The Codes of Gender

6.1/10 from 4 votes

Director: Sut Jhally

Date of release: 13 Oct 2010

Description

Arguing that advertising not only sells things, but also ideas about the world, media scholar Sut Jhally offers a blistering analysis of commercial culture's inability to let go of reactionary gender representations. Jhally's starting point is the breakthrough work of the late sociologist Erving Goffman, whose 1959 book The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life prefigured the growing field of performance studies. Jhally applies Goffman's analysis of the body in print advertising to hundreds of print ads today, uncovering an astonishing pattern of regressive and destructive gender codes. By looking beyond advertising as a medium that simply sells products, and beyond analyses of gender that tend to focus on either biology or objectification, The Codes of Gender offers important insights into the social construction of masculinity and femininity, the relationship between gender and power, and the everyday performance of cultural norms.

Extra

Runtime	73 minute
Producer	Media Education Foundation
Language	English
Themes	western society social structures pop culture gender ideals gender roles advertising social science masculinity beauty gender power relations femininity sociology subordination socialization ritualized cultural performance commercialism objectification analysis hierarchy ervig goffman infantilization
Actors	Sut Jhally