gandolfi & Sciannamblo, 2019).

Recently, authors have explored the notion of women looking back at their audiences (cf. Albertson, 2018). Indeed, looking at Figures 1.3 and 1.4, we see both Charlize and Mariano addressing us.

Figure 1.1 Still from TV Commercial K by Dolce & Gabbana (2019)

Figure 1.2 Still from TV Commercial J'adore Dior the New Absolu (2018)

Figure 1.3 Still from TV Commercial K by Dolce & Gabbana (2019)

Figure 1.4 Still from TV Commercial J'adore Dior the New Absolu (2018)

Both are showing parts of their naked bodies, which might suggest a position of equity. Nevertheless, some differences challenge this idea. While Charlize’s mouth is slightly open, her eyes are half closed, her body is underwater, and the image suggests her being naked. She is not defying the onlooker but is inviting them to the sexual pleasure she has on offer. Mariano’s position is different. The open shirt offers a sneak peek at a well-defined muscular body, indicating physical strength. However, he invites no viewer; it is like he is glancing back after saying goodbye while continuing with his life (that, according to the commercial, takes place in Montepulciano – a town in Italy’s Tuscany). This ‘looking-at’ from females in ads and other media products should not automatically be equated with that of male protagonists (cf. Butkowski & Tajima, 2017).

Though Mulvey’s insights are still considered crucial for the study of gender representations and sometimes even described as the “Mulvey effect” (Pisters, 2011), her essay also received heavy criticism. The main points of criticism were directed at the strict gender binary Mulvey implies, the female audience’s position, and the heteronormative viewpoints. By positioning the male as active and the female as passive, Mulvey (1975) reconstructs and reifies the gender dichotomy leaving no space for active women or passive men. This dichotomy also has repercussions for audiences. From Mulvey’s point of view, female audience members cannot enjoy movies as their position is somewhat masochistic: they would be watching themselves being objectified. Finally, Mulvey’s (1975) ideas are exclusively heteronormative viewpoints. Sexual lust and desire only exist between men and women. In 1981 Mulvey (2009) replied with afterthoughts claiming that female viewers might oscillate between female- and male-coded viewing positions. This oscillation between viewing positions opens up space to negotiate spectatorship by gay, lesbian, and bisexual viewers. More of these negotiations will be explored in Part III.

The second field, semiotics, refers to a structuralist approach that concerns how signs work. Primarily derived from Ferdinand de Saussure’s work, semiotic analysis starts with an understanding of the sign as ‘dyadic’ or a two-part model of the sign. De Saussure (1983 [1972]) defined a sign as being composed of a ‘signifier’ – the form that the sign takes – and the ‘signified’ – the concept it represents. The sign is the whole that results from the association of the signifier with the signified. For example, the three-letter word CAT (the signifier) refers to a furry animal found in many homes (the signified). What is important is that the relationship between signifier and signified is unstable and arbitrary (we do not know, for ...