Gender representation in modern media culture

Objectifying gender sexuality is what we’re talking about here and now—two cultures represented in two separate films that are perpetuated and substantiated by its victims. In the documentary, Beyond Beats and Rhymes by Byron Hurt, issues of masculinity, sexism, violence and homophobia in today’s hip-hop culture are tackled. Similarly, in media specialist Jean Kilbourne’s film, Killing Us Softly 3, we learn of how images of “womanness” are constructed in advertising.

Both pieces tap into the shock-value emotional transfer using evidence and examples of the most extreme cases of gender image construction. The messages from both flicks leave the audience with a sort of “dirty” feeling—there are similar parallels in verbage with words like “hyper-sexuality, dehumanizing, trivializing” in the subconscious messaging of our modern media.

Both of their production techniques were effective, yet almost lunar opposite in their execution. Whereas Beats and Rhymes was documentary-stylized, hosted by Byron Hurt, which incorporated a combination of montages, interviews, candid footage, and text, etc., Killing used a power-point presentation of still shots of over 160 advertisement and a single lecture by Jean Kilbourne as the basis for delivering her equally powerful message. Yet both were successful at imparting messages of objectifying gender roles.

In Beyond Beats we are reminded that music videos are advertisements for an album’s singles, and in Killing, we are reminded that ads sell products, values, images, and concepts of normalcy; telling us who we are and who we should be. Beyond Beats is selling the message that these music “ads” are selling sexism, violence, homophobia, hyper masculinity, women as objectified sex-objects. The kicker is that these messages go unchecked because they are so “normalized” because we are a nation desensitized to gender objectification. The take-home value messaging of Killing is that that most important thing for women is how they look, and that women are learning at a very early age that it takes time, money and energy to be impossibly perfect and flawless—its not natural.

As far as persuasive techniques go, both films used repetition to impart their messages over and over again. In Beats, women are referred to as bitches and hoes that can be bought and victimized in Hip Hop culture, and ironically, in Killing, women pay into being bought by conforming to the media images of commercial beauty. We hear in Killing, over and over again, synonyms of perfection and beauty to the point you are numb to it. Both films used fear tactics to persuade their audiences with statistical evidence, testimony and hard facts. Rhetorical questions were evident, in Beats, rapper Fat Joe said, “Everybody wants to be hard… why?” and in Killing, each one of Kilbourne’s sections of her film were titled after rhetorical questions such as, “…Does advertising still objectify women's bodies? / Are the twin themes of liberation and weight control still linked? / Is sexuality still presented as women's main concern? / Are young girls still sexualized?...” Both films used either/or tactics that were somewhat similar when exaggerating the dehumanization of sexuality, in Beats the question arose, “If you’re not ___, then you must be gay, a punk, or a nigger.” In Killing we are told that only one gender can have a set of qualities and that men should aspire to be masculine and are taught to devalue qualities that are labeled as feminine, such as compassion. So as a male, you are either totally masculine, or less than worthy.

Byron Hurt tries to challenge the reality constructed by the media, or ideology of hip hop culture, by forcing us to question the motivations behind the machine. And he uses himself as a celebrity and lover of hip hop to leverage his arguments and gain access to influential players in the industry. He goes beyond the arguments and hits the streets to figure it out himself and to allow the viewer to decide for themselves what to do about it and who’s to blame. Hurt decides that we should have a broader ideology of manhood and not let men in white suits who manage the music industry to perpetuate these false ideas of masculinity in hip hop. Kilbourne uses her many years of expertise and knowledge and over 160 ads and TV commercials to critique advertising's ideology of women. More so than Hurt’s attempt to persuade, Kilbourne invites viewers to look at familiar images in a new way, that moves and empowers them to take action. Taking action being the operative term, “In order to change we have to be citizens and not consumers.”

The hegemony of hip hop in modern culture pits hyper-masculine men as the impetus of hip hop. There was a time when hip hop was popularized for its social messages of equality and doing social “good.” “Hegemony, however, is not something that is permanent; it is neither ‘done’ nor unalterable” (Media/Society 167). Now, according to Hunt’s film, a bunch of white “suits”, male medial moguls, at the top of the corporate food chain are dictating to Western culture what it wants from hip hop: hard-core, ruthless, morally and socially corrupt, hard gangsters. Even when the artists don’t or won’t live that way, it’s what they need to rap about to make money and get heard and be considered credible in their culture.

For Kilbourne, women have always been victims of cultural hegemony, as reflected in our media text, “Media images do not simply reflect the world they re-present it; instead of reproducing the ‘reality’ of the world ‘out there,’ the media engage in practices that define reality” (Media Society 168). So basically, of the 160 media images that Kilbourne uses to help us understand that our reality of the image of women isn’t a reflection of what is out there, it’s the media’s definition of what women out there aspire to be.

Both flicks’ take home messages imply that the changes that need to be made to exterminate the objectification of genders in media have to be made by first changing attitudes and actions towards genders. Although I thought that Beyond Beats and Rhymes was a more well-constructed piece of media aimed to attract the attention of its target audience, and that there were times in Kilbourne’s film that I thought were exaggerated and some assumptions were taken too far, Kilbourne’s film presented a more persuasive case because it empowered it’s audience to take action. For me, anything that makes me want to get up and actually do something about an issue tells me something about myself, regardless on how hard it tried to “sell me.” Nonetheless, both of these films tell us of how the media is telling us how we should be ideally, how men should be men, and women should be women. And, in my opinion, no one can tell you who you “should” be.

Some clips of the flicks:

Jean Kilbourne's Killing Us Softly 3


Byron Hurt's Beyond Beats and Rhymes