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“Media simply represent
collective identity, they don’t create it.” How far do you agree with this
statement? ”
The roles of family and where the genders fit within were
formed before the media. During the Victorian period there was this gender
divide as the men were forced to do hard labouring jobs, which left the women
to look after the children.
So in some aspects I do agree with the statement.
The media are very important when it comes
to relaying information as they can do it on a large scale which means people
are normally reading and seeing the same thing.
The conservative party promote a nuclear family where there are two
adults of different sexes and any number of children. The nuclear family
requires for the man to work and provide income for the family and the woman to
provide a nurturing side. All the way
from 1951-64 the UK had a conservative government. In 1952 there was an advert
by Schlitg for beer with the slogan “Don’t worry darling, you didn’t burn the
beer!” This sexist poster illustrates a patriarchal society as you can see the
man is dressed up for work whilst the woman is dressed to do housework. And the
slogan suggests it’s a woman’s job to cook. The advert also shows Gramsci’s hegemony
within the home as you can see the woman crying in fear, as she knows her place
in the home next to the man. These representations make me agree with the statement
as they are the identities that the government had wanted to place within the
family and so the media was building on something that was already there, not
creating it.
This collective identity was carried over into the 60s as
well with the Fairy Liquid adverts. The
Fairy Liquid advert of 1966 has a mother washing the dishes and explaining to
her daughter how Fairy Liquid keeps her hands as soft as her face. This links
to patriarchal society as the media was completely dominated by men at the time.
This too links to Gramsci’s theory of hegemony as it would have expressed the
interests of men, and men at the time found it desirable for their wives to
have soft skin as well as wash the dishes and being domesticated. The advert
also hinted at how mothers should be teaching her daughter how to be a good
domestic wife as well. This again does not show the media creating collective
identity but reinforcing the norms of the time and maintaining the status
quo. This links to Strinati’s quote, 1995 that women were 'usually
shown as being subordinate, passive, submissive and marginal, performing a
limited number of secondary and uninteresting tasks confined to their sexuality.
One thing that I would say the media have created as part of women’s collective identity is their sexualisation. The advert to the below links to Schroeder’s
theory, (1998) that the gazer is more powerful than the object of the gaze.
During the
60s however, women tried to push for equal rights within
employment, marital
relationships and sexual orientation. Women were now trying to challenge this
idea of patriarchal society but because of their limited influence not much, if
anything had changed. Even as recently as 2011 there was a huge gap between the
ratios of men and women in journalism. The Guardian reported, “The average percentage
of female reporters was 22.6% - compared to 77.4% of males –”
The Bosch washing machine advert in 2011 shows women
throughout the years and although the last image shows women on having
challenged the patriarchal society at work there is still patriarchal dominance
in the home. This shows the role of women changing because the media have changed the way women's role has been illustrated. However, this is down to the immense pressure from feminist groups and not a representation the media have created themselves.
In 2012 things did change with Ariel’s fairy liquid-tabs
adverts. The 2012 advert has a young man explaining that he has washed his shirt
to go out on a hot date. This shows a change in the patriarchal society as the
man is doing his own washing. However, the advert could also be supporting patriarchal
society as the young man refers them to ‘liquid-tab things’ as if he doesn’t really
know what they do because washing is not a manly activity. It also suggests
that once he gets a girlfriend she is the one who will be doing the washing.This could link to Gidden's theory of structuration as he has washed his shirt to look presentable for the date to partner her so he can reproduce the social norm where she will be doing his washing. Furthermore,
he refers to his date as ‘hot’ this links to Mulvey’s male gaze theory as it
express the needs of the man and the main emphasis on his date is that she is ‘hot.’
More recently we have seen the sexualisation of men in
adverts such as Calvin Klein, Gucci and Coke. The Diet Coke advert 2013, with
a young gardner spilling coke on himself so that he has to go topless, links to Miriam Hansen’s theory of the female gaze and
gender fuck. Following the norms of the
patriarchal society adverts and extracts in the media appeal to men’s needs but
here they appeal to women. This advert goes completely against the stereotypes
of men as they are shown as strong and dominant but in this advert he is at the
mercy of women as he is being objectified and sexualised for their needs.
This challenging of the stereotype could be as a result of the increase of women in the media. The Guardian reported in 2016 that the media was made up of '... 55% male.' This would have given women more influence in the material that was being produced.
