Representation - Selling through Stereotypes

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.