Men should have it all

“As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking”.

— Virginia Woolf, Orlando

In the beginning, babies and toddlers were usually dressed in white, and wore dresses regardless of their gender. In the XIX century, pastel colours started to arrive at stores as colours for baby clothing. In 1927, Time magazine published a chart with the colours appropriate for little girls and boys, according to several stores. Blue was a colour more suitable for girls, because it was a softer and calmer; while pink, considered a lighter shade of red, was more appropriate for boys because it showed more courage and bravery. Culture evolved and the same happened with colour preferences.

Today, a little boy who likes the colour pink, plays with dolls or likes Disney princess movies or My Little Pony is called a ‘fag’. A little girl who doesn’t like wearing dresses, plays football or enjoys watching Pressing Catch is called a ‘butch’. Everything in our society is gendered: toys, clothes, media products… Gender roles in our culture influence the ones portrayed in media, but media has the power to promote them… or promote a change.

Sex and gender

Sex refers to a biological aspect determined by our chromosomes. Gender is a social and cultural construction. ‘Masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ are constructed, and different signs associated with them. Because of that, gender is being studied as a practice. Judith Butler developed the gender performativity theory, according to which gender is a result of daily actions and attitudes. We don’t behave according to our assigned gender, but determine our own gender through performance.

This is especially relevant when it comes to understanding and recognising non-binary genders. In our western society there’s this conception of gender linked strictly to sex, thus recognising only women-femininity and men-masculinity. Anything that doesn’t fit in one of those little boxes is not understood, and that results in discrimination and bigotry.

Two women walk into a bar…

Gender studies entered the communication field during the second wave of feminism (1960’s). History was revised, stereotypes denounced and the promotion of equality in media representation and production started. Since then, it’s been over 50 years, but there’s still a long way ahead.

Let’s start simply with female presence in media. The Bechdel test is a simple three-rule test that identifies gender inequality. In order to pass this test, a movie has to:

1. Portray at least two women
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something besides a man

When looking for examples of contents that passed the Bechdel test, I immediately thought of many TV shows, but I found surprisingly difficult to list a few movies off the top of my head. TV shows are extended in time, and therefore develop more complex storylines and also more complex characters, so it’s not hard to find examples. But when I finally came up with movies that passed the Bechdel test, I didn’t find any movie in which creation (direction, production, writing…) hadn’t participated at least one woman: Harry Potter series, The Hunger Games series, Little Women, Brave… That’s one of the many reasons why it’s so important to have women in the creative process.

Virgin or whore

Now, onto representation. Although in advertising we can speak of objectified men (in underwear adverts, for example), women have always been more objectified and stereotyped. Men are often shown as strong, confident, dominant and successful (in regards to women too), while women are shown as… hot. If only we had a penny for every meaningless shot of a female butt or boobs we saw in any media content…

Actress Natalie Dormer said: “male writers — and I say this with all love and respect — often want to make a woman either the angel or the whore, make her the witch, or put her on the pedestal”. That’s, in my opinion, the perfect reflection of how women are usually treated in media and, sadly, often in real life too. This binary, oppositional representation originates characters like femme fatales, seductive women who use sex as a weapon and are punished at the end. One can easily see how this kind of representation promotes sexual repression.

Another interesting case is the ‘avenger’, a woman who gets raped and then seeks revenge. We get to see sexual violence twice, and female sexuality is once again considered dangerous A woman standing up to defend her own body and sexual freedom? Witchcraft!

Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, an example of a femme fatale. Source: http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/spettacoli/basic-instinct-stone-mi-hanno-fatto-togliere-mutandine-1038428.html

Thelma and Louise

This movie was criticised for bashing and degrading men. OK, I admit that setting that guy’s truck on fire was a bit too much. But actually I found this movie shockingly realistic. Women are catcalled like that (or worse) even nowadays. The way Thelma is treated by her husband is familiar to me too, I’ve witnessed (especially older men) expecting their wife or girlfriend to obey, stay quiet and fulfil all their wishes. And the fear of not being believed if they told the police thar Thelma was about to be raped… Things like “she was looking for it”, “she shouldn’t be dressed like that”, “she shouldn’t have drunk” and “boys will be boys” are still repeated nowadays.

On top of that, the fact that Louise’s boyfriend (or ex-boyfriend) was a good man, loved her and wanted to help her cannot be overlooked. Same goes for the policeman, he’s trying to do his job as well as he can, wants to protect the two women, and it’s obvious that he wouldn’t approve how Louise’s husband treats her.

So why was this movie actually uncomfortable to see for those who criticised it? Because it features two women in a movie genre usually related to men. Because it doesn’t submit to traditional gender roles or stereotypes. Because it shows women who think, act and make decisions for themselves (even if those aren’t always good decisions). Because instead of giving up, they do everything their own way, until the very end.

Iconic final scene of Thelma and Louise. Source: http://www.screeninsults.com/thelma-and-louise.php

Of MacGyver and mermaids

“I don’t want to imitate life in movies; I want to represent it. And in that representation you use the colours you feel, and sometimes they are fake colours”.

– Pedro Almodóvar

Continuing with the effects of media in the audience, now we’re going to see how media affects our cultural background. The term ‘cultural studies’ was coined by Richard Hoggart in 1964, with the creation of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham. Cultural studies aim to understand societies and their politics through the study of cultures.

Introduction to cultural studies

While at the very beginning the focus was on classical cultural forms, the ones linked to ‘elites’, popular culture soon started to prove its importance. Everyday life is also considered an essential part, since our daily actions contribute to shape our culture. A key factor to take into account is the context, and how social constructions (gender, race…) are showed in different contexts. Thus, the encoding and decoding model (by Stuart Hall) is frequently used to interpret the reactions to a certain content and its effect depending on the context.

Cultural studies add three new aspects: consumption as the main focus, an interest in the means of production and an approach that starts in the text and moves to the context. It’s essential to analyse power relations between media and audience, as well as hidden political structures within media and media content. This attention to structures implies that the means of production are as important as the media product itself: the ownership of a medium influences the audience. After all, different media have different agendas, each with their own political interests. This explains the especial interest of cultural studies for Hollywood; a multibillion industry, key for the US imperialism but which denies having any political purpose.

Source: http://culturalstudieslectures.blogspot.com.es/2012/03/lecture-eight-origins-of-cultural.html

Representation theory

Hollywood cinema is probably the most consumed in western society. Movies and TV shows in general represent reality, but are not reality. It’s materially impossible to represent all parts and aspects of reality, so when creating a content (audio-visual or not) the producers must choose which aspects to represent. They select the signs and the codes they’re going to use, and which of them will stay out of the product.

Representation has extremely important effects because, as was mentioned in the previous entry, when paradigms are repeated over and over again, they become normalised and people start taking them as reality. Therefore, media contents and representations constructed in them contribute to shape or reaffirm identities, ideas, prejudices…

This video shows how Basque people have been represented by Hollywood. We can see how they communicate using irrintzis (traditional screams used mostly in celebrations, to express joy), dance flamenco (an Andalusian dance) or are simply dumb South-American looking barbarians who can’t tell the difference between a geologist and a physicist, according to the always resourceful MacGyver. (Sorry the video is in Spanish).

It doesn’t surprise me that those are the stereotypes that have made it to the US. After all, flamenco and bullfighters are probably the most recognised, most exported cultural aspects of Spain. And there are a lot of good reasons why the Basque Country should appear in media (beautiful landscapes, Pre-Romanesque culture and language, wonderful gastronomy) but, sadly, the terrorist band ETA used to be the reason behind most media appearances.

I’ve been personally asked, by non-Basque Spanish people, questions as dumb as: “do they understand you when you speak in Spanish in the Basque Country?” (seriously? We were speaking in Spanish, they saw my parents speaking in Spanish all the time as well); or “do you know how to make a Molotov cocktail?” (we don’t have a subject about explosives and weapons in school, if that’s what they were asking). So, if people in my own country had internalised those stereotypes, how can I expect people in other countries not to?

From traditional tale to animation

Now, if I mention the little mermaid, what will probably come to your mind is a cute redhead named Ariel. In the original story by Hans Christian Andersen, the little mermaid wishes to gain an immortal soul like humans had. The love of the prince is the mains to obtain it, but is not clearly her main purpose. In the end, since the prince marries another girl and the little mermaid wants him to be happy, she throws herself into the sea. But, instead of turning into foam as expected, she becomes a “daughter of the air”, and will be able to obtain an immortal soul after three hundred years of traveling around the world spreading health and happiness.

In the Disney version, Ariel doesn’t want a soul. In this case, prince Eric becomes the object of desire (and, besides riding a boat to stab Ursula with it, he doesn’t do much in this film; which isn’t very common, truth be told). While Andersen’s mermaid was allowed to explore the world, Ariel is expected to be a good girl, behave and obey his father. Instead, she dreams of escaping this oppression and finding what she believes is her true love. One may wonder if being a princess on the surface is going to give her any more freedom that being an underwater princess, but oh well.

Source: http://www.deviantart.com/morelikethis/artists/397076939

Freedoms and desires apart, the most popular song of this movie, Under the sea, has been criticised for being racist. I had no idea about this before taking this class, for me it was just a happy and catchy song from a movie that, overall, I wasn’t very fond of. But looking at it now, from a more mature perspective (and knowing what to look for), it’s true that Sebastian’s accent (Jamaican in the original version, Cuban in the Spanish version) is a crucial part of the representation. The overall tone of the song, along with the accent, leads to think that there was an intention of the producers to imply that Jamaican people were lazy and always wanted to party; not to mention the reference of “the seaweed is always greener”. They could have chosen any accent for Sebastian, but they chose this one, and it’s naïve to believe that it was just a coincidence.

By the way, I can tell a geologist and a physicist apart: the first one would be looking at the ground, while the latter would be looking at the sky.

Power to the audience

“Speech belongs half to the speaker, half to the listener”

– Michel de Montaigne

So far we’ve seen how media has evolved and that it has an effect on public opinion. Now it’s time to explain how those effects are produced. That’s what audience studies do: analyse the relationship between media contents and their audience, and explain the process by which they have an impact on each other.

1920’s - 1950’s: passive audiences

One of the first theories was proposed by the Frankfurt School in the 1920’s, analysing the reaction towards Nazi propaganda; it was the effects theory. It was assumed that the audience was a passive mass, without individual distinctions, and media had an immediate effect on them. These researchers used a quantitative and positivist methodology for their studies. This theory was also called the hypodermic model, because it considered media like a drug that has an immediate effect on the consumer.

This was showed, for example, in advertising. Marketing techniques were simple and advertisements were quite straightforward and used simple slogans:

1920's advert. Source: http://www.artflakes.com/en/products/1920s-usa-31

As media evolved, audience studies evolved as well. In 1955, Paul Felix Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz published the book Personal Influence, in which they explained their theory of the two-step flow. This theory was developed through a study carried out during the presidential election of 1940. This model suggests that media has an effect on some “opinion leaders”, who then have an influence on people in their environment. Thus, the effects of media are mediated by these opinion leaders. Here the audience is not considered as a mass, but as an integration of several social groups, each influenced by their opinion leader.

Diagram of the two-step flow model. Source: https://kieshaboa.wordpress.com/audiences/audience-theories/two-step-flow-audience-theories/

1970’s: the awakening

In the 1970’s, theorists start to view audiences as active. Audiences have woken up and act with a purpose. According to the uses and gratifications theory, the audience is not a passive mass and each individual uses media with a certain aim. This theory focuses on psychological aspects of the individuals, but lacks from a socio-cultural perspective. The five types of needs that media gratifies are: be informed or educated, identify with characters, entertainment, enhance social interaction (not only social networks, but watching contents with family or friends and talking about them to other people) and escape from the stresses of daily life.

Stuart Hall developed the encoding and decoding theory in 1973. This model takes some aspects from previous communication theories. From the effects theory, it keeps the idea of mass media having the power to set agendas. From the uses and gratifications theory, it takes the perception of the audience as active, interpreting the contents and making meaning out of them; this avoids the individualisation and implements social and cultural constructions. From semiotics, it takes the conceptions of media messages as signs and symbols, which only get meaning through codes shared by the producers and the audience. 

Therefore, according to this theory media does have power (economic power, setting agendas), but audience takes over the interpretation. Individuals, influenced by their cultural and social contexts, can decode the messages in three ways. 

• Dominant reading: this would be interpretation wanted by the producers, the original intention of the message. The receptor agrees with the point of view of the message.
• Negotiated reading: this interpretation recognises the original intention, but agrees only to some extent and differs in some aspects.
• Oppositional reading: the message is rejected, or new meanings found. The message has effects that the producers weren't seeking.

One example of an oppositional reading is found regarding the song Over the rainbow, sang by Judy Garland in the movie The wizard of Oz. The song was interpreted by part of the audience as a gay hymn, the expression "friends of Dorothy" started to be used to refer to gay people (now LGBTQIA, to be fair), and Judy Garland herself became a gay icon!

'Friends of Dorothy' bridge club ad. Source: http://www.bridgeguys.com/Gay/online_bridge_players.html

I see the signs, they are everywhere!

 “No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words”.

– Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

Having learnt a bit of semiotics previously, concepts like sign, code, denotation or connotation were familiar to me. However, this course made us think about the effects of the interpretation of signs; how signs configure our reality and how we read reality.

Before starting the class, we were asked to identify as many signs as possible inside the classroom. Some things were easy: the emergency exit sign, the pilot that indicates the computer is on, the posters on the wall… But a classmate made a very interesting point: our clothes, our hairstyle, our movements tell other people how we are. We are walking signs.

Semiotics for beginners

Semiotics is, in short, the study of signs. A sign is the basic unit of meaning (for example, a letter), and a code is a system needed to interpret a sign (for example, a language). Signs have two levels: a signifier (the form of the sign) and a signified (the concept it represents).

We need signs and codes to communicate, and we automatically look for a meaning in everything we see or hear. But the naturalness with which we interpret signs often makes us not be conscious of that process of interpretation and start to think signs are reality. That’s where semiotics comes into the scene. David Chandler, lecturer in media studies at Aberystwyth University, explains in Semiotics for Beginners that semioticians –coming from fields like art, literature, anthropology and mass media– study aspects such as the relation of elements to each other, the significance that receivers attach to the signs within a text or the system of rules governing media texts.

For Chandler, the importance of semiotics relies on its capacity to help us understand that reality is not objective and independent of our interpretation. Reality is constructed and interpreted by us, humans, when we construct a message using certain signs and a certain medium and when we interpret other messages. We are the creators of meaning.

"La trahison des images (Ceci n'est pas une pipe)", René Magritte. Source: https://museumexhibitions.wordpress.com/tag/the-lovers/

Everything is a sign

As has been said before, we look for a meaning in everything we’re exposed to, we always try to understand the world around us. Therefore, what can be considered a sign? Anything that we interpret as having a meaning. It can be a denotative meaning, something objective that we all agree on. For example, we can say that red is a colour in our visible spectrum that has a wavelength of approximately 650 nm. Or we can interpret a denotative meaning, and say that the colour red represents love and passion, or blood and violence.

When interpreting signs, we create various levels of significance. A signifier and a signified create a sign (blue in the image below). That sign has a denotative meaning (green), that at the same time becomes a signifier of a greater meaning: connotation (yellow).

Diagram of connotation and denotation. Source: http://www.indiana.edu/~slavicgf/e103/class/2011_03_21/03_21.htm

It’s important to note, though, that signs are arbitrary. There’s nothing in the word ‘cat’ that automatically makes it the verbal representation of the animal. We simply agree that those three letters represent, in the English language, this domestic feline; we construct that verbal reality.

From the sign to the myth

But we don’t always interpret signs individually. Often we see groups of signs that are related to each other or that invoke each other, because of our cultural context. Those groups of signs are called paradigms. For example: soft, furry, small, independent, whiskers, paws… could be the paradigm of a cat.

When paradigms are repeated over and over again (in media, in society…) we might take them as reality. It’s not uncommon to link womanhood with concepts like beauty, delicateness, sensuality and quietness; or link manhood with strength, toughness, leadership, and action. But again, paradigms, just like signs, are not the reality, they’re constructed.

Some paradigms are so often told that they become myths. A pipe, a magnifying glass, a deerstalker cap, a violin… Do these elements sound familiar? Those signs are part of the myth of Sherlock Holmes. Black round ears, red pants, big yellow shoes? That would be Mickey Mouse. Myths are part of our culture and part of our reality. In fact, they’re so easily recognizable that they’re a common resource for marketing and media. But it’s important to remember that we are the ones with the power to create a myth out of only a bunch of signs.

Mickey Mouse as Sherlock Holmes. Source: http://wondersofdisney.yolasite.com/mickdetective.php