term 2 lec 2 jan 21-2015 media society fouc FW

Part II: A Foucauldian framework on Media’s influence/control on Society:

Why and how are individual /society being disciplined by the power of popular cultural media?

Identifying and interrelating variables from our Kit literature for essay P II. (this integration is impt for your P 2 grade)

Power/Media

1.  Biopower of popular culture

Foucault: Discipline and Punish (chapter 7)

•  Power to Media Technologies

•  Technologies of managing people who are objectified as categories of age, gender, students, workers, managers, investors and all normalized, objectified groups in society

3.  Instrument:

•  Mass produced movies, TV shows, print media

•  Internet

4.  Self:

•  Consumer of media: movies, information, etc

5.  Place:

Society/Home

5.  Mechanisms (creating docility):

•  of objectification

•  of subordination

6.  Techniques of discipline:

•  Surveillance, totally infiltrate/ discipline/ monitor minutely

•  Goal: Identification; Classification (normal /abnormal): assessment; behaviour alteration

Power/Media (cont’d)

7. Discourse:

•  On popular cultural norms on all aspects of life imposed on self, e.g., re: body, leisure, life style, gender, race, education, politics, business, etc.

•  Discourse is that of consumer, corporate profit and integrating the self into the business world, but little discourse on citizen/public sphere or of community life

8. Historical Process that unfolds:

Objectification, Loss of self, Totalization

Framework: Media as popular cultural instruments shape Foucault’s ‘Disciplinary society’:

•  Media set socio-cultural norms – of values, behaviour, bodies, gender, knowledge, etc. - which turn Society into a ‘House of Certainty’

•  Disciplinary power is a non-corporeal totalizing

force:

o  Individual social bodies unconsciously acknowledge and

accept the disciplinary power relations with the media

o  Certainty of control is constructed by the self who spontaneously designs own subjection,

•  Effects :

o  Constant, profound and permanent on the Self

o  Produce a ‘disciplinary’ society

Media’s disciplinary power is invisible and continuous in its control over the self

Its two forms:

•  Surveillance

•  Normalization

Foucault’s method of inquiry:

•  uncovers the discourse of the disciplining institutions

Disciplinary power is a totalizing system:

•  Deployed seemingly innocuously

•  Multitude of capillaries of control

•  Permeates and controls the whole society

Foucault’s Madness and Civilization: The Birth of the Asylum:

•  Movies that present what happens in the Asylum

•  Michel Foucault Madness and Civilization: The Birth of the Asylum; Foucault vs. Freud

•  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXCW6Ztkp7Y

•  Top 10 Movies That Take Place in a Mental Institution (Audience Choice)

•  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzzktK6Gceg

•  The Truth about Mental Hospitals

•  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-ERXsCo5ME

•  Inside Mental Hospital

•  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9wEvsg-nhA&feature=endscreen&NR=1

Resources from the course Kit articles for your essay P II:

Azzarito (2010)

Surveillance:

•  The feminine docile body: ‘woman-as-Panopticon.’

•  The power of the media as a surveillance mechanism presenting and reiterating ideals of high-status femininity.

•  The media defines and circumscribes the feminine body as a complement to and/or in opposition to the masculine body in normative ways.

Azzarito (2010) (cont’d):

Objectification:

1.  popular culture constructs unrealistic ideals of women’s bodies

2.  Normal/abnormal: normalizes stereotypes of race and gender

3.  Celebrating slenderness, lack of muscularity and athleticism. Dieting and fitness practices promoted in health, fitness and fashion magazines serve as technologies of the self for achieving ‘perfection,’ an unattainable, monodimensional notion of slenderness with its promise of ideal femininity

Azzarito (2010) (cont’d)

Discourse:

1.  media offers ever more important sites of pedagogizing girls’ construction of their bodies

2.  The Muslim girl’s body remains portrayed not only as a covered body, a ‘silent body,’ but also as an oppressed and constrained female physicality

3.  Racial and other minorities are often misrepresented by the media, esp. in Hollywood movies

Disciplining:

1.  Media can impact viewers to learn their values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors as media content normalize models of these which then are disseminated as popular culture (see, Bandura, 1986, 1989, 1994, 2001).

2.  Popular views of normal/abnormal of : Who the girls/women are: What types of behaviors; What types of motivations; parents & the nature of relationships within families

3.  ‘House of certainty’ is set up for controlling gender related activities and physicality

Merskin (2004)

Foucault’s argument: Discourse and presentation of body and sexuality in popular media are narratives of control by social institutions (Lewis, 2002)

Merskin: “Adolescent girl bodies in fashion advertisements reveals that what is being procured, offered, and sold is a point of view that supports an ideology that sexualizes girls and infantilizes women to control them and to legitimize that control.”

Merskin (cont’d)

Impact of advertisers and mass media on young/adolescent girls and their gazers:

1.  Surveillance:

•  Normalizing adolescent as ‘sexually available’ and seeing them as always having sex on their minds, willing to be dominated, sexually violated and become sexual objects.

2.  Objectification:

•  Gazing at sexualized girls’ representations subordinates them for male consumers. It turns them into objects of forbidden lust for preadolescent girls

Merskin (cont’d):

3. Discourse: Narratives in Media-content

•  Pornographication

•  Hollywood’s representation of adolescent beauties

•  ‘Teenage tart’ symbolizes adult gaze that sexualizes and seduces adolescents’

•  Young girls are “dressed up” surveilled as adult women

•  Representation of the imaginary relation of adolescents and viewers to the real condition of existence”

Merskin (cont’d)

4. Disciplinary society/disciplining process:

•  Disciplining children: 1954 to 1984: Children’s images in Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler magazines (6,004) in advertisements and cartoons was 24% of the total image representation of children (Reisman, 1990)

•  Control and profiting : 1980s and 1990s: Marketing adolescent girls as sexualized, as catering to men’s whims and as nymphets to arouse male gazer and enjoying their desirability (Asher, 2002).

Dryburg & Fortin (2010) Ballet & Docile body:

1.  Surveillance:

•  Idealized images of the body in media

•  ‘The ballet studio is a panoptic place,’ the barre as “backstage”, is a place of surveillance by instructors, and self-surveillance by dancers looking in the mirror.

•  Self-surveillance of the body as well as the adaptation of social behaviour.

•  The mirror encourages body surveillance and often reminds the dancer that her body does not match the ideal body type

•  Lateral surveillance manifests itself as competitive observation and comparison of appearance and habits between dancers

1.  Objectification

•  Audience ‘gaze’ of ‘physical appearance’, ‘beautiful lines’ and an ‘ideal body type’.

•  Body scrutinized more closely after being asked to shed some pounds

•  Under weight surveillance, dancers tend to think of themselves as a ‘mass of flesh’ (a blob) rather than as an artist

. Discourse:

Narratives in popular cultural magazines, TV fictional shows, movies (1,791 magazine images of models/ celebrities) (McDermott: 2005) :

•  Physical attractiveness

•  Media role models

•  Ballet dancers’ “norm” of accepted ‘physical appearance’, ‘beautiful lines’ and an ‘ideal body type’.

Disciplining:

•  Conforming to the ad’s or movie’s requirements

•  Requirements of pleasing viewers (others) to entice the viewer’s Gaze

•  Willingly marketing the docile body although in an art form that is socially appreciated (Ballet)

•  Selling the norm of popular cultural body image

•  dance plays a significant role in feeding dancers’ obsession with their bodies

Stern, B.B., et al (2005): (Stern, S. R. (2005) Self-Absorbed, Dangerous and Disengaged: What Popular Films Tell Us about Teenagers, Mass Communication & Society, 2005, 8(1), 23–38)

Soap Opera on TV

•  Para-social Attachment

•  Social Learning

•  Behavioral Modeling

1.  Dimitriadis, G (2006) : ‘‘Academic capitalism” and Production of expert knowledge; role of the intellectual (Dimitriadis, G. (2006) 'On the Production of Expert Knowledge: Revisiting Edward Said's work on the intellectual', Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 27:3, 369 – 382.)

•  Representations have cumulative power

•  Conversations privileges certain thought and discourses

Note: This article is for those who are selecting Reality TV shows: as examples for your analysis:

Power vs. Truth / Content and influences of TV ‘Reality’ shows vs. critical media’s take on them

Knowledge vs. Deception: Students view Reality TV as socially undesirable in content, but not having an impact on themselves. Other people who watch these shows are viewed as vulnerable to undesirable effects of the reality TV shows:

Leone, R. et al (2006): Reality TV (Leone, R., Peek, W.C., Bissell, K. (2006). Reality Television and Third-Person Perception. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. 50 (2):253-269.

How does TV Reality shows are seen? How do they influence one’s perception of other viewers of different ages:

•  Respondents perceived reality television programs as socially undesirable as they affect others more than themselves

•  Their perception of others’ vulnerability is related to how the student respondents see the programmes as ‘realistic’ .

•  But when asked whether the programmes are socially undesirable for others due to the latter’s actual exposure, enjoyment or identification with the programmes, there seems to be no correlation to these three factors and their perception.

•  Predicted pattern of greater third-person perception on more socially distant others (based on age), third-person effect studies fall into three groups: "socially desirable," "socially undesirable," or "neither socially desirable or undesirable.

•  Self-categorization theory as the basis for three studies involving university students.

•  Profits of reality television is higher as production costs are lower.

•  Appeal disproportionately to young viewers.

•  Three major subgenres of reality television: the docu-soap (The Real World), the contest (Fear Factor, and the dating show (Joe Millionaire).

Reality shows are criticized:

"Socially undesirable" media content

•  The Real World: Simplistic approach to social problems

•  Joe Millionaire: Gender roles are regressive

•  Fear Factor : Theatrics as in freak shows

Attribution theory: One’s desire to find causal explanations for behavior

Respondents (students)

•  recognize reality television as a guilty pleasure

•  So they may find it hard to admit impact on the self.

•  They may perceive negative effects on others

Are the programmes socially undesirable for others?

Would they affect others’ cognitive (thinking) and behaviour?

Three factors and respondents’ perception.s:

Is there a positive relationship between the ‘others’?

Increased viewing

Enjoyment of the shows

Identification with the programmes