Dreamworlds 3: The Role Of Women And The Media

Today, the media plays an essential role in the Western civilization. Considering this, entertainment, social media, and the news are all intrinsically valuable media literacy devices. In addition, the media “helps to maintain a status quo in which certain groups in our society routinely have access to power and privilege while others do not” (Mulvaney 2016). For instance, both in the music and pornographic industry the female body is perceived as a sexual object. In Dreamworlds 3: Desire, Sex & Power in Music Video, Sut Jhally mentions that “examining the stories that music videos tell us about both male and female sexuality, about what is considered normal, allows us to do more than just understand one aspect of our culture” (Jhally 2007).

For example, “men often feel that they are supposed to be tough, aggressive, [and] competitive” [in the workplace…]. Women, on the other hand, are ‘unsexed by success’” (Kimmel 2013, 250). At the same time, we have seen these gender roles played a vital role in the family. According to Jhally, “the women of the dream world are fragmented and presented as a number of simple and disconnected body parts” (Jhally 2007). Therefore, “the media helps to maintain a status quo in which certain groups in our society routinely have access to power and privilege while others do not” (Mulvaney 2016). Therefore, “these images and stories have worked their way into the inner identities of young women who view their own sexuality through the eyes of the male authors of that culture” (Jhally

Instead, women are being discriminated and treated as inferior due to the stereotypes that are portrayed in the media. The media creates and reproduces ways of seeing that at a minimum reflect and shape our culture. We can look at the media to understand more about a culture’s values and norms, if we realize the limitations of looking at the media. For example, one may ask, does the news based in the United Sates represent what the American culture is like, or only what stands out from everyday American culture? The answer to that is no. Instead, the media represents what it thinks it will be able to sell and is supported by advertisements. This includes violent acts, the sensationally and inappropriate. Jhally reminds us that “it is this male, heterosexual, pornographic imagination based on the degradation and control of women that has colonized commercial culture in general, although it is more clearly articulated in music videos” (Jhally 2007). Therefore, “media content is a symbolic rather than a literal representation of society and that to be represented in the media is in itself a form of power—social groups that are powerless can be relatively easily ignored, allowing the media to focus on the social groups that ‘really matter’” (Gerbner,