Comparing the advert to Oh! because of the contrasting view of the adverts outdated feminine representation against the oh!’s modern take on female empowerment and feminist thinking.

‘Raunch culture is the sexualised performance of women in media that can play into male stereotypes of women as highly sexually available, where its performers believe they are powerful owners of their own sexuality’ – Hendy and Stephenson

^ raunch culture seen in the advert, woman very subservient to man in sexualised clothing, compare to magazine expressing the talents of women and current female empowerment, taking back ownership of bodies and stereotypes, while showing all that woman can do for themselves and men

critisicigng advert off feminist critical thinking

NO CHANGING TO MAYBELLINE ADVERT

Raunch culture

Judith butler – queer theory suggesting gender is fluid – gay man, not killed becuase of 1963

Laura Mulvey – 1975 thesis on male gaze – active male passive female – scopophilia – pleasure of looking

stereotypical

reinforce typical masculine traits after gays allowed – gun connotes/symbolic masc traits

selling product through appeal to men – male words like grooming and score woman – whereas Maybelline inclusive, showig poc woman and gay man, also the porter for product

The idea of feminine, attractive women being attentive to the muscled, masculine man could be seen as sexist and as a power imbalance between men and women.

The fact that the man is elevated shows how he is superior to the women surrounding him, and how this is in agreement with the views that were commonly held in 1969.

Jean Kilbourne:

In 1979 , made her first film. She is internationally recognized for her work on the image of women in advertising and her critical studies of alcohol and tobacco advertising. Her work links powerful media images to issues such as eating disorders, objectification and violence against women and she also talks about addiction as a love affair.

Her complete filmography consists of titles such as; Killing Us Softly : Advertising’s Image of Women (2010); Deadly Persuasion: Advertising & Addiction (2004) and the Killing Screens: Media and the Culture of Violence (1994), with many others on very similar themes.

“Our need for social and personal change and power is often co-opted and trivialized into an adolescent and self-centered kind of rebellion.”

“Ads sell more than products. They sell values, they sell images. They sell concepts of love and sexuality, of success and normalcy. To a great extent they tell us who we are and who we should be.”

Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D. is a public speaker, writer, filmmaker and activist who is internationally recognized for her work on the image of women in advertising and her critical studies of alcohol and tobacco advertising.

FILM AND VIDEO

Her first film Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women (and the remakes Still Killing Us Softly and Killing Us Softly 3) are among the most popular educational films of all time. Jay Carr, film critic for The Boston Globe, wrote, “With skill, humor and acuteness, Kilbourne encourages action against these society-weakening images. Never shrill, her indictment is, if anything, understated.”

Her other films include Deadly Persuasion: The Advertising of Alcohol & Tobacco, Spin the Bottle: Sex, Lies & Alcohol, Slim Hopes: Advertising & the Obsession with Thinness, Pack of Lies, and Calling the Shots.

PUBLICATIONS

Kilbourne is the author (with Diane E. Levin) of So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids (Ballantine, 2008). Her book, Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel (originally published as Deadly Persuasion by Simon & Schuster in 1999) won the Distinguished Publication Award from the Association for Women in Psychology.

ALL FROM: https://www.jeankilbourne.com/full-bio/

A theorist called Julian McDougall wrote a book, “Fake News vs Media Studies”, talking about how the place of Media Studies in the age of ‘fake news’, analysing the calls for a curriculum of critical news literacy as part of a cyclical policy debate. McDougal quotes that “There are always points historically where populations have been discontented or economic hardships have been exacerbated” which can link with the CSP’s, Letter to The Free and Ghost Town due to Letter to The Free, a hip hop song being written solely about the continued mistreatment of black people in america (populations being discontented) and Ghost Town being made about the economic crisis happening in the UK (economic hardships being exacerbated). Both of these music videos are similar in a sense that they are both radical as they go against the current dominant belief and that they both bring a political awareness to their audiences to help them see what really is going on around them. We can understand the seriousness of both of these issues presented as a hegemonic struggle through culture, a theory that Antonio Gramsci states that is a continual exchange of power through the use of ideas. This is very clearly a struggle that links to these music videos as Letter to The Free is about the very little equality and negotiation between the black people of America with the rest of their nation, and Ghost Town with the struggle to keep an equal exchange of power with the economic crisis that was happening in the UK at the time. Gramsci’s hegemonic struggle theory is also quite similar to Louis Althusser’s ideological state apparatus theory as Althusser’s theory talks about how most modern day structures of today are built to serve the dominant and ideal perspectives of society a.k.a, they’re built so that there can be a continual exchange of power through the popular ideas created by society which therefore helps us form our own identity and grow as a society. So, with these two theories in mind, by having more popular, dominant and mainstream artists create a discussion on sensitive subjects like Common’s Letter to the Free about how black lives are still being sacrificed and treated like slaves or in The Specials Ghost Town about how economic hardships were being exacerbated, we can therefore make more modern day structures such as the current education system shed light to important issues helping society realise these wrongens and lessen the hegemonic struggle.Not only are these two videos similar in the sense that they are both radical, but they also bring this sense of knowledge post-colonialism through how they convey values, attitudes and beliefs about the world and how these may be systematically reinforced across a wide range of media representations. With both videos being set in a post-colonialist oppressed society yet with different issues that we can identify ourselves in, this can be linked with Jacques Lacan’s theory of “The Other”. “The Other” theory can be understood; as we can’t entirely see ourselves, we instead use a reflection of things we like and don’t like to interpret ourselves. So, Applying this to media studies, it is understandable why we are so obsessed with reading magazines, listening to music, watching films, videos and television because, essentially, we are exploring ‘The Other’ as a way of exploring ourselves and so, applying this to the two music videos, “The Other” actually links very closely to it as we know that by just simply listening to the lyrics throughout each video e.g. the repeated chant of “freedom” in Letter to the Free, each listener will have their own interpretation and reflection of the lyric and therefore will allow them to decide for themselves on how they want to identify with that specific lyric and learn about themselves.Another post-colonial perspective can be from Paul Gilroy’s point of view is that audiences have a “Double Consciousness”, which is how we can’t dismantle and get rid of oppression from the bottom lower working class, but rather how it has to be from the upper classed privileged people and so the only way these privileged people can get rid of oppression is by letting them see and imagine how life would be like for those who aren’t as privileged as them. In Common’s Letter to the Free, Common talks about how African Americans and other people of colour can still be considered as slaves due to the 13th amendment allowing prisoners to be treated and punished to work as slaves so therefore, with the title “Letter to the Free”, Common is calling to those with more privilege and freedom to have this “Double Consciousness” and use their freedom to help speak up and raise awareness about the mistreatment of people of colour in the USA. In Ghost Town, The Specials are calling their audience to recognise the economic crisis happening and help people who are out of work and refused to leave the house because they were scared about getting robbed or murdered in the UK.I truly do believe that music videos can possibly change the way we view different ideas, such as dominant cultural and social ideas such as race, gender and class, because Letter to the Free was and still is a powerful song made by a black man about the discrimination of black people across America, making Letter to the Free a petition to end this mistreatment against people of colour and same goes for Ghost Town, a song that brought awareness to the economic crisis violence that was happening across the UK. The concept of post-colonialism helps us understand the traumatic events that lead up to almost everything that happens today alongside with the help from sub theories within this topic such as Lacan’s “The Other” theory or Gilroy’s “Double Consciousness” allowing us to learn about different cultures as well as understand more about ourselves.