Holding Media Accountable

Responsibility in Media

It is not just women who bear the brunt of traditional, stereotyped media depictions of our gender.  There are negative images of men in media also. Particularly in television commercials – which are very often aimed at women consumers – men are routinely depicted as bumbling, foolish oafs where the women are shown as being smart and organized, the ones with “the brains” of the operation.

There was a billboard in my neighborhood a few years ago that I thought was blatantly offensive and derogatory of men.  I wish I could remember the details of the ad, but it showed a woman with a product and had a headline something along the lines of “Now if I could just get my husband to be this useful,” or something like that.  It was done in a way that seemed really condescending to husbands, so I asked a housewife friend of mine about the billboard to get her take on it.  I asked if she thought it was offensive to men and she just shrugged and said she thought the ad seemed fine.

Here is another example, which you may recall, a Doritos commercial.  In it we see a bunch of businessmen executives in an office, brainstorming all the innovations they’d like to see implemented, things that would make their company go to the top.  During this meeting, they are all standing together in a circle, chomping on Dorito chips, laughing, just being casual.  Then the camera zooms out and we see a woman seated in the room with them, in business attire looking very sharp and smart, as she finishes up her rapid-fire typing, shuts the lid of her computer and says “Done!”  Some people have argued that this ad also implies women are the ones who ‘get things done’ while the men just goof off and eat chips.

We live in a different, more modern world now, and it’s time to stop relying on the assumption that men are one way and women are another. Lots of people are smart, lots of people are brave, lots of people are capable.  Some people are weak and pathetic, some are not very bright, and some aren’t very skillful at many things.  But these don’t really follow any gender, race or economic lines.  It is ridiculous that media still loves to hold on to the traditional archetypes, where “bad guys” usually are men and women are typically shown as “good people,” albeit overly vulnerable or sexual, in some unrealistic way.

Media is in the business of selling and making money.  But because media is such a powerful programming tool and it is so ubiquitous in our daily lives, it does more than just sell things and make money.  It creates and maintains cultural beliefs, stereotypes and biases. As a society, we don’t teach our kids how to discern between actual reality and all the media images of pseudo-reality that are propagated.  Yet even as a media analyst and an adult, I find it difficult to not get brainwashed at some point by all the media images. It’s hard to not buy into the stereotypes when they are shown over and over again, with the same biases and scenarios each time.  So how are young, impressionable people supposed to make sense of male/female reality when media so repeatedly focuses on the weaknesses and limitations of people – usually along gender-line differentiations – and totally exaggerates any good traits people may have to the point where they are unrepresentative of actual people?  

Media needs to take a greater responsibility for driving the human race-car that is leading us to our social future.  Media is extremely powerful, and it does drive humanity’s cultural beliefs in a lot of ways.  We can better teach young men and women how to be all we can be by showing what that looks like (and allow for variety to exist within that framework), as opposed to going with the standard good/bad, sexy/brutish ideals that traditional media seems so determined to continue relying on for content.  The vast majority of us don’t have much in common with the depictions of our gender characterizations on TV.  Media should take responsibility for the influence they wield in socializing us to perceive such limited-scope world views of how men and women behave and think. My guess is they probably don’t see their content as a problem. This comes in part from the fact that media has a cumulative effect and is not just isolated to one particular instance here or there.

The good news, however, is that in media, money is truly the bottom line.  So if women and men boycott and make a stink about images and portrayals we find disturbing, we can totally make an impact simply by cutting off the money going into their coffers – by refusing to watch, refusing to buy, and speaking (or writing) publicly about their propaganda that we won’t tolerate anymore.  And then you watch – media will start taking greater responsibility in response to public outcry.

Unfortunately, right now most Americans just tolerate it.  We passively watch the movies, the TV shows, the commercials, the comics in the paper, and we don’t bother to complain or do anything about offensive content because it’s a hassle, it has little result in the short-term, and who has the time anyway?

I recently tuned in for the first time to watch a show called No Ordinary Family, which airs on ABC at 8:00 pm (i.e., during family hour).  I was tuning in to watch because a friend of mine has a son who was going to be an extra in the show.  So the show came on, and the very opening scene was a horrifying, brutal, and graphic up-close stabbing of a young girl who was jogging through the woods.  First we see her jogging, then we see her get pulled out of view abruptly, by some unseen attacker.  Then we see a close up of her head and chest, as she is being brutally stabbed over and over and over, screaming a deathly scream.  The next screen-shot is post-attack. She is lying there, obviously dead, with four or five large slash/gash marks disfiguring her corpse-face. 

This is how a show on ABC at 8:00 pm opened itself to the viewing public, yet there was no warning ahead of time, no disclaimer saying “this show is for mature audiences. Some material may be unsuitable for younger viewers, discretion advised.”  But why not? I have seen those disclaimers on animal shows that show wild animals hunting.  Is hunting down and ripping up human flesh somehow more suitable for viewers?  That opening scene was horrific, graphic and misogynistic – it was definitely worthy of a TV-MA rating, but why would such a show be broadcast in prime-time on a major network, where kids could easily be watching?

A responsible programming executive - who took the time to care - would have recognized that material was totally unsuitable.  But, the lines keep getting blurred on TV, with autopsy scenes and lots of routine gun-killings being shown all the time.  I can see how it gets hard to decide what’s ok and what’s not ok to show.   None the less, there is an issue of responsibility to consider when you publish or broadcast media.  I think it was irresponsible for ABC to allow that scene in their show as the opening sequence, and the program should have had some indication to viewers that they were about to be shown terrible, graphic horror being done to human beings during family hour on their network.  Ironically, the very first (and only) time I ever tuned in to watch the show “Monk” years ago, it was an episode that opened in a very similar way, with a graphic rape and killing of a woman.  Why is this family entertainment and why are these graphically-filmed attacks on women, by men, so prevalent in television programming?  It is interesting to note that those horrific scenes at the beginning of both "No Ordinary Family" and "Monk" are not typical of the shows' usual weekly content. So why are studio execs of major networks agreeing to produce the work of writers who open with scenes like that?  It seems like a big risk for show producers to take - risking losing first-time viewers - simply because they are lazy about their social responsibility to viewers and are letting misogynistic writers get their stuff on TV.

I wrote a comment about that on the ABC website, but I doubt many others did. It is hard for media to be motivated to take responsibility when people don’t let them know the boundaries. 

Media currently has no responsibility. They can and do show whatever they want, always striving to expand ‘what can be shown’ and no one is accountable to what is being shown because no one person makes the decisions and it’s all subjective anyway.  But we the people can start demanding more accountability and responsibility, and over time it will make a difference.