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

A trip down my media immersion lane...

When I think back to my media evolution, two mediums glaringly stand out in my mind: books and mixed tapes. I started reading at a very early age and used to have a hard time sleeping at night, lying awake in the dark for hours after my bedtime, so I would self-medicate with books. Reading always helped me sleep and helped me escape whenever I was feeling upset. I remember being about six years old and reading the book Helen Keller cover to cover almost every night for a month. I still revisit that book often and revel in wonder at why and how this book mesmerized me so much when I was young.

Books became part of my life very early and I think they helped to stretch my imagination. I wrote a short story in the eighth grade called, “The Magician’s Daughter” when I was sick at home for three weeks with the chicken pox. I handed the story in to my teacher and about three months later she made an announcement at the front of the class that I had gotten first place in the British Columbia English Teacher’s Association Writing Journal contest. I was thrilled and floored, mainly because I didn’t really remember writing it as I was on medication most of the time. Maybe that says something about the famous fantasy writers in history… maybe?

Another medium that has always been with me is music. I remember being young, like first grade, in the early 80s when the Much Music television station was launched (it’s much like MTV only in Canada). I remember sitting on the living room floor and asking my Mom what certain words of the credits were I couldn’t understand that popped up and the beginning and end of each music video. I remember watching Tina Turner and Madonna and signing and dancing along. Because my Mom was young when she had us, these artists were a part of her culture and were influential on me. There is a second grade school photo of me with a missing tooth and in leopard print leggings and a side pouffy ponytail. Oh yes!

I remember being obsessed with mixed tapes. My boyfriends and I would make them for each other and EVERY SINGLE SONG meant something; it’s hilarious to look back now. One thing that really stands out in my mind is a 10th or 11th grade English project that was assigned to us in class. We had to come up with a 15-minute presentation to the class, describing us as individuals and who we were, but using NO WORDS. I was stumped, and then totally stoked because I knew exactly what I would do. Other students struggled, some were inspired, and others just got very creative, as did I.

Back in the day, around the early 90s, my parents had recently purchased a suped-up (is that a word?) stereo system that all of my friends envied; we even had one of the first cd players on the block (I’m dating myself now). However the technology hadn’t advanced enough to be able to mix cds yet. I decided to cut a 15-20 minute mixed tape that expressed about 15 words that I had chosen that described me that I put onto large flash cards. I recorded everything from commercial tunes, clips of television, radio and other tapes and music… you name it; it was on it. I worked harder on that than almost any project I have ever done; HOURS spent lying in the living room editing, rewinding, timing, recording. I was so proud and terrified at the same time to present it to my class. No one else had done anything like it, and it was gutsy. In the end, my class, and more importantly, my teacher, loved it. Everyone laughed and hooted at certain clips they picked up on that went along with the words on the flash cards that I held up. It forced people to have to put the audio they heard and the words they read together in a creative way. I wasn’t allowed to speak to help them make the connection.

I still have that tape and those cards, I carry with them everywhere I have moved to. I recently tried to play the tape for my boyfriend but it wouldn’t play in my tape deck. I was shattered. I need to take it into one of those restoration places because it’s something I want to hold on to forever. That is one of my fondest media memories.

Immersed in the "feed"

In the book I’m reading in my Media Issues class this semester called, “Media/Society,” about industries, images and audiences, we are reminded *yawn* that the “increase in media options in recent years has even led to an increase in ‘multitasking’ – using more than one form of media at a time” (p. 5). Ya think?!?! I can’t imagine my life without media multitasking; I am constantly immersed. Right now I have the television on, I just received a text and sent one back to a friend, all the while doing homework online and managing my RSS feed. I could throw in that there’s some music playing too, but you get the point.

Ya wanna talk about media multitasking? Imagine what life would be like with an embedded brain internet feed? In M.T. Anderson’s book “Feed” we are met with a group of teens set in a futuristic world where uber-technology has converged electronics and telecommunications into the human brain. Called the “feednet” it combines everything we know today about electronics and communication, data collecting and corporate power (and what it might become), and made humans to be completely dependant and obsessed on consumer culture. It’s a bit scary and sad at the same time because it really is a legit theory on the future, that is, if we continue to allow ourselves to be obsessed with immediate gratification in our computer-consumed society.

“…there was this great promotion, where if you talked about the great taste of Coca Cola to your friends like a thousand times, you got a free six-pack of it, so we decided to take them for some meg ride by all getting together and being like, Coke, Coke, Coke, Coke for about three hours so we’d get a year’s supply. It was a chance to rip off the corporations, which we all thought was a funny idea” (Feed p. 158).

But the best part is that most of the teens in the book don’t even realize the feed's wrong or acknowledge the role it plays—until it’s gone, of course. Media/Society, a dated “textbook” (it was printed in 2000, which is pretty much archaic, considering how rapidly technology changes), acknowledges how dependant we are to media TODAY let alone in the future, “One way to recognize the importance of the media in our lives is to imagine life without media” (p. 5).

There is a time in the book Feed where the teens are without their feednet for some time because of a “hack.” Imagine a week in our lives today without the internet, let alone technology, and then imagine that hundreds of years in the future. Moral of the story: America is addicted to technology convergence and consumerism and is submissive to corporate power and advertisements. Think before you log on, cause one day we might not have a choice.