Age: In 1904
Stanley Hall wrote 2 articles about the Adolescents at the time, he stated that
teenagers are commonly depressed and that between the ages of 12-24 criminal
activity increases significantly. He also said that the youth are very extreme
and require excitement; "Youth must have excitement and if this is not hand in the form of moral intellectual
enthusiasms it is more prone to be sought in; sex, drink or drugs.”
What
Stanley Hall wrote is still stereotyped and
applied to the youths of today despite being written over 100 years ago.
Because of this, magazines aimed at the youth often make their magazines look
edgy, non-conformist and rebellious to stick to the stereotypes and appeal
to the youths that represent themselves as edgy, non-conformist and
rebellious.
Gender: In
1975 the feminist Laura Mulvey published a paper which stated that the role of
female characters in traditional media products function on two levels "As
erotic object of desire for the characters within the story, and as erotic
objects of desire for the spectator." This means that females were only
portrayed sexually in the media so it would attract the male audience and sell
easily, although this may not put off female readers as the woman may feel like
they are represented by the female characters and may idolise the females
in media for being attractive to males.
Since 1975 the
media has changed and you tend to see men used in the same way to sell media
products to females, for example you often see attractive and topless men on
magazines that target females.
Class:The media portrays class in a way that
relates to the target audience. For example the upper class A list celebrities
that are seen in the media and music magazines are portrayed as lower class
through their clothing and demeanour. This is because through appearing ‘poor’
it allows the target audience to relate and see them as part of their own
class/culture. Keith Gandal’s theory from 2007 said that lower class people are
portrayed as a cultural other through fashions that deviate them from the
middle and upper classes. This means that the celebrities with target audiences
of a younger lower class often wear the clothes, such as Jeans, a T-Shirt, and
trendy trainers, that their target audience wear, where as an Opera singer that
might wear an expensive suit or dress of a designer label would appeal to a more
upper class, high society older audience. This relates to the theory that
Richard Butsch wrote in 1992. He stated that working class males are portrayed
in the media as “Incompetent and ineffectual, often a buffoon, well-intentioned
but dumb. In almost all working-class series the male is flawed, some more than
others… He fails in his roles as a father and husband and is lovable but not
respected. This relates to the Rock and Roll image that is appealing to most
Lower class people. The rock and roll stars are often in the media for being
violent and drunken or cheating on their partners, which according to Butsch is
normal behaviour for the typical working class male so it makes the Rock stars
seem human, like their target audience.
In contrast to
the theories above, Hip-hop magazines do not usually show celebrities as lower
class to reach a target audience, but they show celebrities as upper class and
show them with money, expensive cars and clothes etc. Keith Gandal wrote in
2007 that audiences are drawn in by the Sentimental “Rags to Riches” story
because they like to think of poor people making it big through music and can
relate to the lifestyle they have chosen because it is what they might do if
they had money. This would however not be relevant to a person that is already
of an upper class as they don’t have a relatable story of Rags to Riches. The
Rags to Riches lifestyle may give the target audience that wrong idea in
thinking that the money has been attained through crime because of the gangster
look that you can observe from the media in hip-hop and R&B.
Sexuality: Sexuality in
the media is portrayed as very over exaggerated. This is said to happen because
like Medhurst argued, it makes the heterosexual audience feel safe in the
belief that they’re living a natural and normal life. Stereotyping towards the
heterosexual audience gives them a feel of superiority over homosexuals and
gives them the feel of social norm toward heterosexuals. The thought that
heterosexuality is normal and good, and that homosexuality is not normal or
good may stem from religion.
Stereotyping is
a method of giving value to something and not just describing something,
meaning that the image of the screaming queen doesn’t mean all gay maen are
like that, it means that all gay men are like that and look at it, isn’t it
simply awful, linking back to the quote “They are awful because they’re not
like us”
Ethnicity: In 1998 in her
essay “The construction of Black and Asian Ethnicities in British media” Sarita
Malik stated that the word race has automatically been aligned with Black and
Asian ethnicities and ‘Whiteness’ has been naturalized so is seen as the norm.
This causes people to view white people in the media not as a race but as the
normal.
In the media
you see races and ethnicities a lot but sometimes for example a magazine aimed
at young teenage white girls such as ‘The Top of the Pops’ you will see white
celebrities and models the majority of the time, compared to in a Hip-Hop
magazine aimed at older black teenage boys in which you would see the majority
of Black Celebrities.
Sometimes the
different races portray themselves with negative stereotypes, for example most
of the time in Hip-Hop/R&B magazines, the black celebrities and models are
posing and portrayed as criminals or gangsters, this gives a generalisation of
all black people being criminals. Stuart Hall highlighted the negative
sterotypes being embraced in 1981 when he said “There is a grammer of race
based on a traditional diet for the British Media that is based on the standard
image of blackness being the social problem”
The reason for
the embracing of negative stereotypes might be because it may give the product
an edgy feel that makes it more appealing to different races.
