When it comes to making an effort to capture young audiences, none do a better job than music television. Channels like Music Television (MTV) and Black Entertainment Television (BET) are constantly changing in order to appeal to younger generations. Knowing that younger generations are constantly changing fads, attitudes, and styles, it is important for these two networks to keep up with current trends.
Typically these networks only offer content related to pop culture such as music, popular syndicated television shows, and award shows featuring the latest styles and the hottest artist. Tied into the popular media that is presented through these networks are usually some form of sexual content. But are BET and MTV responsible for the amount of sexual media that is presented to youth? This has been a dilemma that has plagued each network during their existence. Whether MTV or BET is to blame, each network has made efforts to take a stand and present examples of positive sexual health.
Here is a commercial from BET's Rap-It-Up campaign (2007):
The TV spots used celebrities and TV personalities to honor 25 different citizens who were leading the fight against AIDS/HIV through protection and awareness. Also, the website http://www.rapituppresents.com/ was created with more information about HIV/AIDS and how to get tested. Their campaign used similar methods to connect with young people by using celebrities in their ads and TV spots. Young people would appear in these ads to create a personal connection with their targeted audience. Such campaigns as BET's Rap-It-Up are not only for show as they can inspire better sexual awareness.
MTV has started a foundation that is dedicated to HIV/AIDS research and prevention. The Staying Alive foundation promotes better choices when it comes to sexual health by stressing the message of condom use and being aware of myths related to sex. The foundation also rewards young people who are running HIV awareness programs in their communities with project grants. To put the icing on the cake, the foundation has even held concerts with celebrities who further stress the importance of sexual health. The efforts of BET and MTV are definitely a step in the right direction but their efforts may be few and far.
According to studies done by Hust et al (2008) and Delgado and Austin (2007) there are not enough representations of sexual health messages in mass media. Another finding was that when these messages of sexual health do occur, they are humiliating and humorous (Hust et al., 2007). They are often not taken seriously and they are not always encouraging people get involved. With such a small representation of 1% of media being related to sexual health messages (Hust et al., 2007), this content is rarely seen. But with the help of media powerhouses like MTV and BET, there is still hope for sexual awareness messages to have importance and longevity in the media.
Striving to be pioneers in the battle against AIDS/HIV is an imperative decision by both networks. Not only do they get the opportunity to reach their targeted audience in young people, they also get to keep these messages relevant for a longer period of time. Offering multiple TV spots for messages of prevention, awareness, assistance for programs, and websites helps these networks fill a void expressed by Hust et al. (2008) and Delgado and Austin(2007) that could make the world a more sexually enlightened society.
Recently stand up comedian Daniel Tosh, host of the Comedy Central television show Tosh.0, has come under fire for his recent comments to a female heckler during one of his sets. Tosh has been a staple of the media because he made a rape joke aimed towards his female heckler allegedly saying "Wouldn't it be funny if five guys came in here and raped you right now?" Because of Tosh's comment, questions in the media have surfaced on what is appropriate and not appropriate when talking about rape.
Here is an example of discussion on Tosh's joke:
This recent incident showcases some aspects of the Ferguson et al. study that looked at influences on sexual harassment. The study used Jerry Springer as the media influence on sexual harassment in relation to the "promiscuous female." One of the main findings of the study was the fact that verbal comments warded lower perceptions of traumatized victims and placed more responsibility on the victim amongst their participants. When it comes to Tosh and the verbal comment that he made towards the lady in the audience, it seems that the outcome of the situation has placed her in a position similar to the findings of the study. In the clip above it shows more people agreeing at the fact that it was just a joke and should not be blown that much out of proportion. However, each person in the clip agrees that rape is a serious topic but still gave leeway to the "harmless" joke that Daniel made.
The Ferguson study looked at more serious scenarios when getting results from their participants, which makes this situation a bit of a grey area in the realm of sexual harassment . Though rape is serious crime and sensitive topic, it has not been exempted from the comedy realm as Daniel Tosh and other comedians have demonstrated. Comedy is intended for jokes to have real life implications and unfortunately rape happens to be an ugly aspect of reality. This lead me to think what if the Ferguson et al. study used shows like sitcoms that have more comedic elements to their characters story line. But given the fact that comedy has no perimeters when it comes to topics, it would be harder to determine what aspects of "promiscuous females" should be taken more seriously. I believe that this brief incident between a comedian and a heckler has opened the door to explore more possibilities when dealing with different areas of sexual harassment and its influences.
Another real world application of this joke gone bad would be to explore if this would make people more susceptible to forms of sexual harassment. On one hand it could show people that it is alright to publicly joke about rape and other serious sexual topics. On the other had it could display how deep-rooted issues dealing with rape can be and yield people in their making fun of the topic. I believe that the most unique part of this bad joke is that it was not intended to ruffle any feathers. The joke was said in the confines of a comedy club where consumers are aware that they did not pay money for each and every comedian to be politically correct. However, word got out that this comedian made such a statement and has been in media circulation for the past two weeks. Using Tosh as an example can help researchers explore new dimensions of media that may have an influence on how people feel about sexual harassment.
Watching the new Batman film was both a joy and task for me. For one I am a big Batman fan, especially of the new films, and I have been waiting a long time to catch this latest installment. The movie lived up to all the hype and then some. However, my experiences in Communication Studies classes at U of M have messed with my movie going experience. I am now very analytically of films in trying to figure out how they relate to my courses and other things I have learned. In the mist of me watching one of the best films I have seen in my life, I was able to pull some useful material out of it.
In the film, Batman faces a new foe named Bane who emerges as Gotham's biggest threat in Batman's absence. Throughout the movie, Batman returns on a mission to end Bane's rampage and save the city once again. In the process he unraveled the story behind Bane but when he found out the entire story about Bane's plan, he had realized that Bane was not the brains behind the operation. In fact the person behind all of Gotham's madness was a woman named Talia, who is the daughter of one of Batman's defeated foes. Who knew right? But before Batman knew Talia was a threat to him, she played a completely different role in the story.
In the begging of the movie, Talia was in disguise as a notorious business woman in Gotham city who had invested a lot of money into Wayne Industries' clean energy generator. For years Wayne Industries had the generator but never operated it. Also once Bruce Wayne returned from his hiatus, he needed Talia to purchase majority stock in Wayne Industries to prevent the company from going under. Talia agrees and is pretty passive in the situation. For the majority of the movie Talia fits into the courtship strategies of being passive and alluring (Kim, 2007). She is also valued for her physical appearance ( Kim, 2007). These typical traits of female characters plagued Talia until the climax of the film.
In a unique plot twist, Talia turns out to be the main villian when she stabs Batman and tells him the real story behind Bane's madness. Once she explains, it turn out that she has been in control of Gotham's fate the entire time and everything she had done until that point was a part of her plot to finish her father's business. It was not Bane, the overly masculine super villain, or Batman, the rouge superhero, who was in the ultimate position of power, it was a beautiful, seemingly harmless woman. Where in their relationship towards the beginning of the film, Bruce Wayne/Batman was the dominant self-assured person in the relationship. But in the twist of the plot Batman was now the unauthoritative one in their relationship as it turns out Talia had all the power until her death in the film (Hotlz, 2009).
This was a unique plot twist where one character does a 180 degree turn around from who they were originally presented as. Talia was suppose to be a harmless, defenseless, and maybe insignificant character who was romantically involved with Bruce Wayne. However, she was the major player in the story and had to be stopped if an entire city was going to survive. I say all of this to say that looks can be very deceiving when it comes to stereotypical gender roles in the media.
While reading the study by Bond et al. the first thought that came to mind was the movie starring Jonah Hill called The Sitter. The movie is about a young college-aged male who takes a baby sitting job for his mother so that she can go out on a date. While on the job he is responsible for watching over three young children (two boys and one girl). During this job he goes on a range of crazy adventures because he is promised sex from his girlfriend. Over the course of the movie the sitter learns some new things about not only the children, but himself as well. These new discoveries helps him grow up in the and make the children less of a pain to deal with.
What drew me to think about this movie was the fact that one of the boys, Slater, that Jonah Hill was watching turned out to be a homosexual. Throughout the movie he is stereotyped as weird, an outcast, and mentally unstable. He is on prescription medicine and goes to see a doctor several times a week. He goes throughout the movie feeling that something is wrong with him until this clip (I apologize for the video quality):
Once he comes to terms with the fact that he is a homosexual he feels relieved and free to finally express himself. For the longest he fights his true feelings about one of his good friends and other males because it was seen as socially acceptable, especially for someone his age. It was not until Jonah Hill's character ousted him about his homosexuality was the young character able to come to terms with who he was.
I took this into consideration when reading Bond et al because I wondered how many participants of this study came out of the closet on their own terms. It would have been more helpful to the study to consider how many participants were ousted by someone else or asked if they were gay when they may have not been ready to disclose such information. This is especially important when dealing with youth because they have more pressure on them to fit into societies gender norms. When these adolescences do not fit into hetero-normative society, their sexuality is immediately questioned. Like Jonah Hill's character explained that high school would be rough for the young preteen but once he gets to college no one will care whether he is gay or straight because by then he would have grown out of the adolescence stage and into the adult world where people are more informed and aware of different sexualities.
The other unique part of this situation is that Slater was receiving help for his "mental illness" and taking prescription medication. I feel that this is another issue within society because it is easy to throw labels on children when no one is concerned about their true feelings or getting to the core of the problem. This could be a cause for when adolescence come-out and look to seek for more information about their sexuality because the information was not presented to them in more traditional fashion such as school or parenting. This clip and the reading helped be realize how much of a challenge it maybe for adolescence to come-out in such a hetero-normative society where people may see your sexuality as a mental disorder or just socially wrong.
I chose to analyze The 40 Year-Old Virgin for two reasons. The first being that it is without a doubt one of my top 5 favorite movies of all time! Second, but most importantly, I chose this film because of the unique situation of the main character Andy (Steve Carell). Andy is a 40-year-old, single male who lives on his own and works at an electronics store. To add insult to injury, he is a video game playing, action figure collector who's main source of transportation is a bicycle. Andy hangs out primarily with a group of male guy friends that happens to be his co-workers. The plot of the movie starts to take place once his friends find out Andy is a virgin after joking around about their sexual experiences during a poker game. At first Andy is ashamed and runs away but his friends later catch up to him and want to help out with his situation. From there on Andy and his friends set out on a mission to help him lose his virginity and become a ladies man given their "expertise."
In my analysis I decided to focus on the double standard scripts posed by Kim et al along with the gendered relationships scripts of Ivory et al. From the male perspective I chose to observe how Andy interacts with his friends and females. And for the female perspective I chose to observe how Andy's love interest Trish interacted with him. In the sense of sex as masculinity and good girls scripts (Kim, 2007), I looked for both actions of characters that reinforce and go against codes that follow those scripts.
The first scene that was analyzed was the first interaction between Andy and his later love interest Trish. Trish walks into the electronic store where Andy works and is looking for some help with a purchase. Though their are several staff members (Andy's friends) who are available to help her, they all act as if they have other business to tend to so that Andy can assist her. Trish goes on to tell Andy that she owns a "We Sell Your Stuff On Ebay" across the street from the electronic store. She then gives Andy her number and tells him to call her sometime. Andy proceeds to ask what does he need her number for if she is across the street. They both laugh and she then leaves the store. As she leaves one of Andy's co-workers approaches him and congratulates him on getting her number.
In this scene there was good example of counter scripts from the interaction of Andy and Trish. For starters Andy tended to be the more passive person (Ivory, 2009) in the conversation especially towards the end. He was not aggressive at all and would not have been the initiator of conversation had it not been for his friends. On the other side of the conversation was Trish who looked to be the aggressor (Kim, 2007) in giving Andy her number and telling him to call her or stop by the store anytime. She did not set any limits (Kim, 2007) within this conversation pertaining to any sexual advances. If anything she opened the door for any sexual advances to be made between the two while Andy seemed to be confused during their talk.
This next scene is the development and beginning of their first date:
While on the date Andy and Trish go to a restaurant where they have causal conversation. While they are talking some of the restaurant staff are singing happy birthday to one of the customers. While still in conversation Trish misinterpreted what Andy said and thought he told her it was his birthday also. She then asks the staff to sing to Andy for his birthday as well. Though embarrassed, Andy laughs the situation off and Trish gives him a kiss on the cheek and tells him happy birthday. The next part of the scene is back at Trish's house where the two are engaging in heavy kissing and touching. Trish then asks Andy if he is really into kissing where he responds that he is. Next she tells him to take off his pants and then asks him if he needs any help. Once he takes his pants off she asks if he has any protection and he says "I don't like guns." She then shows him the drawer where she has leftover condoms from her previous marriage as she proceeds to go into the rest room to freshen up. As Andy waits in the bedroom he struggles to put on a condom because he has never done it before. The scene ends when Trish's daughter walks into the bedroom with her boyfriend and sees Andy in the bed and her mother half-dressed with a bunch of condoms on the ground.
This scene also presented several counter scripts go against the courtship strategies (Kim, 2007). To start Andy was ridiculed about his place by his friends saying that it is too childish and not masculine for him to have as many action figures and video games as he did in his apartment. Once on his date it seemed as if Trish dominated most of the conversation and Andy was active in conversation but not powerful. Following dinner when the two head back to Trish's house it seems that Trish was the one who initiated the sexual contact whereas Andy was fine with just kissing, which is usually coded to be a more feminine characteristic. However, Trish does set a limit by asking Andy if he had protection and when he did not she had her own supply meaning that they were not going to engage in unprotected sex (Ivory, 2009). Though Andy was the initiator of the date, he tended to be the less dominant character throughout the scene.
The final scene that was observed took place in this clip:
This clip is towards the end of the movie and it shows some character development with Andy. As you can see in the clip portrayed some dominant characteristics when he wanted to take a stance for all of the changes going on in his life. Prior to his friends finding out that he was a virgin he lived a lifestyle that was average and ordinary to him. Now with all of the new changes in his lifestyle, it has almost been as if Andy has not had time to take into account how different he has become. This scene shows Andy's frustration and allows him to finally portray some aggressive, stereotypical male dominance by finally putting his foot down.
The clip also began with Trish portraying more of a submissive female character role (Ivory, 2009) by telling Andy that she feels she is falling for him and wants to take their relationship to the next level after their twenty dates that the two agreed upon. As they are in the heat of action Andy stills shows some resistance to the situation by saying that they have not quite reached their twenty dates yet. Once they knock over the action figures that were on the bed, Andy reaches his boiling point and begins to yell about the value of his collection thus finally showing some dominance of his character (Ivory, 2009). It is not until now when the two start to act as typical gendered relationships usually play out with a male dominant character and female submissive character (Ivory, 2009).
Andy's unique problem is the main cause to blame why he did not typically portray scripts such as using sex as masculinity (Kim, 2007) or having dominant traits (Ivory, 2009). In the story his virginity held him back from these scripts because it was not masculine for Andy to be a virgin, especially at the age of 40. It was not until Andy started to be put in situations that may have lead to him losing his virginity by interacting with women in ways he had never before that helped him develop into a more masculine character. Also it took a more dominant female character and some friends to finally break Andy out of his shell and allow him to gain his masculine traits through the experiences he had with them.
Holz Ivory, A., Gibson, R., &
Ivory, J. D. (2009). Gendered relationships on television:
Portrayals of
same-sex and heterosexual couples. Mass Communication & Society, 12 (2).
Kim, J. L., C. L., Collins.,
Zybergold, B. A., Schooler, D., & Tolman, D. L. (2007). From sex to
sexuality:
Exposing the heterosexual scripts on primetime network television. Journal of Sex Research, 44(2).
Ivory et al. looked to determine how gendered relationships worked between heterosexual and same-sex couples on television. This was a great research topic that explored if television upheld traditional gender roles established in society. As helpful as this study may be in establishing roles between couples, it could be stronger with the inclusion of television duos or pairs.
For instance, take Rizzoli and Isles as an example. The show is centered around Detective Jane Rizzoli, police officer, and Dr. Maura Isles, medical examiner. The two team up and solve various crimes in the city of Boston. They have a distinguished relationship that could be further examined for gender specific acts.
Each character has certain traits that are gender specific or could be coded as such. Take Rizzoli as an example. She is an aggressive, smart mouth detective who typically wears dark clothing and pants suits, rarely is she dressed in provocative clothing. All of those characteristics can contribute to codes that relate to dominant traits. On the other side of the spectrum there is Isles. She is a quiet, less out spoken scientist who dresses in bright, feminine clothing and is often in the lab examining things, staying out of any real danger. Those are some characteristics that could be taken into consideration for a submissive type of character.
Judging from the interactions between the two characters, it is easy to see who is the more dominant in the series. When it comes to making decisions, being self-assured, and assertive, Rizzoli rises and the more dominant figure. In terms of being unbold, forceless, and meek, Isles would take the reign as the less dominant character between the two.
It is easier said than done when analyzing television relationships among characters of a particular show. However, when characters are involved in relationships such as lovers then relationships become more easier to code for traits that Ivory et al. was looking for. Gendered roles on television that do not have romantic involvement between opposite and same-sex relationships can be analyzed . Shows like The Honey Mooners, Sanford and Son,Will and Grace and Rizzoli and Isles all possess strong, main character relationships that may involve some dominant and submissive traits that researchers maybe looking for.
MTV has started a foundation that is dedicated to HIV/AIDS research and prevention. The Staying Alive foundation promotes better choices when it comes to sexual health by stressing the message of condom use and being aware of myths related to sex. The foundation also rewards young people who are running HIV awareness programs in their communities with project grants. To put the icing on the cake, the foundation has even held concerts with celebrities who further stress the importance of sexual health. The efforts of BET and MTV are definitely a step in the right direction but their efforts may be few and far.
