Representing Gender

Representing Gender

In this session I want to open out some of the questions and issues raised by the treatment of Gender in the media. Although there are a number of possible approaches to these issues (including questions about Men's versus Women's involvement in, and control of the Media and Media institutions - questions about men versus women producers, directors and executives) I want to concentrate on issues of Representation, how Gender is re-presented in media texts. Before we can go very far into these issues, however, we need to think about the concept of Gender, and how it differs from Sex, or the differences between Men and Women.

Sex, whether one is male or female, is essentially a question of biology and genetics; Gender is the cultural and social codes and conventions which are associated with either sex. One way of thinking about this is to think in the following terms: "Biology says 'It's a Boy!', and Gender says 'We'll buy the blue outfits, the train sets and the Action Men!". The distinction between 'Sex' and 'Gender' has become increasingly important as feminist and masculinist criticism have sought to question the orthodox and established conventional ways in which we are brought up to think of 'Men' and Women', arguing that the ideas and associations which surround, say, femininity are not issues of Biological determination, but rather of social and cultural convention. One might be born a woman or a man, but that need not mean necessarily that one is therefore born to be either a housewife/homemaker or a John Wayne/Clint Eastwood. Can you think of other ways in which (i) the difference between Sex and Gender can be explained or experienced, and (ii) the implications of the distinction between Sex and Gender can be seen.

In terms of recent critical thinking about Gender the Media has been seen to be a natural ground for raising these issues. This is for a number of reasons: (i) if 'maleness' and 'femaleness' are indeed socially and culturally defined, the Media is surely one obvious and powerful source of attitudes and ideas of what constitutes the two - this is not to say that the Media (especially film and television) produce these ideas and impose them on viewers, but certainly the Media circulates or redistributes these ideas in all sorts of ways and to all sorts of audiences; (ii), more abstractly, one of the technical approaches to Gender which has emerged in recent years, largely owing to the influence of French Structuralist theories of language and psychoanalysis, is that each of us, when we are born and "enter into" Culture and Language, become defined and acquire an identity as a result of the culture and language into which we are inscribed. This is more controversial, certainly in terms of implications, but one way to think about this process is to think of the significance of certain words, and the connotations they carry, and the reasons why feminists over the last twenty years or so have sought to question words like "Chairman", "Mankind", "History", "hysterical" or "housewife". Arguments about names and labels are, from this approach, not simply academic nit-picking, but part of wider arguments about the significance of names and labels for defining and identifying, and also limiting and differentiating. Continuing the argument, when each of us "enters" language we become defined by that language and, furthermore, when each of us enters a "culture" we become defined and identified through that culture. Media texts, and indeed all texts, offer us a parallel way of seeing this process of "inscription" in operation. If we think of the Julia Roberts character is Pretty Woman we have the example of a female character who, in the course of the film, has her identity presented, confirmed and then re-established in words or phrases: she begins the film as a "prostitute" ('hooker', 'tart', 'whore') but then is presented and represented in various contrasting ways through the film - "lady", "girl", "beautiful woman", "warm hearted and spontaneous person", "partner", "princess" and, of course, the "Pretty Woman" (i.e., not "Plain Woman" or "Ugly Woman") of the title. "She", of course, is not a real person at all: she is a character in a film, who is created out of, and lives within, the codes, images and sign system of the film itself, and its relationship to other films, other texts, etc. Another example, from a classic novel this time, Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, makes a similar point: Tess, as "woman" and character, is created and presented as "natural" "pure", "feminine", etc., within the terms of the novel (its words, ideas and attitudes) rather than being something or someone in her own right. Clearly, if character, identity and being is the result of the story in which one lives, then it follows that changing becomes an issue of changing the story.

These issues have become increasingly important in recent years as both men and women have been encouraged to question the stories (the assumptions, ideas and attitudes) which govern and determine what is 'Male' and what 'Female'. The Media's products (films, programmes, advertisements) have also proved to offer extremely fertile ground for recognising and questioning accepted and established images of femininity and masculinity, and also for proposing new or alternative ideas and attitudes. The rest of this session is designed to open out some of these ideas and representations, by focusing on particular issues and examples:

(i)

Essential 'Manliness' or 'Womanliness'. Think, for a moment, of what images come to mind when you think of the terms "essential man" or "essential woman". Advertisements can be useful for this exercise, as we shall see. What words, phrases or images come to mind when the terms are deployed in advertisements? Think about appearance, dress, hair, age, roles, images and associations,

(ii)

Natural Roles? Think of four films of your choice. In each of them, try to decide what the role of men and women within that film. What constitutes 'male' or 'female' heroism or courage. What motivates 'male' and 'female' characters? What rewards do 'male' and 'female' characters want and expect?

(iii)

"Femininity"? Select five examples, and consider the following propositions. To what extent would the five examples of your choice appear to agree with or to challenge these propositions. Remember, we are not interested in what you think of the propositions, but what each of the examples appears to say or infer about each proposition. Try also to think of how you would back up your judgments.

"a woman's role is essentially that of pleasing and catering for the needs of men"
"a woman's first duty is to her home and family"
"women have to be strong and courageous, but the nature of their strength and courage is different to the strength and courage of men"
"women are respected for their intellect and powers of reasoning"
"a woman alone is a woman incomplete"
"women are there for decoration, as objects for the attention and admiration of the male gaze"
"a woman can be friends with a woman, but she can rarely be friends with a man"
"a woman is naturally a mother and a wife"
"a woman can be respected firstly as a person, and secondly for being a woman"
"independence in a woman is a virtue"
"female sexuality is dangerous and destructive"

(iv)	"Masculinity". Now, the same exercise, but in relation to the following propositions, and using the same 5 media texts as those used for (iii) above. Remember, it's the films or programmes which we are concerned with, not your own attitudes and values:

"A man must be a hero or he is nothing"
"Woman needs man, every man must have his mate"
"A man is naturally a hunter, warrior and a protector"
"A man is there for decoration, as objects for the attention and admiration of the female gaze"
"A man's role is essentially that of pleasing and catering for the needs of women"
"Dependence in man is a evidence of a flawed character"
"Men must be vulnerable, compassionate, sympathetic and caring"
"Male sexuality is naturally predatorial"
"A man's first duty is to his wife and family"

These propositions are intended to be contentious (although not, I hope, offensive): they do offer a means of getting at the crucial and highly loaded questions which underpin ways in which the media deals with, and recirculates, social and cultural attitudes. You will certainly find, provided that your range of examples has been sufficiently wide, that there is are radical differences between individual films, programmes or advertisements, and certainly from a historical point of view, there are marked differences between the different versions of what it means to be male or female.

(v)

To conclude, I'd like you to think of one media example, and to consider how it treats (or, just as significantly, fails to treat) the following issues in terms of male and female characters: male friendship; female friendship; motherhood; fatherhood; being a brother; being a sister; competition and rivalry; the home; family life; sex and sexuality; hopes, dreams and aspirations; fears and nightmares; age and aging

In all of the above, please remember the following. In looking at the media (film, television, the press) we are trying to look critically not just at what each media text shows, and how it matches up to what we consider true and false, desirable or reprehensible. We are also concerned with how each media text presents, treats and constructs what it shows. Part of the "hidden agenda" for the tasks above is that we're trying to start thinking about how we back up our assessments and judgments about media products, what constitutes the "evidence" for the judgments we make. In other words, it's not simply what we are shown, but also how it is shown that concerns us, and what the effects and implications are of it having being shown one way rather than another. This means we have to think about matters of characterisation, plot and structure, image and iconography, themes, associations, point of view, narrative comments, musical background, camera angles, and the relationship between frames and sections.

Finally, some examples for you to consider: Rebecca, Double Indemnity, Tootsie, Superman, Carrie, Apollo 13, any James Bond movie, Ghost, The Piano, Sleeping Beauty, Brief Encounter, The Alamo, Thelma and Louise, The Sound of Music, When Harry Met Sally, Fatal Attraction, Dirty Harry, Terry and June, Keeping Up Appearances, Coronation Street, etc, etc.

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