World Through the Filters of the Media - Essay Example

?The philosophical merit of the belief that the world does not access a true, centered notion of reality depends on the ability to prove the validityof the assumption that there is, in fact, no true, centered reality for humans to access or to know. If a true reality behind appearances does in fact exist, then it is meaningless to speak of it unless human beings can access its truths—the kind of objective truths that we seek when conducting science or philosophy. However, in the absence of such access to universal truths, the reality behind the appearances might as well not exist. Postmodern and poststructuralist thought along these lines challenges the world as it is and favors the world as we think it to be, leaving people without notions of a truth reality but rather one manufactured by culture. The question, then, becomes—manufactured by whom? Also relevant is the question of what is being manufactured. Reality, as some thinkers would say, is what is being manufactured and is being done so by the media, which developed countries are increasingly reliant upon for information about the world. The purpose of this paper is to find examples and principles regarding how media constructs reality, with particular emphasis on the construction and imposition of gender, and how this construction interferes with the notion of a real reality. First, however, it is important to start with definitions of important terms; the first of these terms is “culture.” In saying that a culture is responsible for manufacturing truth, one is suggesting that shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices of a group are creating an integrated pattern of symbols to represent its beliefs, knowledge, and ideas. In other words, a culture is a set of shared attributes of a group, which has the capability of creating a symbolic system that represents those shared attributes. Language is the keystone example of how groups transcribe concepts and abstract ideas into symbols and signs representing its shared reality. A culture is a tool toward this social symbolic thought. Another important definition to clarify is that of media. To say that media assists in the construction of reality, one is suggesting that the tools or instruments that store and deliver information are actually responsible for giving meaning to the information they communicate. McLuhan (1964) coined the phrase “the medium is the message,” meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a mutual relationship in which the medium influences how the message is perceived. As applied to gender, a message delivered by a scantily clad woman on a television about the best tasting beer is likely to have a different meaning than the same message delivered by an old woman talking on the radio about the same topic. Media, then, is any medium by which information is stored and delivered to the public. This is a very wide-ranging definition of media that captures the essential point that media is a broader instrument to communication than simply speaking or acting in a certain way. Media is also goal-directed, whether that goal consists of inspiring action in its recipients, making a profit, or informing certain people of events happening in the world. Lastly, a third relevant definition to be considered is for gender. The idea of “gender” is conceptually distinct from sex, which is tied more fundamentally to the biology of an individual’s body. What is relevant here, then, is not the identification the individual can make of himself or herself with regard to what is anatomically true about his or her body, but rather the kind of individual he or she identifies with as a person. To the extent that cultures are capable of creating their own systems of symbols to represent their own beliefs and attitudes, so too can individuals form beliefs and attitudes about personally relevant issues such as which groups in society he or she identifies with. According to the sex and gender description, one social identifier open to individual choice is that of gender classification. This idea is prescient when looking at the impact of culture and media on gender. Each of these three concepts is related in a triangular fashion. Culture, which is the group that creates signs and symbols in order to represent its beliefs, attitudes, and values, produces media in order to communicate information within and outside of the group. Media serves to reinforce gender in the ways that it represents individuals who identify with particular genders, either by representing the ideal traits of members of the gender or by representing stereotyped characteristics of members of the gender. However, culture also serves to produce the concepts involved with gender by creating the language that is used to describe the gender identities and roles in society. Without language, as we will see, gender and other social constructs do not seem possible. Gender does have some reverse effects, however, insofar as it is capable of influencing both culture and media. Gender influences culture especially when a group is identified by the gender that its members identify with. For instance, the National Assembly of Women’s culture is defined by the primary shared characteristic of its individual members (of course, being gender). Gender also exerts an influence on media, particularly in marketplaces that appeal or are marketed toward individuals of a particular gender—most likely based on gender stereotypes and gender roles. Examples of such influence might be the advertisement of sexual enhancement supplements during male-oriented television programs. If the argument is that humans do not see reality as it truly is, but rather as it is created by the media, then there is an extremely relevant parallel to be drawn with French thinker Jacques Derrida and the deconstructionist movement. The primary accomplishment of this movement is in questioning the integration of a word and what the word refers to in reality. Instead of having a fixed relationship between the two aspects of a sign, words in our language incorporate infinite shifts in meaning in a constant flux. In this kind of world, what is true is neither objectively verifiable nor constant for any period. Increasingly, human beings are reliant on forms of media for the development of their own worldviews and pictures of reality. In the age of instant global communication, images from one corner of the world can be beamed to another corner of the world. As a result, media controls the extent and content of individuals’ beliefs, values, and attitudes. Remembering that these three concepts are encompassed in the meaning of culture, it seems then that media is playing a direct role in changing the culture of consumerist society that pays for and consumes information about the world. Reliance on mass media for a more complete view of the world offers an opportunity for a wider lens through which to see the world, but at the cost of having this lens managed by fewer and fewer people. Within the hands of those who have the resources to provide worldwide coverage of the world, the media is capable of selectively choosing what information to include or to omit in what it presents to viewers. Ultimately, the “filters” of mass media present an incomplete picture of reality, albeit a picture that would not be possible without the media. The constant flux of meaning attached to particular words allows force to enter into the equation. Force, in this context, is the ability of certain institutions to control the signified by subverting the signifier. With gender, for instance, what we have come to know as beautiful can be changed by those who publish images to supposedly “beautiful” women. By introducing the new image of beautiful, those with control over the most mass media resources can control what is meant by the term “beautiful.” In the critically acclaimed television series Mad Men, the lead character Don Draper (an advertising executive on 1960s Madison Avenue) notes when speaking about the concept of ‘love’ that: “The reason you haven't felt it is because it doesn't exist. What you call love was invented by people like me, to sell nylons. You're born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts” (Weiner, 2007). In the attempt to sell nylons, the character believes that what his advertisements do is subvert the meaning of “love” as a means to control and capitalize on the re-construction of reality according to the needs of a mass media instrument. From economic control of this medium comes the power over language and the power over force. An additional example of manipulating language comes from a more modern advertisement for Old Spice body wash product. Depicting an attractive woman eating ice cream, the advertisement insists that it she is not performing this act as a ploy to grab attention. At the intersection of media and gender, one can evaluate this advertisement as an attempt to undermine the image of feminine sexuality as a means toward selling male products. By denying the sexuality of the image while blatantly displaying it, the advertisement is demonstrating a clear belief in the necessity of interpretation when approaching a text (or an image, as the case may be). The slogan “Keep it Clean” is given the role of irony, telling the audience to interpret the image in a clean way, even though what is meant by “clean” in this instance is not one’s interpretation but rather one’s body through the use of the product being sold by the advertisement. In the end, the hope the advertisement is to subvert the use of the word “clean” and the use of the image of a seductive feminine figure in order to serve the product-maker’s own ends, which is an instance of the use of force in the deconstruction and re-construction of language. Another primary example of how an advertisement can seek to shift power dynamics is not through text but through implied action. Referencing a Dolce & Gabbana advertisement, the picture depicts a gang rape scene with five men and one woman. Like the use of words to denote violence, the imagery being evoked in the advertisement denotes violence as well. Men, who are portrayed with a stereotypical degree of masculinity and aggressiveness, subdue to the stereotypically submissive woman in a way that upholds a kind of expressed social ideal for men to be dominant in society. In this case, the media is perpetrating this value judgment on its audience. Accordingly, just as language and words can bear some degree of force and ammunition, so too can images that evoke strong emotional reactions and outright shock. Social constructs exist as products of human interaction and are constructed by human cultures—as opposed to non-human nature. Culture is the primary starting point of social constructs in the sense that constructs are developed using a symbol or sign to represent some concept that has meaning within a group context. Social constructs are based on contingent variables based on the context and characteristics of the group that generate them. The issue of social constructs in particularly relevant to a treatment of media’s influence on the perception of reality in the sense that social constructs form the basis for a great deal of human thinking. Culture, according to Gurung and Prieto (2009), is what gives social constructs their meaning, and cultures around the world can be very similar to each other in ways that promote intercultural understanding (p. 6). An understanding of what constitutes a social construct is important for understanding the concept of a gender role as conceived of in contemporary society. In contrast to more classical views that upheld gender roles as biologically prescribed institutions into which individuals ought to morally fit into, gender roles as social constructs tends to ignore the appearance of essentialism in how boys and girls interact. According to one contemporary feminist scholar, being a female is not a “natural” state and that it seems natural only by repeated performances of gender role. Gendered performances reproduce and define the classic categories of gender for individuals (Butler, 1980). This line of thinking has its roots in the early feminist movement, primarily by de Beauvoir (1949), who wrote that men oppress women through the classification of females as “the Other.” In the sense that man is the self, or the subject, and that woman is the object, de Beauvoir draws a connection to Derrida’s treatment of language in deconstruction. Derrida would maintain that the notion of a centered self is mistaken, implying that the distinction between man and woman is actually a false one (MacCannell, 1990, p. 22). In that case, gender is a construct upheld by the institutions of media and mass communication. A gender role certainly qualifies as a social construct to the extent that gender roles are primarily built onto gender stereotypes, which are psychological categories that individuals tend to form with respect to classifying others. Since stereotyping occurs because of a social process, one might say that it is necessarily cultural to the extent that individuals—as part of society—form generally agreed upon categories. Gender stereotypes, of course, dictate when and how it is socially acceptable to express particular feelings or emotions; social approval or disapproval results either through aligning with those stereotypes or ignoring them respectively (Niedenthal & Cantor, 1984). Ideas that society has formed about men, for example, is that he is prone to express anger more, while women are believed to be more judgmental and superficial. Examples of this supposedly universal female stereotype can be seen in movies such as House Bunny (produced in 2008) and Legally Blonde (produced in 2001), where the protagonist of the film is an attractive, blonde-haired woman female that thrives with a judgmental and superficial personality. These films uphold particularly rigid divides between what defines a woman and what defines a man, even though gender roles are not so completely rigid and defined when children are as young as three or four years old. Gender stereotypes limit these main characters to particular actions and emotions in order to appeal to an audience that already implicitly agrees with the premises on which it is acting. Secondly, the supposedly universal male stereotype of being prone to express anger is borne out in the television series Sons of Anarchy, which follows the exploits of a criminal enterprise and motorcycle club. In the series, major interpersonal conflicts are most often handled by violent outbursts, threats of physical violence, and execution-style murders. In contrast to female characters (referred to as “old ladies” who have no power in the motorcycle club), the males are highly aggressive and often incapable of displaying emotional reactions to events around other men. As was discussed previously, a deconstructionist attitude toward the symbols adopted by a culture necessarily entails a relativism of concepts that is simply impossible under a more centered approach (“centered” as in the words used to describe a concept are centers of meaning). Concepts like ‘love,’ according to Mad Men character Don Draper, are relative not only at a specific point in time, but at all points in time. As meanings constantly change and fluctuate, what one person means by ‘love’ could very well be incompatible with another individual’s notion of love. For that reason, a great deal of ambiguity occurs in language that cannot be easily explained. As it applies to gender, ambiguity is a problem for individuals looking for gendered stereotypes that easily classify an individual as part of one group as opposed to another. More relevantly, the topic of “force” in language is brought again to the fore in the context of forcing individuals into particular social identifications. Neatly placing homosexual people, African-American people, and so on assumes the natural connection of those words to concrete things, which is a faulty and oppressive kind of arrangement. Increasingly popular video games participate in the enforcement of gender roles through the often times explicit objectification of women (Miller & Summers, 2007). Like films that portray women as superficial, and similar to the observations of de Beauvoir (1949) classifying women as “the Other,” violent video games provide an outlet for outward male aggression and female submissiveness, both of which are stereotypically gender-driven traits of human beings. However, they contribute to a distinction between subject and object that may not exist. Only a cursory glance at violent video game content, as well as music lyrical content, reveals a great deal that a modern feminist would object to. Indeed, empirical studies are showing that adolescent attitudes in male teenagers toward females are becoming more disjointed with a dismissive view of distinctions between genders. ter Bogt, Engels, Bogers and Kloosterman (2010) surveyed 480 Dutch students in a study of how music preferences align with gender stereotypes. For both female and male students, preferences for hip-hop music were positively correlated with gender stereotypes. Given the increasing popularity of various forms of media that support gender stereotypes and rigid gender roles, it is curious how cultural notions of gender will continue to evolve through the short-term future. In addition, this raises the question of how individuals choose media content to watch; in other words, are individuals with more rigid gender role concepts drawn toward objectifying media forms, or are objectifying media forms causing individuals to adopt more rigid gender role concepts? Perhaps, as the television show Mad Men hopes to demonstrate, gender role rigidity is cyclical rather than linear—noting the rigidity of the work- and home-life of 1960s American women. There is so validity in the thought that the mass media colors our perception of reality. Based on the survey of deconstruction and cultural studies given here, there does seem to be truth to the thought that the media both provides and restricts the amount and content of information with the public. The act of selection incorporates values that process reality into a more consumable form. However, without a fuller experience of reality that mass media by definition cannot provide, there can be no true centered approach to how we see and interact with truth. Violence, both in word and in image, pose a threat to further progress in establishing equal footing for both men and women. References Butler, J. (1980). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge. Gurung, R., & Prieto, L. (2009). Getting culture: Incorporating diversity across the curriculum. New York: Stylus Publishing. MacCannell, J. (1990). The other perspective in gender and culture. New York: Columbia University Press. McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. New York: Mentor. Miller, M., & Summers, A. (2007). Gender differences in video game characters' roles, appearances, and attire as portrayed in video game magazines. Sex Roles, 57, 733-742. Niedenthal, P., & Cantor, N. (1984). Making use of social prototypes: From fuzzy concepts to firm decisions. Fuzzy Sets and Systems, 14, 5-27. ter Bogt, T., Rutger, C. E., B., S., & Kloosterman, M. (2010). "Shake It Baby, Shake It”: media preferences, sexual attitudes and gender stereotypes among adolescents. Sex Roles, 63, 844-859. Weiner, M. (Director). (2007). Mad Men [Motion Picture]. Read More