With this lecture I would like to indicate, in very rough lines, how people in the academy think about the importance what we might call in general ‘the representation of gender in the media’. With this term I refer to every depiction of men and women, be it in a soap opera, the eight o ‘clock news, an advertisement for Diesel or the latest Leonardo Di Caprio movie. Now about these representations of men and women you have — again, very roughly — two opinions. I will call them the feminist and the negationist analysis.

On the one hand there is the view that the media, in general, are sexist, and that women get depicted or represented in a way which continues the oppression of women. At the same time men get represented as powerful and active. Most of the time the people belonging to this line of thought are feminist writers. There’s a great deal to say for this argument. For example, take the Bold and the Beautiful, America’s most exported soap. The most important story-line is centred around the question for whom Ridge will choose: Brooke or Tailor. Both women have been struggling for ages to be the one and only partner of Ridge. For the feminist writers I’ve mentioned above this is clearly an example of the sexist ideology in which the fulfillment of women’s lives lies exactly in finding the right husband. Women, the soap opera says, can only be happy when they find a man whom they love, and this means that "the female meaning of life" lies at the home, with their husband and children, thus creating a dependency of women at the emotional and financial level.

The other view on the matter is that media portray the world as it is. If women are depicted in this way, they say, it is because women are such romantic creatures and indeed want a man to care for. There are also some points to be made in this case. Take for example the cover of this Belgian magazine. The woman on the cover is Vanessa Chinitor, this years’ Belgian contestant in the European songfestival. The people belonging to this "negationist" camp will say that she is presented as she is. All the magazine did was take a picture of her and put it on the cover. The feminist critique , they will say, ignores the fact that she is indeed pretty, wears a short skirt because she actually likes wearing one and that you can’t blaim the media for presenting women "as they are". The same goes for the news: you can’t blaim the news for not representing enough women: there simply are very few women in politics and the media can’t help that the important issues they are talking about are handlled by men. The media just show the world as it is, they are a window upon the world. Maybe the world is not a perfect place, but you can’t blame the media for representing this world as it is.

Now what I want to do in this lecture is to show that both views — the feminist and negationist view - are in a sense correct and that both views are in a sense wrong. For showing this I will have to start with a rather theoretical part. In a first part I will explain the nature of "representation" and its relation to the world "out there". In a second part I will explain the relation between the representations and the people who actually consume them, that is you and me, the viewer at home, or the woman who reads the Cosmopolitan. After these theoretical explorations into the nature of media representations we will apply them to men and women.

So the first thing we must ask ourselves is what the relation is between representations and the outer world, or the objects they designate. For doing this we have to think about the importance of human beings as cultural beings. With the term "culture" I refer to the fact that we don't act in an unstructered manner. We organize the world we live in by means of categories or concepts.

Take for example the concept of "hammer". As an object it has a material existence which is independent of human beings who perceive it. But for us, people who use hammers, the meaning of a hammer is limited to "the instrument you use for driving a nail into the wall". With this I mean that the hammer is an object that for us has a meaning, it fits into a certain category of objects. Suppose you enter into a room and there's a man sitting in the corner, and he's biting a hammer. We would immediately have to conclude that the man is insane. In other words, we human beings organize the world we live in by means of categories, and everything that disrupts these categories is weird or culturally unintelligable.

The importance of these cultural categories cannot be underestimated. Reality out there exists, but the only way we can grasp it is by means of the cultural categories we use for understanding that external reality. So if we look at a dog we see a nice pet, while in some parts of the world they see a piece of tasty meat, waiting to be eaten. Simultaneously when we see a pig we don't think of it as an intelligent pet, but we think of a domesticized animal which can be consumed. For a muslim then, the pig is a filthy animal which can't be consumed. So, the Western and the muslim are both watching the same object or animal (this is the objective reality), but they see different things, because the cultural categories both people use differ. So we see that these cultural categories are very important in the way human beings interact with the world they inhabit.

But what then is the implication of this? As I stressed before, the meaning of things are very important for how we think or act. Meaning is thus intrinsically bound up with culture. And how we perceive things depends upon the way we represent things. In other words, it is in and throug representations that objects get their cultural meaning. So if a Westerner sees in a pig a nice peace of meat, it is because from our childhood we get a pig represented as "that which can be eaten". As a child you learn by means of playing with plastic cows and pigs that both animals belong to the same class, you look at drawings of farms. When a little bit older, the child learns to talk and so it hears that you have a pig which can be eaten and that you call the meat "pork". When it goes to the butcher it sees the meat with next to it a small plate which says "pork". In short, representations are the primary means by which things get their cultural meanings. Next to these representations there are of course the things you do which give things their meaning. We know what a "hammer" means because we have seen people using it, or have used one ourselve. We know that a pig is an animal which can be eaten because we have eaten it several times, or because we have bought pork at the butchers. In short, things get their meanings because of representations on the one side, and because of practical use. By means of both "technologies" we act culturally meaningful upon the world we live in.

Now what is important about these representations is that they are not innocent. They are inflicted by power relations. What do I mean by that? Take again the pig example. Because we represent these animals in the same category as the cow and the sheep, which is the category of "animals which can be eaten", we don't think it's a crime to kill them. Our cultural understanding of these animals makes it in fact quite normal to breed them especially for killing and eating them. In other words, the categories give us the right or the power to kill them. In short, representations are not innocent reflections of reality, but they construct a world in which it is "right" to kill certain animals, but it is wrong to kill other animals. Intrinsically there's no reason why we shouldn't eat a dog, meat is meat. But because we think of them as pets, and because we represent them as pets in our stories and pictures and books about how to educate your dog that we don't think it's "right" to kill and eat a dog. So representations are not value free, in fact they can decide on life or death.

The examples I've given so far are quite "radical" in the sense that most of us agree on the fact that we can kill and eat pigs. I don't want to argue that we are cruel people, it is rather a way to show you that representations shape the world we live in, and that these representations are inflicted by power relations.

A second thing which has to be said about things, their representations and power relations is that these categories are not always uncontestated. Take for example a cat. There's a more or less cultural consensus about the fact that it's a domestic animal which can't be eaten. But suppose we have a man who breeds pigeons in his garden. For him the cat isn't a nice fluffy animal, but a predator who is very likely to kill his precious birds. In other words, in the eyes of the pigeon breeder the cat is a threat to his flock. What you see then is that in a given culture there will always be what theorists call a struggle for meaning. This struggle for meaning happens all the time around us. So the man with the pigeons will talk about cats (or represent them in words) as predators, he will write to the mayor for protection against the dangers of cats and he will eventually buy poison for protecting his precious flock. In his words, this won't be murder but self defence. The owner of the cat on the contrary, will talk about his best friend who was murdered by a cruel madman. So what you see is that the definite meaning of things is never "final" there will always be a struggle for the "right" or correct meaning of things. This struggle for meaning happens between social groups with conflicting intrests, for example between the group of cat owners and the group of pigeon lovers. The struggle for meaning also happens in and through representations (discussions, letters, magazines) and actions (the poisoning of the cat, organizing in action groups).

But what goes for animals goes for people too. What happens when human beings become the object of representations?

Well, what we see is the same struggle for meaning, but intensified. As I said before, there is more or less a cultural consensus on which animals can be eaten and which don't . When representing people things get rather complicated, since we don't agree on what the meaning of certain people is. Take for example a man who plants a bomb in a building. This is the "objective reality", which will have to be represented in words, pictures and the likes. So for the government this action clearly is a "terrorist action", by a terrorist group who wants to destabilize the state. For the terrorist group however, the planting of the bomb is a revolutionary deed, the man who planted the bomb is a hero, a freedom fighter who fights against an injust system. So what we see is that one event or person can have totally different meanings, and that there's a struggle to fix the meaning. Note also that this struggle for meaning is an uneven proces, which doesn't take place on equal terms. The government or the state has more ways for expressing its view on the matter: they have the police and the army to back them up, the media will express their point of view, in short, they have more means in the struggle for meaning. The terrorist group only has its actions and the use of press releases in which they can express their point of view. So for the moment we can conclude this first part with stating that:

1. representations shape the way we perceive the world

2. there's a struggle for the meaning of things

3. this struggle is an uneven proces in the sense that some groups have more means and power to define than others.

Until now I have talked in a very general way about representation, and it is necessary to make some nuances between different kinds of representations. If we want to understand how media representations of men and women work it is important to realize that not every representation is similar in kind. Generally speaking, you have three modes of representation which matter in case of media-analysis. These are language, image and narrative.

a. Language: with language I don't refer to the fact of talking English, French or Dutch. Language is generally speaking, the use of words in order to understand the world and trying to communicate about it. Language is a specific symbolic representation because it is fundamental in organizing the world we live in. A famous example of the importance of language in shaping the world is found in Inuit culture. The Inuit are Eskimo's and they live in a world which is literally packed with snow. In English there is only one word for snow, but the Inuit don't have one word for snow, but more than thirty. For them there's not snow, but "crispy snow" which is a separate word, or snow which melted and then froze again, which is another word. So the different categories of a culture are intrinsically bound up with the words we use. Words are the most basic categories in which we understand the world. Another example is the use of "he" or "she" for a person. In English we have to choose a gender for a person to talk about him or her. In other words, gender difference is inscribed in our language. It is the most fundamental difference on a linguistic level. The binary split between male or female is in other words "created" in our language. This doesn't necessarily have to be so. In some cultures there are several genders, all of them having their own he/she form. That's also why it is in Western culture so difficult to talk about transsexuals. It sounds really weird when you say "John brushes her teeth". This small sentence is a violation of the rule in our culture that you are either a male or a female. And this being either male or female is inscribed into the very structure of our languages.

b. Image The second form of representation is image. This can be a painting, a cartoon a picture or a movie. Now most of the media use either pictures or moving images, so I will focus on the these forms. Pictures, we tend to think, are exact copies of the reality they were taken from. This is indicated by sayings like "a picture says more than a thousand words", or "pictures don't lie". And in a sense it is correct, because a picture looks exactly like the object it represents. But there are however some remarks that have to be made on this so-called reality of the image. I will do this by showing a picture of an advertisement for a perfume.

First of all it is notable that the man in the picture is a handsome one. So the mere fact of this man being picked for representing the perfume is already a choice which had to be made. Second, this man is not realistic because light, shadowing and all the photo techniques are not real. You don't walk on the street and "see" a man like this. The view is not at all realistic in the sense that we perceive the world as it is depicted in this picture. Third, and this is more important, pictures are realistic in the objects or people which they represent, but this doesn't mean that the meaning of the picture is "obvious". The difference between language and image is exactly that language is capable of appreciating things.

I'll give an example of this. Recently I received an e-mail from a friend with an attachment added to it. It was a short movie and it showed a man sitting at his desk. He was working on his computer and probably got irritated because it wasn't working properly. As he grew angrier, he started to hit his screen, and the little scene ended with him smashing the computer against the ground. Now that was what the scene depicted. Since the file didn't contain any written messages, it is difficult to get the meaning of the scene. Was the guy a broker who had just lost one billion dollars on Wall Street and read this message from his computer screen? Or was it a man madly in love and had he received an e-mail from his girlfriend saying that she was leaving him? Or is he rather a psychopath, a dangerous man who can't control his emotions and bursts out in anger for the most ridiculous reason? Even if you would watch the movie a thousand times you wouldn't know, and that is exactly because there's no language (be it written or textual) which explains the situation. In short, image without language can mean lots of things.

If we return now to the picture of the man in the perfume advertisement, we see that the there's a text added. It says "Proud by nature", and the message of the ad becomes clearer. The man depicted here is a proud man and in touch with the forces of nature. So the ad works with a certain coherence: the natural earthly colors of the picture work together with the text to signify "naturaleness", a contact with some deep kind of essential male values. The man depicted here is also looking away from the camera as if he is absorbed by some higher thought. And, as the text ads, he is proud, which can also be "read" from his looking away from the camera. In short, text as well as image work together to fix the meaning of the ad, which is in this case the message that if you buy this perfume some of these quintessential masculine values will be yours too. And I would like to stress that language is capable of adding meaning to image, which is in itself not meaningless, but is more difficult to carry meaning.

c. Narrative: A last form of representation which is important for analyzing media is narrative. Narrative is most important in fiction programmes, for example movies, soap operas, action series and sitcoms. Narrative is what one could call "storytelling". This storytelling is another way for structuring the world. What narrative in fact does is setting up a sequence of events and these events must conform to certain cultural logic.

But what is then this logic of events? As I indicated in the introduction narrative is a way of structuring the world. So, when you look at the American soap opera as e.g. The Bold and the Beautiful it is indeed interesting to note that the main story-line is the question for whom Ridge will choose, Brooke or Taylor. The logic inherent in this little tale about love and defeat is that women have to struggle for getting the love of their life. Love, the story tells, is a matter of fighting for your man. And indeed, Brooke and Taylor seem the most happy when lying in the arms of Ridge. So what a narrative does is setting up a starting point (two woman love one man) and a way to resolve this tension (the struggle between Brooke and Taylor for "having" Ridge). Again we see that a representation of events through narrative structures the world and the people who inhabit it. Why for example can't both women decide that Ridge is an asshole who can't make up his mind, and leave him? The story entails in other words a message about true love and what to do about it. In short, narrative contains a cultural logic.

Now what is important is that almost every media representation contains all three forms: language, image and narrative. Take for example a news flash. In the introduction the anchorman or woman introduces the event by means of langguage and narrative (he structures the events that happened into a logic story). The flash itself also contains image, narrative and language. The images of the events are accompanied by a voice over which tells us what to see, and the sequence of the images with description also function as a narrative. The same goes for the soap opera: the characters use language to describe how they feel, we see them acting (image) and the sequence of scenes gives a logical sequence to that what happens on the screen. The same goes for an article in the Cosmopolitan: language, image and narrative all coincide to form a story. In short, media work in varying degree with these three forms of representation.

If we apply this now to media and the representations of men and women, it is clear that the "negationist" view is not correct. The media don't just represent the world as it is. If we return to the picture of Vanessa Chinitor, it is clear that this picture is not free of ideological messages. First of all, she is a beatiful woman. It is clear that not every woman will be put on the cover of the magazine, a necessary condition is that she has to be pretty. Second, there's a difference between the man in the advertisement for the perfume and Vanessa Chinitor. The man is handsome indeed, but he is not sexualized: he is proud and natural, but not in a sensual or sexualized sense. Vanessa Chinitor on the other hand is wearing a rather short skirt and one can see her brah through the lace; the body of the man, on the contrary is not at all visible. A third difference is to be found in the way both look in the camera. She is looking straight in the camera, holding her arms in an almost defensive manner around her waist. In other words, fragile and sensually, that's what she is. He on the contrary is looking away from the camera, absorbed by something else. He's not at all fragile, since he is proud by nature.

So here is my main point. Though both persons, Vanessa Chinitor and the unnamed proud man, actually exist out there, they are represented in a totally different way. The picture of the man is different in tone, colour, camera-angle, body language and accompanying text. In short, though both people actually exist in a extra-discursive space, they are brought into discourse, as theorists call it. Though appearing "natural" representations, both pictures are the result of different levels of selection: the person to be depicted, which parts of their bodies would be included, the clothes they both wear, the camera angle and colours, all of these techniques work together to create a gender discourse, or a representation of women as fragile and sexually attractive, and men as proud, asexual and having a bond with nature. One also has to keep in mind that during the photo shoot probably hundred pictures were taken, and that the result you see in the magazine is - again - a proces of selection. Both pictures then, tell us something about how women are and how men are, in short, through these representations a certain message about femininity and masculinity is created, or in other words constructed.

I'd like to resume what we've seen until now. First I started with stating that things get their meaning in and through representations. Though both pictures seem quite natural, they are the result of selection and techniques. In short, these pictures tell us something about how gender and gender difference is constructed in our culture. Further I've mentioned the fact that there is a struggle for meaning, and that this struggle for meaning takes place in and through representations. So one way to look at both pictures is to say that they illustrate how subtle patriarchal society works: women are fragile sexualized bodies, and therefore need protection by strong independent men, who are "proud by nature". Thus, a feminist would call these pictures "false" representations, in other words, she or he would claim that "true" women are not fragile beings, that they can take care of themselves and don't need a man. This struggle for meaning of what it means to be a woman will take place in other representations: books or magazines, or discussions. I have also mentioned that you have three modes of representation: language, image and narrative, and that most media messages contain all three of them in varying degrees (Note that both pictures only contained language and image) .

So at first sight one would say that the feminist analysis from the introduction is correct in stating that the media are sexist and that they are "ideological" in their content, in short that they produce stereotypes. But I started this lecture with stating that both sides were right and both were wrong. In order to explain this we will have to move from the moment of representation towards the moment of consumption. That is, the moment when the people "out there" view the actual programs. What happens at that moment?

We all tend to think that something which is popular has to be of low taste, has to be rubbish. Why is that? Usually the argument is that in order to appeal to all groups in society, one has to take "the lowest common denominator". Implicitly this line of thought supposes that society is divided into "lower people" and "better people". The better people have something which is added, when one compares to the lower people. Thus, the reasonment goes, if you take something which is common to all people, it will have to be popular.

This line of thought is wrong, because it underestimates the importance of life style and subjectivity. People don't have a shared base to start with, you have to conceive of society as a mixture of totally different people. The lifestyle, subjectivity, the way of experiencing things of a young working class man has nothing in common with that of a 40 year-old female lawyer. Both subjective worlds they live in have nothing to see with eachother.

But if it is true that society exists out of different groups which don't have anything to do with eachother, how come that a particular programme, be it a soap or a game show, can be popular, that is, how can these programmes appeal to different kinds of people? The answer to this question is a difficult one, and it has puzzled many scholars in media studies.

In fact, the answer is rather simple. In short and academic terms, it is because programs are polysemic and viewers are interpretative. What do I mean by this?

Polysemic means literally "what has different meanings". Programs have different meanings in the sense that the combination of language, image and narrative, which appears on the screen, have to be interpreted by the viewers who actually watch the show. And, as research has indicated, on the level of reception people indeed interprete these programs differently.

I'll give you a rather spectacular example of this. In the eighties there were lots of action movies. The most well known action movie was Rambo, with Sylvester Stallone. Everybody in the West thought it was a rather American nationalist movie: simply stated, the story was about a ex Vietnam veteran who thought he was badly handled by the government and the military and revolts against it. In first blood part II Rambo even went to Vietnam to liberate some POW’s. A research showed that the movie was very popular with Australian Aboriginals. This surprised researchers, because Aboriginals are normally rather anti the West, which is no surprise given their history of oppression by white men. So the researchers were puzzled: how could the Aboriginals love the movie while it was so obviously imperialistic? The answer was that the Aboriginals didn't perceive the movie as such. For them, Rambo was somebody who fought against the white establishment, who was forced by the white establishment to fight against other races, and they considered him in fact a freedom fighter. This example is rather spectacular in showing that the people who watch television or movies are interpreting these shows and that these interpretations sometimes can radically differ between groups.

It is important to stress that this is not a question of the Aboriginals being "wrong" or "interpreting too liberate". If you want to know why people actually like a programme or a movie it is not important if they have the "right" meaning. Indeed, if programmes are polysemic or open to interpretation there is no such thing as the "true" meaning: what's left is a range of interpretations.

In short, my argument is the following: a programme or movie has to be ambiguous if it wants to be popular, that is, if it wants to appeal to different groups in society. It is exactly because it is ambiguous or open to interpretation that it can appeal at all to the different people of which society consists.

Before we apply this to men and women, I first would like to stress that this ambiguity is rather difficult to grasp at first. How is that? I think it is because while you watch television, and with you I mean you personally, the meaning of the programme is "clear" or obvious to you. Either you think "it's a cool show", or "I don't like the way that man acts". But it is wrong to presume that everybody sees the same programme you see. This is because people accentuate different things when looking at a programme. So it is possible for Aboriginals to ignore the nationalist message (in fact, Rambo revolted against the military), while for Europeans it is clearly a matter of American Imperialism.

Now what does this mean for the representations of men and women? As I said before, representations are not "innocent" in the sense that they construct masculinity and femininity. But what happens when actual people out there see or consume these images? Well, what we see is that they also interprete these representations. In other words, the problem with what I have called the feminist analysis is that they don't take this interpretation in account. It is true that the media produce stereotypes, but what the people do with these stereotypes is not always as straightforward as one might think. Let me give some examples.

I've mentioned the Bold and the Beautiful before. I've said that the main story line is the struggle between Brooke and Taylor for the "posession" of Ridge. I've also said that this is an ideological representation of men and women, because this story-line states that women get fulfillment in their lives by marrying the right man. This was my interpretation. But how is it possible that, at least in Belgium, a lot of well-educated women like this soap? The answer is probably that these women interprete the soap differently. For example, one might as well say that the women in the Bold and the Beautiful are strong women, and that Ridge is a coward who cannot make up his mind. Brooke as well as Taylor are ready to fight for their man, while Ridge is always undecided about whom to choose. So with the same elements it is possible to make an alltogether different story. I am not stating that all women who watch the Bold and the Beautiful are feminists, on the contrary. What I'm saying is that there are different interpretations possible, and that these different interpretations can account for the popularity of the soap.

Other example. Madonna probably is the most famous female popstar since the eighties. At first sight one would say that once again she is the prototype of the sexualized woman. But Madonna is as a sexsymbol very amiguous. She is not the passive sexualized woman, on the contrary. Madonna is the one who uses her sexuality to attain what she wants. So the interpretations of Madonna will depend from person to person. A feminist person will accentuate her powerful aspects, and she will be celebrated as a smart woman, who uses her sexuality to attain power in life. A male chauvinist then, will probably interprete her as a cheap bimbo, nothing more. For an "old fashioned" feminist, she will be a woman who is trapped into the hands of patriarchy. For a gay person, she is the one who subverses the heterosexual hegemony. In short, all these people watch the same Madonna, but see a different one.

But things get even more complicate when you consider that not all representations convey the same meaning. One tends to think that all representations of men and women are monolithic: men are active, individual, proud, seducers, and women are passive, sexualized for the male gaze and dependent. The most obvious examples of this are Rambo or Jean-Claude Van Damme; on the feminine side you have the Vanessa Chinitor, Pamela Anderson or the range of soap opera characters who dwell in romantic desperation.

This image is a stereotype on its own. When one considers the vast range of males who appear on the television screen, it is clear that we don’t have one single representation of masculinity. Take for instance the serial the A-Team, which was highly popular in the eighties. There were four males in the series, each representing a certain type of masculinity. BA Baracus is the strong, mussled and aggressive male, symbolizing or incorprating hypermasculine behaviour. He is a doer, not a thinker. Then there is Murdock, the mad and childish but sometimes genial logistician. He symbolizes this weird mixture of madness and geniality, added with a touch of childish behaviour. The third male is Face, a handsome womanizer who took care of the more worldy aspects of their jobs. He is the one who, in each episode, falls in love with another girl, who is the victim of his sexual appetite, but nevertheless he manages to keep out of the hands of one woman. The fourth man is the leader of the group, Hannibal. He symbolizes the brains, the organiser and the older or more mature masculinity. It is very clear that we don’t have one discourse on masculinity here. Instead we see a range of masculinities, each emphasizing different aspects of what it means to be a man.

It is exactly because the A-Team had these four different types of men, that they could be so popular. Different types of men were able to identify with one character and saw their choice "validated" or "rewarded" (because all four types were necessary to get the "full, succesful" team on the road). So we see again that interpretation comes into play when considering the succes of a series.

But the A-team is maybe a bad example, because all four types of men are "hegemonic" masculinities, in the sense that these are quite clearcut and conventional forms of masculinity. Not all representations of men are as clearcut, take for example Miami Vice.

Sonny, played by Don Johnson, is the main star of the show. He is in a sense a typical male since he is silent, emotionally withdrawn, and he is a cop, which is a profession in which notions of masculinity, action and violence are important. But next to this there are certain "feminine" charactertraits in the way Don Johnson enacts Sonny. He is a pretty boy who is always perfectly dressed and spends a lot of money on his clothes. This combination of consumerism and beauty is normally a position for women, and in this sense Sonny is "feminized". Furthermore, he has a problematic relation with his work, which is in hegemonic masculinity the place where one finds the "true male identity". In short, Sonny embodies different types of masculinity, a more softer New Man image, and a violent and silenced masculinity at the same time. Again I would like to stress that this makes identification easier for different types of men.

If we refer now back to the struggle for meaning, we see that the struggle for meaning is happening not only in the moment of representation, but also in the moment of reception, that is, the moment when people are watching television or reading magazines. What is important is that the interpretation of programmes happens not at random: there are variabels as class, gender, age, which will determine how we will interprete programs. As I mentioned before, very few "old-fashioned feminists" will interprete Madonna as the next step forward in the feminist struggle. Post-feminists however consider her as a lethal weapon against male domination. Sonny of Miami Vice can be interpreted as a step forwards in the feminization of men, but at the same time he is not a woman.

In short, representations are not value free, they try to depict men or women in certain ways which stimulate one interpretation instead of the other, but how people actually interprete, enact and embodie these representations, is a different matter alltogether and there’s a constant struggle for the "true" meaning of Madonna, or the "true" meaning of Miami Vice. People are more varying then we think, and when you actually talk to them you will notice that underneath so-called uniformity of modern society there's a variety of opinions, meanings and gender identities. In short, stereotyping does happen in the media, be it in rather complicated ways. Whether we are all "stereotyped men and women" remains the question.

I started this lecture with two ways of looking at the media and stereotypes. What I have called the feminist approach stresses that media are sexist, and that they legitimate the oppression of women in and through representation. The other point of view I have called the "negationism", and it claims that media are just a window on the world, and that, if they represent women as beautiful, it is not a question of ideology but because there are beautiful women. In the negationist point of view, the media don’t "do" anything: if there’s something wrong with them it’s because society is wrong.

I’ve also mentioned that part of both views is right, part is wrong. What is it then what makes me say this?

First of all we’ve seen that representations structure the world we live in. Things and people — hence also women and men — get their meanings in and through the way they are represented. The logic conclusion would then be that the feminist analysis is right: media are important producers of representations, and, as I’ve shown with the pictures of Vanessa Chinitor and the perfume boy, they produce totally different meanings around notions of masculinity or femininity. This producing of meanings happens by means of subtle technologies as there are framing, colouring, the use of text, and the likes. Hence the negationist view is wrong: media are not some window on the world, they are not realistic in the sense that they immitate reality. Rather, they create reality. But why then do I claim that the feminist analysis is wrong?

This has to do with the interpretation of all these images, texts and narratives. Implicit in the feminist point of view is that media are powerfull persuaders who invade the minds of the people without any possibility of resistance. This assumption is wrong, because of several reasons.

First of all, people interprete these images, and the outcome of this proces of interpretation is sometimes surprising. The most powerful example is Madonna: though she is the classical sexualized woman, she is interpreted by lots of her fans as a powerful woman who can stay on the top for almost two decades.

Second, and this is where the negationist point of view comes in, the media are not the only producers of meaning in this society. As I stated above with the pigs example, it is not only through representations that things get their meaning: the things we do determine as much how we perceive the world we live in. Women are sexualized, indeed, but it is not only the media who are to blaim for this. It is because mama tells her little daughter to wear a dress, and gives her a barby doll for her third birthday; it is because she learns at the age of 14 that dress and make-up matter, that to be feminine is a way of exercising power over boys; and it is because gradually she will start to feel this feminine self as her true self, that she will dress up each time she goes out. Of course the media matter in this proces of growing up into a fully gendered person, but it is not the media alone who are responsible for this. And let’s not forget that a whole lot of women actually like dressing up. To dismiss this as some false consciousness in servitude of male domination seems to me a rather elitist position.

Third, what the feminist analysis tends to forget is that there are many representations in the media, and these representations are not always as consensual and in consonance as the feminists say. In short, there are lots of competing gender identities and that’s why the concept of patriarchy is not adequate enough for analyzing the complex relation between representation, interpretation and the influence this has on people’s lives.

What then, is the importance of media in gender identities? I think they can be subversive as well as hegemonic, conservative as well as progressive, and this differs from programme to programme, from magazine to magazine. If there is an influence it is because people identify with their stars, with a certain ad or a certain fashion picture. But identification is always an interpretation, and the outcome of this subjective investment is not always as clear cut as one presupposes.