Media and the Margins, Essay Example

What is the relationship between sex and gender? What do we mean by “social construction of gender?” Please provide some examples in relation to the material we watched in class.

The relationship between sex and gender is primarily presented in the academic literature in terms of a crucial differentiation regarding what determines the respective concepts. Sex is generally described as determined by biological factors, and thus refers to the purely physical difference between male and females, as manifested in phenomena like anatomy and sexual reproduction. Gender is employed primarily as a social category, in which the biological difference of sexuality is subsequently developed into social differences that are related to the roles of the respective sexes within society. Both sexuality and gender, therefore, are phenomena that are determined, or in other words can be thought according to a theory of causality: sex is “determined on a person’s chromosomes” (Degiuli, Gender and the Media, 2), whereas gender recalls “behavioral differences between the sexes.” (Degiuli, Gender and the Media, 2) It is such behavioral differences that are the products of a distinct social construct, which is to say that it is social normativities that determine such behavior, as opposed to any such behavior being determined by some inherent biological phenomena.

At first glance, such an account would suggest that when thinking the relationship between sex and gender, sex occupies a primary importance, to the extent that the purely biological determination of a human being as male or female is thereinafter received by society according to particular gender roles. This viewpoint, however, remains too facile, since the very distinction between sex and gender implies that sex does not determine the particular gender roles within society, but rather that it is society itself that has determined such gender roles. Illustrative of this thesis is the notion that gender roles may vary from society to society, or how within a given society, gender roles may change over time. For example, this temporal relativity of gender roles is demonstrated in some of the changing portrayals and representations of women within the arts: “It has become more socially acceptable for women to enjoy the pleasure of sex.” (Degiuli, Sexuality and American Film, 5) The shift in social acceptance indicates that depictions of women’s sexuality have been susceptible to revaluation, which suggests that gender can also affect sex.

These phenomena reflect the “social construction of gender”, insofar as it is the behavior of men and women that finds itself delineated along lines determined by society. Moreover, this social construction can be viewed as aggravating or exaggerating the biological sexual difference between male and females into two clearly distinct societal castes. The notion that the social construct of gender implies “the process of transforming males and females into two groups that differ noticeably in appearance” (Degiuli, Gender and the Media, 3) intimates that the biological sexual difference is in reality a minimal difference. It is the social construction of gender that seizes on such a minimal difference, transforming it into a gap that is crucial to modern day societal formations. This social construction of gender forces men and women to “conform to cultural definitions of femininity and masculinity,” (Degiuli, Gender and the Media, 3) since this minimal difference has been made into a gap that is viewed as necessary to the structure of society itself. Such a social construction of gender can thus also be understood as the foundation for the concept of “gender ideology”, to the extent that this forced conformity is subsequently retroactively viewed by members of society as the only possible organization of the sexes: the gender difference is viewed as indicative of the very essence of men and women.

Such concepts are readily discernible in forms of media such as advertisement, film and television. Portrayals of women in these media tend to emphasize the submissiveness of the female gender role that is symptomatic of the patriarchal structure of society, a patriarchy that is equivalent to “male dominance in society.” (Degiuli, Gender and the Media, 8) Berger notes that such a patriarchal effect manifests itself in the artistic media’s objectification of women, a particular gender role that entails the very stripping away of the women’s human characteristics. For example, Berger suggests that in classical European Art, women are not portrayed “as complex and individualistic human beings that they are, but rather as an object.” (Degiuli, Gender and American Film, 5) This objectification is also present in film, as  “Hollywood and other media have used patriarchal codes of gender to define these different sexualities.” (Degiuli, Sexualities and Hollywood, 3) Furthermore, examples from advertising demonstrate how after sexual difference becomes transposed into a particular gender role, women can also be reduced to their very sexuality, a sexuality that is equivalent to an object. Women thus become another commodity, in any numbers of mainstream ads such as Dolce Gabanna to Virginia Slims. That advertising often relies on “an implicit comparison between the woman’s body and the product being sold” (Deiguli, Gender and American Film, 8) suggests that the body of the woman becomes indistinguishable from the commodity. Such a technique clearly reflects the specific manner in which women are objectified according to the particularities of the social construction of gender.

Please describe what the “oppositional gaze” is, how it relates to race and gender, and how it applies to Hollywood movies.

The concept of the oppositional gaze can be understood as a direct intervention by marginalized or suppressed groups within particular social constructs, with the intent of resisting such social constructs themselves. As Bell Hooks notes in her text “The Oppositional Gaze”, the notion of the oppositional gaze arises from a certain prohibition that recurs throughout both patriarchal and racist social constructs. Hooks recalls that in times of slavery “white slaveowners…punished enslaved black people for looking.” (Hooks, 253) Such a punishment immediately recalls two aspects of the gaze: firstly, the one who looks or gazes embodies a certain power. That is to say, insofar as one of the explicit prohibitions of this social construct was the prohibition of the gaze, the logic for the prohibition itself was tied to a fear that the gaze bears power. Secondly, it is by maintaining this very gaze, despite it being forbidden, which engenders the possibility of creating spaces of transgression from the dominant social construct. Hooks, citing Michel Foucault, writes “emphatically stating that in all relations of power ‘there is necessarily the possibility of resistance’, [Foucault] invites the critical thinker to search those margins, gaps and locations on and through the body where agency can be found.” (Hooks, 254) To the extent that the power to punish (as in the case of the prohibition of the slave’s gaze) indicates a power relation in which one person exercises domination over the other, for Foucault, such power relations in their very essence suggest an unbalanced form, one that essentially is itself conducive to “resistance”, that is to say, one that can be overthrown. As Barry Smart observes, for Foucault, “the network of power relations is paralleled by a multiplicity of forms of resistance.” (Smart, 133) The oppositional gaze is one such instance in which the power to look can be understood as a form of resistance in which the utilization of the body can enact a rupture within such social constructs. One of Hooks’ key terms in the above citation is agency: it is precisely agency which the prohibition of the gaze seeks to eliminate, an agency that is equivalent to both a subjective autonomy and a heterogeneity to the very power relations that essentially determines who is allowed to look.

To clarify the possible emancipatory gesture that is at the heart of the oppositional gaze, we may contrast it with another type of gaze: the objectifying male gaze. Hooks’ text suggests that to understand who holds power within a particular social construct or gender ideology, it is significant to understand who is allowed to look, and which gaze is assigned prominence. In Hollywood film, this power relation is reflected in the notion that such films are intended for “a presumed male heterosexual audience member, forcing individuals outside this group to adopt a male point of view – the so called “male gaze” or else risk finding the film un-pleasurable.” (Degiuli, Gender and American Film, 14) The fact that certain media are essentailly designed for a particular gaze, or a particular perspective thus identifies those within society who are allowed to look. At the same time, Others must conform to such a perspective in order to become active in the narrative. In the case of females, “chiefly in Hollywood films, male characters are the ones doing the looking (subjective shots are their prerogative, while female characters are usually the ones that are being looked at)” (Degiuli, Gender and American Film, 14) which suggests that the prohibition of the female gaze is the subsequent objectification of the female in favor of the subjectification of the male. Subjectification and agency are thus associated with the power to look: the separation from this look delineates both sites of agency and subjectivity and sites of objectivity and submission to the social construct. Accordingly, in the above example of classical cinema, an example of the oppositional gaze would be a case of the woman looking back at the man in a demonstration of her own subjectivity and agency.

Such an example implies that the oppositional gaze is a consciousness of the existence of a particular power relation or social construct, the agency that acts against it and a point of resistance that asserts the autonomy of the subject who performs the oppositional gaze. Thus, Hooks writes that for blacks, the oppositional gaze is equivalent to “spaces of agency…for black people, wherein we can both interrogate the gaze of the Other but also back, and at one another naming what we see.” (255) The gaze in itself therefore is not only an expression of agency; in the act of the gaze, there is concomitantly a radical questioning of the power relation, this “interrogation” that critiques the logic of the entire social construct. The enactment of the gaze is the consciousness of the very existence of this power relation, and it is this consciousness that contributes to the weakening of its dominance. Moreover, those who are prohibited from the gaze, through the performance of the oppositional gaze can now communicate with those who have also been forbidden from looking: this site of resistance multiplies itself, as a dialogue can now be formed between those who have been stigmatized as Other.

During this semester we have looked at the ways in which minorities (race and ethnic minorities, women, and homosexuals) are portrayed in the media. Do you see any patterns in the way in which minorities are represented?

When considering the portrayals of various minorities in the media, one of the most striking phenomena is how certain stereotypes of these minorities are repeated in television, film and advertisement. What this suggests is that such minorities are continuously viewed as essentially different from the majority group constitutive of society. The particular representations of such a difference can take various forms according to the minority in question, such as racism, homophobia, objectification according to sexism, orientalism, etc., All such forms nevertheless share a crucial pattern, insofar as they demonstrate the presence of a singular dominant discourse or social construct which fosters such representations: those incommensurable with this particular construct are subsequently portrayed as an Other.

To develop this notion, it is pertinent to examine how the media supports such social constructs and how particular minorities experience this exclusionary gesture. In the case of Hollywood cinema, the depictions of sexuality demonstrate the specific ideology of the dominant social construct, an ideology that does not only define the sexuality of minority groups such as homosexuals, but also defines the sexuality of majorities such as heterosexuals. The effectivity of the media on apparent majority groups is thus indicative of how “film works ideologically to shape the way that both individuals and nations as a whole make sense of sexuality in general.” (Sexualities and Hollywood, 3) Hence, one of the ways in which media represents homosexuals is through a simultaneous broader representation of sexuality. This broader representation of sexuality subsequently delineates what may be termed normal modes of behavior and those behaviors that differ from the mainstream, that is, what is inevitably portrayed as abnormal forms of sexuality. In other words, homosexuals are treated primarily in difference to the majority group, transformed into an Other who is qualitatively defined according to what the majority is portrayed not to be. Accordingly, in the case of sexuality, the norm of sexuality is that of heterosexism, “the assumption that heterosexuality is the only normal sexual orientation, and that it should be celebrated and privileged above all others.” (11) Such portrayals thereby reflect the ideological choice regarding sexuality in society: those that do not fit the heterosexist norm are identified as Other. Furthermore, the qualities that are conferred to the heterosexist norm are continuously withheld from the Other, in order to perpetuate difference.

Such narratives of difference also inform the portrayal of minority groups. For example, the treatment of Arabs in American media, according to Jack Shaheen, “has served to prejudicial attitudes towards Arabs and Arab culture.” (Reel Bad Arabs, 2) In the past, the Arab has been presented as the primitive desert Bedouin, while according to the current political situation, this representation has shifted to the notion of the Arab as terrorist. Thus, in line with current media theorists, we can understand such consistent patterns as indicative of a primacy of form over content. Insofar as content denotes available roles to minorities, form suggests the consistency of the representation of minorities. (Degiuli, Gender and American Film, 3) This notion of a differentiation in content and a simultaneous consistency in form becomes clear when considering representations of African-Americans, such as the portrayal of Lebron James on the cover of Vogue magazine: while the very appearance of an African-American on the cover suggests a shift in the role of African-Americans within American society, the form of the cover has been compared to older stereotypes regarding African-Americans, in the cover’s very resemblance to the poster for the film King Kong (Degiuli, African Americans and the Media)

In essence, such minority groups are portrayed as empty caricatures lacking any subjective agency. For example, in the case of African-Americans and Latinos on television, they are predominantly portrayed as criminals; the sexualized, objectified woman is always submissive to the agency of the man; and gays are normally portrayed as effeminate, whereas lesbians are portrayed as manly (Degiuli, Sexualities and Hollywood, 4) A significant pattern in the treatment of minorities is thus their general desubjectification that conforms to the majority’s perspective, a perspective largely informed by the media itself: they must exist within media as stigmatized objects as opposed to subjects.

Accordingly, media presentations of minorities can be thought as consistent presentations of form that reflect an underlying ideology and a social construct that is operative in the media. While the apparent liberalization of society would suggest that minorities such as women, blacks and gays are more eligible to partake in this society, the consistency of their representation according to stereotypes demonstrates the illusory nature of any greater ideological shift within society. Rather, what has remained prominent is the consistent form of the portrayal of minorities as Other.

While film theorists have placed a new emphasis on form over content when studying cinema (Degiuli, Gender and American Film, 2), Kimberly Pierce’s Boys Don’t Cry (1999) offers a narrative that can be said to follow this same theoretical shift: the film can be understood as an attempt to radically re-think traditional gender roles and portrayals of sexuality through the manipulation of formal representations of such roles. This includes a critique of dominant social constructions of gender, culminating in the tragic murder of the lead character Brandon Teena, played by Hillary Swank. Accordingly, the film utilizes traditional forms and representations of gender and sexuality to confront some of the underlying prejudices in society.

That the film incorporates a transgendered person as its lead character re-configures some of the possibilities for sex and gender as presented in American cinema. The Teena character occupies an ambiguous role between sexes, thus demonstrating the inherent limitations of gender roles to explain sexuality. Accordingly, Teena can be thought of as going beyond the traditional representations of homosexuals and heterosexuals within cinema, as the character suggests a “beyond” that has never been sexualized in cinema before, and thus transcends all traditional gender roles. While some of Teena’s behavior could be considered in line with the classical representational form of the lesbian as “manly” (Degiuli, Gender and the Media, 4), such a representation perhaps does not apply to Teena, as according to his/her status as transgendered, Teena can be viewed as incompatible with both lesbian and heterosexual gender roles. In this way, a new form of both sexuality and gender representation is suggested.

Simultaneously, the continuous violent treatment of Teena can be interpreted as the underlying dominance of the particular social construct and its gender roles: it is precisely because Teena does not fit into these roles, which leads to the horrific violence she experiences and her ultimate death. In the film, the representation of gender and sexuality embodied in Teena are so radical that the category of such formal representation breaks down from the perspective of the dominant social construct. Accordingly, the violence she experiences can be understood as the content of the film itself, to the extent that this content relates to the type of roles allowed to minorities within cinema. In the case of Teena, the death of the character demonstrates that for such a new form, there is essentially no content possible: the character of Teena cannot even be treated as a minority, as an Other, to the extent that she represents such an extensive break with the previous social construct.

From the perspective of content and form analysis, Boys Don’t Cry can be can be viewed as a radical re-working of form that subsequently finds itself incompatible with any type of traditional content. The violence the character experiences underscores the dominant gender ideology that defines sexual norms in a particular society, a society which is unable to incorporate the difference Teena embodies within its ideology

Works Cited

Degiuli, Francesca. “African Americans and the Media.” CUNY Staten Island.

Degiuli, Francesca. “Gender and American Film.” CUNY Staten Island.

Degiuli, Francesca. “Gender and the Media.” CUNY Staten Island.

Degiuli, Francesca. “Orient and Its Dangers: Arabs and Islam.” CUNY Staten Island.

Degiuli, Francesca. “Sexuality and American Film.” CUNY Staten Island.

Degiuli, Francesca. “Sexualites and Hollywood.” CUNY Staten Island.

Hooks, Bell. “The Oppositional Gaze.” In Reel to Real: Race, Sex and Class at the Movies. London: Routledge, 1996. pp.

Smart, Barry. Michel Foucault. London: Routledge, 2002.