Popular media culture & diversity.........................................................................................................3
Concepts, debates, and approaches..................................................................................................3
Identity and diversity in Western society.......................................................................................3
Researching diversity and popular media culture..........................................................................6
On representation..........................................................................................................................8
Guest lecture: age, ageism and childrens content...........................................................................11
Theories and debated on age and ageing....................................................................................11
Case study: ald age in childrens television...................................................................................13
Representations of older characters in children television..........................................................13
Gender.............................................................................................................................................14
Sex, gender, and feminisms..........................................................................................................14
Researching gender and popular media culture..........................................................................15
Gender, the music industry, and rock music................................................................................16
Pornography and sex wars...........................................................................................................17
Trans representation in media.....................................................................................................18
Sexual orientation................................................................................................................................20
Sexuality, sexual identity, and sexual diversity.................................................................................20
Conceptualisations.......................................................................................................................20
Changing discourses about nonheterosexuality in Western society............................................21
Researching sexual diversity and popular media culture.................................................................21
Cultivation theory-informed communication research................................................................22
Queer-theory informed media and cultural studies.....................................................................22
Representing sexual diversity in film and television fiction..............................................................23
Absent images and coded representation....................................................................................23
Stereotyping................................................................................................................................24
Between heteronormativity and queerness................................................................................25
Queer practices of fan audiences.....................................................................................................25
On race, ethnicity, and diaspora......................................................................................................27
About race and racialisation........................................................................................................27
About ethnicity and diaspora.......................................................................................................27
Researching racial and ethnic diversity in popular media culture....................................................28
Racial and ethnic diversity in the production of popular media culture..........................................29
Capitalism, media and cultural industries, and policy..................................................................29
Pitfalls, pressures, and pervasive whiteness................................................................................30
A historical outline of black popular music......................................................................................31
Disability..........................................................................................................................................34
About dis/ability..........................................................................................................................34
Researching dis/ability in popular media culture.........................................................................36
,Representing disability.................................................................................................................37
Accessibility.................................................................................................................................39
,Popular media culture & diversity
Concepts, debates, and approaches
Identity and diversity in Western society
About identity
Ubiquity of identity & identity markers
- People will read you in a way
Bodily traits and sociocultural features: basis for identity categories
- Social class is personal to people, depends on some terms
JENKINS:
- Identification: “the systematic establishment and signification, between individuals,
between collectivities and between individuals and collectivities, of relationships of similarity
and difference”
- Identity “denotes the ways in which individuals and collectivities are distinguished in their
relations with other individuals and collectivities”
- Both an interactional product of ‘external’ identification by others,
as of ‘internal’ self-identification (combination)
o External: when you are born, you will have a sex identity
o Internal: when you try to make sense of sexual desires
- Shaped by and dependent on culture
Cultural discourses & representations about identities
- (Re)produced in popular media culture
- Help people make sense of who they are as a person…
o Having vocabularies, …
- … but may also hamper people’s lives as they engender normative assumptions about people
o Can make your life quite difficult
- Context-specific!
o Not everyone can relate
o What is considered as normal, depends on time and place
Social constructionist perspective
- Identities are socially constructed and vary culturally and historically
o Words that u use to describe depends on culture
- Opposes an essentialist understanding of identity
o Essentialism assumes:
+ certain identities are natural, biological, and ahistorical, existing prior to the birth
of a person
+ persons with same identity share the same feelings and experiences, throughout
history and across the globe (with anyone with the same identity)
- Differences exist, but should be seen as the outcome of social processes and cultural
practices
o Crucial that we should see these differences as outcome of social process
o More than physical differences
,Sociocultural diversity, inequality, and identity politics
- Sociocultural diversity: “all kinds of differences between individuals
and groups”
- Discourses about diversity are deeply political
- Discursive constructions of identities as ‘normal’, ‘mainstream’, or ‘superior’ vs. identities
constructed as ‘abnormal’, ‘deviant’, or ‘inferior’
o Constructing identities as binary, oppositional, & hierarchical
Ex. Men are from mars, women from venus
o Constructing cultural repertoires that limit diversity within identity categories
Theres a proper way of being, some ways are not proper
- structural inequalities in institutions, culture, and everyday life practices
- How to make visible, question, overthrow structural forms of oppression?
- Identity politics: “The forging of ‘new languages’ of identity combined with acting to change
social practices, usually through the formation of coalitions where at least some values are
shared”
o When people who are part of a group to create new languages, change social
practices we need to form coalitions
- Celebrating a share culture…
- … but at times presented as homogenous and essentialist
- Alternatively, emphasising a shared identity as strategic:
o Helps formation of a social collective & clear set of goals
o Should not imply that other intersecting identities are annulled
o Shared identity can be experienced & signified in diverse ways
- Ex identity politics: #metoo, shared identity of women
Intersectionality
CRENSHAW
- Scholar in law, critical race theory, and civil rights
- ‘Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of
Color’ = her concept
- Identity politics: importance and pitfalls
- Violence against women of colour: shaped by intersecting patterns of racism and sexism
- Structural intersectionality: Intersection of race and gender makes actual experiences
women of colour qualitatively different than that of white women
o Act of violence itself is the same, everything that comes with it is different
- Political intersectionality: Intersectionality needs to be the fundamental basis for politics
and policies
o We need to invest in this
o Feminist and anti-racist politics’ hegemonic logics have reproduced oppressive
discourses
- Representational intersectionality: Cultural construction of women of colour
o Do representations acknowledge those things
- Using an intersectional lens to ask questions about the sociocultural implications of
representations
2 Live Crew
- American lawsuit against the members of 2 Live Crew
o Arrested and charged under Florida’s obscenity statute, 1990
, - Two days before: Federal court judge considers As Nasty as They Wanna Be (1989) legally
obscene and lacking artistic value
o “It is an appeal to dirty thoughts and the loins, not to the intellect
and the mind.”
o First time a concert was seen as legally obscene
- Records store owner Charles Freeman arrested for selling album
- Members were acquitted (October ‘90) – album’s ‘obscene character’ only later overturned
(in ‘92)
- Crenshaw: focused on the public debate about the case
o What was being said about the representation of black women
o Debate dominated by two positions
Feminist position: degrades and objectifies black women
- WILL: dominates the discussion
o If you look at the lyrics, you will find a lot of misogyny, objectification, condoning
sexual violence against women
o Lyrics are sexually explicit
Anti-racist position: mocks stereotypes and wants to be funny
- Henry Louis Gates, scholar in African American culture
- Exaggerations intended to expose the ridiculousness of stereotypes of black masculinity
o Political motivation: advance the black antiracist agenda by liberating black men
from these stereotypes
o Cultural motivation: wanting to be funny; not intended to cause pain, thereby could
not be seen as injurious
- Anti-racist prism dismisses (gendered) power relations
o Humour: punching up or punching down?
o Mocking with more power, or punching down, mocking more people in minority
positions
- Intra-group humour dismisses intersectional relationship: men mocking women to bond with
other men
- Crenshaw concludes by stressing that categories of identities are valuable if they factor in
intersectional experiences
- and legal contexts and norms that intertwine to create structures of oppression and
privilege”
Woke and cancel culture
Origin of the term woke:
- Early 20th C: ‘woke’ circulated in African American communities
as a reminder to be vigilant and stay alert
- 1962: “If You’re Woke You Dig It”, article published in New York Times by a young black
novelist William Melvin Kelley
- Late 20th C, early 21st C: different meanings but idea of being aware of systemic and social
injustice persisted
- 2014: Ferguson unrest in Missouri, USA: #StayWoke
- Black Lives Matter movement: watch out for police abuse and racial injustice
- Drew attention to different forms of social injustice, became part of popular discourse as well
as an international known and used term
, - Coexistence activist interpretation with ‘corporate wokeness’
o Corporations engaged in “apparent championing of identity politics”
o ‘woke-washing’: promotional/marketing discourses rarely coincide with a true
commitment to social justice (window dressing)
- International resignification of the term
o Local forms of structural inequality and social injustice
o Moderate and social conservative critics:
+ Transformed initial meaning of woke into signifying an excessive form of political
correctness
+ Signpost a series of practices considered an attack on traditional norms and values,
established cultural practices, or freedom of speech (ex. The little mermaid)
And what about cancel culture?
- Demands for accountability of high-profile persons or organisations
with symbolic capital that engaged in (systemic) wrongdoing and who have been not
listening to critic so far
- Demands amplified by requesting “the withdrawal of any kind of support […] for those who
are assessed to have said or done something unacceptable or highly problematic, generally
from a social justice perspective especially alert to sexism, heterosexism, homophobia,
racism, bullying, and related issues”
- Digital platforms:
o Facilitates fast, large-scale responses to acts deemed problematic, empowering
traditionally marginalised groups in the moment
o But attributes of social media do not create room for nuance, contemplation, slow &
thoughtful debate
- Debates over alleged dangers of cancel culture tend to obfuscate and dismiss underlying
issues
Researching diversity and popular media culture
Divergent paradigmatic approaches
- From second half 20th century on, researching diversity and popular media culture
- ‘Communication sciences’ and ‘media and cultural studies’
o Start from different philosophic paradigms (ontology, epistemology, axiology)
- Communication sciences: post-positivist perspective
- Media and cultural studies: interpretative and critical perspective
Unfamiliar with paradigmatic perspectives? Read section 2.1. from Chapter 1 by yourself (pp. 32-
33)
Communication sciences: realism and socialisation
- Became a discipline in 1950s-1960s
1st assumption: media can and should reflect the real world
- Images of minoritised identities should be ‘realistic’ and ‘accurate’
- Methods & protocols to capture how groups of people are depicted in media, compare to
groups in real world, assess distortion
- Use objective research to criticise role of media in sustaining structures of inequality
nd
2 assumption: media play an important role in process of socialisation
- Impact of stereotypical images on perceptions & attitudes of people
o Social psychology (short-term effects)
o Cultivation theory (long-term impact)
Concepts, debates, and approaches..................................................................................................3
Identity and diversity in Western society.......................................................................................3
Researching diversity and popular media culture..........................................................................6
On representation..........................................................................................................................8
Guest lecture: age, ageism and childrens content...........................................................................11
Theories and debated on age and ageing....................................................................................11
Case study: ald age in childrens television...................................................................................13
Representations of older characters in children television..........................................................13
Gender.............................................................................................................................................14
Sex, gender, and feminisms..........................................................................................................14
Researching gender and popular media culture..........................................................................15
Gender, the music industry, and rock music................................................................................16
Pornography and sex wars...........................................................................................................17
Trans representation in media.....................................................................................................18
Sexual orientation................................................................................................................................20
Sexuality, sexual identity, and sexual diversity.................................................................................20
Conceptualisations.......................................................................................................................20
Changing discourses about nonheterosexuality in Western society............................................21
Researching sexual diversity and popular media culture.................................................................21
Cultivation theory-informed communication research................................................................22
Queer-theory informed media and cultural studies.....................................................................22
Representing sexual diversity in film and television fiction..............................................................23
Absent images and coded representation....................................................................................23
Stereotyping................................................................................................................................24
Between heteronormativity and queerness................................................................................25
Queer practices of fan audiences.....................................................................................................25
On race, ethnicity, and diaspora......................................................................................................27
About race and racialisation........................................................................................................27
About ethnicity and diaspora.......................................................................................................27
Researching racial and ethnic diversity in popular media culture....................................................28
Racial and ethnic diversity in the production of popular media culture..........................................29
Capitalism, media and cultural industries, and policy..................................................................29
Pitfalls, pressures, and pervasive whiteness................................................................................30
A historical outline of black popular music......................................................................................31
Disability..........................................................................................................................................34
About dis/ability..........................................................................................................................34
Researching dis/ability in popular media culture.........................................................................36
,Representing disability.................................................................................................................37
Accessibility.................................................................................................................................39
,Popular media culture & diversity
Concepts, debates, and approaches
Identity and diversity in Western society
About identity
Ubiquity of identity & identity markers
- People will read you in a way
Bodily traits and sociocultural features: basis for identity categories
- Social class is personal to people, depends on some terms
JENKINS:
- Identification: “the systematic establishment and signification, between individuals,
between collectivities and between individuals and collectivities, of relationships of similarity
and difference”
- Identity “denotes the ways in which individuals and collectivities are distinguished in their
relations with other individuals and collectivities”
- Both an interactional product of ‘external’ identification by others,
as of ‘internal’ self-identification (combination)
o External: when you are born, you will have a sex identity
o Internal: when you try to make sense of sexual desires
- Shaped by and dependent on culture
Cultural discourses & representations about identities
- (Re)produced in popular media culture
- Help people make sense of who they are as a person…
o Having vocabularies, …
- … but may also hamper people’s lives as they engender normative assumptions about people
o Can make your life quite difficult
- Context-specific!
o Not everyone can relate
o What is considered as normal, depends on time and place
Social constructionist perspective
- Identities are socially constructed and vary culturally and historically
o Words that u use to describe depends on culture
- Opposes an essentialist understanding of identity
o Essentialism assumes:
+ certain identities are natural, biological, and ahistorical, existing prior to the birth
of a person
+ persons with same identity share the same feelings and experiences, throughout
history and across the globe (with anyone with the same identity)
- Differences exist, but should be seen as the outcome of social processes and cultural
practices
o Crucial that we should see these differences as outcome of social process
o More than physical differences
,Sociocultural diversity, inequality, and identity politics
- Sociocultural diversity: “all kinds of differences between individuals
and groups”
- Discourses about diversity are deeply political
- Discursive constructions of identities as ‘normal’, ‘mainstream’, or ‘superior’ vs. identities
constructed as ‘abnormal’, ‘deviant’, or ‘inferior’
o Constructing identities as binary, oppositional, & hierarchical
Ex. Men are from mars, women from venus
o Constructing cultural repertoires that limit diversity within identity categories
Theres a proper way of being, some ways are not proper
- structural inequalities in institutions, culture, and everyday life practices
- How to make visible, question, overthrow structural forms of oppression?
- Identity politics: “The forging of ‘new languages’ of identity combined with acting to change
social practices, usually through the formation of coalitions where at least some values are
shared”
o When people who are part of a group to create new languages, change social
practices we need to form coalitions
- Celebrating a share culture…
- … but at times presented as homogenous and essentialist
- Alternatively, emphasising a shared identity as strategic:
o Helps formation of a social collective & clear set of goals
o Should not imply that other intersecting identities are annulled
o Shared identity can be experienced & signified in diverse ways
- Ex identity politics: #metoo, shared identity of women
Intersectionality
CRENSHAW
- Scholar in law, critical race theory, and civil rights
- ‘Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of
Color’ = her concept
- Identity politics: importance and pitfalls
- Violence against women of colour: shaped by intersecting patterns of racism and sexism
- Structural intersectionality: Intersection of race and gender makes actual experiences
women of colour qualitatively different than that of white women
o Act of violence itself is the same, everything that comes with it is different
- Political intersectionality: Intersectionality needs to be the fundamental basis for politics
and policies
o We need to invest in this
o Feminist and anti-racist politics’ hegemonic logics have reproduced oppressive
discourses
- Representational intersectionality: Cultural construction of women of colour
o Do representations acknowledge those things
- Using an intersectional lens to ask questions about the sociocultural implications of
representations
2 Live Crew
- American lawsuit against the members of 2 Live Crew
o Arrested and charged under Florida’s obscenity statute, 1990
, - Two days before: Federal court judge considers As Nasty as They Wanna Be (1989) legally
obscene and lacking artistic value
o “It is an appeal to dirty thoughts and the loins, not to the intellect
and the mind.”
o First time a concert was seen as legally obscene
- Records store owner Charles Freeman arrested for selling album
- Members were acquitted (October ‘90) – album’s ‘obscene character’ only later overturned
(in ‘92)
- Crenshaw: focused on the public debate about the case
o What was being said about the representation of black women
o Debate dominated by two positions
Feminist position: degrades and objectifies black women
- WILL: dominates the discussion
o If you look at the lyrics, you will find a lot of misogyny, objectification, condoning
sexual violence against women
o Lyrics are sexually explicit
Anti-racist position: mocks stereotypes and wants to be funny
- Henry Louis Gates, scholar in African American culture
- Exaggerations intended to expose the ridiculousness of stereotypes of black masculinity
o Political motivation: advance the black antiracist agenda by liberating black men
from these stereotypes
o Cultural motivation: wanting to be funny; not intended to cause pain, thereby could
not be seen as injurious
- Anti-racist prism dismisses (gendered) power relations
o Humour: punching up or punching down?
o Mocking with more power, or punching down, mocking more people in minority
positions
- Intra-group humour dismisses intersectional relationship: men mocking women to bond with
other men
- Crenshaw concludes by stressing that categories of identities are valuable if they factor in
intersectional experiences
- and legal contexts and norms that intertwine to create structures of oppression and
privilege”
Woke and cancel culture
Origin of the term woke:
- Early 20th C: ‘woke’ circulated in African American communities
as a reminder to be vigilant and stay alert
- 1962: “If You’re Woke You Dig It”, article published in New York Times by a young black
novelist William Melvin Kelley
- Late 20th C, early 21st C: different meanings but idea of being aware of systemic and social
injustice persisted
- 2014: Ferguson unrest in Missouri, USA: #StayWoke
- Black Lives Matter movement: watch out for police abuse and racial injustice
- Drew attention to different forms of social injustice, became part of popular discourse as well
as an international known and used term
, - Coexistence activist interpretation with ‘corporate wokeness’
o Corporations engaged in “apparent championing of identity politics”
o ‘woke-washing’: promotional/marketing discourses rarely coincide with a true
commitment to social justice (window dressing)
- International resignification of the term
o Local forms of structural inequality and social injustice
o Moderate and social conservative critics:
+ Transformed initial meaning of woke into signifying an excessive form of political
correctness
+ Signpost a series of practices considered an attack on traditional norms and values,
established cultural practices, or freedom of speech (ex. The little mermaid)
And what about cancel culture?
- Demands for accountability of high-profile persons or organisations
with symbolic capital that engaged in (systemic) wrongdoing and who have been not
listening to critic so far
- Demands amplified by requesting “the withdrawal of any kind of support […] for those who
are assessed to have said or done something unacceptable or highly problematic, generally
from a social justice perspective especially alert to sexism, heterosexism, homophobia,
racism, bullying, and related issues”
- Digital platforms:
o Facilitates fast, large-scale responses to acts deemed problematic, empowering
traditionally marginalised groups in the moment
o But attributes of social media do not create room for nuance, contemplation, slow &
thoughtful debate
- Debates over alleged dangers of cancel culture tend to obfuscate and dismiss underlying
issues
Researching diversity and popular media culture
Divergent paradigmatic approaches
- From second half 20th century on, researching diversity and popular media culture
- ‘Communication sciences’ and ‘media and cultural studies’
o Start from different philosophic paradigms (ontology, epistemology, axiology)
- Communication sciences: post-positivist perspective
- Media and cultural studies: interpretative and critical perspective
Unfamiliar with paradigmatic perspectives? Read section 2.1. from Chapter 1 by yourself (pp. 32-
33)
Communication sciences: realism and socialisation
- Became a discipline in 1950s-1960s
1st assumption: media can and should reflect the real world
- Images of minoritised identities should be ‘realistic’ and ‘accurate’
- Methods & protocols to capture how groups of people are depicted in media, compare to
groups in real world, assess distortion
- Use objective research to criticise role of media in sustaining structures of inequality
nd
2 assumption: media play an important role in process of socialisation
- Impact of stereotypical images on perceptions & attitudes of people
o Social psychology (short-term effects)
o Cultivation theory (long-term impact)
