Introduce the overall aim and argument that you are going to make
Establish your first main critical approach
Develop approach by using key words, phrases and quotation (Mulvey, Kilbourne, Moi, Wander, Wollstonescraft, Woolf, de Beauvoir, Van Zoonen, Dollimore, Woolf, Levy)
Laura Mulvey is a British feminist film theorist. She was educated at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She is now professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck University of London.
Laura Mulvey is a feminist film theorist from Britain, best known for her essay on Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Her theories are influenced by the likes of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan whilst also including psychoanalysis and feminism in her works.
“It is said that analysing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it.”
Apply your theoretical ideas to either or both of the set CSP’s
Show some historical knowledge about societal changes
Establish a secondary theme or idea that you wish to raise (1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th wave feminism, Raunch Culture, Queer Theory, Intersectionality)
“Male and female identities are not naturally configured” – You can choose who you want to be (butler).
“Popular culture within the process of constructing their sense of identity” – The general idea of genders is constructed by opinions and stereotypes.
“Audiences learn how to perform gender via the media.” – The media in today’s society constructs our own gender identity for us.
“Society constructs a binary view of gender” – A binary view is a social construct made up of two parts that are framed as complete opposites (e.g. male and female).
“Audiences realise they can change their identities” – They can be whoever you want to be without being held back by society.
Develop this approach by using key words, phrases and quotation
Apply your theoretical ideas to either or both of the set CSP’s
Show some historical knowledge about societal changes
Similarly, feminist critical thought became much more prominent and pronounced during the counter cultural movements of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, which heralded, among other changes a greater acceptance of birth control, divorce, abortion and homosexuality.
There was also the abolition of hanging and theatre censorship, and the Obscene Publications Act (1959) which led to the Chatterly trial. Nevertheless, as Johnathon Dollimore wrote: ‘all this should not be seen as a straightforward displacement of dominant conservative attitudes‘ (1983:59).
However, the Score advert was produced in the year of decriminalisation of homosexuality and as such, the representation of heterosexuality could be read as signalling more anxiety than might first appear. The reference to colonialist values can also be linked to social and cultural contexts of the ending of Empire.
Establish a contradictory argument that shows your ability to think and engage
Develop this approach by using key words, phrases and quotation
Apply your theoretical ideas to either or both of the set CSP’s
Summarise your main arguments
Ensure you have a summative, final sentence / short paragraph
most people think gender is just male and female. butler is like nah.
Judith Butler describes gender as “an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts”. In other words, it is something learnt through repeated performance. How useful is this idea in understanding gender is represented in both the Score and Maybelline advertising campaigns?
Numerous different ideas have been presented circulating the topic of gender, implying that it is “an identity instituted through a stylised repetition of acts”. In this essay I will be stating arguments about this idea and the waves of feminism.
Judith Butler discusses many ideas involved with gender representation such as gender fluidity and changeability. She states that gender is a “Social Construct” and that our gender identities aren’t established at birth, childhood or adolescence, but are formed through our consistent performances of gendered behaviour. She has stated that historically, gender has been viewed in a binary fashion – divided into categories based on stereotypes/characteristics that can’t be changed.
In the first wave of feminism Barry makes the point that although the women’s movement was not the start of feminism. In other words, the issue of women’s inequality has a history that pre-dates the 1960’s, for example Mary Wollstonecraft, (1792) A Vindication of the Rights of Women. ‘Sexism was coined by analogy with the term racism in the American civil rights movement in the early 1960s. Defined simply, sexism refers to the systematic ways in which men and women are brought up to view each other antagonistically, on the assumption that the male is always superior to the female.
In many ways Judith Butler counterpoints earlier ideas of gender representation, for example, some of the ideas presented by Laura Mulvey seem to suggest that gender is fixed – male/female – that it is structured by institutions and those powerful individuals who are able to exert power and control for example Weinstein. While still recognising those arguments presented by Mulvey, Jean Kilbourne, Butler suggests that gender is fluid and changeable and can be altered by anyone at any point in time depending on how they see fit.
Putting it another way , it suggests that we can have multiple identities that are presented to different people in different ways whilst under different social settings, and different social conditions. For example, looking at a category such as butch and femme, girly girl etc., which illustrate the multiple, plural nature of identity, representation and performance with feminist critical thinking. Which can be explored and mapped out into similar studies on male identity and example of this would be the work of Dollimore, Sinfield and others.
The idea of identity performance is explored further in another post: Representation, Identity and Self However, to understand the approach of gender as performative and how to recognise it as a ‘phenomenon that is being reproduced all the time‘, which perhaps suggests that ‘nobody is a gender from the start.’ The question for Butler (and for students of media and cultural studies) is therefore: how can gender get established and policed? Which, of course, is why we look at her ideas in subjects like Media Studies.
The Score advertisement from 1967 is a genuine representation of advertising methods and techniques. It was first shown during a period of time when first wave feminism was starting to have a larger impact on society as a whole. This wave of feminism was trying to resist against the common thought of how men would be seen as superior over women, mainly their partners or counterparts. Score follows this strategy by having five women carry a man on a sort of platform, whilst they are reaching out to touch his arms and clothes. On the topic of clothes, the women are not wearing very much, whereas the man is fully dressed. One of the women, rather than looking at the man on the platform, is looking straight at the camera to give the impression of the reader being involved with the advertisement. This just about confirms the advert’s target audience being men around the same age as the male model. This contradicts Judith Butler’s theory of how identity is represented by choice and repetition of actions.
Maybelline took a very alternative approach. There were two actors in the first video advertisement. One was a straight black woman, the other a gay white man. This contrasts hugely from the Score advertisement as all six models were white and presumably straight. These choices also shows how the world’s methods of advertising have changed in a relatively short period of time. The same approach is taken in the second part of the advertisement series. The same actors, Manny and Shayla, are pictured with two other actresses, one being white and the other of Asian decent, varying the contents of the advertisement even further.