Feminist Media Theory Linda Steiner

Part III New Approaches and Reconsiderations 20 Feminist Media Theory Linda Steiner Feminism is an emancipatory, transformational movement aimed at undoing domination and oppression. To assert these normative purposes is not to deny its complex and much contested status. Nor does this definition explain what “feminist” modifies in the phrase “feminist media theory.” Feminist media history, to take a different example, highlights the development of media established by feminists for feminist audiences, which often embody feminist values. In contrast, the field of feminist media studies deploys feminist principles and politics in research- ing media processes and organizations, regardless of whether the media content expresses a feminist ethos. Feminist media theory, I argue, relies on feminist theory. That is, it applies philosophies, concepts, and logics articulating feminist principles and concepts to media processes such as hiring, production, and distribution; to patterns of representation in news and entertainment across platforms; and to reception. Unlike approaches that hide their politics, feminist theorizing is explic- itly political. It addresses power. The theory’s feminist agenda is also manifest in its research aims and methods.1 Moreover, feminist media theory takes gender seriously – as a factor that structures identity and experiences – without assuming permanent or static gender differences. Instead gender intersects with other dimensions of identity such as race, class, ability, nationhood, and sexual orienta- tion, as well as with the relations of subordination or domination that these categories carry along. Indeed, precisely because the sex/gender system is socially constructed – naturalized but not “natural” – media issues are central to feminism; much of the controversy within feminism turns specifically on media. Significant changes in media representations of women, many pushed by or produced in response to feminism, have provoked fierce debate. Which representations are progressive, The Handbook of Media and Mass Communication Theory, First Edition. Edited by Robert S. Fortner and P. Mark Fackler. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 360 Linda Steiner which disguised versions of conventional sexism, or even actively anti-feminist? Furthermore, feminist media theory remains largely implicit rather than becoming explicit. It hasn’t caught up with the emergence of multiple feminisms and approaches. The Activist History To complicate the definitional issue one more time, the field of feminist media studies history arguably begins with Betty Friedan’s 1963 attack on popular women’s magazines (which were run by men) for their single-minded celebration of the “feminine mystique.” The premise of those magazines was the idea that working women were unhappy and neurotic and women can find fulfillment only as devoted housewives and mothers. Such fulfillment required the products sold by magazine advertisers. The feminist media theorist whose pioneering legacy survives most clearly is, however, Donna Allen – not Betty Friedan. A civil liberties and peace activist, Allen was convicted of contempt for refusing to testify before the US House Committee on Un-American Activities (the sentence was overturned). In 1972 she founded the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP). The WIFP’s newsletter Media Report to Women tirelessly reported on lawsuits against news organizations, challenges of broadcast licenses, and other policy and legal efforts. A 1977 manifesto by Allen and her daughter Dana Densmore called for invent- ing a radical and feminist philosophy of communication, “one that is gentle and peaceful, respectful of all people, and politically equal.”2 Women’s progress and power required women’s media, as well as women working in male-owned media who could correct the latter’s distorted, misleading content and its emphasis on violence, conflict, and sex. Allen and her second daughter Martha Leslie Allen identified (and enacted) three principles for feminist journalism: never attack or use words that judge people; privilege facts over opinion (“Conclusions without facts keep us apathetic, powerless to act, and dependent upon the decision- making of others”); and let people speak for themselves, something “male journalism” refused to do. Inspired by the burgeoning visibility of “liberal feminism” (the idea that irrational prejudice and incorrect stereotypes of women result in their being denied their equal rights), and often supported by the WIFP, scholars and organizations col- lected empirical data in the 1970s about unrealistic “sex roles” in, or women’s absence from, television and film; these quickly filled anthologies and bibliographies (Busby, 1975; Butler & Paisley, 1980; Friedman, 1977). A US Commission on Civil Rights (1977) report documented the stereotyping and under-representation of women and people of color in prime-time television dramas and news. According to the Commission, people of color and women rarely reported news, much less enjoyed leadership positions of media organizations; and this fact resulted in that stereotyping and under-representation. The report showed that a group might both decry its stereotyped representation and complain of invisibility. Feminist Media Theory 361 Moreover, the report’s emphasis on television also explains why television has particular importance, that is, why it matters more than other media: [Television] confers status on those individuals and groups … telling the viewer who and what is important to know about. Those who are made visible through television become worthy of attention and concern; those whom television ignores remain invisible. (US Commission on Civil Rights, 1977, p. 1)3 In general, again, these content analyses assumed both cause (sexism and, relatedly, women’s lack of access to media employment) and effect (the lowering self-esteem of women consumers). Rather brutally refuting the “mythology” of the women’s movement in the 1960s and 1970s, Marjorie Ferguson (1990) attributed feminists’ demands – their demand for better representations of women in the pro- grams’ content and for a higher-status representation of women inside media organizations – to their shared beliefs about “increased visibility as a key to greater access, equity, and power” (p. 215). In sum, the central assumption of the early, essentially second-wave, feminist media theory was what could be called the three Rs: depictions of women (and girls) result from, reflect, and reproduce dominant ideologies. Portrayals prescribe and perpetuate roles limited by race/ethnicity, gender, and class; and feminists worried that this causes women to internalize a highly constrained sense of their possibilities and options. Even if women sought nonconventional careers, they would be barred by men.4 Among the theory’s internal contradictions, however, was the argument that women (potentially all women, although women of color were particularly vulnerable to negative and limited stereotyping) were uniformly harmed by such content. Yet the theory also predicted that women hired and promoted by media organizations would produce more “realistic” and “positive” content. The only exceptions here were women in the advertising industry. No advertising women would be able to resist the demand to sexualize and objectify women – often by splitting them into body parts (lips, breasts, legs) for male consumers’ pleasure. Either way, in the wake of war-time and post-war fears about propaganda, feminists feared “strong” negative effects. Promises for realistic and positive images are problematic, independently and in combination. Even if media can mirror reality and “accurately” reflect women (which they cannot), who defines the ideals? Media texts are made in contexts that articulate with the current dimensions of power and ideology, and these are beyond the making of individuals; but such texts remain cultural forms whose meanings are neither real nor unreal but made – constructed (Rakow, 2001; van Zoonen, 1994). And, while this particular insight emerged only later, more nuanced approaches soon began to surface. Gaye Tuchman (1978) applied the concept of symbolic annihilation: The media “annihilated” women through omission, trivialization, and condemnation. Scholars in England, especially the Women’s Studies Group (1978) at the University of Birmingham, studied women’s cultural experiences; their attention to how cultural spheres are gendered launched still ongoing research on women’s genres. Feminist film theorists focused on how structures and narrative 362 Linda Steiner strategies guided cinema spectatorship in gendered ways, thereby constructing “woman” as the Other. Using psychoanalytic theory to explain gendered viewing dynamics, Laura Mulvey (1975) famously described Hollywood’s structuring of the male gaze. As Allen’s philosophy shows, much of the early (and also later) work on representations of women in news and entertainment media was quantitative. Scholars counted how many of the lawyers or doctors or police officials on television dramas were women; how many of the heroes on children’s television shows were girls; how many of the front-page news makers were women. This preoccupation with counting was largely predicated on crude, albeit well-meant ideas about the detrimental “effects” of such representations, both generally, on social life, and at the individual level, on consciousness. Ironically, some blamed the excessive abstractness

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