Gender as contested memes in the media spectacle. Negotiating the meaning of gender in popular mediated culture

1. A spectacular contesting field of meaning…

2. Alternative title:
Gender as contested memes
in the media spectacle
Negotiating the meaning of
gender in popular mediated
culture

3. To get in the mood

4. negotiation of
meaning is on-
going
mediation of
media= experience
technologies (subjective
of voices
filters)
gender gender is a
media Literacy: time social
& culture wise & construct
crucial: sustaining
images, media (just as
relationships, values spectacle identity)
popular culture gender as
mediation =
important contested
socialization memes
agent
Meaning
generating
devices

5. Creatures looking for meaning
―The saturation bombing approach to life‖
(Bill Viola)

7. Media as agent of socialization

9. Media as agent of socialization
• Agenda Setting function
• Uses and Gratification
• Media Dependency Theory
• Symbolic power (semiotics)
• Carrier of values and ideologies (hegemonies)

10. What‘s in the box, granny?

11. The workings of the media
• Fragmented mediation
• Constructed/deconstructed
• Discourse and images: actors and actions
• Meaning generating devices: images, stories,
metaphors, myths
• Strategic process (arranging and re-arranging
images/actors/acts)
• Carrier of values and ideologies
• Frames the ‘fragment’/image/story
• Sets the agenda
• Mainstream vs. alternative: Power/interests involved

12. Recap:
Five core concepts in media literacy
1. All media messages are ‘constructed’
(authorship/constructedness)
2. Media messages are constructed using a
creative language with its own rules (format and
techniques of production)
3. Different people experience the same media
messages differently (audience)
4. Media have embedded values and points of
views (content/message)
5. Most media messages are organized to gain
profit, convince and/or power (purpose/motive)

13. A now what about
the meme-thing?
Contested memes
Meaning carriers, Meaning fighters
The winner takes it all

14. Woman as contested meme
(e.g. in the last two weeks…)

15. What is a Meme…
• A meme is an idea, or a particular way of thinking
about what an idea is.
• A unit of mental information in the same way a
gene is a unit of biological information
• A metaphor of an idea as a transposon, a pattern
of thought as a virus, a knowledge structure as a
chromosome.
• Memes compete to spread their information
though a social population in the same ways
genes compete to spread their information
content through a biological population.

16. Gender is a social construct
Feminist Theory Queer theory

17. So, back to socialization…or
Barbie as an archetype

18. Playing with dolls while negotiating
the meaning of personhood…

19. And how about GI joe?

20. Personhood negotiation:
Images of late 80s and 90‘s

21. Becoming biographies?
Bursting some mythical bubbles…

22. Mediation of experience: the
experience of Gender

23. Language and Images mediate…
1. All our experience is mediated, nothing is direct,
and images & language are central forms of
mediation
2. People can mediate our experience by the way
they structure reality for us in social interactions
– The ideas they stand for, their intentions, their own
experiences and how they ‘see’ the world influence
how they mediate (compose) this reality they want to
share
3. Texts, whether they are books, films or
advertisement mediate our experience

24. Barthes‘ Myth (1972) & Entman‘s Frame (1993)
• Myth is not a falsehood or a fiction, but a
rhetorical figure upholding a social belief that
has become so firmly entrenched it is
understood as real and therefore has real
effects.
• To frame is to select some aspects of a
perceived reality and make them more salient
in discourse (text, talk, images) in such a way
as to promote

25. Meaning generating devices:
Myths, metaphors,
stories, frames, images
They are all entwined
And they do a great job in
mediating experience for us

26. A perspective influences how you:
Value & Act
Analyze attitude Talk about (solutions)
Identify See or
(causes & understand (judge with others
(pinpoint) (frames)
consequences) others/see (discourse) Accept the
yourself) status quo

27. Bursting some mythical bubbles
1. The obsession with the body: culturally
embodiment of gender (Butler)
o Sexy for who?
o You are a man, because you have a penis!?
o Calorie counting freaks…
o Perpetual youth! The ant-ageing movement
2. Masculinity is strong, Femininity is Soft and
other absurdities!
3. Queer is deviant!
o What I don’t understand, I will try to categorize, even
if it doesn’t fit in the narrow category!

28. “Objects are categories of objects
which tyrannically induce
categories of persons. They
undertake the policing of social
meanings, and the significations
they engender are controlled.
Their proliferation, simultaneously
arbitrary and coherent, is the best
vehicle for a social order, equally
arbitrary and coherent, to
materialize [...]”
Jean Baudrillard

29. Narrow category boxes…

30. I am (post) (post) modern
fluid…

31. Continuity is replaced by fragments

32. Extract from:
Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: How the Quest
for Perfection is Harming Young Women
Courtney Martin
Author, philanthropist,
blogger, editor, and
lecturer on topics such
as feminism, activism,
and philanthropy

34. The engraved ‗Barbie‘ in our psyche

35. Doll face

36. From dolls….

37. …to reality TV

38. And in between…
Ana & Mia

39. Mediated gender attributes

40. Extract from:
Tough Guise, Violence & Media the crisis of masculinity

41. True or false? a continuum?
or mere stereotypes!?
Nelson (1985)
• Masculine • Feminine
• Active • Passive
• Presence • Absence
• Validated • Excluded
• Success • Failure
• Superior • Inferior
• Primary • Secondary
• Independent • Dependent
• Unity • Multiplicity
• Organized • Scattered
• Intellect • Imagination
• Logical • Illogical
• Defined • Undefined
• Dependable • capricious

42. Reversing the Gaze: Men as Object

43. Taking a critical stance: 5 core
questions of media literacy…
(new) Media as technologies of
alternative voices

44. Technologies of liberation:
WE ARE THE MEDIA & THE MSSG
Mainstream is slowly dying!
Alternative voices, grassroots movements,
Mobilizing!
Ladies & Gentlemen…
the critical literate individual is awakening
and he/she or LGBT has a powerful voice

45. Core concepts translated in key questions
1. Who created this message? (authorship/sender)
2. What creative techniques are used to attract my
attention (format/creative strategies for reality
construction)
3. How might different people understand this
message differently? (audience/receiver)
4. What values, lifestyles and points of view are
represented in, or omitted from, this message?
(content)
5. Why is this message being sent? (purpose)

46. Participatory culture (Jenkins)
A participatory culture is a culture :
• With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement
• With strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others
• With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the
one with the most experienced is passed along to novices
• Where members believe that their contributions matter
• Where members feel some degree of social connection with one
another
– at the least they care what other people think about what they have created.
• Not every member must contribute, but all must believe they are FREE
to contribute, when ready and that what they contribute will be
appropriately valued.

47. Joanie Croes, Aruban contemporary artist
www.joaniecroes.com

48. http://trans-positive.tumblr.com/

49. Conversation, social identity, support
http://trans-positive.tumblr.com/

50. e.g. Alternative narrative:
What if Carrie was a lesbian?

51. The revolution will be tweeted
tweeting for freedom…

52. Digital activism: signatures for action
e.g. AVAAZ.org

53. Miss Representation

54. The film became a movement
― The average teenager spends more
than 10 hours each day consuming
media — more than sleeping or
attending school. Media is the
messenger and an increasingly
powerful one. Mainstream media
bombards children and adults alike
with overwhelming messages that
women should be beautiful and sexy,
while men should be powerful and
often violent. These messages limit
children‘s ideas of what is possible in
the world and can have damaging
effects on their self-esteem, health,
and the way they treat others‖
Miss Representation org.

55. Taking the pledge against ―Miss representation‖
actions you can take…

56. What if you start conceiving your Facebook
wall as a platform for change?

57. Voicing checklist
• What am I authoring?
• Does my message reflect understanding in
format, creativity and technology?
• Is my message engaging and compelling for
my target audience?
• Have I clearly and consistently framed values,
lifestyles and points of view in my content?
• Have I communicated my purpose effectively

58. Recap:
Gender & the Media Spectacle:
1. The negotiation of meaning is an on-going process
2. Mediation of experience, mediation is never neutral
3. Gender is a social construct
4. Gender as contested memes
5. Meaning generating devices: images, myths and stories
6. Mommy and daddy can’t be around all the time, but you
can always count on popular culture, it is everywhere, all
the time to ‘socialize’ (with?) you
7. Media play a crucial role our lives, both time wise as
culturally wise: creating meanings, (of the self),
strengthening relationships and pondering values
8. Media as powerful technologies of voice.

59. Conclusion:
• fluidity, diversity, identity…is so difficult to
categorize in ‘cultural’ image-boxes.
• We are no longer passive recipients of the
media, we are the media…
• “Pro-sumers”(Ritzer)/ “participative
culture”(Jenskins)
• Be the message

60. More information on the topic:
www.scoop.it/t/gender-as-contested-memes
Interesting media-clippings (articles, videos, etc) are being curated here.