Gender profiling : critical thinking about gender portrayals in media

Abstract

It is wearying to live up to the slogan 'be critical and unconventional' advocated by the new multimedia era, when the mass of information dumped upon us in this information age still seems to be highly dogmatic, conventional and stereotypical. We believe that we possess the ability to critically reflect on media messages, but alas it is the crafty mass media which makes us believe that we do so while continuously and conspicuously feeding us the same material. And because we do not challenge what are being fed through the media enough, supreme patriarchal capitalists who hold the power of the media exert social conlrol lhrough manipulalive messages and images which rnerely support the system and facilitate its growth (van Zoonen 1994, p.29). This work addresses two fundamental issues commonly encountered in the consumption of mass media - critical thinking and gender discourse. Using the combined knowledge gleaned from critical thinking theory, memetic theory and other media studies, this study hinges an exploration of the core concepts of critical thinking and audiences' thinking against the backdrop of media texts, specifically on one popular culture sitcom entitled "Two and a Half Men". The second part of the work deals mostly with audiences' own interpretations of the specific gender portrayals in the sitcom and draws upon the queer theory, feminist theory and cultivation theory to analyse the effects of such portrayals and discourses on audiences. The findings of this study are based on the outcome of a series of focus groups held with European and Chinese viewers of the sitcom. Through these focus groups it was possible to compare the two groups' unique understanding of media and culture. It was found that most participants have a rather obscure understanding of critical thinking and often limit its use to academia. Another key result which emerged from the study concerned audiences' thinking ability when viewing the sitcom. It emerged that participants expect the presence of stereotypes in TV shows and tend not to engage in critical thinking about them because they view the sitcom as being 'only entertainment'. Probing into a deeper level of the effects of mass media led to the conclusion that viewers, particularly women, do consider the gender images and portrayals troubling and problematic because these portrayals do not genuinely represent true females and males. The participants of the study, however, were unable to agree on a description of gender roles in real life due to the cultural differences among them. In comparison to female viewers, male viewers seem to be temporarily lured into the 'television view' of the world, experiencing "escapism" when viewing the sitcom. While questioning the stability of gender, this study suggests that gender is a performance which changes according to context, gender and culture.