POP CULTURE, MEDIA

AND FEMALE IDENTITY

I said it m ust be ya ass
cause it aint yo face i need
a t ip drill i need a t ip drill
I said it m ust be ya ass
cause it aint yo face i need
a t ip drill i need a t ip drill

Nelly
LOl never thought she
was hot anyways now
she looks like a monster,
I’m pretty sure no one
would have known if it
wasn’t someone else who
called the police. she
would have kept it a
secret” – Sora
well done son, gave her a propoer
ass whoopin, silly girl deserved
it…..i love chris brown forever!!
blup blup blup !” – woman basher 4
life

“i think that this pic looks far worse

than it realli was. i mean whose 2
sey that chris brown actually did all
this 2 her. females lie jus like
niggaz. & if she’s as grimy as i
heard, then this isnt probably all
chris’s work! & yess im standin up 4
chris becuz im a loyal fan & neither
one of us know the real story. so
everyone needs 2 chill cuz we dont
know FACTSS!!” – quiauna
3 percent of college
women experienced a
completed and/or
attempted rape during
the current college year
Misogyny

 Hatred of
Women
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=X8nJKa13sBo
 What is Pop Culture?

 Culture that speaks to a large audience

 Culture viewed as oppositional to “high
culture”
 Culture that speaks to the people's
experiences
 Circulated by mass media
 Assumptions of Feminism
a set of political practices founded in
analyses of the social/historical
position of women as subordinated,
oppressed or exploited either within
dominant modes of production (such
as capitalism) and/or by social
relations of patriarchy or male
domination (A. Kuhn, 1994)
 Assumptions of Feminism
 Power relations
 Patriarchy and female subjectivity
 Female representation
 Commodification/objectification of
female body
 Phallocenric language
 women as castrating Medusas, or
unfathomable continents Freud
(1950)

 Pop Culture and the Construction
of Female Identity – The message

 Media produce people’s sense of who

they are and who other are
 Media play important role in creating
and maintaining social inequalities
 Media influence social behaviour
 Media create social identities
 Pop Culture and the Construction
of Female Identity – The message

 Music
 TVand Film
 Magazines
 Pop Culture and the Construction
of Female Identity – The message

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyKEcV-
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HtuU0g
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnqlHFt
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_Zhym

Pop Culture and the Construction
of Female Identity – The message
 What’s the Big Deal?
S. Hall
 All messages are constructed with an
agenda
 Messages are encoded must be
decoded
Preferred/dominant - intentional

Negotiated- rationalized

Oppositional
 What’s the Big Deal?
S. Hall
 Messages suggest codes of conduct


 Howmessages are constructed affect

how they are read
 What’s the Big Deal?
S. Hall
 How are messages about women
constructed/ what symbols are used?


 How should they be interpreted?



 Leavemuch room outside dominant

reading?
 What’s the Big Deal?
S. Hall
 Dumb blonde
 Housewife
 Bitchy/ aggressive boss
 Sexless/ manless intellectual
 What’s the Big Deal?
S. Hall
 Visuals powerful and significantly
influence perceptions
 But most likely to be misread/ taking
representation for reality
 Representations of misogyny in pop
culture are about the issue itself in
society. What is permissible

 Questions
 Howdo we begin to correct the
problems?
First, do you believe there is a problem

 Power of the wallet!

 Be critical consumers of media messages
 Questions
 Who? Created this message
 Why? For what purpose/ intent/agenda
 What? Is it conveying and to whom
 How? Is it being circulated and with
what effect
 Questions
 Why would mass media be interested in
correcting the problems when they
are only interested in making money?
They wont!
Power of the wallet!

Power of legislation!
 Questions
 What is the international perspective on
the topic?  Do other countries have
the same problems as the U.S.?

 Yes!
 Questions
 What is the relationship between
cultural relativism and mass media’s
content?  How far can a culture go in
portraying images?
