A Look at Media's Impact on Race and Gender
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Media Today: A Look at Media's Impact on Race and Gender Emmanuel Cuevas Bracamontes California State University East Bay COMM 4500 Gender Identity and Representation June 3, 2014 ABSTRACT: Cultural studies gives us an academic platform in which we can look at today's media and how it affects our perception of gender and race. California's Native American tribes, print advertisements, and examples found in film media help us understand ideas such as critical race theory and gender roles here in our own society. Studying these subcultures and media sources within the United States, we can see how social, print, and film media has affected our perception of social issues, sexual objectification, and racial stereotyping. We find ourselves in an interesting time for media as society becomes aware of its effects on these perceptions. A Look at Media's Impact on Race and Gender 1 BACKGROUND Our world has thousands of different cultures with different practices, traditions, and rituals; Black, white, gamer, athlete, student. These are some of the groups one might associate themselves with. Within these groups, there are subcultures full of their own jargon, practices, and ideologies. They help give people identity and give them a sense of belonging. Humans are a species who thrive from being social. These cultures have managed to thrive under different conditions, but they have one constant; they require a group of people. Cultural studies is “an approach to the study of communications in society that is drawn from a number of sources including Marxism, semiotics, literary and film analysis, psychoanalysis, feminism, and critical race and postcolonial theory” (Dines,2011,624). Simply put, researchers study different aspects of a culture to understand it and the culture's climate. Researchers look to cultural studies to try to answer the questions how and why things came to be as they are. Cultural studies are also used to see how dynamic a culture can be due to change. Things that are commonplace now were normal in the past. From something as common as a car to an idea as ambitious as space flight,these ideas forever changed the way our society functioned. Cultural studies help researchers understand where society was, where it is, and where it is going. There are four areas of research being presented in this paper. The study of California's Native American tribes and how they have approached domestic violence, sexual objectification found in images used in print advertising, reading race today, and hip hop's commodification. Do social and entertainment media predicate the way we approach things such as race and gender and how have they affected the way we view race and gender today? FINDINGS Taking a Gamble, Domestic Violence Among the California's Native American Tribes The Santa Ynez band of Chumash Indians are located north of Santa Barbara, California. The community itself has a very limited media presence. The tribe has their own website dedicated to teaching people about the history and culture of the Chumash people. Navigating through their website, there is no mention of domestic violence as a social issue among the Chumash people. There is a page dedicated to gambling and how it has helped the financial stability of the community. According to the page, the casino employs 1600 employees and brought in enough revenue that the casino has donated $14 million back to the community's schools, public works programs, and road maintenance. Finally, there is a link to the private clinic located within the community. Their main social media pages were on Facebook and Twitter which were posted to infrequently. Their Twitter page had 21 followers on 4/15/2014 and 23 followers as of 5/26/2014. There were a total of seven posts the day the study A Look at Media's Impact on Race and Gender 2 started and one additional tweet posted on the last day of the study bringing the total post count to eight. Their main focus with these tweets were to promote their community Facebook page. The latest post as of 5/26/2014 was on 5/5/2014. Their Facebook page was very similar in terms of activity. The last thing posted was posted in conjuncture with their Twitter post. They had a total of 30 posts, 101 page likes, 19 responses, 4 shares, and 132 cumulative post likes at the beginning of the study. There were a total of 31 posts, 111 page likes, 19 responses, 4 shares, and 137 cumulative post likes at the end of the study. The themes of the posts covered a variety of topics which included local sports events, charity events, donation announcements, and the introduction of their new YouTube channel. Their YouTube channel had 5 total videos posted which were all posted 3/7/2014 with commenting disabled on all of them. The total view count for these videos was 1,732 on the last day of this study. Relative to other more popular YouTube channels which get millions of views, this is not a popular channel. In a very sharp contrast, the Chumash Casino Resort Facebook and Twitter pages were much more active and popular. There were 24 posts made on their Facebook page during the time the study took place. There was a cumulative total 8,733 post likes, 1,219 comments, and 501 shares on the posts made during the time of the study. At the end of the study their Facebook page had 48,260 likes. Compared to their community page, the Chumash Casino had an estimated 345% larger fan base, 110% more commenting, and 99% more sharing occurring on their Facebook page. The Chumash Casino Resort's Twitter had 942 followers and 229 total tweets on the casino page. The themes on the Twitter page reflect very similar themes to those on the Facebook page. The topics range from the twentieth anniversary of the casino, giveaways, concerts, restaurants at the location, random facts about the casino, praising of the staff and a statement withdrawing their sponsorship of the LA Clippers after the Donald Sterling remarks on 4/28/2014. The casino also has a YouTube Channel. There are 6 videos posted with the most recent being dated over a year old. There have been a total of 962 video views for their channel which was surprisingly lower than the Chumash community YouTube channel. Both the community and the casino have Instagram pages which are posted to infrequently if at all. The casino's page would not post for months at a time up until February 2014 where it posted 11 pictures and then averaged 3 images a month through May until the end of the study. The community Instagram has one photo which was taken back in January. The Chumash Indians are not very active in their social media in comparison to their casino which seems to be riddled with activity. A lot of effort and resources seem to be put into promoting the casino and its image. This might be due to its financial influence in the community and surrounding cities. The biggest social issue being tackled by the community was housing and community public works. The casino had resources for people with gambling addiction, addicts, and places A Look at Media's Impact on Race and Gender 3 where victims of gambling addiction could reach out to for help. In conclusion, there is no mention anywhere of domestic violence among the Chumash Band of Indians of Santa Ynez. This is interesting because the biggest social issue being tackled by many Native American tribes is domestic violence. The case could be that there is indeed no domestic violence taking place among this particular group of Native Americans, however, there is a chance it is just not spoken about publicly. The only conclusive thing to be considered here is that it is not a current social media issue for them. A group of researchers compared results and found that the tribes California had very similar traits. Their social media efforts were weak on their community pages, but very strong presence was found on their casino pages. Domestic violence was not a social issue that was being addressed by the tribes of California and was not mentioned. Furthermore, there was much more interest in financial stability and promoting the casino above all other topics found among the tribes. Music Icon or Sex Symbols? Using Caroline Heldman's Sexual Objectification coding questions, a group of researchers analyzed images found using a random Google search. The image chosen and analyzed shows covers of the music magazine, Rolling Stone and hypersexualized images on it covers. There are a total of twelve covers of the magazine represented in this image. Out of the twelve, ten include covers of women. Out of the seven questions Heldman proposes, her fourth question of sexual integrity applies to Janet Jackson's breasts being covered by hands other than her own or some form of clothing which have been replaced by another person's hands while the headline reads “ JANET JACKSON: the joy of sex”. The fourth question asks, “Does the image affirm the idea of violating the bodily integrity of a sexualized person that can't consent?” (Heldman,2014). Jackson's hands are over her head in a submissive position while another person covers her breasts almost as if she is in their control. Another one of the covers has two girls from the show “Gossip Girls” eating an ice cream cone. Question five asks”Does the image suggest that sexual availability is the defining characteristic of the person?” (Heldman,2014), This image is suggesting a sexual innuendo and the ice cream cone could be seen as a stand in for a male phallus.