Who To Turn To*

Today, I read the final chapter and the conclusion in Media, Gender, and Identity: An Introduction by David Gauntlett. This chapter made a very interesting observation of the different role models that people have, especially children. The role models that Gauntlet mentioned were:

The ‘straightforward’ role model: a successful individual. Usually a well celebrated celebrity or a person of power.

The ‘triumph over different circumstances’ role model: someone who has went  against the odds to change the world.  

The ‘challenging stereotypes’ role model: a person who goes against stereotypes, even though those stereotypes have been placed on them.

The ‘wholesome’ role model: a person that parents want their children to look up to.

The ‘outsider’ role model: free thinkers as well as people that reject what society has told them to become.

The ‘family’ role model: either a person in one’s own family or a celebrity that is family focused.

  Gauntlet then went further to discuss how young girls look at Britney Spears as a role model. For example, we can look at the fact that she changed from a girl to a woman in the light of the media and how church groups would give her praise for boosting about how she wants to wait to have sex until marriage. Gauntlett then brings up that Britney Spears fans then turned away from her as she became more daring in her performances. I thought it was interesting that one of the quotes that Gauntlet mentioned talked about how one fan liked how Britney Spears matured as she grew up. I do wonder how her fans would think of her now: she is basically naked in her music videos and she had a mental breakdown a few years ago.

I decided that since Gauntlett discussed role models, I  would briefly share a two of my own. The first person I would like to mention is the director M. Night Shyamalan. Even though he is an Oscar nominated director and an okay screenplay writer, I feel that I look up to him for a different reason. I think that he is a really great director because his family is a strong influence on his life. First  of all, he has time for his children. For example, he goes to his children’s music concerts. In addition, most of his films were filmed near his house in Wayne, PA. The movie he is currently working on, The Last Airbender, is a show that his children really enjoy and the film Lady in the Water was based off of a bedtime story that he would tell his kids. I just find it very commendable for him to be such a family man because the value of family in the film industry seems to be slowly losing its importance. This is a perfect example of the ‘family’ role model given by Gauntlet.

I was actually upset by the fact that Gauntlett didn’t mention another type of role model: the fictional character. Sometimes an author can bring to life a character that people feel a strong connection with or to look up to. One of my role models, somehow on the opposite side of the spectrum of M. Night Shyamalan, is Howard Roark from the novel The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. There are a few attributes of his that I find admirable. I must confess that I am still working through the large novel, but there is something about him that I find intriguing. I hope to be the type of filmmaker that is as determined about film as Roark is about architecture. In other words, I want to be an artistic risk taker: I want to make movies that I want to make, even if that means I have to work as a production assistant, live in a cardboard box for a long time, and not become famous. I say that because the American film industry is going downhill. People in the industry are making movies that they know will make money. However, independent filmmakers are starting to step up and trying to make interesting new movies. I hope to join this revolution. I like to think that soon there will be the next New Wave in the film industry, the first since the 1960’s and 70’s. I feel that by having the same amount of passion for film that Roark has for architecture, I will be a part of it. Roark would be the ‘outsider’ role model in Gautlett’s list because he is a strong believer and advocate of freewill. 

        
    

The Many Levels to a Man.

            There are many different sides to a man. In today’s society, advertising and magazines have started to reach out more to the male community. Recently, I read the chapter in Media, Gender and Identity by Gauntlett titled "Men’s Magazines and Modern Male Identities". This section of the book took a very thorough look at different men’s magazine and assessed their views and assumptions. For example, the slowly popularizing magazine FHM may seem from its cover to be “women in bikinis”, but it actually is a male version of Cosmo. In other words, it tries addressing men on the topics of sex, relationships and humor. I also found it interesting how Gaunlett discussed Men’s Health Magazine. This part of the chapter caught my attention by describing the magazine as “The only magazine in this selection to regularly feature semi-naked men, instead of women, on the cover”(163). There was also a few interesting facts about Men’s Health such as its focus on the entire man and not just the physical attributes. For example, it contains articles about the male psyche as well as views and advice on relationships. Lastly, the chapter continues with the magazines focusing on men and the “fear” of commitment and male independence. This is very intriguing because it also mentions how “feminism used to criticize men for being too dependent on their female partners, sapping women’s energies by selfishly expecting women to tend to their emotional, sexual and domestic needs” (172). In other words, the magazines are projecting independence from women, while women are thinking that men are too dependent.

            Another article I read was Advertising and the Construction of Violent White Masculinity by Jackson Katz. Katz seems to focus on primarily white males having a violent portrayal in the media. He makes a very good argument that the definition of a rebel has changed from the past, such as James Dean and Marlon Brando, to the rage ridden individuals today. Katz also goes into great depth about how the rap artist Eminem has such an abusive and violent image. For example, the negative and vulgar things he says about his ex-wife Kim such as “Kim rot in pieces” (353). In addition, Katz briefly discusses the womanizing lyrics by artists such as Limp Bizkit and Kid Rock.  There was a section in this article that reminded me of the film Fight Club and its over arching message of not letting society tell you who you are. This is demonstrated when Katz talks about “boxer and football players appear in ads regularly, promoting products from underwear to deodorant. A Black-and-white photo of a young White Man in uncovered foot ball shoulder pads adorns some Abercrombie and Fitch advertising layouts. Like female ads, this image is telling men, in order to succeed, this is how one should act and look like” (356). For example, the image promotes “Real men can wear Clinique” (356).

            I also read an article titled The Commercializtion if Masculinities by John Beynon. Beynon goes into great detail about how there are different strands of man as time progresses. I found that the most interesting type of “New man” that he described was the “New man-as-Narcissist”. It is the a individual that is a consumer and out to prove something to the world. I find that a very good representation in the media of this man as well as the Yuppie type of man that Beynon mentions is (oddly enough) is the character Patrick Bateman in the novel American Psycho by Brent Easten Ellis. The character is very fashion focused where there are literally pages of detail of all the clothes that he is wearing. Beynon talks about this when he mentions “male retail outlets proliferated in the 1980s with designer clothes were amongst these outlets (203). In addition, the image of man and what a man was supposed to be in the 80s was highly discussed in the novel. According to Beynon, “the male form began to eroticized and objectified in ways that had previously been applied to the female body”(203). This is very well addressed by Ellis as his character pays a lot of attention to his body, especially his skin, feeling attractive and desirable. Lastly, Beyton mentions how there are two groups of masculine archetypes in the 1980s, The ostentatious city/Wall Street yuppie and the Old industrial man. I feel that Bateman would be the ostentatious City and Wall Street yuppie because he was selfish and determined to spend money. Even though Patrick Bateman is a fictional character, the concept of  man his role embodies is real and tangible in society.

Lara Croft and Buffy, Is There Anything Better?

           Finally, a girl does not have to be half naked to get respect in films!  The concept of sex sales is always regard as the way to make money in the film industry. However, sometimes sexiness can be the power a women possesses. As I read the article The Buffy Effect by Rachel Fugde, Fugde gives an insight of women taking on a stereotypical man’s role (When I say man, I mean the action star protagonist, the mocho action star). The article makes a few very good arguments about these roles. The first is that the writer decided to make the Buffy role because he felt that the blonde women stereotype that we see in horror movies were a bad portrayal.  For example, if usually is she enters a dark alley, we know they are most likely going to die. In result of that, the writer wanted to make a character that the audience cheers for when they are in a time of danger rather then a self-fulfilled prophecy. It is very coincidental that the lead character in the Buffy television series played the blonde victim in the film I Know What You Did Last Summer, the very stereotype they were trying to avoid. However, it is interesting the sacrifices that must be made in order for that to occur. Fudge talks about the description of the Buffy character that she must be physically attractive to make her marketable. She continues to say that what makes the audience relate more to this character is that she is still a member in society. In other words, she must still do her homework and go to class on top of killing vampires. 

I also have recently read an article called The Phenomenon of Lara Croft by Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, I really got to identify with this article because I played and owned the first three Tomb Raider video games in my teen years. Deuber-Mankowsky really brings into light how revolutional this character was. I remember reading in an article that the makers of the game wanted to have a female version of Indiana Jones. In addition, the makers of the game desired to conceive a character that men would care about and would bring in a female audience. That is why in the first Tomb Raider there is so much knowledge that is given out about the character such as blood type and birthday.The writer then continues to look at the progress of the character throughout the video games and the film. It literally got to the point of being a social phenomenon.The character Lara Croft also opened a lot of doors for female characters in video games. The example that really stands out to me is the Resident Evil series because at first it had a male character, the second game had both a female and male lead, and the third game had a lead women. In addition, the films have a women as a lead. The company that released the Resident Evil video game, Capcom, has since then release other games that are female leading, like DinoCrises.  It will be interesting to see how many female lead characters will be present twenty years from now. 

What are We Telling Young Women?

  There harsh effects on music listeners. According to Imani Perry in the article Who(se) Am I: The Identity and image of Women in Hip-Hop, the music industry has a strong grasp on the ideology of women. The article goes into great depth about how women are becoming viewed as objects in a male dominating culture. I couldn't agree more with this statement. It sickens me when I watch such degrading things on the television because women either become victims of the stereotype and it sets impossible expectations.

Music, mainly R&B, is slowly becoming more vulgar and shameful towards women. Through examples of Lil Kim and Missy Elliot, Perry was able to discuss how women are able to give into the stereotype as well as fight against it. In the article, the most interesting part was when the author compared the two versions of Lady Marmalade. The song was released under to different artist at two different time periods. The author went into great detail about how the original version by The Bluebells took more of a storytelling stance of a Creole prostitute walking the streets. However, the newer and more recent version sung by current pop sensations (Christian Aguilera, Mya, Pink and Lil Kim) took it to a different level by having the women singing about how they are the prostitutes on the street. The writer seemed upset that the producer of the song, unlike the older version, was a women.

I am very hesitant about the example I want to use but I do feel that it really does push what Perry is talking about to the most extreme level. I will not post the video on this site but will provide a link if you still wish to see it after reading. The song Cult 45 and Two Zigzags by the rap artist Afroman, is a song about smoking marijuana and sex with multiple partners. The songs lyrics go great detail about multiple sexual relationships that the singer has been through with women of every race and culture. In addition, he goes as far as each ethnicity of woman that he slept with that fits the stereotype. For example, having sex with a white woman who's father is in the KKK. I find the lyrics highly disturbing and embarrassing to listen to. In the article, Perry goes in to great detail about how women are shown in music videos as sexual objects and this video does not let down the reputation. The concept of the video is of a man waking up in a bed surrounded by women in very skimpy and scandalous clothing. In an article that I have also read, The More You Subtract, the More You Add by Jean Kilbourne, Kilbourne talks about how girls are victims to images that are portrayed in the media. I feel that her statement, “They [young girls] must be overtly sexy and attractive but essentially passive and virginal” (259) is demonstrated in the video because the girls in the video are literally walking prostitutes, there is an attempt to show them as experience with sex but also innocent. But what I really dislike about this video more so than the song is the fact that there is so much visual demonstration of sex but there is no visual representation of the drugs that he is talking about. This makes me wonder that is our culture really hitting the point where sex idealized then drugs. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xl7PVp4O2k

Source: Who(se) Am I: The Identity and image of Women in Hip-Hop by Imani Perry 

The More You Subtract, the More You Add by Jean Kilbourne

This is Not My Grandmother's World Anymore... (Warning: Somewhat Graphic Images)

I read today what I think is my favorite article out of all the articles that I have blogged about so far. It was called Inventing the Cosmo Girl: Class Identity and Girl Style American Dreams by Laurie Ouellett. This article took a look at woman who  reformated and revolutionized Cosmopolitan. First, Helen Gurley Brown started with a book called, Sex and the single Girl, and with the success of the book, she became an overnight celebrity. In her book , she goes in to great detail about controversial issues at that time such as premarital sex and dating tips. It also brought into light birth control, working and being independent from men (118). Now this helped her go the extra mile and produce more books about the topic until she bought Cosmopolitan and became editor-in-chief. The magazine then started to take on the topics that were brought up in Brown’s books. 

        After reading this article, I read another article, Sex, Lies, and Advertising by Gloria Stienem. I will be honest that I was not to happy about reading this article because being a college student, I have a test today in my advertising class and this article was a constant reminder :). 

The article is about Ms.( which I am presuming is a magazine) and the ads it would decide on but by offering ads that might apply to both men and women. One of the examples that they mention is car advertisements. I decided to go the extra step and look at two different advertisements for alcoholic beverages. I should warn you that some of these are pretty graphic but I deem important to use as examples. 

      The first one I would like to point out is the pregnant woman holding a beer. The message that this image is trying to convey it is OK for one to drink this beverage if one is pregnant. What I find quite interesting is that they are still in skimpy clothing. I would then raise the question of does this mean taking pride in woman’s body caring a child? This really makes me question who is this ad is aimed for. I think this may have upset many people in the time Brown was in charge of Cosmo because not what she is wearing but that she is not married (no wedding ring is visible). There is a series of ads with the same sort of image. 

The next image is the one that I am mostly embarrassed to post but that is also apart of the point that I will be trying to make. This picture is of a man naked with a bottle of vodka. I would guess that this ad does contain the sexual innuendo with the bottle. I would like to point out though that this sort of ad is very rare in today’s advertisements because it is usually women that are partially dressed to sell the item.  What is interesting is that in the Article Sex, Lies, and Advertisements, it is mentioned that liquor ads, not so much beer ads, are less stereotyping in their imagery (227). I am wondering is that I feel so immune to women in advertisements but when I see this ad, it shocks me. I am not a pervert in anyway as I write this but do you think that we are so conditioned to not be shocked as much, if at all, by women in ads anymore? I think so. 

Source: Inventing the Cosmo Girl: Class Identity and Girl Style American Dreams by Laurie Ouellett

Sex, Lies, and Advertising by Gloria Stienem

     

The Not So Dark Side of Feminism:

       Recently, I watched a film called The Monstrous Regiment of Women by Gunn Brothers. This very disturbing movie was making the argument that feminism is "unchristian". This was not very well depicted in the documentary because of the bias interviews and weak arguments. The first problem with this movie is it mostly interviewed women. Now, I do understand that it is about feminism but I feel it would be intriguing to see what the Christian male perspective would have been on the topic. The interviews do consist of some of the leading anti-feminist women but not too many leading feminist. This makes the film very bias in how the information is presented. Also, a majority of the interviews could have been just neighbors of the filmmakers. This creates a misinterpretation that the views that are being projected are of a majority of Christian women across the nation but it is mostly a few women in a small town in Texas. I personally feel that this film would have done a better job with promoting pro-life views rather than feminism.
      It was fully unnecessary to get into the topic of abortion in this documentary. I do understand the reason that they presented abortion was to show how women are made to carry children in their womb and take care of them and the household after birth. However, abortion is only a sub factor in that argument because it is just the concept of the child bearing. Sadly, this was the only section of the film that I found interesting through the overly graphic showing of a partial birth abortion and the interview with the former head of an abortion clinic. But here is a good example of how bias this documentary is because the only interviews that the filmmakers had against their argument of abortion was a man and woman that they found off the street and a doctor they happen to run in to. Overall, this documentary makes me want to become more of a feminist rather than supporting the ‘Christian’ view that it presents.