On Friday we watched a documentary called “The Codes of Gender” produced by the Media Education Foundation.
SUMMARY:
Sut Jhally explains sociologist, Erving Goffman’s groundbreaking analysis on how advertising gets us to think of images that are strange as “normative” in this film about gender as a ritualized cultural performance. Uncovering a remarkable pattern of gender specific poses, Jhally explores Goffman’s central claim that the way the body is displayed in advertising communicates normative ideas about masculinity and femininity. The film looks beyond advertising as a medium that simply sells products, and analyzes the gender focus on biological differences or issues of surface objectivity and beauty, to demonstrate the power these images have on us.
HIGHLIGHTS:
1. Codes of Femininity: Body Language such as “canting” puts the body off balance with the tilt of the head, sometimes in awkward positions. Women crossing a leg, bending a knee, holding the heel of their shoe, standing on one leg indicate her vulnerability, submissiveness and appeasement.
Posing women this way is sexually suggestive.When a woman is posed with her head completely back as if to howl, she is seen as giving into her helplessness.
“None of this (the images the film presented) is biological” said Jhally, “but rather messages about how femininity and masculinity are to be performed.”
Women are often shown psychologically “spaced out” indifferent to the world around them with their heads down, dazed, passed out or passive.
In contrast, men demonstrate their masculinity in media images as active, ready for action, in control and aware of their surroundings with their gaze fixed, jaws out, hands in pockets and arms crossed.
While women are shown drifting in their thoughts, men are shown anchored and protective. Boys have to push their way into manhood, girls and women have to merely “unfold”.
The film demonstrated how often women are shown in childlike ways dressing like their children in matching clothes, posed in fetal positions and putting their fingers in their mouths. By “infantilizing” women, power is being taken away from them. Another issue with advertising women more like children is that when adult women are equated with children, then children become equated with adult femininity. In turn younger girls, or younger women have such a sexed up image at such a young age they are already under the guided path to giving into what negative representation these images create for our culture.
Only when the “gender code” gets broke, does it become visible such as when men pose in the same way as women with bent knees, fingers in their mouths, looking over their shoulders, etc.
Example given: Women are often seen in the media hiding behind objects or snuggling into others or one another. In contrast, men are not shown snuggling into women or others, which shows a woman’s dependence on men.
2. Codes of Masculinity: Are defined simply through what masculinity is not. It is not what the culture defines as feminine. It is about being active, ready for action and in control standing upright, hands in pockets, arms folded, confident, waiting for whatever may come their way while gazing outward.
Breaking the masculine code might be with images of men crying, canting or touching themselves.
The media targets heterosexual men in the clothing market, yet the images being used to sell a product like jeans for instance can often times be homoerotic so women will often be used to assure heterosexual male viewers that there is nothing “gay” about the more objectified male models in the ads. (ie: Abercrombie & Fitch male models.)
3. Trapped in The Code:
Femininity has also emerged through the female action hero. Females play a larger role in action or suspense movies than they once use to.
Example given: the movie Charlie’s Angels. All three females have fight scenes where not only are they fighting off the enemy but they are wearing clothing to prove their femininity at the same time.
Female Athletes are also Trapped in the Code
Female athletes are prized for being at the top of their sport but they are also featured in magazines, modeling, promotion, and advertisements showcasing their femininity. In most cases, these athletes are wearing very provocative clothing or (in some cases what they are not wearing) to highlight that no matter how much toughness and masculinity their sport takes, they are still females first and foremost. (ie: Danica Patrick.. Her sport is race car driving. This type of sport is male dominated. She has won very prestigious races, but still poses for Sports Illustrated or GoDaddy with little to no clothing at all)
Trapped in Code Conclusion
a.) Action & Sports, more mannish than properly womanly
b.) Female athletes have to prove heterosexuality
4. History Power and Gender Display: Where do these images come from?
They are the same corpus of displays that already exist in the culture that become privileged.
We are conventionalizing what already exists in culture and concentrating & emphasizing our gender display in current day.
Our history of power: we analyzed and conceptualized with the past of oil paintings. It was known that ”men gaze and women present themselves to be gazed at”. The simple way each sex presents themselves in an image can set the tone for how each sex is perceived for all time. i.e. When the man is standing behind a woman with his arms draped over her it may be seen as sweet and endearing, but looking deeper it represents the man showing dominance and the woman being inferior to that man, the woman under that mans care.
Codes of Gender focused on the company GUESS and Co-founder Paul Marciano. His advertising campaign concentrated on displaying the culture of the West. Marciano was reported as saying ‘The West does not change, it’s assumed that women know their place.” Marciano is battling to bring back an era where women were fixtures and less likely to disagree. There is a strong link to Vargas Drawings where women were to be gazed upon. Marciano is quoted as saying “Real women aren’t as cooperative as real men”. This kind of advertising and message comes from the diluted world of Marciano’s imagination.
“The main point”, says Jhally “is to make what is invisible, visible.”
All images are authored by someone. No images are neutral or natural.”Our images are our reality” says Jhally “and to make what was invisible VISIBLE in the world in which we inhabit.”
What the power of the one looking does to the one being looked at as in the “watcher and the watched”.
What theory that we’ve discussed in class does the video relate to: Queer Theories
Performance : Humans generate identities, including gender; constantly performing through citationality. Gender is what you do, it is a constant performance. We often do it so naturally we forget it’s a performance.
Example: Performing the other sex is complicated. In class we discussed how there are many details such as: the way we walk, sit, and talk. The character ’Huck Fin’ was an example that we discussed to prove how small details become important when performing a specific gender.We also discussed drag shows; Dr. Kissling described a man at a drag show who was wearing a tight blue dress and how the man jokingly said “my penis hurts!” after a show.
Extra Resources:
Here is a link to the documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o9AYI79bb4
This link is to the Media Education Foundation
http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=238
This link below is a funny representation of how women and men have been viewed and are still viewed today. It doesn’t exactly play directly into the film we watched in class, but I still think the comments under each picture put a negative assumption as to what each woman and man are capable of doing and are supposed to do.
http://sadieamanda.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/i27m2bglad2b8bmp.jpg
These two links below are photos that fit directly into the film we watched in class. I listed them because it amazes me how easy it is to find photos that shape our gender roles in such an unequal opportunity. They are literally in front of us all the time, and I’ve never realized the message it sends out until this film helped me push past the poses.
Hi all,
I saw the few comments left on the notes page that I created and then I saw that most people were editing the other one that must have been created around the same time I made mine, so I went ahead and trashed the page I created and added to the other. Just wanted to let you all know in case you were wondering where the page I made went… -chelsea
Very nice notes, Group 3. Good job of hitting the highlights of the film without trying to cover the entire movie, and it looks like (almost) everyone contributed.