Sociology of the Arts. Victoria D. Alexander

Sociology of the Arts - Victoria D. Alexander


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“pleasing and helping” males by cooking or cleaning for them (p. 1132–1133). Adult females were restricted to a few roles, such as mothers, mermaids, or fairies/fairy godmothers, whereas males were depicted in a large range of roles such as “storekeepers, housebuilders, kings, spiders, storytellers, gods, monks, fighters, fishermen, policemen, soldiers, adventurers, fathers, cooks, preachers, judges, and farmers” (p. 1140–1141). They also note, “Picture books actually deny the existence of the discontented, the poor, the ethnic minorities, and the urban slum dwellers” (p. 1148).

      Subsequently, researchers have wondered whether changes in society since 1972, when Weitzman et al. published their work, are reflected in children’s books. Williams et al. (1987) conducted a much more rigorous content analysis of influential children’s books published in the 1970s and 1980s. This study showed that women and girls, while still underrepresented, had come closer to parity in illustrations, as compared to books published from 1961–1971 (in Weitzman et al.), and that the percentage of books with central female characters had tripled. These changes were statistically significant. However, gender roles still tended toward the traditional, stereotyped roles in the majority of books. Gooden and Gooden (2001) reported that gender equity was reached with respect to females represented as the main character in “notable” children’s books published from 1995‐1999. However, more male (human or animal) characters than female appeared alone in pictures, and while the prevalence of gender stereotypes had declined, stereotypes were still common. A key change was that women were sometimes portrayed in work roles, such as “doctors, chefs and even milk vendors” (p. 95).

      Content analysis can be useful for uncovering changes over time. McCabe et al. (2011) use this technique when looking at changes in children’s books over the twentieth century to contribute to the debates on the portrayal of gender. After coding 5,618 children’s books published from 1900–2000, they discovered that the disparity between males and females persisted across the century, but was lower in periods in the 1900s–1920s and from the 1970s on, when women’s movements were active, and greater in mid‐century during periods of traditionalism or backlash against feminism.

       Understanding Rituals

      Goffman (1987 [1976]) took a very different approach to learn about gender relationships. He examined advertisements to learn about contemporary society in his well‐known study, Gender Advertisements. He argues that, in order to make their meaning clear, advertisements point to familiar rituals from everyday life. Rituals include formalized behavior called “displays,” which are useful because they “provide evidence of the actor’s alignment in a gathering, the position he seems prepared to take up in what is about to happen in the social situation” (p. 1, emphasis original). Displays, then, reveal the structural relationships—the alignments—among people. The depictions in advertising are schematic representations of displays; they are “hyper‐ritualized.” Goffman argues that advertisements are an excellent source from which to learn about structural relationships in everyday life, precisely because they present, unambiguously, these hyper‐rituals.

      Goffman describes a number of other displays that similarly reflect the unequal nature of gender relations in society. He posits that a “classic stereotype of deference is that of lowering oneself physically in some form or another of prostration. Correspondingly, holding the body erect and the head high is stereotypically a mark of unashamedness, superiority and disdain. Advertisers draw on (and endorse) the claimed universality of the theme” (p. 40). He goes on to show that “children and women are pictured on floors and beds more often than are men” (p. 41), and that women are posed with a “bashful knee bend” (p. 45) or with a “cant” (bend) of the head or body that “can be read as an acceptance of subordination, an expression of ingratiation, submissiveness and appeasement” (p. 46). Another display is “Function Ranking” in which men “perform the executive role” in face‐to‐face interactions between men and women (p. 32).

      Goffman’s influential study was based on advertisements printed in the 1960s and 70s. More recent studies have found that many, but not all, of Goffman’s findings still hold in contemporary advertising. Cortese (1999), for instance, finds that the relative height of men and women often follow the pattern Goffman described, but heights are also reversed, with women portrayed higher, such that the finding on relative size no longer applies (pp. 27–28). Gender reversals are also found in function ranking, with women taking the lead, but Cortese finds that “traditional function ranking remains a big draw for marketers” (p. 33). Similarly, Kang (1997) found that relative size and function ranking had declined in advertisements, but that stereotyped portrayals of women have increased.

       Race


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