SOC 202 2024 Lecture 7 Gender & Pop Culture PDF

SOC 202 Lecture 6 Gender & Pop Culture Part One Women, Pop Culture and the Gaze Women, Pop Culture & the Gaze Section ONE Louis Althusser: Ideology & the Screened Image As viewers and consumers of mediated images (tv screens, phones, social media etc) we all negotiat...

SOC 202 Lecture 6 Gender & Pop Culture Part One Women, Pop Culture and the Gaze Women, Pop Culture & the Gaze Section ONE Louis Althusser: Ideology & the Screened Image As viewers and consumers of mediated images (tv screens, phones, social media etc) we all negotiate modes of identification as we consume those images Ideal Subject: we are “ideal” subjects (individuals) when we occupy a position that is set up for us as viewers by the producer of the images: we identify with what we see on the screen as the producer intends for us to identify. Interpellation: we are interpellated when we come to recognize our “image likeness” on the screen and identify with and maintain it through our consumption. The image on the screen is a likeness of ourselves, a “surrogate self.”  Gender, Generations & Pop Culture Both the Ideal Subject and Interpellation are contextualized through gender, pop culture and generational changes in how gender is represented through pop culture and culture itself. 1950s: Domesticity, nuclear family, rise of suburbs, harmony, strict gender roles, “mom and pop” 1960s-70s: Rise of the women’s movement (feminism). For example, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) examined “the singular view of what it meant to be a woman.” That is, Friedan wondered if there was more to womanhood than the traditional ideas put forth  Gender, Generations & Pop Culture 1980s & 90s: by the 1980s, feminism and social changes in gender and gender roles had become pronounced enough that pop culture was forced to respond to a increasingly effective feminism. One way it did so was via the “out of control” feminist Conservative pop culture saw the “polite and proper” ideal female of earlier generations as undergoing social change in identity. That is, different forms of womanhood entered into social consciousness  Gender, Generations & Pop Culture 1980s and 90s con’t: Pop culture began to produce images of women in which she was socially and politically active (feminism),but she could also be violent, crazed, sexually promiscuous, a threat In effect, this new “independent woman” was seen as unappealing. Question: how has this perspective remained and been maintained in 2023? Women, Pop Culture & the Gaze Section TWO  Gender, Identification & Pop Culture Gender Trouble (Judith Butler, 1990) What Butler argues in this book (her thesis) is this: gender is “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” This process is about enacting (performing) gender according to social expectations and in aid of the status quo – norms. With any status quo comes expectations and if not satisfied, a consequence, sanction or stigma Question: what stigma(s) may be applied to a young woman who doesn’t adhere to socially accepted expectations or the status quo?  Gender, Identification & Pop Culture Judith Butler con’t (from Gender Trouble) Hegemonic Perspective: Gender - masculinity and femininity - are in many ways performed gender identities that re-make the gender roles determined for us and naturalized to us beginning at birth. For example…boys have a blue room and girls have a pink room. Counter-Hegemonic Perspective: Gendered behaviour is subjectively socialized as something we perform and maintain, yes, but it is also something we may subvert and manipulate, as well. Women, Pop Culture & the Gaze Section THREE  Gender, Identification & Pop Culture American sociologist Charles Cooley is known for conceiving of Looking Glass Theory (1902) and it works in three parts: (a) we imagine how others see our appearance (b) we imagine other’s judgment of our appearance (c) our feelings – pride, shame, empowerment, disempowerment – are determined by our imagination of judgments of us  Performing Gender Operating from the earlier counter-hegemonic perspective, Gayle Rubin connects gender expectation to performance and acceptance, as well as to deviance and subversion. For example, “patriarchy has determined the acceptable meaning of female behavior and categorized it accordingly” And central to “restricting female autonomy over representations, freedom and behaviors are repressive ideologies categorizing sexual behavior as good or bad” Adrienne Rich: “objectivity is determined by male subjectivity”  The Body & the Gaze in Pop Culture Popular cultural - and art historical - images largely operate within a system of erotic spectacle Woman in classical cinema and media images serve as an empty sign exchanged by men: she is always the object rather than the subject of desire. These images have historically worked within a patriarchal structure of society. For example, pleasure is derived from either: Looking at and consuming the erotic object – traditionally a male act! Pleasure through identification with the image – traditionally a female act!  The Body & the Gaze in Pop Culture Laura Mulvey argues there are two forms of “the gaze” – that is, how we are positioned to “look” at the image of body displayed on the screen (a) Active Male Gaze: this “gaze” contains the female body within the confined space of a movie screen. That is, the male gaze on behalf of the viewer gazes at the female body as she is presented on the screen. Her body is then consumed as “an object the male viewer is detached from.” (b) Passive Female Gaze: the female viewer recognizes herself as the subject (she is the viewer, the subject) but she also sees herself on screen as the object (the body being consumed) Art History and Objectification Popular Culture and Objectification  SOC 202 End of Lecture #6 - Gender and Pop Culture Part ONE