CSOC 202: Pop Culture - EXAM (Modules 7-12)

Module 7: Representations of Gender

• Sociology of Gender

• Socially constructed, as seen through the representation of gender roles (which we learn from our family dynamics, then turn to pop culture for reference)

• One’s culture and cultural norms are the primary socialization factors grooming an individual’s gender and gendered behaviour

  • EX: Women may biologically be able to give birth to children but they don’t instinctively know how to cook → BUT posts on female athletes include comments of “ok, but can she cook?” or “tell her to go make me a sandwich” (misogyny and sexism, stating her “rightful” job is in a domestic space, not a male-dominanted field)

Module 7: Representations of Gender

• Pop Culture’s Effect on Gender

• A socialization tool that presents and represents images of gender-appropriate behaviour 

  • Men & women become “gendered” through pop culture, putting idealized feminities + masculinities on display → we learn masculinity and femininity through cultural representations of gender

  • Culture is the home of symbols that inform our lives and our deepest identities

Module 7: Representations of Gender

• Structural Functionalism on Gender

• Gender roles as a social function: Misogyny and sexism is reflective of the dominant culture that has produced the gender roles & expectations and the sanctions and penalities of those who step outside their “perscribed responsibilities” 

• Because gendrered roles & expectations exist → they must serve some functional need

  • An oppressive view → supports the dominant ideological position that maintains a system of gender inequality)

Module 7: Representations of Gender

• Feminist Theory & Social Conflict Theory on Gender

• The feminist theory + social conflict theory definition of the patriarchy → men are the prime beneficiaries of various policies and privileges

  • EX: Voting & owning property 

  • EX: Glass ceiling - women in the workplace are restricted from going up the corporate ladder, they have to break through the glass ceiling and risk bleeding

Module 7: Representations of Gender

O’Brien & Szeman

• Structure of Gender Roles at Home

• State that “gender is one of the most basic, if not the most basic binary oppositions” 

  • MALE: Father, a leader who takes on leadership roles (surname, family representative, life outside the home - the workplace, supports family as the “breadwinner”)

  • FEMALE: Mother, supporter, takes on expressive roles → raise children, the “homeworker” whose primary role is socializing the children while they’re home

Module 7: Representations of Gender

O’Brien & Szeman

• Structure of Gender Roles at Home

  • Gender…

Both…

• An ideological force that inserts us into particular roles we may or may not have chosen in a social script we don’t control

• A platform for self-expression that may allow us limited forms of rewriting 

Module 7: Representations of Gender

O’Brien & Szeman

• Structure of Gender Roles at Home

  • Culture and Physicality

• Identities function as stories with meaning and context - and the meaning assigned to identities operate to produce power and pleasure

  • Gender, sexual orientation, and race serve as markers of identity & social power (culture + physicality)

  • Material differences are invested with cultural meanings that have material effects, which is seen in the unequal pressures and opportunities encountered by different groups in their self-definition journey

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Erving Goffman

• Connecting The Sociology of Everyday life to Gender Performance

• Central to the everyday are the negotiations you have with others → and it doesn’t even have to be verbal

• Non-verbal communication ensures that communication isn’t limited to language, but that gestures (smirks, hand gestures, winks) speak as much as a sentence

• Therefore, how you act (your manner) and dress (style) are primary communicative modes normalized in society

Module 7: Representations of Gender

• The Nuclear Family

• The dominant and idealized norm when “the home” is thought of → a family unit living together under one roof; a mother, a father, and any number of children

  • Has been treated as an entity that “needs” protection from the control of state authorities, and who gives that? - The most powerful member, the man, father, the patriarch (Cutas)

  • Women as a result suffer from their position, prioritzing their family’s interests over their own (women’s rights movements have changed this, they’re less vulnerable, but still vulnerable nonetheless)

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Judith Butler

• Gender Trouble: Gender as Performance

The “Nuclear Family” is rooted in mythical ideas of gender

• Gender is…

  1. the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a regulatory frame that produce the appearance of a natural sort of being

  2. A performance/act that develops out of, reinforces, and is reinforced by, societal norms and creates the illusion of binary sex → aiding the status quo

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Judith Butler

• Gender Trouble: Gender as Performance

  • NORMS

• Social & behavioural norms are responsible for constructing the concepts of masculinity and femininity + the identities of hetereosexuality and homosexuality (ex: Everyday actions, speech utterances, gestures and representations, dress codes and behaviours, prohibitions and taboos all produce what is an “essential masculine” or “feminine”)

  • “That’s not very lady-like”

  • “Man up, pussy”

  • Men wear suits, women wear dresses

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Judith Butler

• Gender Trouble: Gender as Performance

  • A CHALLENGE FOR US

• If gender is socialized (something we act, perform, and maintain), it’s also something that we can subvert and manipulate

• We can theorize gender from a counter-hegemonic POV - challenge the status quo/norm like Gayle Rubin

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Gayle Rubin

• Gender in Deviance

• Connected gendered expectations to performance and acceptance (like Butler), but also deviance and subversion

• The patriarchy determined the acceptable meaning of “female behaviour” → restricting female autonomy over representations, freedom, and behaviours, so even sexual behaviour can be seen as bad

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Gayle Rubin

• Gender in Deviance

  • All for Men (Adrienne Rich)

• The repressive ideologies surrounding female autonomy are structured to aid heterosexual men, to make sure they’re still the dominant ruler/patriarch

• Adrienne Rich backs this up, explaining that ideologies appear normal/natural in invisibility, but their objectivity is determined by male subjectivity

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Charles Cooley

• Looking Glass Theory

  • Backs up the Arguments of Butler, Rubin, and Rich

All conclude that gender is an act, an expectation, and a socialized norm → those who don't adhere to gender may experience the looking glass theory and be punished as a result by society

Applying Cooley’s Theory:

(1) IMAGINATION: We imagine how others see our appearance

• I imagine how boys see me as a girl, what they would want me to wear to interest them (as much as I hate admitting that)

(2) JUDGMENT: We imagine other’s judgment of our appearance

• I look at how they act (symbolic interaction theory), how they talk to me, and respond to me based on my appearance

(3) FEELINGS: Our feelings - pride, shame, empowerment, disempowerment - are determined by our imagined judgments of us

• How I feel based on their reactions then affects how I feel about myself (clearly)

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Louis Althusser

• Sociology and Subjects: Interpellation & Ideal Subjects

• Purpose of ideology: to position individuals as ideal subjects

• Ideology is so invisible in addressing and positioning us as subjects that it structures our reality

  —> This is seen in our “unthinking” participation in rituals that confirm our roles as ideal and ideological social subjects; if we do them, we are “doing life correctly”

  • EX: Saying “Good Morning” back to people, holding the door open for the person behind you, and every social exercise/ritual we participate in

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Louis Althusser

• Sociology and Subjects: Interpellation & Ideal Subjects

  • THE IDEAL SUBJECT

• Viewers/consumers only have a certain degree of individuality, making them an ideal subject to feel propelled to identify with/identify someone else with what’s on the screen

  • EX: A friend posts on social media, you see the representation of them - they have already calculated what people will see, how they will see it, and how people might respond (Charles Cooley’s Looking Glass Theory)

• Producers of films know this, so they seek to connect us with characters 

  • Seen in when we cry when a beloved character dies, or gets married, or gets subjected to violence

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Phillip Green

• Ideology and Ambiguity in Cinema: Louis Althusser’s Interpellation

• Ideological purpose of cinema: to structure the viewer’s association and relationship to the film → INTERPELLATION

  • Viewer is “interpellated” as a subject, a bearer of a familiar social role, which becomes familiar over time

  • So viewers become naturalized into a series of beliefs, expectations, and norms that you identify as ideological to everyday life → you may relate to social scenarios as they play out on screen

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Phillip Green

• Ideology and Ambiguity in Cinema: Louis Althusser’s Interpellation

  • Althusser’s Distaste for Romcoms (Again…)

• Romcoms maintain dominant ideological beliefs regarding gender, heterosexuality, relationships, expectations and norms, traditions (marriage, children, nuclear family) → ALL IDEALIZED

  • When you identify with a likeness to the male or female character, you’re interpellated into a position, hailed/called into your position as a receiver of the story 

  • EX: Watching “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before,” and relating to Lara Jean, being called into her role as a shy, innocent virgin, and expecting some twist of fate to tell my love story

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Phillip Green

• Ideology and Ambiguity in Cinema: Louis Althusser’s Interpellation

  • The Hollywood Narrative

• All shots and looks that compose a Hollywood film achieve the effect of a continuous, coherent narrative to create a “seamless” story

• What we see came from an invisible point and appeared mysteriously before us, there’s no authour except us who identify with the camera’s standpoint

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Laura Mulvey

• Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

• Examines the relationship between the viewer, the camera, the action on screen, and gender + the conventions as gender as constituted heterosexually

• Conventions of pop cinema are structured by a patriarchal unconscious that positions women as objects of the male gaze → we eventually appropriate/adopt the camera’s gaze as our own (you see what the film wants you to see)

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Laura Mulvey

• Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

  • THE FEMALE BODY

• A woman’s body is presented on screen as an object that is sexualized and objectified 

• Producers of Hollywood cinema, pop culture, TV commercials will disengage a woman from her body by focusing on areas of her body that they have determined as most valuable/important (her clevage, her butt, her legs, etc.)

• So, she’s not able to present herself as a whole being, but rather areas of her body (her face, her smile, etc.) is deemed not valuable, simply removed from sight

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Laura Mulvey

• Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

  • PRIVILEGING THE MALE POV

• Mulvey states that pop cinema is structured so the spectator is made to identify with the male look, privileging a male/heterosexual POV

• Which is done in the ways that…

  1. The characters in a film look at each other

  2. The viewer looks at the screened image

  3. The camera looks at the event being filmed

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Laura Mulvey

• Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

  • Feminist Film Theory

• Aims to understand pop culture as a cultural practice that represents and reproduces myths about women and femininity

• Also looks at possibilities for a women’s cinema → representations of female subjectivity and female desire

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Laura Mulvey

• Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

  • GAZE

• Gaze: How we are positioned to “look” at the image of the body displayed on the screen 

• There are two types:

  (1) SCOPOPHILIA (THE MALE GAZE):

  • Hollywood cinema prioritizes male viewing pleasure, the male gaze

  (2) NARCISSTIC SCOPOPHILIA (THE PASSIVE FEMALE GAZE):

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Laura Mulvey

• Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

  • GAZE

    (1) SCOPOPHILIA (THE MALE GAZE)

• A pleasurable male gaze consuming a female body on display as that body connotes a “to-be-looked-at-ness”

  • Contains the female body within the confined space of a movie screen, she can’t no longer participate and walk away

  • A viewer’s active male gaze looks at the female body as she’s presented on screen

  • Her body/what is shown of it, is then consumed as an object the male viewer is detached from and able to simply enjoy, gaze upon and consume

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Laura Mulvey

• Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

  • GAZE

    (2) NARCISSISTIC SCOPOPHILIA (THE PASSIVE FEMALE GAZE)

• A passive female gaze where the female viewer is compelled to take on two roles: 

1. The Subject (Viewer)

2. The Object (Viewed Upon)

   • She is then ultimately compelled to take on the role of the narcissist in her “consuming” of the image that appears on the screen

   • The male viewer consumes while the female viewer next to him is also positioned to consume the same images but in an entirely different way

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Laura Mulvey

• Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

  • Limitation to Mulvey’s Framework

• Assumes and assigns heterosexuality to both male and female viewers

Module 7: Representations of Gender

POP CULTURE REFERENCE:

• “Closer”

• Writer in London meets two different women and he develops different relationships

  SCENES:

  (1) Why Isn’t Love Enough?

  (2) Why Are You Doing This?

  (3) Are You Flirting With Me?

  (4) Tell Me Something True (Continuation of Scene 3)

Module 7: Representations of Gender

POP CULTURE REFERENCE:

• “Closer”

  • Questions

1. How does the film demonstrate gendered behaviour? Specifically, how is gendered behaviour constituted as acceptable or unacceptable, and what stigmas or sanctions are applied when norms are ruptured?

2. How does the film acknowledge, informally, Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema?

Module 7: Representations of Gender

POP CULTURE REFERENCE:

• “Spring Break Forever”

• A group of college girls who rob a Chicken Shack to acquire capital for a spring break trip to Florida, ending up involved with a drug gang

• It has been characterized as an “odyssey of excess” and “an exercise in female empowerment” → it is a dream for young women in the film but also the viewers, looking at a reality that is deviant, excessive, rebellious, and nihilistic WHICH is rarely presented to female spectators, only male spectators

  • As the producer, Harmony Korine was met with binary reviews + polarizing opinions 

  • As Butler explains about gender, rooted in power, control, and agency → Korine alters a prescribed reality, where social roles and expectations are subverted (film isn’t real but an re-interpretation of the world & its characters)

Module 7: Representations of Gender

POP CULTURE REFERENCE:

• “Spring Break Forever”

  • Questions

1. To complete this activity, watch the trailer of Spring Breakers, a 2013 action film. Take special note of all you see and hear in the film, as you should be able to connect that with the upcoming examination of gender, power, and sex.

2. How are the ideas above on fantasy, horror, escape and nihilism explored?

3. Is Mulvey’s argument on popular cinema, gender and the gaze defended, and if so, where and how in the scene?

4. Is Stan Cohen’s moral panic and folk devil concept from Module 5 problematized in seemingly casting young women rather than young men in the role of folk devils whose behaviour causes a moral panic?

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Mary Wilkinson

• Spring Breakers: Breaking The Girl Norms

• Korine’s film introduces audiences to unexpected stories about girls and guns in the contemporary U.S. → girls explore criminal behaviour for both and for as leisure (which might explain the bizarre reactions)

• Unlike reviews, Wilkinson characterizes the film as a complex critical commentary on the representations of teenage girls and performativity

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Mary Wilkinson

• Spring Breakers: Breaking The Girl Norms

  • Issues of Gender, Power, and Capitalism

• CAPITALISM: Wiklinson argues Spring Breakers presents girls as both ideal objects and subjects of hyperconsumerism → they’re driven by material/immaterial commodities so they can present themselves to others in a certain light

• POWER: The mantra: “Spring Break Forever,” they indulge in their hedonism 

• GENDER: Female folk devils creating moral panic → but how come when guys do it, it’s “Boys will be Boys”? - if the movie was filmed with male characters, would it have been received better?

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Ed Cameron

• Spring Breakers: Candy-Coated Dreamscape

• Unlike Wiklinson, Cameron sees the film as a fantasy, nothing that occurs is probable in real life (two of the film’s anti-heroines are named “Candy” and “Cotty”)

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Ed Cameron

• Spring Breakers: Candy-Coated Dreamscape

  • REBELLION AND ESCAPISM

• Cameron also states that Spring Breakers instigates a fleeting suspension of accepted law and order, providing the members of a culture/sub-cultural group a temporary break from reality for a little while

  • It has reps of sexualized “good girls gone bad,” having a kinship with the porn company “Girls Gone Wild”

Module 7: Representations of Gender

• Personal Fashion Blogs (PFBs)

• A genre of 21st-century interactive media, platforms for young Western personal fashion bloggers that frequently reinvent the identity they express in the public online domain

• A cause and potential solution to metamodernism

  • Bloggers use social media to control and export self-produced images

  • Constructed for the female gaze rather than the male gaze

  • Opposes the language of the dominant patriarchal order established in non-interactive media (Hollywood films, TV, newspapers, photography, ads)

EX: themanrepeller (Leandra Medine), stylebubble (Susie Lau), thestylerookie (Tavi Gevinson

Module 7: Representations of Gender

• Female Gaze

• A POV in media that is predominantly created by and for women, serving as an alternative to the historically dominant male gaze

  • EX: Personal Fashion Blogs (PFBs) → women actively define and portray their identities through aesthetic choices for a female audience rather than conforming to objectifying standards set by a male-dominant media landscape

Module 7: Representations of Gender

• Self-Portraits

• Core feature of PFBs → author posts themselves (selfies), taking control over how they capture themselves as the photographer and model (focused on the clothes rather than the body)

  • An expression for the female gaze 

  • Frequent selfie-posting = updating and renewing oneself

  • Allows PFBloggers to embody a “constant state of being in flux” - repositioning themselves and their identities (identity formation through self-reflection)

Module 7: Representations of Gender

• I Like, Therefore I am

• Engagement with identity and the formation of identity through social interaction on blogs is extended through the “Like” feature

  • When you “like” content, you are reaffirming their own identity and even the poster’s existence through those expressed preferences

  • The act of “liking” has become a way for individuals to define themselves and assert their presence in the digital realm

  • Fashion brands use this feature in marketing, blurring the line between personal expression & commercial content within social media feeds

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Giles Lipovetsky

• Hypermodern Times & Empire of Fashion

  • Do-It-Yourself Enlightenment

• Where individuals strive to “seek truth in themselves” but, paradoxically, also constantly seek the opinions and reassurances of others within an unstable environment with a frivolous economy of meaning

  • “Frivolous economy of meaning” = a societal condition where meaning is fluid and lacks stable anchors

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Giles Lipovetsky

• Hypermodern Times & Empire of Fashion

  • Asking Questions

• A societal shift where people are more inclined to challenge established ideas and even their own believes

• People are more “prepared to raise questions in the absence of preconceived answers” and are “more comfortable calling themselves into question as well”

  • In advanced democracies, ideological fanaticism is becoming extinct, traditions are coming undone; meaning, a passion for information isn’t as prioritized → So, people would rather question 

EX: PFBs act as a “vehicle” enabling bloggers to engage in this practice of “increased questioning” → they post images of themselves and the comments function, allowing feedback, criticism, and praise → facilitating the questioning of the messages they communicate through their appearance

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Giles Lipovetsky

• Hypermodern Times & Empire of Fashion

  • Hedonism

• The continuous desire for a “fast fix,” as seen in the increased pace of image/fashion production and consumption 

  • Boredom is linked to a decrease in meaning in the world 

  • People are afraid of getting “bogged down,” they become restless, with a need to move on

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Vermeulen & Akker

• Metamodernism

• A cultural shift characterized by an oscillation, like a pendulum swing, between opposing feelings or ideas

  • Society constantly moves back and forth between different poles (Enthusiasm & Irony, Hope & Melancholy, Naivete & Knowingness, Empathy & Apathy, Wholeness & Fragmentation)

  • Metamodernism arises in a world where systems like the ecosystem, financial system, and geopolitical structure as increasingly unstable

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Vermeulen & Akker

• Metamodernism

  • Characteristics of Metamodernism

• Pendulum Swing

• “Meta” meaning (“with,” “between,” “beyond”)

• A response to instability and desire for change 

• Metamodern individual has a fluctuating identity (constantly repositioning themselves and referring to both past and future)

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Vermeulen & Akker

• Metamodernism

  • Swing

• A constant oscillation between opposing feelings, ideas, and tendencies

  • EX: thestylerookie by Tavi Gevinson states how inspiration for creativity is hard to hold onto, which is a characteristic of metamodernism

  • “Random bursts inspiration” represent the pole enthusiasm, hope, and creativity

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Genz & Brabon

• Postmodernism & Postfeminism

• Postmodernism and postfeminism contradicted each other due to the difference between a philosophical position and an active position

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Genz & Brabon

• Postmodernism & Postfeminism

  • POSTMODERNISM

• Questions truths, narratives → emphasizes deconstruction and the idea that reality is constructed rather than fixed (leads to intellectual detachment about political goals/collective action)

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Genz & Brabon

• Postmodernism & Postfeminism

  • POSTFEMINISM

• An active social and political movement aimed at addressing gender inequality and advocating for women’s rights and liberation → how women act/perform their identities (postmodernism’s deconstructive nature seems at odds with feminism’s need for clear goals and a subject for women to advocate for)

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Genz & Brabon

• Postmodernism & Postfeminism

  • Aligning at “Woman”

• Earlier forms of feminism assumed a universal experience of “Woman”

• But postmodern postfeminism rejects the idea that “Woman” is a single category, emphasizing the differences among women based on their race, class, sexuality, culture (intersectionality)

• Celebrating plurality and difference in female identity

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Svendsen

• Being Bored

• A widespread, subtle, and intangible psychological state in contemporary society, driven by a perceived lack of overarching meaning and a constant craving for novelty

• Can act as a catalyst for active engagement and reinvention, particularly within digital platforms like PFBs

• The world has become “more boring” because of a decrease in meaning in life → social placebos (need for fast fix)

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Adam Phillips

• A Wish For Desire

• Links boredom to the “wish for a desire” → the number of PFBs are evidence that reinvention is a social priority for people in the Western world, particularly young women

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Naomi Wolf

• Carrie Bradshaw’s Legacy (Sex and the City)

• Describes Carrie Bradshaw as the “first female thinker in pop culture” (she’s a columnist who updates her female audience regularly - like PFBs)

• Sex & the City → an example of postfeminism in pop culture (focuses on female friendship and sexual independence) → both are considered a source of pleasure and power for women that is resistant to male control

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Rachel Gill

• Postfeminism = Distinctive Sensibility

• Suggests a cultural atmosphere where women are encouraged to view their bodies as projects to be continuously managed and presented, focusing on their “sexual appeal,” which is all under the banner of “personal agency” and “empowerment”

  • Femininity is linked to the body

  • Women suffer under self-surveillance, having an internal gaze

  • It’s presented as a form of “empowerment,” where women can “take agency” over their sexual self 

• PFBs are unlike this, they allow young women to construct a self-regarding identity whose primary preoccupation isn’t a sexual identity

Module 7: Representations of Gender

Alexander Forbes

• The Metamodern Mind-Set

• Metamodern Sensibility: The geopolitical crisis & economic crisis are affecting us (people believed they would have better lives than their parents but now it’s possible we won’t)

  • Despite this, we still have a willingness to try → continuous post of self-portraits demonstrates this desire to reconstruct ourselves

  • Rather than succumb to apathy in a changing and unstable world, people are actively engaging in self-creation and seeking validation

Module 7: Representations of Gender

T. Chitternden

• Fluid Identity

• Fashion blogs of teen girls support a fluid notion of identity

• Hypothesis: Bloggers use feedback from their followers to form affinities and build a Social Capital (Pierre Bourdieu)

  • EX: Tavi Gevinson built social and cultural capital through her fashion blog, her influence went beyond her peer group into the wider fashion industry (Emma Chamberlain can account for this as well, but through Youtube!)