I'm searching around for a decent basic gender studies article for a unit I am doing in Freshman Comp, so my weekend has been filled with reading and trying to evaluate comprehension level and how well the article will confront the inevitable student objection: "It's JUST a (movie, tv show, advertisement, etc)" which basically implies that any sort of critical thought, much less critique, about an artifact of mass media is somehow trivial and humorless and taking things too seriously.
It's doubly hard to confront when it comes from a male student, who already may have it in his head that feminism (or the female professor he's talking to who just happens to be a feminist) is a grim, humorless thing designed to punish men and deprive the world of every crumb of fun.
I found a nice article comparing Adorno and Fiske. A quickie recap in case you're not hip to this proverbial trip. Adorno was one of a group of Germans who fled his home country during World War Two. It's not hard to imagine the connection he has, the awareness he learned firsthand, how Hitler and the Nazis had such control over the 'mass' media. (It was not complete control, of course: the movie All Quiet on the Western Front was still screened in Germany, just with vociferous interruptions, including in at least one noticeable instance, the release of mice in the movie theater. But you could argue this supports the idea: if you have to stoop to rodentia, you're trying quite obviously and tangibly to control the media.). Adorno believes in the Culture Industry, that it's not a 'mass' media at all: you and I have no real ability to create the culture. Even if we aspire to do that by, say, becoming a filmmaker or an author, we'll have to face a number of gatekeepers who will limit or diminish our ability to do so: the Hollywood mogul will tell us that our movie won't make box office, and therefore goes unfunded, the editor who tells us that it's not right for 'the market' right now.
When it comes to gender, the mass media is insidious and penetrates into just about all aspects of life. I recently got a prescription for my progestin refilled: they swapped out my (previous) generic for a brand name. The previous pill was yellow: this one is pink. Pink. Really? I need to have gender color in my hormones? Does this make it more effective somehow? (It even has a flowery sounding name!)
My period tracking app has pink flowers all over it (I searched for an app that wasn't swaddled in pink and/or flowers and failed abjectly) because, as we all know, the most FEMININE thing a woman can do is menstruate. Logging my PMS symptoms using kawaii faces and cutesy images seems almost to diminish the stuff, or at least try to make the least fun thing about my gender 'fun'! (Hint: it does not succeed). If I could code and program these things, I'd make an app that had little robots instead. Sure, they could be cute, why not?
Adorno argues that there is no escape from the system, that anything, even a deliberate rejection of the main message is still, in a sense, acknowledging the main message. So the punks with their deliberate DIY style, anti-pretty message, were defining themselves against the mass media message: couldn't, in a sense, have existed without 80s culture.
(The irony is, punk has become ludicrously commodified: just go to Hot Topic and consume and conform....to an anti-consumer, anti-capitalist subculture?)
So I'm knee deep in pondering when I look over at my clock and say, OH, I should get going. Because, you see, I got my magazine subscription yesterday. Which itself is fraught with feminist baggage--how the women in the workout features are less 'fit' than 'cachectic' and have perfect hair and makeup and are even SMILING as they work out--compared to the grunty, sweaty shredded male counterpart.
And I could try to wiggle my way out of this and say OH I like it for the recipes, or the women's health issues features, but I have to admit, what caught my eye this month was a feature on makeup and I wanted to put down my heavy gender theory stuff to go to the drugstore and see if they did, in fact, have a nice pale-green pearlescent creme eyeshadow.
Adorno would be facepalming, but then, I think, he'd sagely nod and say, yes, conformity. No one escapes.
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