POWER & THE MEDIA - ORIENTALISM / GENDER / ASIAN IDENTITY

Exam questions

POWER & THE MEDIA: ORIENTALISM  

We are preparing for the 'Power' exam question. Your final essay may consider three topics: how black / Asian identity is constructed in the media; how women are represented in the media; how Arabian culture is represented in the media. Today's lesson on orientalism therefore may give you a third to a half of your final exam answer.

Please email me your completed essay by Friday 25 September.

You will write a short essay on Orientalism as part of this topic in answer to the exam question: "The media construct identity." How far do you agree with this view?

• define orientalism and how it relates to the media's power to shape perceptions about identity
• give an account of Edward Said's thoughts on orientalism. Edward Said was a founder of the academic field of post-colonial studies, whose work Orientalism was a foundational text.
• offer three case studies that support your views - like American Sniper, Ironman, True Lies, Aladdin, Sex and The City, Karate Kid, The Hurt Locker
  
• brief conclusion that relates to the exam question

In our lesson on orientalism, we will use these resources:

• What is orientalism? A stereotyping of Arab peoples and cultures
• Imperialism and orientalism: what did Edward Said write?
• Orientalism asserts the West's superiority and justifies the assertion of Western power over the East 
  
• Hollywood stereotypes: Arabs as terrorists, Arab women as exotic or oppressed
• The misrepresentation of Arabs in Western media

 Watch the brief video

POWER & THE MEDIA: IDENTITY and GENDER

We are preparing for the 'Power' exam question. Your final essay may consider three topics. Today's lesson on how women are represented therefore may give you a third to a half of your final exam answer.

Please email me your completed essay by Friday 2 October.

You will write a short essay on power and gender as part of this topic in answer to the exam question: "The media construct identity." How far do you agree with this view?

• define how women are represented and the media's power to shape perceptions about identity
• give an account of three to four theorists with media examples
• The Bechdel Test
• Carol Clover – last girl theory: useful if analysing representation in horror films but mainly the sub genre of slasher horror. These are often aimed at catering for male audiences.
• Angela McRobbie – post feminist icon theory 
• Laura Mulvey – male gaze/female gaze: the female form is objectified in a range of media. 
• Tessa Perkins – stereotyping has elements of truth and are based on repeated representations, both in society and within the media. 
• Judith Butler – queer theory. Gender is not the result of nature but is socially constructed through media and culture. 
• brief conclusion that relates to the exam question

In our lesson on gender, we will use these resources:

• Laura Mulvey – male gaze/female gaze. Although Mulvey herself has rejected the male gaze theory in recent years there are still strong arguments suggesting the female form is still objectified in a range of media. Can we subvert the theory and suggest male performers/actors are objectified?
• Carol Clover: the representation of the last girl model in slasher films has evolved. First depicted as a hopeless damsel in distress who is bombarded with all sorts of dread and insurmountable fear and  panic at first, the moment she is drawn face to face with her attacker, since she then appears tough as a male as she fights against the attacker with a weapon in her hand in her hopes of survival. Examples of slasher films that utilize the ‘final girl’ concept are Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006, Scott Glosserman),  the 1997 film Alien Resurrection (1997, Jean-Pierre Jeunet), Urban Legend  (1998, Jamie Blanks). You may have newer examples?
• Angela McRobbie: McRobbie concluded from analysing constructions of gender in magazines that the media socialise us into gender roles: masculinity tends to be equated with power and aggression whilst femininity is represented in traditional roles, often as weak or subservient. These stereotypes perpetuate social ideas about gender. However, her Post Feminist Icon Theory suggests that female characters can also be determined, strong, independent and in control but also utilise their sexuality. “Lara Croft, Lady Gaga and Madonna, for example, could be identified as post-feminist icons as they exhibit the stereotypical characteristics of both the male and female – strength, courage, control and logic but also are willing to be sexualized for the male gaze. This control element of their own representation is crucial in understanding the theory”. In Rihanna's tv advert for Reb'l Fleur she has control over her representation: both knowing and innocent, Rihanna explores both sides of her nature in a visual palindrome.
• Digital technology has enabled the representation of the warrior woman in film: examples include Avatar with the CGI alien Neytiri (2009, James Cameron), Lara Croft Tomb Raider (2001), Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000, Ang Lee), Mei in The House Of Flying Daggers (2004, Yimou Zhang), Mulan (2020, Niki Caro), Captain Marvell (2019) and similar films like Captain America, Wonder Woman. 
• Robotic 'service' figures tend to be constructed as compliant females: Mia the synth in the popular tv series Humans (2015-18), Arisa in Better Than Us (2018, Netflix), Ava in Ex Machina (2014)
• The director of Avatar, James Cameron, is a notable figure in the screen history of the warrior woman because his previous films include two memorable examples: Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in The Teminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), and Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in Aliens (1986). 
• Judith Butler – Gender is not the result of nature but is socially constructed through media and culture. This theory challenges the assumption that there is a binary divide between gay and heterosexual suggesting in mainstream media heterosexuality is represented as normal. For Butler, gender is 'performative', like a theatre script that is repeatedly performed to a social audience, of acts associated with male or female. For Butler, gender is not innate, but "a series of acts which are renewed, revised, and consolidated through time". This suggests that performances of woman are compelled and enforced by historical social practice. For example, in films like East is East and Bend It Like Beckham, young Asian women are required by their parents to dress in particular ways that count as 'female' or 'suitable' (Jasminder may not wear football shorts, Meenah must wear a sari for visitors).
• Advertisements as gender scripts The conviction that advertisements are gender scripts is best summed up by Goodman (2002): ‘Because the media are the main information source about social processes and images and self-presentation, women are likely to attend to and use media images as guides for their attitudes and behaviours’. Many commentators position advertising as a powerful socialising agent among women, and, in particular, young women. In perhaps the seminal article in the field, Angela McRobbie (1978) studied Jackie! magazine and isolated a number of ‘codes of femininity’ centred on romance, domestic life, fashion and beauty used to indoctrinate young girls. Content analyses also suggest that a variety of subtle cues are used to tell young girls what might be considered suitably ‘feminine’ characteristics.

WATCH THE PRESENTATION ON THE BECHDEL TEST HERE

If you wish to read further, there is a downloadable pdf: 

WOMEN IN ADVERTISING: REPRESENTATIONS, REPERCUSSIONS, RESPONSES 

© Mercury Publications 

The representation of women in advertising has been the subject of discussion and debate for over four decades, with advertisers standing accused of utilising inappropriate and degrading stereotypes. This is currently a matter of prime concern in Ireland. The Equality Authority has recently issued a call for a background paper on the issue. This initiative has been welcomed by the National Women’s Council of Ireland. However, it has been dismissed as unnecessary by the Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland (ASAI) and by the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland (IAPI). This paper explores these issues and, in an effort to represent diverse views, draws upon discussion and empirical evidence from gender studies, consumer research, media studies and advertising studies. The paper highlights the fact that polarised views regarding the repercussions of gender representations are based upon understandings of how advertising impacts its audiences. Specifically, do advertisements operate as gender scripts or, alternatively, is gender textually mediated? The paper concludes with a number of recommendations for the advertising industry. 

Maurice Patterson, Lisa O’Malley & Vicky Story

POWER & THE MEDIA: BRITISH ASIAN IDENTITY

We are preparing for the 'Power' exam question. Your final essay may consider three topics. Today's lesson on how collective identities (black and Asian) are represented therefore may give you a third to a half of your final exam answer. We have already covered some of this material in class.Today's lesson will give you a third to a half of your final exam answer.

You will write a short essay on British Asian identity as part of this topic in answer to the exam question: "The media construct identity." How far do you agree with this view? Please email me your completed essay by Friday 9 October.

Additional case studies: 

Yasmin (Kenneth Glenaan, 2004) written by Simon Beaufoy and starring Archie Panjabi as Yasmin and Renu Setna as her father, Khalid. The film was a response to the demonisation of Muslims as terrorists. It was made a a time when British Muslims felt that they were being treated badly by the wider population, the media and the government because of growing concern over an extremist minority within Islam. The variety of different representations of this ethnic group could be viewed as positive as it does not simplify what it means to be Asian. In the film, Yasmin is seen changing her clothes in secret in her car as she moves between her family identity and her work identity. 

Despite this, the film still uses several stereotypes. Yasmin has been criticized for its representation of white people in so far as there are few likeable white characters in the film. They are also shown as racist. This starts lightly but gathers momentum over the course of the film with remarks such as ‘get back to your own country’. The collective term ‘you’, to describe anyone from an ethnic minority, becomes important as a symbol of the way that racism simplifies difference as a simple case of ‘us’ meaning white and ‘them’ meaning non-white. 

The film is clearly critical of these attitudes. It is set amongst a British Pakistani community in parts of Keighley (in West Yorkshire, England) before and after the events of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon Building. 

At the start of the film, English-Pakistani girl, Yasmin, lives two lives in two different worlds: in her community, she wears Muslim clothes, cooks for her father and brother, Nassir, and has the traditional behaviour of a Muslim woman. On top of this, she has a non-consummated marriage with the illegal immigrant Faysal Husseini who is a friend of the family from Pakistan. From Yasmin's perspective, she has gone along with the arranged marriage just in order to facilitate his getting a British passport, before divorcing him. 

In the second act, we see the instant and the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks. The effect of those terrible events meant an upsurge in prejudice against the Muslim communities in many parts of Great Britain. In her job she endures prejudice when people start sticking notes on her locker stating 'Yaz loves Osama'. She is eventually asked to take some paid leave and given no valid explanation. We see ordinary people in the pub looking down at her as well as yobs on BMXs attacking an innocent old Asian woman in the street who Yasmin rescues. We see how young male members of the once harmonious Pakistani community in Keighley go against their parents and start to become radicalised by corrupt readers of the Koran to rise up and fight against the West for the way that they have started to demonise Islam and persecute their people. Yasmin's younger brother is easily recruited by a Radical Muslim Group. Finally, after Yasmin's husband is arrested on suspected terror charges that turn out to have no basis in reality, she too takes sides against the British establishment and changes her life, dressing in traditional costume, waiting for her husband outside a police station for days and eventually comforting him when he is released, traumatized, without charge. Yasmin refuses to grant her blessing to him as he prepares to go to a training camp in Afghanistan. Between the White English characters, both of the young British-Pakistanis, the old Pakistani father and the newly arrived immigrant Faysal there are many huge contrasts in belief about what it is to be British.

Four Lions (Chris Morris, 2011) is a jihad satire depicting four homegrown jihadis from Sheffield who fail to disrupt the London marathon with a series of own-goals. Originally rejected by both the BBC and C4 as too controversial, Morris describes it as an attempt to explore the war on terror after 9/11 and in the wake of 7/7; he describes it as a good-hearted farce, the Dad's Army of terrorism:" Suddenly you're not dealing with an amorphous Arab world so much as with British people who have been here quite a long time and who make curry and are a part of the landscape." It pushes mainstream comedy to the edge, allowing a discussion about an incendiary subject within the safe framework of satire.

East is East (Damien O’Donnell, 1999) is a comedy drama based on a Punjabi family in the 1970’s based in Salford. It is arguably one of the first hits to have established British Asian cinema as a true contender across the world. The film touches upon the controversial topic of arranged marriages and traditional families. Based on award-winning actor and playwright, Ayub Khan-Din’s play of the same name, it depicts BrAsian family life as a site of conflict with Bollywood actor, Om Puri, leading the cast in his role as father Zahir George Khan with British actress Linda Bassett playing his wife. 

Media representations can only ever be just that: individual stories, not stereotypes anchored in 'truth'. Khan Din rejects the notion that George Khan is 'typical' Muslim father.

Bend It Like Beckham (Gurinder Chadha, 2002)

Theory: Erving Goffman and Performance 

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) is Goffman's seminal sociology book. It uses the imagery of the theatre in order to portray the importance of human social interaction.

Goffman writes about the nature of social interaction e.g. notions of ‘performance’ reflecting a certain identity. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is relevant when looking at the whole idea of identity and can be mapped onto contemporary media. Identity can be a site of conflict, especially between generations and often more so between second and third generation immigrants. There are several film that explore this.

Many second and third generation immigrants openly and confidently challenge their parents (like Anita in Anita and Me), whilst others 'bend', showing flexibility and moving between two cultures (like Jess /Jasminder in Bend It Like Beckham). Some feel forced to hide their real identities in the face of entrenched traditional values (East Is East, where 'east' and 'west' Do not meet).

For Erving Goffman, identity becomes a matter of performance, with front and back stage behaviours, which serve to define appropriate behaviours in two different spheres.

For example, in East is East, Tariq pays lip service to obeying his Muslim father but morphs into his western identity as ‘Tony’ at college and in the night club. Some conflict leads to outright war, with positions taken that are poles apart, as when Nazir is disowned by George after fleeing an arranged marriage for a homosexual relationship. The message of this film is that hybrid identities are not accepted by traditional Muslim parents.