Is the Media in the UK Sexist and Racist - Essay Example

Is the Media in the UK Sexist and Racist Today, as we view images and reports in the UK media, it becomes immediately clear is that the images and reporting is free flowing in nature, without the stodginess once associated with all things British, which lent itself to a British media that was sexist and racist by design. The media in the UK has evolved into one that now offers the public a fairer truth in reporting and viewing without the restrictions of traditional politics and morality that once caused the Stanley Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick, 1971) – even though the setting for the film and the location of the actual shooting of the film was in the UK – to receive an X film rating, imposed upon it by the British Board Film Censors (BBFC), and, in 1972, limited the showing of the film to just one London theater (McDougal 2003: 3). The X rating imposed by the BBFC was as a result of explicit sexual and violent content, according to Stuart McDougal (2003: 3) in his book, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Today, the censorship that resulted in an X rating for A Clockwork Orange, and prevented the film from being made available to the British public country-wide, is noticeably absent in the British media; as is the moral judgment and assertion of political interest that once prevailed in the UK’s media. The discernable sexism and racism that once defined the UK’s media was by design, according to David Buckingham, in a journal article published in the Journal of Communication (1998: 33). In his journal essay, Buckingham describes, “. . . the history of media education in the UK, tracing its evolution Leavisite (Leavis and Thompson 1933) origins, through the advent of cultural studies to the more explicitly political approaches developed in the 1970s. These approaches reflect a gradual democratization of the curriculum, as well as a form of cultural or political protectionism (1998: 33).” There has been, writes Buckingham, a noticeable and discernable move away from the aforementioned protectionism, resulting in a more open, less sexist, less racially discriminatory British media (1998: 33). The teaching of media in the UK, utilizing the Leavis and Thompson (1933) methods, was, according to Buckingham, focused on “. . . salvation of the (British) culture – preserving the literary heritage, language, values, and health of the nation it was seen to embody and represent (1998: 34).” In their book, British Cultural Identities, authors Peter Childs and Mike Storry write, “The British are famed for both their prurience and their sexual reserve, a stereotype which, though exploited with many British cultural forms (Merchant/Ivory “heritage” cinema, for example), probably derives less from contemporary cultural attitudes than from England’s former role in the global imposition of repressive middle-class norms and values (2002: 128).” However, note Childs and Storry, those norms and values are shifting in the media as Britain moves towards “permissiveness” (2002: 128). That is, a media depiction of Britain’s “swinging London” image, or “. . . the explosion of British youth culture and the legislation of homosexuality, abortion, birth control, divorce reform in the 1960s (2002: 128).” However, the authors contend (2002: 129), as does Buckingham (1998: 35), that the effects of the changes arising out of the 1960s, were not widely felt or noticeable in the British media until the 1970s. “The most influential exponent of this approach in terms of practice was undoubtedly Len Masterman (1998: 35),” writes Buckingham. “Masterman (1980, 1985) strongly rejected what he saw as the class-based, evaluative approach of Leavis and his followers. By contrast, semiotic methods were seen to provide objectivity and analytical rigor. Students were urged to put aside their subjective responses and to engage in systematic forms of analysis that would expose the “hidden” ideologies of media texts, and thereby “liberate” themselves from their influence (Buckingham 1998: 35).” The result, Buckingham notes, was “These forms of analysis were combined with detailed of the political economy of the media institutions. Discrimination on the grounds of cultural value was thus effectively replaced by a form of ideological demystification (1998: 35).” Still, some experts point out that the British media continues to be less than perfect in nature, especially in terms of fairness when portraying gender. Author David Gauntlett (2002), in his book, Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction, points to an advertisement from 2000, and one that received regular advert airtime in the UK (2002: 75). The advert, focusing on a man’s less than favorable reception of his absent wife’s dinner left for him, a “meal” presumably prepared by the absent wife – and one must wonder as to the nature of her absence; was it working – finds satisfying and sustaining “. . . a tin of Baxter’s soup (2002: 75).” Even in lieu of the acclaimed progress made in the British media, a single advertisement, repeatedly aired, gives rise, if nothing else, to speculation about the progress made towards equally portraying men and women in the British media. What drew question to, and cast suspicion upon, the move toward gender portrayal in equal light, was the fact that the man who satisfied himself with the tin of Baxter’s soup, was portrayed as “. . . smart and professional-looking, so this did not appear to be one of the waves of “laddish” adverts (2002: 75).” However, Gauntlett concedes, “The whole ad seemed to make no sense in the modern TV environment. But that’s the point – the ad was the exception (2002: 75),” where once, under the Leavite notion of media, it would have been the rule. There remain, nonetheless, even in an evolving British media, bastions of sexism; like the fashion industry about which Angela McRobbie writes in her book titled British Fashion Design: Rag Tag Trade or Image Industry (1998). McRobbie acknowledges that fashion images are highly charged with sexualized images in the media, saying, “There is plenty of admiration for the funds we raise and the publicity, but in academic terms it’s not easy taken seriously. It’s a sexist thing. It’s okay for graphics and illustration but fashion is female dominated. Industrial design is also okay, but fashion design is ephemeral (1998: 42).” What McRobbie is suggesting is that there are some industries, some trends, yes, even some traditions such as those associated with the fashion industry and the media’s obsession with fashion, that will remain traditionally sexist in nature. This is not a cultural or media indictment, it’s about selling images that appeal to the young, that segment of the market that will devote expendable income to fashion to imitate the images that appeal to them. Even that doesn’t sound to awful in light of the fact that even the fashion images have achieved a certain media balance, especially in the UK. Today, in the UK, the evolution of women’s magazines has metamorphosed beyond the traditional restrictions imposed upon women by pre-1960s British standards and politics, surpassing even the sexist image of the female as an object to achieve fashion sales, to one of competitive nature with those which have long sustained the nature of men sustaining the nature of women. Media which, admittedly, was in the late 1970s influenced by the feminist culture of Angela McRobbie, now looks at that era of the 1970s as a way of how not to approach the delivery of a magazine that focuses on the nature of women (Gauntlett 2002: 182). McRobbie herself is quoted by Gauntlett in his book as saying, “Frazer (1987) demonstrated (as did Beezer et al., 1986) that my own work about Jackie magazine wrongly assumed that ideology actually worked in a mechanical, even automatic kind of way (2002: 182).” McRobbie’s early assessments of the teenage oriented magazine were originally critical, and she accused the magazine of a bias in forming and shaping the identities of young girls into stereotypical women (2002: 182). What subsequent studies found, was that McRobbie’s accusations were but unrealized fears, because young women were less influenced by the media directed at them, especially as presented in Jackie, than they were other internal and external life influences (2002: 182). Other studies on female teens and women arrive at similar conclusions, such as a study conducted by Elizabeth Frazer (1987), wherein Frazer successfully demonstrated that teen girls and women remained largely unaffected by the media of magazines directed towards their age specific markets (2002: 182). However, studies such as Frazer’s did conclude that teen girls and women were interested in certain firsthand stories carried in those magazines, rendered by persons to whose circumstances and experiences the reader could relate to in her own life; or the fashion trends that kept them updated as to what was going on in the fashion world (2002: 182). If there was a noticeable change in the media for women, it was one that served to balance the scale between men and women. Namely, that magazines and media now depicted men in a way that capitalized on the woman’s attraction to the male sensuality and sexuality in a way that men’s magazines had long utilized and depicted images of women. “In the UK, the young woman’s magazine More delights in showing pictures of semi-naked hunks, and sells twice as many copies as the men’s Front – so this can’t be sexism as such, since both men and women are shown in these ways (Gauntlett 2002: 173).” Rather, it’s seen as evening what has long been an uneven playing field in the media as would be defined by sexism. However, Gauntlett is quick to point out, lest there be resolution, “(But) a counter-argument to this might be that women are sometimes shown in “fuck me” poses, whilst men are usually not (2002: 173).” The argument here is not necessarily one that tilts the media sexism scale in one direction over another, but is answered by the psychological and cognitive processes of men and women. In other words, the medias as they appeal to the men and as they appeal to the women likewise appeal to different psychological precipitators that bring either sex the greatest satisfaction in the way that it is best accomplished for that particular sex. The goal in eliminating sexism is not one of neutering either sex, but being inclusive of recognizing the sexuality of people in general. That the discussion even goes to this extent, is in and of itself indicative of the progress made in the UK’s media in evening the playing field between men and women. The evolution of the British media away from racism and sexism has not occurred without its share of setbacks. The advent and spread of AIDS “. . . produced a wave of anti-gay hysteria exacerbated by the popular press (2002: 129),” Childs and Storry remind us, while other cultural studies, such as those conducted by subculture expert Dick Hebdigie, in his book Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979), is interpreted by Angela McRobbie in her 1994 book Postmodern and Popular Culture, as an indication that the relationship between youths of different races in the UK as being “. . . a response to the presence and experience of young black people in the UK in the postwar years. The implication, which remains somewhat cryptic in the book, is that white subcultures show an overt fascination with black culture and music, a fascination which may, as in the case of the skinheads tip over into hostility, rivalry and hatred (1994: 188).” A cautionary tale suggesting that even though it has been largely demonstrated that the media in the UK has made much progress in eliminating sexism and racism, there is yet more work to be done, and in terms of progress to be maintained, to accomplish fairness in the depiction of gender, culture and ethnicity in the British media. References Buckingham, D. (1998). Media Education in the UK: Moving Beyond Protectionism. Journal of Communication 48, no. 1: 33-43. Burgess, A. (1963). A Clockwork Orange. New York: Norton, W.W. & Company, Inc. Frazer, E. (1987). ‘Teenage Girls Reading Jackie’, Media, Culture and Society, 9, 407- 425. Gauntlett, D. (2002). Media, Gender, and Identity: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Hebdigie, D. (1979). Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge. Kubrick, S. (Director). (1971). A Clockwork Orange [Motion picture]. United Kingdom: Warner Brothers. Mcdougal, S, ed. (2003). Stanley Kubrick's a Clockwork Orange. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Mcrobbie, A. (1994). Postmodernism and Popular Culture. New York: Routledge. Mcrobbie, A. (1998). British Fashion Design: Rag Trade or Image Industry?. London: Routledge. Storry, Mike and Peter Childs, eds. (2002). British Cultural Identities. London: Routledge. Read More