MECO1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Laura Mulvey, Gloria Steinem, Me Too Movement
20 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
MECO1001
SEM 1 2018
MECO1001
Week 6 – Media Representation: Gender
Key Theories/Theorists/Readings
●‘Sexism Reloaded, or, it's Time to get Angry Again!’ - Rosalind Gill
●‘Exhibiting masculinity’ – Sean Nixon
Points
●Myth, discourse and ideology
oCan’t look at language in isolation → all about context and relation, it’s all
relative → what we bring to every act of cognition
oCulture is shared map of meaning making → understandings we arrive at
collectively that are constantly changing
o“Meaning is a social production, a practice. The world has to be made to
mean. Language and symbolization is the means by which meaning is
produced. This approach dethroned the referential notion of language, which
had sustained previous content analysis, where the meaning of a particular
term or sentence could be validated simply by looking at what, in the real
world, it referenced.” (Hall, 1982, p.67).
Encoding and Decoding
oStuart Hall agrees with Saussure and Barthes that meaning is a discursive
process operating within a language system or set of codes loaded with
ideological signification
oMeaning we bring to it + context asymmetrical exchange
oMedia institutions and texts they generate help us make sense of the world.
oSemiotics enables us to understand the sense-making process by which media
transmit messages to audiences
oLanguage is encoded by those with the means of production and decoded by
audiences – an asymmetrical process not a linear relationship
oHall is interested in how the media represent and misrepresent what they mean
rather than just reflect meanings
oProcesses of editing, selection, camera operation and arrangement important
aspects of encoding
Representation and Power
oSemiotics is part of post-structuralism, part of post-modernism all of white
reject the idea that there are inherent meanings or truths it is instead
constructed and relational
oIn post-structuralism the reader replaces the author in terms of primary focus
meaning is created not by the author but by the social influences upon the
reader
= definition
= quote
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
MECO1001
SEM 1 2018
oCritical Tradition critical theories investigate power structures and how they
are culturally constructions how power and agency is granted to some groups
and not to others, and whose interests are served because of those structures
Examples of post-structuralism: Marxism questioning who benefits
from owning the means of production, postcolonialism questioning
who benefitted from and continues to benefit from colonialism and
imperialism
“Foucault breaks with the semiotic approach, arguing discourses
themselves are the bearers of ‘subject-positions’ i.e. ‘specific positions
of agency and identity in relation to particular forms of knowledge and
practice’ (Nixon, 2013, p.300) Foucault supports an analysis of rules
and practices that define what is knowable i.e. ‘sayable’ at any specific
historical moment, later focusing on the role of institutions, experts and
professionals in controlling habits and actions of wider groups; thus
knowledge and representation is intrinsically linked to power.” (Hall,
1997)
Gender: Feminism and masculinity studies
oFundamentally it asks: who represents and who is represented power and
gender
oFramework to study the effect of gender structures + our experience of them in
all arenas of life
oCultural struggles in contemporary 1st world society (on femininity,
masculinity and feminism) many different forms of feminisms but they focus
on gender as a mechanism
oFeminism has led the way to the emergence of theories of sexual identities
(created a framework to address social construction of identities, power etc)
Intersectionality
The male gaze
oCoined by Laura Mulvey in 1975 claimed the mail gaze = dominant because
majority of media was produced by men
“[…] features of cinema viewing conditions facilitate the voyeuristic
process of objectification of female characters and also the narcissistic
process of identification with an ‘ideal ego’ seen on the screen’…’in
patriarchal society ‘pleasure in looking has been split between
active/male and passive/female” (Mulvey, 1992, p.27)
oCreates a power imbalance patriarchal status quo
oInvokes sexual politics of the gaze, suggests a sexualized way of looking,
empowers men and objectified women
oWoman is positioned as object whose own being is less important than her
being “framed” by male desire
oThe male gaze in media has normalized that viewpoint for society
= definition
= quote
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Sexism reloaded, or, it"s time to get angry again!" - rosalind gill. The world has to be made to mean. Language and symbolization is the means by which meaning is produced. Examples of post-structuralism: marxism questioning who benefits from owning the means of production, postcolonialism questioning who benefitted from and continues to benefit from colonialism and imperialism. The male gaze: coined by laura mulvey in 1975 claimed the mail gaze = dominant because majority of media was produced by men. Sem 1 2018: film has been called an instrument of the male gaze, producing representations of women, the good life, and sexual fantasy from a male point of view (schroeder, 1998, p. 208) The headless women of hollywood: points out how women are dehumanized and sexualized in media, female gaze: when men are headless" it is almost never in a passive manner. The bechdel test: a method of evaluation the portrayal of women in fiction be means of 3 rules:
