adamedia

SOME BACKGROUND THEORY (2735 – Magazines & Gender)
 

These notes are based on the discussion of ‘background debates’ in David Gauntlett’s book ‘Media, Gender and Identity (2002).
Please be aware that this is essential BACKGROUND theory. These theorists are not writing specifically about magazines. Instead, their theories have been used by commentators like Gauntlett to provide interesting alternative perspectives to issues like ‘Magazines and Gender.
Here is a link to the conclusion to his book:
http://theoryhead.com/gender/about.htm
 

Theodor Adorno (1903-69) was a member of the Frankfurt School for Social Research.
-         he explored the media as a an instrument of power. He referred to the mass media as the ‘culture industry’, a well-oiled machine producing entertainment products in order to make a profit
-         his main concern was the ‘passivity’ which media consumption brings to people’s lives
-         he believed that the media’s content encouraged conformity: ‘The power of the culture industry’s ideology is such that conformity has replaced consciousness’
-         Read more about Adorno at: http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-ador.htm
 

 

By contrast:
John Fiske in Understanding Popular Culture and Reading the Popular (both 1989) said that we can’t even talk about ‘the people’ or ‘the audience’ because a singular mass of consumers does not exist: there is only a range of different individuals with their own changing tastes and a ‘shifting set of social allegiances’ which may or may not relate to their social background, and which are complex and contradictory
-         most texts contain the ‘preferred’ meaning – the one intended by its producers – but also offer possibilities for consumers to create their own alternative or resistant readings
-         Fiske has been criticised for being too optimistic about the challenging consequences of people’s own unique readings of mainstream texts.
 

 

Social Learning Theory
-         includes the idea of ‘modelling’ – that we may imitate and take on behaviour which we observe in same-sex role models and ‘reinforcement’ – that behaviour which is socially approved-of will be well-received, and so we learn to continue and develop it, whereas socially inappropriate actions will not get a good reception and so will be cut from our repertoire
 

 

Laura Mulvey and the ‘male gaze’
The publication of Laura Mulvey’s article ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’ in 1975 had a huge impact. She argued that female viewers are compelled to take the viewpoint of the central (male) character, so that women are denied a viewpoint of their own and instead participate in the pleasure of men looking at women: ‘Men look at women; women watch themselves being looked at’….identification means she can be admired narcissistically, as an ideal version of the self. It is interesting to try to apply this theory to magazines.
Liesbet van Zoonen argued (against Mulvey) in 1994 that women could find their own pleasures in inevitably-sexist cinema.
 

 

Anthony Giddens (1938-), Modernity and Self-identity
Whilst earlier societies with a social order based firmly in tradition would provide individuals with (more or less) clearly defined roles, in post-traditional societies we have to work out our roles for ourselves.
The self is not something we are born with, and it is not fixed. Instead the self is reflexively made –thoughtfully constructed by the individual.
Advertising promotes the idea that products will help us to accent our individuality, but of course the market only offers us a certain range of goods. The project of the self is redirected, by the corporate world, into a set of shopping opportunities. Giddens sees this as a corruption of the, and a threat to the true quest for self.
Consumerism is one of the clearest ways in which we develop and project a lifestyle. ‘Lifestyle’ is not only about fancy jobs and conspicuous consumption, though; the term applies to wider choices, behaviours, and t(to greater or lesser degrees) attitudes and beliefs.
Giddens would argue that we borrow material from media (magazines for example) when shaping our narratives of the self.
Read more about Giddens at:
http://www.theory.org.uk/giddens4.htm
http://www.theory.org.uk/giddens5.htm
http://www.theory.org.uk/giddens6.htm
 

Stjepan Mestrovic has criticised Gidden’s belief in people’s own capacities – he sees people as rational agents, in control of their lives, who have the ability to evaluate received ideas and creatively bring shape to their own lives. To Mestrovic, this is too rational and excludes emotion and sentiment.
 

 

Michel Foucault (1927-1984) is a very important theorist, philosopher, historian etc.
In 1982 he said ‘The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning.’ He explored the individual’s own dynamic adaptation to their surroundings and the history of the different ways in our culture that humans develop knowledge about themselves.
Read more about Foucault at:http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-fou1.htm
 

 

Anne Cronin wrote an interesting article in 2000 called ‘Consumerism and “compulsory identity”’
-         as more and more messages tell us to ‘just be yourself’ or ‘espress yourself’, this ‘compulsory individuality’ takes women further and further away from truly being ‘an individual’.
 

 

Judith Butler (1990) asks whether feminism, in seeking to construct ‘the category of women as a coherent and stable subject’, might actually be performing ‘an unwitting regulation and reification of gender relations’. One of the initial ideas behind feminism was that we wanted a society where everyone was just treated as an equal person, without their sex making a difference. But by creating a binary ‘women versus men’ opposition, feminists were confirming the notion of women as a unique species – a notion which, in other contexts, would be seen as sexist. The assertion that women make up one united, oppressed group, then, has not enabled a realistic understanding of women (or others) in society.Read more about Butler at:
http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-butl.htm
http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-b-e1.htm
 

Finally, You should be confident in discussing effects and how the effects model has developed and been challenged by alternative models like ‘Uses and Gratifications’. For a good discussion/criticism of ‘effects’, take a look at:
http://www.theory.org.uk/effects.htm
http://www.theory.org.uk/effec-tg.htm