Gender and Popular Culture PDF
Preview Gender and Popular Culture
& LESTONE & ANNEKE MEYER POPULAR CULTURE Gender and Popular Culture Gender and Popular Culture Katie Milestone anu te Anneke Meyer polity Copyright © Katie Milestone and Anneke Meyer 201 2 The right of Katie Milestone and Anneke Meyer to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in 2012 by Polity Press Reprinted 2012 (three times), 2013 (twice), 2014, 2015, 2016 (twice) Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK Polity Press 350 Main Street Malden, MA 02148, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4393-9 ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4394-6(pb) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Typeset in 10.5 on 12 pt Plantin by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire Printed and bound in the United States by RR Donnelley The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition. For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.politybooks.com ~~ Contents Acknowledgements vi 1 Introduction 1 PART |: PRODUCTION, GENDER AND POPULAR CULTURE 2 Gender and Cultural Work: Post-War to the Late 1970s 35 3 Gender and Cultural Work: Punk and Beyond 59 PART Il: REPRESENTATION, GENDER AND POPULAR CULTURE 4 Representing Women 87 5 Representing Men 113 PART Ill: CONSUMPTION, GENDER AND POPULAR CULTURE 6 Consuming Popular Culture: The Role of Gender 151 7 Gender, Popular Culture and Space/Place 184 8 Conclusion: Prisoners of Gender? 210 References 215 Index 232 Acknowledgements We would like to acknowledge colleagues (past and present) from the Department of Sociology, Manchester Metropolitan University, for their encouragement and support. Immense gratitude in particular to those involved in work on popular culture and/or gender for providing a stimulating, welcoming and good-humoured academic environment. From Katie to Mike, Esme, Freddie and Miles — thanks for putting up with my sporadic withdrawal from family life whilst writing this book and for your love and support. Thanks also to my mum, sisters and in-laws for the same. Thanks to former colleagues from the Manchester Institute for Popular Culture for motivation and good times. I’d like to dedicate my contribution to this book to my late father, Chris Milestone. From Annie — a big thank you to all my family and friends for all the support and good times together. A few people deserve a special mention. Tony for getting me through the ups and downs of life and always remaining positive — I couldn’t have done it on my own. Hannah for simply being the best friend anyone could wish for. Meine Mutter Carmen, auf die ich mich immer verlassen kann. We would like to thank Andrea Drugan from Polity for her great patience and support in this project and to the reviewers for their helpful comments. Thanks also to Lauren Mulholland for dealing with the nitty gritty and to Justin Dyer for his excellent copy-editing. ‘Introduction Gender and popular culture are connected in inextricable, and complex ways. Popular culture is an from cinema films to newspaper articles, from designing computer games to playing music. Much ofp opularc ulturei sme diacu ltures popular culture includes mass media such as radio, the press, film and television, as well as new media such as the internet or email. In this book we concern ourselves with the ways in whi ender, i.e. . We do not aim to provide a general overview of the field of gender in popular culture, recounting and reviewing all the existing academic literature; this would be virtually impossible in the space of one book and only produce simplistic generalizations. Instead, we aim to offer in-depth and analytical insights into how y analys- ing and illustrating each process through exemplary case studies. Some of these studies constitute primary research conducted by the authors, while others are drawn from wider academic literature. We aim to show how gender is produced, represented and con- sumed in popular culture, and how the three processes interact to ‘construct what we commonly identify as gender identities. We do this by looking at a range of literature, case studies and examples drawn from modern Western culture. The first part of the book is devoted to the process of production. In this part we look at who produces popular culture, including visible producers such as artists and per- formers and less visible, behind-the-scenes ones such as producers and managers. We also investigate patterns of gender regarding employment and careers, and examine how this links to genres and 2 Introduction types of popular culture, and attempt to explain them by looking at a range of factors such as gender discourses, individual aspiration and economic structures. The second part of the book focuses on the process of representa- tion. Popular-cultural products, or texts, are symbolic because they carry meanings. These meanings are produced through linguistic and visual representations. We concern ourselves with the ways in which women and men are represented in popular culture, drawing out similarities and differences, and examine how normative notions of femininity and masculinity are constructed and sustained. Moreover, we investigate the implications of representations and gender norms in terms of status, power relations and gender (in)equality. The third part of the book deals with the process of consumption. Consumption is a gendered practice. There are, for example, differ- ences between men’s and women’s consumption patterns and differ- ent subject positions set up for men and women in popular-cultural texts. We investigate the reasons behind these gendered patterns, looking at a range of factors from space to gender norms. Moreover, we examine how popular culture can be used by individuals to con- struct gender identities by performing masculinity and femininity. The book is clearly structured into these three parts and each part consists of two distinct chapters. For the remainder of this first chapter we outline in detail the key concepts which are used through- out the book. Popular Culture and the Media Popular culture is a contested concept. It is vague and diffuse and can therefore be filled with many different meanings. In order to investigate these meanings, we will start by looking at the more general concept of culture. (1983) put forward three meanings of the word arguing that it can refer to (a) intellectual, spiritual or ings. The concept of popular culture is of course different from that of culture. Williams’ first definition refers to culture with a capital C, i.e. those aspects of culture commonly called high culture, for example literature or opera. We usually do not associate popular culture with this definition. ocon ae Soe *
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