...The documentary movie Tough Guise 2 gives us the most insightful understanding of how the contemporary masculinity is shaped and constructed by the media. In the movie, Dr. Jackson Katz bridges the connections between violence on the screen and violence in the real life by using lots of stunning examples from television, films, video games, and sports. Then, what is the media? The media is the means of communication, as television, film and video games, newspapers, radio and magazines, which plays the silent but influential roles in the lives of individual. In particular, Television, film, and video convey information as well as impact comprehension of gender identities as a result of portray by the media (Kivel & Johnson, 2009; Johnson, Richmond, & Kivel, 2008). For example, in our society, TV set is so important in many families and households. It functions as one of the most popular ways of entertainment for most of people and also as the important source of information. Van Evra (1990:112) comments on the impact of television on the lives of many people by saying that it plays a significant role in a child’s growing beliefs and attitudes about what it means to be male or female in the world. The National Television Violence Study examined nearly 10,000 hours of television programming from 1995-1997 and found that 60% contained violence, with children’s programming being the most violent (Federman, 1996). This study is summarized in the diagram below (Mediascope...
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...101.01 Individual Research Paper Dr. Gillespie Violent Masculinity: How American Society and Media Glorify Violence in the American Youth By it’s anthropologic definition, masculinity is anything that men think and do. It is anything that men think and do to other men. And lastly, it is the idea that some men are innately, or are acknowledged to be, more macho than other men (Guttman 93). When we consider those in their childhood and adolescence stages, even though they aren’t men, they are nevertheless affected by the constructs of masculinity. In this paper, I intend to show how American Society and popular media combine to construct a masculinity norm that glorifies violence, especially among teens, adolescence, and children. Before we look at how masculinity can lead to violence in our culture, we must first unearth how masculinities are constructed, both by mainstream media and by societal norms. Perhaps the most crucial aspect of masculine and feminine studies is that gender is a perception that is socially constructed (Craig 2). Academics are cautious to separate sex—a purely biological difference—and gender—a label that is used to illustrate the essential qualities that society attributes to members of a particular sex. As a result, masculinity becomes a term that we must explain. It is widely recognized that American society and popular media are responsible for shaping masculinity, so it is only logical to that these two institutions be of...
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...Derek Hillegas Sport Media Triad Research Write-Up 6/6/14 Michael Sam and his portrayal in the Media Introduction: The number of gay athletes that are starting to come out and announce that they are gay are increasing. Every time this happens it is a shock to people and the media gets a hold of this information and makes it known. Homosexual athletes will face challenges. Most locker rooms have a “don’t ask don’t tell” policy, and there are few openly gay male athletes in hyper masculine sports like American Football. Michael Sam became the first open gay player to enter the NFL draft and eventually would be selected in the draft by the St. Louis Rams. He announced he was gay back in February and ever since them he was the main focal point of the NFL up until the Draft. The main point of this paper is to take basic ideologies such as masculinity, violence, Race, Gender, sexuality or meritocracy, and use these ideologies to analyze how the media portrays Michael Sam. Another point that will be touched upon is how the news media and sport media have different ways of portraying Michael Sam in the media. Methods: The first thing I did to conduct my research was to find 10 media sources that were related to how the media portrayed Michael Sam. In these 10 media sources I was looking for different types of ideologies and how the media used these articles to describe Michael Sam. Once I found 10 media Articles I needed to find 2 more Academic articles. It was going to be hard...
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...Defining Masculinity Masculinity is what it means to be a man which I think is not such a simple thing” (Grey Beyer) Being a man or a woman is the biological sex of a person, it is a descriptive biological concept. It is a physical and bodily nature but being masculine or feminine includes a mix of behaviours, characteristics and beliefs. Our society usually associates masculine traits with a boy or man and feminine traits with a girl or woman. Our cultures teaches men and women to be completely the opposite of each other. Pezzote (2008) tries to explains that when people refer what a ‘real man’ is in the everyday sense they actually combine four things together. • Biological sex ( Male and female reproductive organs) • Gender expression (How gender is expressed whether as masculine or feminine) • Gender identity ( The inner sense of being a man or woman) • Sexual orientation ( Straight or gay) When we combine these four categories it creates the perception that a biological male, masculine and hetereosexual and who identifies himself as a man is the norm to which all the other types of men should aim. Different types of masculinities Just like in societies...
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...MASCULINITY: CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF A VISUAL ARTIFACT Visual Culture Essay 2 Module 2 Wessel Viljoen 090029 Genieve Eloff Thursday 14h00 Word Count = 860 TABLE OF CONTENT Pages LIST OF FIGURES…………….....……………………………………………iii 1. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………..1 1.1 What is Musculinism…………………………..………………………..1 1.2 Branded Masculinity…………………………………………………….1 2. MASCULINISM AND ADVERTISING………………………………………...2 3. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………..3 4. BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………...4 LIST OF FIGURES Page Fig 1 Old Spice, The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, 2010. ………………….2 INTRODUCTION 1.1 What is masculinism? Masculinity is a word that describes an idea generated by the media of what it entails to be a man. According to Cohen(2001:5) “a gender is formed by shared beliefs or models of gender that majority of society accepts as appropriate”. Gender ideals are socially constructed in specific historical and cultural context and changes over time and location. As identified by Brannon (1976) being a hegemonic masculine male entails four main themes: (i) No Sissy Stuff: men must never resemble women or display stereotypical characteristics of a woman. Kimmel (2001:35) suggests that “Homophobia is a centralised principle of our cultural definition of manhood.” (ii) The Big Wheel: the ability of real men to obtain wealth, fame, success and status. Typically determined by occupation. (iii) The Sturdy Oak: manliness...
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...questions needs to probe by the researcher prior to the process of beginning the research: Why ask these questions? Has anyone else done something similar? Will the answers and ultimately the results be relevant? All these answers will be better answered through the process of reviewing literature. This essay will provide a mock interpretation of how the given literature reviews on masculinity can be used to extract the interview schedule. This will be done through examining the existing phenomena in the body of research on masculinity and to further close the gap between themes that have been addressed and the need thereof to expand on the existing theory should the need arise (Et al). 2. INTERVIEW SCHEDULE 2.1 Section A: Understanding masculinity in the 21st century Franklin describes masculinity as those behaviors, language and practices existing in specific cultural and organizational locations, which are commonly associated with males and thus culturally defined as not feminine. This line of questioning will seek to interrogate the understanding of respondents on the concept of masculinity and various groupings of masculine ideals. Questions:...
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...The purpose of this paper is to explain the following terms in detail: radical feminism; socialist feminism; rape; masculinities; violence; sexual harassment; biology is not destiny; and negative feminist stereotypes. I have chosen to discuss the two feminist theories that were previously mentioned due to the fact that they both focus heavily on the oppression of men in society, as well as the evident gender division between the sexes. I have chosen to focus on the six concepts that were previously mentioned because they focus on how women are oppressed, and mistreated in society. Radical Feminism Radical feminism supports the idea that patriarchy is the main form of oppression women face. The goal of radical feminism is the elimination of patriarchy. From a radical feminist perspective, women are oppressed in three main ways or areas: the state, the nuclear family, and through reproduction and mothering. Radical feminism also suggests that the lack of control women have over their own bodies and own reproduction is central to oppression. Radical feminists aim towards eliminating sexual, as well as physical violence against women (Calixte et al., 2009). The significance of radical feminism is that it focuses on what is seen as the major oppressors in our culture. Moreover, radical feminism opens our eyes to male dominance and how it has been highly normalized. It alerts us to how ‘normal’ or common images from pornography reduce women to sexual objects. Moreover, it makes...
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...Muscularity, Masculinity, and Adolescent Men The relationship between muscularity, masculinity and dominance, propagated by advertisements and mass media, gives adolescent men a negative body image discrepancy. Men’s self-esteem is often tied to this discrepancy between the ideal body image and how they view their own bodies. Adolescent men attempt to diminish the difference between the perceived ideal body and their own bodies by lifting weights and taking supplements. Unfortunately, as they build more muscle their ideal body becomes more muscular, instilling a cycle of constant low self-esteem in adolescent men. This cycle is based on problems and contradictions inherent in this traditional notion of masculinity. Muscular, powerful male bodies are assumed to be related to social power. This gives them a perceived dominance over smaller, weaker men. Men believe that they will gain more self-esteem as they become more muscular. When confidence and self-esteem are defined by body image, men will never be confident because their body never reaches what they perceive to be the ideal. White and Gillett point out the fallacy that social power is related to physical power, when in reality social power is more closely tied to economic and political structures (35). White and Gillett summarize Brod’s ideas about the two primary reasons that cause men to feel insecure about their masculinity. The first is that there is an increasing gap between the institutional and personal forms...
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...Kevin Henry FOUN 1001 13th April2015 The marginalization of male domestic abuse victims through the media (Final) “Whenever I speak of male abuse I am met by disbelief and even worse laughter. I notice in talking with other shelter staff throughout the state that this attitude prevails in other shelters, too- men are the perpetrators women are the victims.” The above quote from Jan Dimmitt executive director of Kelso’s emergency support shelter in Longview Washington, United states reveals an all too common attitude towards male domestic abuse. Such a discriminatory attitude is not simply limited to the United States however it is also seen here in the Caribbean, a region with a history of domestic abuse and even more concerning is realization that the media helps to proliferate such a view. Media of all kinds can influence and even distort the perception of persons’ opinions on topics such as physical attractiveness and politics. Similar problems arise when applied to the issue of domestic abuse and the media has a responsibility to ensure that it does not misrepresent men by offering only one view of the issue. The media has a prospective responsibility to ensure that they portray the reality of domestic abuse to avoid stereotyping men as aggressors. The media in all outlets whether social or otherwise is the major provider of information on various issues and therefore has a prospective responsibility to provide information without bias. Prospective responsibility according...
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...Imane Rhaleb English 132-23 Mr. Scott Still 2 May 2013 Achieving Society’s Prescribed Definitions of Femininity and Masculinity: Is One Harder to Accomplish than the Other? In Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll” and Sharon Olds’ “Rite of Passage,” both authors discuss the roles that a female plays and the roles in that a male plays. “Barbie Doll” describes the implications and consequences of society’s definition of femininity and how the character was affected by it. Contrasting to that poem is “Rite of Passage,” which serves to portray the coming of age of a young boy into manhood, all set within the backdrop of a birthday party. While each of these poems describe the different roles in which men and women can act on, both Piercy and Olds make the point that there are pressures that come with fitting into the right character. Furthermore, both poems’ messages extend into today’s society as many young adolescents struggle with achieving the fixed notions of femininity and masculinity. Both women and girls are socialized into society’s definition of feminine behavior. The innumerable social pressures that are put onto women to be conventional to certain ways of looking and behaving are consequentially destructive. In Durham’s research, she examined and observed a group of girls’ conversations in a middle school in the southwest region of the United States. She noted that many of these young girls are influenced by what they see on magazines such as YM or Seventeen...
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...forward to the biggest college basketball tournament of the year, most commonly known as March Madness. This competition consists of both men’s and women’s NCAA basketball teams who compete in hopes of making it to the respected and heavily televised Final Four. The Final Four is the last game for each remaining team before the National Championship game, where the two deserving teams are matched up against each other. This series of competition creates a rich supply of content for sports media networks to influence viewer’s values and attitudes. Networks have become increasingly knowledgeable and schematic in using sport entertainment as a way to promote their ideologies, values, commercialization and interpretations of sport. Studies have found that people turn to sports in the media for entertainment. The different forms of media are evolving and moving in a more prevalent direction than they have been in the past. With the explosive growth of internet users in the past decade, media companies have created a domain where they can input their interpretations of sporting events and coverage. These domains have become dominated by the 18-34-year-old demographic (Kian, Mondello & Vincent 2009) who use websites such as ESPN, the most widely used website for obtaining sports related news (Lefton, 2006 as cited in Battenfield, Redmond & Ridinger 2014), and Sports Illustrated to read about upcoming games, watch live coverage, or get the low down on games that have already happened...
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...Examine how the media causes crime -21 Marks. We live today in a media- saturated society. The media are all around us and crime is the central theme of their output, both fiction and non-fiction. Crime and deviance make up a large percentage of news coverage. For example, Richard Ericson et al’s study of Toronto found that 45-71% of quality press and radio news was about various forms of deviance and its control, while Williams and Dickinson found British newspapers allocate up to 30% of their news space to crime. However, many question whether media causes criminality. There are frequent ways in which the media might possibly cause crime and deviance and this includes the glamorisation of offending. As we have seen, the media overstates the amount of violent and unusual crime, and they exaggerate the threats of certain groups of people becoming its victims, such as young women and the elderly. Hence, there is a concern that the media may be misleading the public’s impression of crime and causing an impractical fear of it. Research evidence to some degree supports the view that there is a link between media use and fear of crime. For example, in the USA, Gerbner et al found that heavy users of television (over four hours a day) had greater levels of fear of crime. However, the existence of such correlations doesn’t verify that media viewing causes fear. For example, it may be that those who are already afraid of going out at night watch more TV just because they stay in more...
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...Kenechukwu Igweze Mrs. Armstrong-Sanchez English 110 9 September 2011 Life, who makes the choices? you or the media Most people think that they are completely in control of their own thoughts, emotions, actions, basically their whole lives and the way they see other people. However, in actuality, they are not. In the society we live in today, we are all brought up on stereotypes and expected to fill the supposed roles of the child, the woman, and the man. All we see on TV, in commercials, magazines, and on the internet is the stereotypical person. The big strong male figure, the mother or the sexy and thin female figure, these are some of the types of characters portrayed in everything that we intake from the media. The media is a massive information network that connects people to the world, which is beneficial, however , it also misrepresents different groups of people which in turn warps the minds of its audience. It forces us to prejudge, and we grow up on these often false representations of the world. The representation of women in the media has changed a lot in the last couple decades, Many of us would agree that some strides have been made in how the media portrays women in movies, TV and magazines, and that there has been an increase in the presence and influence of women in media. Nonetheless, female stereotypes continue to expand in the media we take in every day. Images of female bodies are everywhere. Women's bodies are used to sell everything now a days...
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...“Sex/Gender and the Media: From Sex Roles to Social Construction and Beyond,” in Ross, K. (ed) The Handbook of Gender, Sex and Media, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN-10: 1444338544; 365-82. ISBN-13: 978-1444338546 Sex/Gender and the Media From Sex Roles to Social Construction and Beyond Cynthia Carter Introduction In the early years of second-wave western feminism, many gender researchers and feminist scholars distinguished between the notion of sex, defined as biological differences between male and female, and ‘sex roles,’ referring to certain behaviors and characteristics attributed to each sex that was a social construction. The resulting media research centered on images of women in the media (much less emphasis was placed on men) in order to draw attention to inequities in their portrayal in relation to men (in quantitative terms as well as in terms of the use of stereotypes). Since the 1970s, however, the scope of social constructionism has greatly expanded in feminist theory. Some suggest that the distinction between the biological and the social has, as a result, eroded to such an extent that it is no longer possible to understand the difference, while others question the need for this distinction. For instance, in queer and transgender theory and feminist cultural studies, theorists have sought to make strange the ‘sex/gender’ distinction. The key argument made is that biology is no less a cultural construct than gender socialization into masculinity and femininity...
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...“Devil Wanna Put Me In a Bow-Tie” Dr. Mark Anthony Neal’ s lecture consisted of how black masculinity has distorted patters of portrayal. The distorted patterns include: no representation, negative association, and limited positive association. He talked about how black male bodies are seen as negative in comparison to white male bodies. Dr. Neal gave examples like, if we saw a white man getting caught with weed we would think that he was just addicted, but if we saw a black man with weed society sees it as a crime. He also mentioned how Gene Anthony Ray was a gay African American actor who had a hard time coming out because people thought that it was not a good representation of black masculinity. Dr. Neal’ s lecture reflects what we learned...
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