Masculinity

Advertising: Score case study and wider reading 

We have already studied the changing representation of women in advertising but there is no doubt that the portrayal of men and masculinity has also changed significantly too.

Our first advertising CSP, the 1967 Score hair cream advert, provides a compelling case study for the representation of both men and women.

Notes from the lesson and the blog task are below.

Hypermasculinity in advertising

Hypermasculinity is defined as: a psychological term for the exaggeration of male stereotypical behaviour, such as an emphasis on physical strength, aggression, and sexuality.

Advertising in the 1950s-1980s often featured a hypermasculine representation of men – and some representations in the media today still continue this.

Gelfer: Changing masculinity in advertising

Joseph Gelfer, a director of masculinity research, suggests that the way masculinity is represented in advertising is changing. Looking at advertising over the last 20 years:

“Previously, masculinity was mostly presented in one of two ways: either a glamorous James Bond-style masculinity that attracted ‘the ladies’, or a buffoon-style masculinity that was firmly under the wifely thumb. 

Thankfully, and somewhat belatedly, things are beginning to change.” (Gelfer, 2017)

Gelfer: Five stages of Masculinity

Gelfer suggests there are five stages of masculinity – how people perceive and understand what it means to be a man.

Stage 1: “unconscious masculinity” – traditional view of men

Stage 2: “conscious masculinity” – as above but deliberate

Stage 3: “critical masculinities” – feminist; socially constructed

Stage 4: “multiple masculinities” – anyone can be anything

Stage 5: “beyond masculinities” – it doesn’t exist 

Gelfer says advertisers need to think about how their target audience views men and masculinity when creating campaigns.

Masculinity in crisis? David Gauntlett

Media theorist David Gauntlett has written extensively on gender and identity. He disagrees with the popular view that masculinity is ‘in crisis’:

“Contemporary masculinity is often said to be 'in crisis'; as women become increasingly assertive and successful… men are said to be anxious and confused about what their role is today.”

Instead, Gauntlett suggests that many modern representations of masculinity are “about men finding a place for themselves in the modern world.” He sees this as a positive thing. (Gauntlett, 2002)

Score hair cream advert: CSP context

The Score hair cream advert is an historical artefact from 1967. It should be examined by considering its historical, social and cultural contexts, particularly as it relates to gender roles, sexuality and the historical context of advertising techniques.

Context: 1967 can be seen as a period of change in the UK with legislation on (and changing attitudes to) the role of women – and men – in society. Produced in the year of decriminalisation of homosexuality and three years before the 1970 Equal Pay Act, the representation of gender could be read as signalling more anxiety than might first appear. The reference to colonialist values can also be linked to social and cultural contexts of the ending of Empire.

Blog task: Score advert and wider reading

Complete the following tasks and wider reading on the Score hair cream advert and masculinity in advertising.

Score hair cream advert

Answer the following questions to ensure you have a comprehensive textual analysis of the Score hair cream advert:

1) What year was the advert produced and why is the historical context important? 

1967, advertising incorporated a lot of masculine personas.

2) Analyse the mise-en-scene in the advert how is costume, make-up and placement of models constructed to show male dominance?

His clothing paints him as a hero as oppose to the women who have a lack of clothing .
3) The main slogan is: 'Get what you've always wanted'. What does this suggest to the audience and how does it reflect the social and cultural context of 1967?

That you can get an abundance of women, attempting to enforce male dominance.

4) Why is it significant that the advert text says it is "made by men" and that it also contains "Score's famous masculine scent"?

It reinforces to the intended audience that it is a hyper masculine product.

5) What representation of sexuality can be found in the advert?

That the women are there for the male figure, they glorify him by holding him above them.

6) How does the advert reflect representations of masculinity in advertising 50 years ago?

That they were presented as heroes, due to the mise en seen of the clothing and props. But also that they attracted the opposite sex.
7) How much do you think things have changed with regards to representations of masculinity in advertising? 

They are perceived now as the family man, with a family. But is seen less in modern day adv. 


The Drum: This Boy Can article

Read this article from The Drum magazine on gender and the new masculinity. If the Drum website is blocked, you can find the text of the article here. Think about how the issues raised in this article link to our Score hair cream advert CSP and then answer the following questions:

1) Why does the writer suggest that we may face a "growing 'boy crisis'"?

A growing global ‘boy crisis’ suggests that we could be, in fact, empowering the wrong sex.

2) How has the Axe/Lynx brand changed its marketing to present a different representation of masculinity?

Men are craving a more diverse definition of what it means to be a ‘successful’ man in 2016, and to
relieve the unrelenting pressure on them to conform to suffocating, old paradigms.

3) How does campaigner David Brockway, quoted in the article, suggest advertisers "totally reinvent gender constructs"?

In order to prevent a full blown crisis of self-worth, Brockway advocates that advertisers “totally
reinvent gender constructs” and dare to paint a world where boys like pink, don’t like going out and
getting dirty, or aren’t career ambitious, for example.

4) How have changes in family and society altered how brands are targeting their products?

As Miller says, the definition of “family” in places like Britain is profoundly changing – but advertising is not helping to normalise different scenarios by largely failing to portray this new normal.

5) Why does Fernando Desouches, Axe/Lynx global brand development director, say you've got to "set the platform" before you explode the myth of masculinity?

Lynx/Axe has attempted to get the conversation rolling with its U-turn ‘Find
Your Magic’

Campaign: Why brands need to change

Read this Campaign article on Why brands need to change their approach to marketing masculinity. If the Campaign website is blocked, you can find the text of the article here. Think about how the article relates to our work on gender and advertising then answer the following questions:

1) What are two ways advertising traditionally presented masculinity?

Masculinity was mostly presented in one of two ways: either a glamorous
James Bond-style masculinity that attracted ‘the ladies’, or a buffoon-style masculinity that was
firmly under the wifely thumb.

2) What are the two reasons the writer Joseph Gelfer suggests for why this needs to change?

One altruistic, the other self-serving. The altruistic reason is that traditional masculinity causes problems, whether it be its impact on men’s wellbeing or on women and their equal representation in society. The self-serving reason is that masculinity is constantly shifting and brands need an equally agile response in order to engage with consumers and remainrelevant and competitive.

3) What are the five stages of masculinity?

Stage 1: “unconscious masculinity” – traditional view of men

Stage 2: “conscious masculinity” – as above but deliberate

Stage 3: “critical masculinities” – feminist; socially constructed

Stage 4: “multiple masculinities” – anyone can be anything

Stage 5: “beyond masculinities” – it doesn’t exist 

4) Take the Five Stages of Masculinity Personality Inventory testto see what stage of masculinity you are at. Where did it suggest your views are currently? Do you agree with its assessment? You can read more about the five stages of masculinity here.

5) What stage of masculinity was the Score advert aiming at in 1967?

Unconscious 

6) Why are the stages of masculinity important for companies and advertisers when targeting an audience?

They see what type of male they want to attract

Henry Jenkins

Henry Jenkinsis an expert in fandom and participatory culture. Key to this idea is the concept of the ‘prosumer’ – audiences that create as well as consume media. This culture has revolutionised fan communities with the opportunity to create and share content. It also links to Clay Shirky’s work on ‘mass amateurisation’.

Fandom is now big business – with Comic-Con events making millions. More importantly, the internet has demonstrated the size of fan communities so it is no longer a minority of ‘geek’ stereotypes but mainstream popular culture (such as Marvel, Harry Potter or Doctor Who).

https://youtu.be/ZCKoLB1kUsY

Jenkins defends fan cultures and argues that fans are often stereotyped negatively in the media because they value popular culture (e.g. films or games) over traditional cultural capital (high brow culture or knowledge). The irony is fan culture is often dominated by middle class, educated audiences.

Jenkins discusses ‘textual poaching’ – when fans take texts and re-edit or develop their meanings, a process called semiotic productivity. Fan communities are also quick to criticise if they feel a text or character is developing in a way they don’t support.


EU copyright law: a threat to participatory culture?

A new copyright law currently moving through the European Parliament has been described as a potential 'meme-ban'. It would place the responsibility for the distribution of copyrighted material with the platform rather than the user or copyright holder - and therefore could lead to huge amounts of content being removed. If implemented in full, it could end textual poaching, fan-made texts and re-edits and many more examples of fandom and participatory culture. You can read more on the potential implications in this Wired feature.

CAN YOU FIND SOME FANDOM OR EXAMPLES OF PROSUMERS FOR EACH OF THE CSP’s?

https://lbbonline.com/news/sarah-lund-stars-in-save-the-children-xmas-viral/

Or literal music videos?

First list ALL your CSP’s. Then find an example!

Billie Jean
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lii3y-12ZBk&safe=trueLetter to the free 

No offence

The Killing

Then Answer these…

Henry Jenkins - fandom blog tasks

The following tasks will give you an excellent introduction to fandom and also allow you to start exploring degree-level insight into audience studies. Work through the following:

Factsheet #107 - Fandom

Use our Media Factsheet archive on the M: drive Media Shared (M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets) to find Media Factsheet #107 on Fandom. Save it to USB or email it to yourself so you have access to the reading for homework. Read the whole of Factsheet and answer the following questions:

1) What is the definition of a fan?  A fan, or fanatic, sometimes also termed aficionado or supporter, is a person who is enthusiastically devoted to something or somebody, such as a singer or band, a sport or a sports team, a genre, a politician, a book, a movie or an entertainer

2) What the different types of fan identified in the factsheet?

3) What makes a ‘fandom’? 

the fans of a particular person, team, fictional series, etc. regarded collectively as a community or subculture.
4) What is Bordieu’s argument regarding the ‘cultural capital’ of fandom?




5) What examples of fandom are provided on pages 2 and 3 of the factsheet?

6) Why is imaginative extension and text creation a vital part of digital fandom?

How does Billie Jean represent Michael Jackson as an artist? What does this have to do with the historical context?

How does Billie Jean represent Michael Jackson as an artist? What does this have to do with the historical context?

It refers to the Historical context by showing how Michael Jackson as a black American is under pursuit by the detective, reflecting the potential context of society for black Americans. As an artist he was the first black musician to be shown on MTV, also a break through moment and reinforced by his untouchable persona. 

Post Modernism

Jean Baudrillard.

PASTICHE– Means to combine multiple elements.  In postmodern media this can be a homage or a parody of past styles.

It can often reference pop culture as part of the narrative.

Postmodernproductions often blur the lines between good and evil, light and dark for both viewers and characters. 

HYPER REALITY- is a condition in which reality has been replaced by simulacra.

SIMULACRA- an image or representation of someone or something.

Give examples of Billie Jean aligning with Baudrillard.

Pastiche: It shows homage to "singing in the rain" although is a parody as it highlights it through the perspective of a black American.

Postmodernism: It blurs the lines between the detective and Michael, as the detective who would be seen as negative in his pursuit of Michael in the video. Where as in society a detective is seen as positive.  

Hyper reality: When Jackson gives the homeless man a coin and his clothes change. 

Music Video: theory

Music Video: theory

There are a range of important theories we need to learn as part of our Music Video unit.

Both our Music Video Close-Study Products contain representations of black Americans. We therefore need to study a range of theories that address the representation of black or minority ethnic people in the media.



Paul Gilroy: The Black Atlantic

Paul Gilroy is a key theorist in A Level Media and has written about race in both the UK and USA.

In The Black Atlantic (1993), Gilroy explores influences on black culture. One review states: “Gilroy’s ‘black Atlantic’ delineates a distinctively modern, cultural-political space that is not specifically African, American, Caribbean, or British, but is, rather, a hybrid mix of all of these at once.”

Gilroy is particularly interested in the idea of black diasporic identity – the feeling of never quite belonging or being accepted in western societies even to this day.

For example, Gilroy points to the slave trade as having a huge cultural influence on modern America – as highlighted by Common’s Letter to the Free.

Diaspora: A term that originates from the Greek word meaning “dispersion,” diaspora refers to the community of people that migrated from their homeland. [Source: facinghistory.org]

Gilroy on black music

Gilroy suggests that black music articulates diasporic experiences of resistance to white capitalist culture. 

When writing about British diasporic identities, Gilroy discusses how many black Britons do not feel like they totally belong in Britain but are regarded as ‘English’ when they return to the country of their parents’ birth e.g. the Caribbean or Africa. This can create a sense of never truly belonging anywhere.

Additional theories on race representations and music

Stuart Hall: race representations in media

Stuart Hall suggests that audiences often blur race and class which leads to people associating particular races with certain social classes.

He suggests that western cultures are still white dominated and that ethnic minorities in the media are misinterpreted due to underlying racist tendencies. BAME people are often represented as ‘the other’.

Hall outlined three black characterisations in American media:

·               The Slave figure: “the faithful fieldhand… attached and devoted to ‘his’ master.” (Hall 1995)

·               The Native: primitive, cheating, savage, barbarian, criminal.

·               The Clown/Entertainer: a performer – “implying an ‘innate’ humour in the black man.” (Hall 1995)

https://youtu.be/Ouhdtrmzenw

Tricia Rose: Black Noise (1994)

 

Tricia Rose was one of the first academics to study the cultural impact of the hip hop genre in her influential book Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994).

Rose suggested that hip hop initially gave audiences an insight into the lives of young, black, urban Americans and also gave them a voice (including empowering female artists). However, Rose has since criticised commercial hip hop and suggests black culture has been appropriated and exploited by capitalism.

Michael Eric Dyson: Know What I Mean (2007)

Georgetown University Professor of Sociology Michael Eric Dyson has passionately defended both hip hop and black culture – Jay-Z describes him as “the hip hop intellectual”.

 https://youtu.be/q6rBbT2UktU

Dyson suggests that political hip hop in the 1990s didn’t get the credit (or commercial success) it deserved and this led to the rap music of today – which can be flashy, sexualised and glamorising criminal behaviour.

Dyson states: “Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such critics. Sadly, the enlightened aspects of hip hop are overlooked by critics who are out to satisfy a grudge against black youth culture…” Michael Eric Dyson, Know What I Mean (2007)


Hip hop debate - full video
This appears to be the full Google debate on hip hop if you want to watch more from where those extracts came from.


Music Video theory - blog tasks

https://youtu.be/q6rBbT2UktU

Childish Gambino, the musical stage name of writer and performer Donald Glover, has just released a critique of American culture and Donald Trump with This Is America.

Racking up 10m views in 24 hours and already dubbed ‘genius’ and ‘a masterpiece’, the music video is a satirical comment on American culture, racism and gun violence.

Create a blogpost called 'Music video: theory', watch the video again then answer the questions below:


1) How does the This Is America video meet the key conventions of a music video?

Dance in time with the music, a story line that would conventional be reflected within lyrics and the video. 

2) What comment is the video making on American culture, racism and gun violence?

That it still happens in America and is an on going problem. 
3) Write an analysis of the video applying the theories we have learned: Gilroy, Hall, Rose and Dyson. 

Gilroy suggests that black music articulates diasporic experiences of resistance to white capitalist culture. 

Hall outlined three black characterisations in American media:

·               The Slave figure: “the faithful fieldhand… attached and devoted to ‘his’ master.” (Hall 1995)

·               The Native: primitive, cheating, savage, barbarian, criminal.

·               The Clown/Entertainer: a performer – “implying an ‘innate’ humour in the black man.” (Hall 1995)Read 

As represented all in the music video

Rose suggested that hip hop initially gave audiences an insight into the lives of young, black, urban Americans and also gave them a voice 

Dyson states: “Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history and race.

this Guardian feature on This Is America - including the comments below.

4) What are the three interpretations suggested in the article?

He's playing Jim Crow, he's duping us with dance, taking on the police

5) What alternative interpretations of the video are offered in the comments 'below the line'

"Its just music"

13th Documentary

13^th

What is the likelihood of a black male being incarcerated in America?  1 in 3

 

History is not just stuff that happens by accident. We are the products of history that our ancestors choose, if we’re white. If we are black, we are the products of the history that our ancestors most likely did not choose. Yet here we are all together, the products of that set of choices. And we have to understand that in order to escape from it. — Kevin Gannon, 13th 

What are your thoughts on this quote? Do you agree or disagree? Why or why not? 

I agree that we need to move away from stereo-types for example moving away from the life of our ancestors  .

President Lyndon B. Johnson ushered in the War on Crime, Nixon began a figurative War on Drugs that became a literal War on Drugs in the Reagan era. 

Were you surprised to learn about the racial underpinnings of these legislative policies, and the active role of the state in criminalizing and targeting communities of color? Discuss using the quotation below.

 ‘The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did. – John Ehrlichman, Nixon Administration Advisor.’ 

I am surprised as it was at the time not an obvious correlation as it appears that the war on drugs was happening for the good of others. Although the fact that it was under mining a racial group and connecting them to the drugs problem was shocking. This is because it was a world wide problem. 

Super predator. Criminal.

Think about the power of media and the power of words.

 Discuss media and how words impact the perception and criminalization of people of color, both in the past and the present (animalistic, violent, to be feared, threat to white people, criminals, etc.). 

Give 2x modern-day examples.

Lavinia Woodward: Oxford student 'too bright' for prison is spared jail for stabbing boyfriend

PRISONERS FOR PROFIT. 

Were you aware of the Prison Industrial Complex and how corporations are profiting from incarceration?

no i wasn't aware that big companies are profiting from prisoners producing these products. 

 What are the dangers surrounding ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council—a committee of politicians and corporations influencing laws that benefit its corporate founders and pushing forth policies to increase the number of people in prison and increase sentences)?

The American Legislative Exchange Council. This is a secretive group of about 2,000 state legislators, major corporations and far-right think tanks. The goal of ALEC is privatization and advancing the interests of corporations.

What is the impact of  CCA? (Corrections Corporations of America, leader in private prisons that is required to keep prison beds filled—the leading corporation responsible for the rapid increase in criminalization) and how that impacts our communities. The film argues that there is a direct link between American slavery and the modern American prison system. What is your take on this argument?

They enforce harsher laws to keep prisons filled swell as house grant families in prison like halls. 

People say all the time, ‘Well, I don’t understand how people could have tolerated slavery. How could they have made peace with that? How could people have gone to a lynching and participated in that? That’s so crazy. If I was living at that time I would never have tolerated anything like that.’ And the truth is we are living in this time, and we are tolerating it.” -Bryan Stevenson

What is the power of media representations and how does this relate to cultivation theory? If you consistently hear for example that black people in America are the problem behind crime you will start to have a negative view to a group of people. 

N.S.

Find some examples of music, musicians and music videos serving successfully to raise awareness to political issues. Post them to your blog.