ILLU5060 - Gender & Identity

Gender & Identity Lecture Notes

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Defining Gender
Spectrum of identity, society defines gender roles & performative behaviour.
Sex & Gender
Sex

• Biological differences between men & women.
• Official documents – legal requirements etc.

Gender

• The cultural roles of masculinity & femininity.
• Not natural properties of men & women – but are social constructs.

Opening thoughts on gender

• Definitions of gender are specific to time and place.
• Gender roles change over time – reflect broader cultural change.
• Representations of gender: ideas on gender are reflected and explored within the media & wider visual culture.

Popular media is a vehicle where ideas on gender are explored & debated.
Non-binary or genderqueer is a spectrum of identities that are not exclusively masculine or feminine – identities that are outside the gender binary.
Transgender – gender identity does not correspond with a person’s assigned sex at birth.
Key debates on gender

• Gender & power structures
• Why do we use gender as the basis upon which to place discussions of identity?
• Essentialism vs. structuralism – are gender appropriate behaviours learned at an early age?
• Gender performance.
• What are the political, economic, scientific, and social elements that affect attitudes to gender?

Gender & representation

• How is gender represented in visual culture?
• Do representations in popular media reflect gender stereotypes, or prescribe them?
• Gendered body, cultural ideals?
• The relationship between gender & consumerism (Style magazines are the place to look).

Cultural patriarchy:

“GOOD GIRL” Typeface designed as a self-initiated response to the lack of female representation in the field of type design (Marion Bisserier)

Are gender appropriate behaviours learned/ performed at an early age? Do they merely reinforce natural tendencies, or are they prescriptive doctrine?
Gender as performance

• Gender as construct.
• Gender as a performative act.
• Socio-historical conditioning.
• Culturally anchored.
• Reiteration – sedimentation – perpetuation.

The Male Gaze – Laura Mulvey

• The male gaze is the act of representing women in visual media from a heterosexual male point of view – which reduces women to objects of male pleasure.
• Three perspectives –
  1. That of the man behind the camera.
  2. That of the characters within the film representation.
  3. That of the male viewer
• Women are depicted in a passive role.
• Men are the active observers in viewing the female from their perspective.

The spectacular male body – the female gaze

• Common trope in popular media

Letraset – type-foundry. Letraset art sheets (1966) featured representations of gender stereotypes of the time.
Evering Goffman: Gender Advertisements – analysis of ads in the late 1960s & early 1970s

• The ritual subordination of women.
• Gender roles – the power dynamic.
• The gendered body – display & negotiation.

The ritual subordination of women:

• Men pictured as assertive – decision makers
• Women in supportive roles.
• Men survey – men look at women
• Women are surveyed – women are to be observed

Gender Roles – The power dynamic:

• Men inhabit the world of paid work – bread winners.
• Women inhabit the world of the home – homemakers.
• Humorous/ Ironic depiction of men in the home.
• …

The Gendered body – display & negotiation

• Men’s bodies are shown as active & forceful.
• Women’s bodies are shown as passive & yielding.
• Men seen as reserved/ alert/ detached.
• Women are seen as emotionally outgoing.
• The feminine touch – women are depicted as tactile, conciliatory, emphasis on hand gestures.
• Women and licensed withdrawal – women allowed to dream and imagine.

Break Notes - The Tiger Who Came To Tea (1968)

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• Mother & Daughter in the home.
• All Mother’s imagined callers are male workers.
• Very accommodating to a giant bipedal tiger.
• Tiger is a black hole of consumption.
• Disturbingly accommodating to this uninvited guest that might be overstepping some boundaries.
• Tiger drains the entire water-table.
• Father returns – mother & daughter confide in him.
• Father offers a solution to their problem & they acquire more resources.
• Mother & daughter go shopping.
• Somehow preparing to accommodate the tiger again.
• The story seems to just happen to the mother & daughter, they are passive observers of the narrative.

Analysing Style Magazines

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​Are performative gender roles featured in popular media descriptive or prescriptive in nature?
“Style magazines can be seen as commercial sites of intensified femininity and masculinity.” – In The Culture Society: Art, Fashion, and Popular Music (Angela McRobbie 1999)
Key points to address:

• What can the analysis of style magazines tell us about modern gender roles?
• Are they progressive or regressive?
• Do style magazines accurately reflect real men & women?
• Do they propagate myths about femininity & masculinity?

Style Magazines: Context

• The magazine business: a saturated market – gradual move to online publication
• Categorisation of readers - by age, gender, relationship, status, disposable income
• Reader patterns – subscription, casual, second hand, cross gender
• Advertising – approx. 50% of costs of running a magazine are covered by advertisements, concealed advertising, advertorials.

Style Magazine: Themes

• Leisure vs. work – magazines occupy the world of leisure
• Status – focus on selling a future happier self
• Consumerism – gender identity linked with consumption
• Sexuality – normalise heterosexual relationships – attitudes to sex are constantly changing & being redefined.

“sex is a means of self-discovery, sex is the center of the relationship; sex is the step to other things; sex is always something that can be bettered or varied; sex is potentially a problem; sex is something you never can forget” 

GQ vs. Cosmopolitan Magazine Covers

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GQ

• Serifed typefaces, authority & heritage.
• Political content – big picture of the world being addressed, very serious business.
• Also, petty celebrity gossip & fashion content as an aside.
• Joe Biden – US president in a real-world location.
• Joe Biden with his hand in his pockets.
• Fancy Tuscan columns.
• Red & Blue bold colours.
• Suit & tie – traditional male uniform.
• Type contrast with image makes it harder to see & read.
• The lighting is a choice.

Cosmopolitan

• Model in ethereal void of pastel blue.
• Celebrity gossip – petty, inconsequential, vapid, content.
• Consumerist content – money, fashion, lifestyle.
• Sex.
• Type contours around model.
• Feminine hand pose.
• Traditionally female attire – dress.
• More pleasant visuals, type & colour contrasts are bold but easy to read.
• Professional, considered lighting for ideal photographic outcome.

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Cover design is an important factor in slaves – seen in context with other magazines
Magazine covers address anybody, they also claim to address individuals with specific needs
Content – emphasis on lifestyle, consumption, relationships, & body image.
Use of a model on both – signification of body language, the feminine touch.
Celebrity culture – celebrities as role models, associated status.
Commodification of gender – link between consumerism and gender identity is presented as the norm.
Direct Address – image & text addresses the reader directly.
Subjective terms – you/ your/ our has two meanings: recognise yourself, and recognise yourself as part of a group.
Men’s magazines: regressive argument

• Firmly heterosexual in content & outlook.
• Reinforce (outdated) patriarchal ideologies.
• Provide cynical or misogynistic depictions of sexuality, gender roles, and relationships.
• Provide unrealistic male role models or purely fictional identities.

Men’s magazines: progressive argument

• Postmodern texts full of irony, humour, & self-awareness
• Encourage dialogue & negotiation between men & women.
• Provide a cultural place for male identities to be explored, manipulated, and preserved.

Women’s Magazines: regressive argument

• Have a long history, more saturated & niche market.
• Link femininity & consumerism
• Are “schizophrenic” – constantly changing viewpoints on how women should be. Dissonant ideologies.
• Obscure deeper (patriarchal) social structure
• Moral ambiguity and cynicism towards relationships – replacing romance with sex.

Women’s Magazines: Progressive argument

• Response to contradictory feminist viewpoint – ie what sort of magazines should young women be reading?
• Readers are actually more knowing & discerning.
• Provide readers with a sense of community, comfort & pride in a mythic feminine identity.
• Women have the right to demand satisfaction in sex, work, and in other areas of life.
• “There is an energy and vitality in young women’s magazines, a self-confidence and openness to the world rather than a retreat from it.”

Style magazines are sites where gender is debated and explored.
They respond to changing gender roles.
Reflect changing attitudes towards sexual relations, relationships, consumerism, & work/ leisure patterns.
Diminishing male power structures.

Review Of Laura Mulvey's Visual Pleasure & Narrative Cinema (1973)

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Visual Pleasure & Narrative Cinema

I. Introduction

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• The Analysis Framework used: Psychoanalysis - Bias towards Nurture (environmentally learned behaviours) as oppose to Nature (inherited traits & tendencies).
• Subject: Male power structures within cinema.
• Women’s displayed powerlessness creates men’s power.
• Freudian relationships discussed. (It is my opinion is that Freudian psychology has very little merit & his pseudo-deification within the field of psychology is an insidious blight that will never be removed. The man cherry-picked his data to support his already established theories, dismissed any evidence to the contrary and doggedly chased the questions to answers he already decided. A series of curated case-studies & anecdotes does not a scientific method make. /Freud rant.)
• Women proposed to be vessels of meaning rather than sources of it within a patriarchal society.
• Freudian psychological basis for discussing gender, sex, & relationships (Overemphasis on subconscious lust permeating every facet of life).
• Unconscious coding is imprinted upon members of society, cinema is purported to be an important part of that societal imprinting of ideologies upon the individual.
• Cinema both describes culture, and prescribes it.
• Alternative, amateur, cinema allows for the production of Work that challenges the current societal zeitgeist.
• Alternative cinema, by definition, only exists as a response to mainstream cinema.
• Mainstream cinema is responsible for imprinting an erotic language into the patriarchal culture of the day.
• Cinema, within the patriarchal society, creates a fantastical experience of vicarious pleasure for its male viewership.

II. Pleasure In Looking/ Fascination With The Human Form

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• Cinema allows the audience to experience Voyeuristic fantasies & appropriate the performance of actors.
• There is an erotic pleasure in witnessing.
• Transforming others by objectifying them through this voyeuristic erotic fantasy is the source of pleasure, transcending the physical.
• The presentation of cinema, dulling the perspective of reality via dark theatres, enhance the voyeuristic aspect of viewing.
• Voyeuristic pleasure is derived from the recognition of oneself & the desire to be more, this is satisfied by the projection of the self beyond the physical body onto that which one witnesses. That projection extends to ownership of that which is viewed.
• This narcissistic projection is exploited in cinema.

III. Woman As Image, Man As Bearer Of The Look

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• Under the male gaze women are presented to be passive objects of sexual pleasure
• Within cinema, the woman’s role is to be a catalyst for male spectacle. The value of a woman is that only which she may evoke within a man, she alone is worthless.
• Women are presented as an erotic object for characters within the story, and as erotic objects for the viewership.
• As a man is reticent to explore his exhibitionism & objectification in the eyes of another, the male role within cinema is to form agency, and progress the narrative.
• The male spectacle is that of action, that which a man is able to impose his will over, control & domination.
• Women are presented as objects for men to acquire within the narrative of a story, their sexual allure is played up until the male protagonist has acquired them.
• Men must objectify women to resolve an inherent fear within themselves, to control women is to control that fear.

The dissonance caused by using Freudian psychology, which paradoxically flips between Nature & Nurture as the primary driving force on psychological development, as the primary lens in which to view this subject matter detracts from any coherent point being made.
I believe this article's message to be that cinema is both a vehicle for patriarchal ideologies to be disseminated throughout society, and a medium that exploits an already established patriarchal code.