20th October

This has been a week of properly sinking my teeth into the actual research part of my research project. Some highlights of the week:

• Watched The Raft for our Tuesday seminar - I found this documentary and our discussion of it very fascinating. As well as being just a generally unbelievable and exciting story, there's definitely a lot to take from it that I can apply to my own research project. The main thing that stuck out to me is the importance of having a clear and focused research question. In my opinion, one of the big problems of the raft experiment was that it seemed unclear what was actually being studied, and Santiago's mind seemed to constantly jump between different things. Sometimes he seemed more interested in gender dynamics and what would happen if men and women's roles were reversed. Sometimes he seemed more interested in race and culture and how possible it is for people from different cultures to collaborate. Sometimes he seemed more interested in the effects of isolation. While I have no plans to trap myself on a raft across the Atlantic with a bunch of strangers, I can certainly relate! My own mind has been jumping around plenty - there's so much to think about and so many different directions I could go in, and it's going to definitely be a challenge to stay on track.
• Our seminar discussing the documentary was also super interesting - We discussed the topic of the research question a lot, especially the idea of having an overarching question that's even bigger than the research project, one that guides what you actually want to research in the first place! It got me thinking about what my overarching question might be - "What is the relationship between society and media?" perhaps? As I've said before in this research journal, I find the question of how art reflects the society it's made in and how it can impact society deeply fascinating and important.
• Library resources session - I have made interlibrary loan requests for So Many Books. Phil from the library got back to me with links to find most of them online (a lot turned out to be on archive.org).
• Trip to the Russell-Cotes! There was nothing super relevant to my research project but I still had a great time, and it actually made me feel inspired to get back to drawing and painting! I've been feeling pretty damn burnt out on actuallly making art since my degree finished, so it was lovely to actually feel passionate about the process of making art again, even if only for a few hours.
• Watched the video Gravity is a Social Construct, and that's OK - Miles referenced this video in our Tanizaki seminar and I thought it sounded really interesting, so I finally decided to check it out. I'll admit that a lot of the actual science in the video went over my head, but I found the video's primary point: that what we think of as science is in many ways socially constructed, or at least affected by social and economic factors, to be very interesting and well-explained. It reminded me of Angela Chen's discussion in her book of how sex is a socially-constructed concept, not an inherent impulse as is typically assumed.
• Actually started my research into portrayals of asexuality and aromanticism! I watched season 2 episode 4 of Sex Education, the show's first attempt at dealing with the topic of asexuality! Transcript of relevant scenes here! The main thing that struck me about this depiction of asexuality is that it is clearly intended to be educational, explicitly discussing things like the definition of asexuality and the distinction between asexuality and aromanticism. This makes sense for the premise of the show, the main characters of which are a school sex therapist and her son, but it does perhaps come off as a bit simplistic or didactic. The educational nature is emphasises by the fact that the show contrasts what is clearly supposed to be a good reaction to asexuality (from sex therapist Jean) to a poor one (from her well-meaning but perhaps a bit clueless son Otis). The character Florence feels distressed because she doesn't want to have sex with anyone and doesn't understand why, so she goes to Otis for advice and he gives her well-meaning but ultimately unhelpful advice like "try not to think about what other people are doing" and "when you meet the right person, I'm sure you'll be ready". Still unhappy, Florence speaks to Jean, who tells her about asexuality and the fact that she could be asexual and that it doesn't make her "broken" if she doesn't want sex. This is clearly shown as a superior response, with Florence telling Otis at the end "Your advice was a bit crap but your mum is my hero". Overall, this episode clearly seems intended first and foremost to educate people who don't already know what asexuality is.

In terms of what I've actually been reading, this week I read some relevant essays from Media and Society (Curran and Hesmondhalgh, 2019). I also started reading Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences (2000, Croteau and Hoynes). Important notes so far:

• My main takeaway from the Popular Culture essay by Marwan M. Kraidy is that I probably shouldn't use popular culture as my point of focus for my research, because the definition of popular culture is very contested and very broad. Kraidy defines it as "mass-produced images and objects designed to be consumed under conditions of late capitalism. Popular culture encompasses music, fashion, style, street art, television, movies, posters, games and - with the advent of the internet - various digital and networked permutations of the preceding" (p.21). I think it's quite obvious that this isn't actually a very workable parameter to use to narrow down my research.
• Other possible definitions the essay presents: "First, 'popular' refers to 'the things which are said to be "popular" because masses of people listen to them, buy them, read them, consume them, and seem to enjoy them to the full'" (p.23), "Popular culture is all those things that 'the people' do or have done" (p.23). Neither of these are particular useful.
• Also the idea of "popular culture as a terrain of struggle between dominant and marginal cultural values, norms and forms" (p.23) and "understanding popular culture as a space and means of power struggle means popular culture is never too far from politics" (p.33). This is at least pretty relevant to what I want to discuss in terms of the relationship between media/art and society, but again - there simply isn't a clear-cut enough definition of popular culture to satisfy me.
• I expected Susan J. Douglas' essay on Media, Gender and Feminism to be useful to my project, and it was... but in a very different way than I expected! While there wasn't as much about sex and relationships in media as I thought might be, or as much about the relationship between media and society, a lot of the content of this essay was really useful to me from a methodology perspective - it gave me a lot of ideas for how I can analyse portrayals of asexuality and aromanticism, and discuss the trends in question.
• Feminists in the 60s "singled out the mass media as a central culprit in promoting and reinforcing sexist ideas about women" (p.38) - an example of media impacting society, or at least of people believing that it does! Does raise the question of what "mass media" actually is, which the essay doesn't specify.
• Gender stereotypes in the mid 20th century: "Women in the media [...] were primarily young, white, slim, shown almost exclusively in passive or helpmate roles or, worse, used simply as sex objects" (p.38), "It was worse for African American women who, if and when they were represented at all, were either servile maids or mammies or over-sexed Jezebels" (p.39) - these racial stereotypes in particular were discussed by Angela Chen as having an impact on Black asexual people - both how they perceive themselves and how they are perceived by wider society.
• The essay mentions "content analysis" as a method used by feminist scholars to analyse gender stereotypes in the media (p.39) - I could potentially apply this to stereotypes about aspec people that emerge in the media, so I should look further into what content analysis actually involves.
• Concept of "'symbolic annihilation': the systematic underrepresentation of a particular group or groups and/or media representations that favour stereotypes and omit realistic portrayals" (p.40) - definitely applies to aspec people!
• Also notes that early analysis of representation of women "employed both social science and humanities methodologies" (p.40)
• An alternative approach to the content analysis of stereotypes is Laura Mulvey's and/or John Berger's - idea of the "gaze", "beyond analysing stereotypes, the very ways in which our viewing of imagery is structured and maps onto our psyches was crucially important to feminist media studies"(p.42)
• If I decide to look at wider media examples and relevant stereotypes beyond just those that explicitly feature aspec characters, perhaps Fatal Attraction would be a useful one to look at - portrays single women as "miserable and crazed"(p.46)
• Also discussion of male stereotypes, most relevantly the fact that the typical film hero has "sexual prowess and sexual power over women"(p.47)
• Also might be interesting to look at music videos, which it's argued often portray a "rape culture ideology" (p.48)
• Media/Society by Croteau and Hoynes does actually offer a definition of mass media - "media that reach a relatively large audience of usualy anonymous readers" (p.7) - so for example TV, film, or printed books or magazines as opposed to a small circulation zine or a phone call
• "While reality exists, we must negotiate the meaning of that reality"(p.7) - social construction of reality - everything is a social construct!!
• Authors argue that "viewers learn and internalize some of the values, beliefs, and norms presented in media products" (p.15) - references a 1985 essay by Carlson on how TV affects people's views of law and order, but doesn't mention any evidence that essay presents, so I'll have to look at the essay itself in more detail.
• Also references a 1992 essay by Coontz about the construction of the "traditional family" structure (p.21) - could be relevant to my research!
• This book also got me thinking about the issue of audience interaction with media. As the authors put it "Readers are not passive sponges that soak up the many messages they come across in media [...] Instead, readers of media products must actively interpret messages." (p.24). Basically, it's not enough to look just at the media itself, I have to think about how viewers actually interpret these messages and bring their own experience to the table.
• "Most media scholars believe that media texts articulate coherent, if shifting, ways of seeing the world. These texts help to define our world and provide models for appropriate behaviour and attitudes. How, for example, do media products depict the 'appropriate' roles of men and women, parents and children, or bosses and workers? [...] What are the underlying messages in media content, and whose interests do these messages serve?" These are, fundamentally, questions about media and ideology." (p.157)
• Defines ideology of a piece of media as "the underlying images of society they provide" (p.157)
• "Scholars are interested in the images of, say, women, or African Americans - and how these images may change over time - because they contribute to the ways we understand the roles of these groups in society. [...] Instead of assessing the images and making some judgment about levels of realness, ideological analysis asks what these messages tell us about ourselves and our society" (p.158)
• Notes how media are often attacked for their ideology by both politicians and the public - demonstrates public understanding of media as "purveyors of ideology" (p.159)
• Note on methodology: "The most sophisticated ideological analysis examines the stories the media tell as well as the potential contradictions within media texts, that is, the places where alternative perspectives might reside or wehre ideological conflict is put into the text. Ideological analysis, therefore, is not simply reduced to political criticism, whereby the critic loudly denounces the 'bad' ideas in the media. Nor, in our view, is analysis particularly useful if it focuses on the ideology of one specific media text without making links to broader sets of media images [...] This inquiry will move from party conversation to serious analysis only if we think more carefully about the patterns of images in media texts, rather than analyzing one film in isolation." (p.160)
• "The accumulation of media images suggests what is 'normal' and what is 'deviant'" (p.161)
• "The fear is that media images normalize specific social relations, making certain ways of behaving seem unexceptional. If media texts can normalize behaviors, they can also set limits on the range of acceptable ideas. [...] Ideas anda attitudes that are routinely included in media become part of the legitimate public debate about issues. Ideas that are excluded from the popular media or appear in the media only to be ridiculed have little legitimacy. They are outside the range of acceptable ideas. The ideological influence of media can be seen in the absences and exclusions just as much as in the content of the messages" (p.161) - This passage is obviously SUPER useful and relevant for me - everything the authors say about the exclusion of certain ideas from media could easily be written about aspec identities! It would be especially useful for discussions of aromanticism, which from what I can tell seem to have even less portrayal than asexuality!
• An important thing to bear in mind for both content and methodology: "Hegemony operates at the level of common sense in the assumptions we make about social life and on the terrain of things we accept as "natural" or "the way things are." After all, what is common sense except for those things we think are so obvious that we need not critically evaluate them?" (p.164), "What we think of as natural and normal, then, is a central part of the terrain of hegemony" (p.165) - This could both apply to ideas people have about sex and relationships, AND is a reminder to me to not rely on my own assumptions.
• Stuart Hall "argues that mass media are one of the principal sites where the cultural leadership, the work of hegemony, is exercised" (p.165) and that "representation is a very different notion from that of reflection. It implies the active work of selecting and presenting, of structuring and shaping; not merely the transmitting of an already-existing meaning, but the more active labour of making things mean."
• More methodology stuff: "We have to be careful when we make generalizations about the ideological content of media, in large part because we are usually talking about a specific medium and perhaps even specific media texts." (p.169) also "One of the most common approaches is to focus on specific types or 'genres' of media, such as the television sit-com, the Hollywood horror film, or the romance novel. Because texts within the same genre adopt the same basic conventions, analysts can examine the underlying themes and ideas embedded within these conventional for-(p.170)-mats without worrying that any contradictions they might uncover are the result of the distinct modes of storytelling of different genres. The result is that most scholarly studies of media ideology are both quite specific about their subject matter and narrow in their claims." (p.171) - Again I need to think about what genres/media/time period I will be specifically looking at.
• "If television is as central to our mass-mediated culture as a broad range of scholars maintain, then the underlying ideas that television programs disseminate are of substantial social significance" (p.175) GUYS. WHO ARE THESE BROAD RANGE OF SCHOLARS.
• "Researchers who study the ideology of media are interested in the underlying stories about society that the media tell, the range of values that the media legitimize, and the kinds of behaviors that are deemed normal. Most popular media promote, often in subtle and even contradictory ways, perspectives that support our basic social arrangements and endorse the legitimacy of social institutions, marginalizing attitudes and behaviors that are considered to be out of the 'mainstream'" (p.190)
• "We argue that the creators of media content have often reproduced the race, class, and gender inequalities that exist in society. This is not to say that the media have acted as a mirror, passively reflecting the inequalities of society. Rather, white, middle-and upper-class men have historically controlled the media industry, and media content has largely reflected their perspectives on the world. Therefore, the inequalities in the social world have affected the organization of the media industry that produces media products." (p.193)
• "Readers and audiences develop at least some sense of the social world through their exposure to both entertainment media and news media. It behooves us, therefore, to attend to what these media messages might be." (p.195)
• Discusses a few different methodologies for analysing the content of media - the ones I'm primarily interested in are "Content as Reflection of Society in General", "Content as Reflection of Audience Preference", and "Content as an Influence on Audiences". These require combining content analysis with audience research, research on audience interpretations, and research into relevant social context. The authors do warn that making "sweeping assessments" about how media reflects society or influences its audience is very difficult, so I should bear that in mind. (p.197)
• Relevant discussion of stereotypes of Asian characters in media: "Asian male sexuality as negative or nonexistent", "Asian women as 'China dolls' (i.e. 'exotic, subservient, compliant, industrious, eager to please')" (p.205) - taken from a memo by the MANAA (Media Action Network for Asian Americans)
• "Familly and heterosexual relationships are central to the plots of many films, music videos, and television programs, ensuring that women (unlike racial minorities) are regularly included in these media, though in secondary roles" (p.210) - really fascinating view of women in media, often only included so they can be romantic interests etc.
• Gender stereotypes: "Women's roles have often reflected similar stereotypes about femininity. Over the years, the dominant roles for women have been as mother/homemaker or sexual object" (p.212)
• An interesting note on early depictions of gay and lesbian characters: "Such programs, though, almost always framed these images as a 'heterosexual view of homosexuality. Dramatic programming portrayed homosexuality as a problem disrupting heterosexual lives and expectations'" (p.223) - can the same be said about current depictions of asexuality?
• "Fejes and Petrich (p.412) note that the changes in mass media images of gays and lesbians did not occur spontaneously. Such changes 'were not brought about by more enlightened social attitudes. Rather, the activism of gays in confronting and challenging negative stereotypes played a decisive role in the change.' Nardi (1977) observes that changing images are also partially the result of 'an increase in the production of media by gays and lesbians themselves'" (p.225) - could compare to work of aspec creators and activists such as Alice Oseman or Yasmin Benoit.
• "The dynamic relationship between media content and the social world is complicated. Is media content cause or effect? A sociological approach would suggest that it is both. The social world affects media producers and media products [...] In turn, media content certainly influences our understanding of the social world" (p.225)

Referenced sources for some possible further reading!!!

• Living with Television: The Violence Profile by Gerbner and Gross (symbolic annihilation. I think. I was stupid and didn't make a note of WHY I wanted to read this and then I returned the book to the library and it was too late. oops)
• Up From Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men and the Media in America by L Gross (portrayal of LGBTQ people in media)
• All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America by S Walters
• Prime Time Law Enforcement by James Carlson (impact of media on audience)
• Political Socialization Through Media by James Carlson (impact of media on audience)
• The Rediscovery of 'Ideology' by Stuart Hall (general media ideology)
• Prime Time Families by Ella Taylor (depictions of family structures on TV)
• The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coontz (formation of the idea of 'traditional family')
• Invisibility, Homophobia and Heterosexuism: Lesbians, Gays and the Media by Fred Fejes and Kevin Petrich (portrayal of LGBTQ people in media)
• Changing Gay and Lesbian Images in the Media by Peter Nardi (portrayal of LGBTQ people in media)

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