The Codes of Gender: Identity & Performance in Pop Culture

Sut Jhally, executive director of the Media Education Foundation, wrote and directed this illustrated lecture on gender and pop culture, drawing on sociologist Erving Goffman's seminal 1959 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Using images from advertising and a few mainstream feature films, Jhally shows how often women are photographed in poses signaling that they are physically helpless, passive or submissive, unaware of their surroundings, childlike, or emotionally out of control, while men, on the other hand, appear ready for action, steady on their feet, and directly engaged with the camera. In one example, Jhally examines the ads for Guess jeans, which are influenced by the exaggerated nudes in Alberto Vargas' paintings and Guess co-founder Paul Marciano's conscious desire to show females as decorative and subordinate. Comparisons with classical paintings suggest the long history of these visual tropes, which Jhally argues are so culturally ingrained that we don't even notice them until they are violated (shots of males in typically feminine poses bring home the point). But Jhally also contends that greater awareness of these types of skewed messages will ultimately dilute their power. Despite the worthy topic, however, The Codes of Gender suffers from a repetitive and slow-paced presentation (Jhally often simply talks to the camera or reads onscreen text), as well as dated references—citing, for example, the “recent” Charlie's Angels movies (2000–2003). The DVD also features an abridged 46-minute version, edited to omit nudity. Optional. Aud: C, P. (M. Puffer-Rothenberg)