Reading The Media- The Sociology Of Mass Communications
Reading The Media- The Sociology Of Mass Communications
Gender, Ethnicity and Sexuality and the Mass Communications Industries.
In the last paper I indicated that the mass communications industries have as commonplace piece of shorthand a particular stereotype of a homogeneous mainstream cultural imperative - "the British way of life", which is at the centre of the content of much of the popular media's content. Much has been written by many authors on the depiction of women in the mass media and the notion of a stereotyped version of femininity that is implicit in much of the content. That the mass communications industries contribute to a process of socialisation which gives explicit guides to how a young woman should behave has become part of the currency of all feminist analyses of the media and of much cultural analysis outside specifically feminist perspective.
That being said it is not in and of itself a "socialised femininity" that I wish to examine in today's lecture. The Influence of the mass media in constructing models of masculinity should be self evidently just as important. It is however, an almost completely neglected area of the discipline. That the portrayal of men has not attracted the interest of the media analyst does not however, attest to a stasis of imagery. The images of men presented by the mass media has changed over time and continues to do so in response to social change. The formal portraiture of the nineteenth century, a preserve of the upper levels of the working classes and above, is of interest in that a particular convention was followed almost universally in the industrial economies.
The patriarchal authority structure of the late Victorian family is directly reflected in the cliches and conventions of formal portrait photography.
The man is, in this convention, at the centre of the frame and by implication at the centre of the family. Other family members whether mother or child are shown to be peripheral and as Goffman puts it "backup support, somewhat in the manner of a chief lieutenant". ( E Goffman "Gender Advertisements" 1976 p40).
In the post war period in particular there has been a major change in the visual imagery that depicts men within the context of relationships in the family. This new convention of imagery is evident even from the depiction of children as they strive towards maturity. Within the context of the family boys are shown as having to struggle towards adulthood often in competition with the dominant male family member, the father, rather analogous to the known behaviour patterns of some of the lower primates particularly gorillas.
Although the image shown is drawn from an American magazine advertisement published in the seventies, the conflict and competition between father and son is also a cliche that is constantly referred to in family based situation comedies, films and soap operas. (For example the early episodes of Brookside, the films "Ordinary People" and "This Boy's Life" or almost any sitcom you have ever watched that includes a male child eg "The Upper hand").
In advertising the man has been displaced from centre stage and is often shown with a significant separation from the main family group. The purpose of this separation is undoubtedly connected to the ideology of the late twentieth century family and the father role within it. Men are presented with an image of parenthood that validates only certain behaviours within the family and a proscribed role - a role that demands competence, an ability to both protect and instruct and an expectation of the provision of financial rather than emotional support for the family members.
Women may be often presented as sex objects, but no more often or more explicitly that men are presented as salary objects - valued for what they earn rather than who they are. In advertisements the competent male is constantly validated and lauded, except in the domestic arena itself. In the domestic arena men are most often shown in situations that are beyond their ability to deal with- their competence is restricted to the world of work external to the home (The example in extremis of this is course the Frank Spencer character in the sitcom "Some Mothers Do Have 'Em").
The resurgence of mass unemployment in from the mid 1980s onwards resulted in the creation of an underclass in the UK of men who have, in the pages of the popular press and on television, "have lost not only their jobs but their role, and who are consequently violent and abusive and good for nothing except serial impregnation, leaving in their wake a trail of fatherless children." ("Is the male redundant now?" MELANIE PHILLIPS - The Guardian 26 June 1994).
At the present time, we seem to be witnessing the creation of a new stereotype and the demonisation of a particular lifestyle, legitimated curiously by much of the writing of feminism. In particular Bea Campbell has been vociferous in asserting a cultural change in the world of young men that is related to long term unemployment -"Campbell sees unemployment as unleashing and endorsing extreme forms of masculinity: `Unemployment reveals a mode of masculinity, whereas the commonsense notion has been that it causes a crisis of masculinity.' In particular, it is the trashy excesses of mass culture which fan their brutality, `surrounded by a macho propaganda more potent in its penetration of young men's hearts and minds than at any time in history - they were soaked in globally transmitted images and ideologies of butch and brutal solutions to life's difficulties.' In other words, unemployment does not fracture masculinity but rolls back the stops to unfettered expression of masculinity." (ROSALIND COWARD "Whipping boys" The Guardian 03 September 1994.)
Such an analysis "fits neatly into the feminist stereotype that All Men Are Bastards." ("Is the male redundant now?" MELANIE PHILLIPS - The Guardian 26 June 1994). As is common with many rigid stereotypes that are the day to day conventions of much of the mass media content there is also an element of racism, for while the "YOB" may be "a species of young, white, working-class male" (Coward). The serial father who impregnated rather nurtures is, it is asserted, even more common within a particular ethnic minority in the UK. The media created moral panic relating to single mother has spawned a directly racist element - "The latest moral panic to sweep Britain is that the welfare state corrupts by encouraging lone parents, who produce misfits and miscreants. The black community has been singled out as being out of control and prejudice is fuelled by men like black presenter Darcus Howe who has said, apparently without irony: 'I am a West Indian. That means I make children all the time'"(YASMIN ALIBHAI-BROWN "Call me Daddy" The Guardian 13 June 1994).
The moral panic can only work of course if the hegemony of the nuclear family is widely accepted, even if such a conceptualisation of the "normal family" is historically and culturally specific. Outside the modern period, and beyond contemporarily northern Europe and North America, the two adult residential kin group or "nuclear family" is not the most prevalent form of family living. Indeed the concept has a Eurocentric basis that has lead to accusations of racism at those who call for a return to "family values".
Underlying the demonisation of the yob, of any ethnic origin, is an assertion that they are inherently dangerous as a species and need to be civilised by marriage and family. If women have been restricted and oppressed by the narrowly defined family promulgated by the mass media, then it should be obvious that that restriction and oppression is not gender specific and just as radically affects men.
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