Media, Men and Women…

ECOMP 6016 - Assignment #6A: Watch two movies that make claims about how media influences people, then write a reflection based on the following questions:

• What do you agree or disagree with what they claim? Explain.
• What is your perspective on the media's influence? 
• What evidence or counter-evidence of what they are claiming do you see with your own students?

Video #1: "Touch Guise" by Jackson Katz

Video #2: "Advertising's Image of Women" by Jean Killbourne

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Good golly is this a huge topic, with so many points of views, philosophies and conclusions that is hard to know where to start…

Jackson seems to come right out of the gate attaching the media as the source from which men learn how to commit violence. But later on he points out that the media is not necessarily creating the violent culture but rather is a reflection of the violence that is in our culture.What is so scary is that our society, at least with respect to our opinions of what good “media entertainment” is, seems to be okay with this. As I listened to Jackson talk about how men are getting tips on what it means to be masculine from the media, it makes me wonder how much of the masculinity we see portrayed is an accurate representation of the real world, or is it more what a small group (e.g. the entertainment industry) thinks masculinity is? He also goes on to look at how the media portrays violence by students at school in the vocabulary they use, i.e. using the term children and rarely that of boys or young men. Unfortunately, I think there are times when the news media is less concerned with the facts or being specific then with being politically correct and/or gender neutral.

For Kilbourne, she attempts to take on the huge powerhouse that is the beautification of women. Just like Jackson who says it takes more courage to challenge the ideas of perceived masculinity, Kilbourne points out that challenging the stereotypes that clothing, cosmetics, and even plastic surgery advocates claim as femininity requires great strength and perseverance. Another interesting point she makes is what would happen if the media took their attitude toward the female body and applied them to the male body. 

When I look at my own students there are some that I can see potentially fitting into some of the stereotypical labels, but others do not. I have also seen counter-evidence to claims that it is males that are the primary source for violence; often female teachers tell me that girls are much meaner to each other than boys, and I think we may be beginning to see this surface in the entertainment media via reality TV. And speaking of girls, now that the weather has turned warmer we at the middle school had to address the issue (again) of appropriate school attire. 

As educators and parents and well, adults, I think we need to stress to students the difference between what is “real” and what is entertainment and fiction. Going back to Week #4’s assignment, one of the reasons why I love DVD technology is because it gives us the opportunity to see the “Making Of…” and see the work that it took to create all that drama and action and violence…and how nobody got hurt doing it. Interviews with cast can also show them what it takes to create the image of the characters we see, such as how much weight the actor had to loose in order to “fit into” the role. The point really hit home about how the media has gotten very good at dehumanizing people, creating artificial expectations for women about what it means to be beautiful and for men what it means to be masculine.