Representation and Stereotyping

The media have 'the power to represent the world in certain ways. And because there are so many different and conflicting ways in which meaning about the world can be constructed, it matters profoundly what and who gets left out, and how things, people, events, relationships are represented.' (Stuart Hall 1986)

Introduction to Representation

A representation is an image, likeness or reproduction of something in the 'real' world. It may be an object, person, group or event that has been re-presented, or mediated in some way. With a written text this mediation is clear to see. The thing has been re-presented as marks on a page, or 'words', which are not easily confused with the thing itself. With media such as tapes, C.D.s, film and television, however, the re-presentation appears to resemble far more closely our own experience of reality. A video recording of a wedding, for instance, looks in many ways like the thing itself, certainly far more than a written diary entry describing the event (although the diary may later seem to be a more 'honest' recording of the occasion).

In this way, television re-presents the real world , at a superficial level, in ways that are analogous to how we 'interpret' experience through our senses of seeing and listening. We, rightly, assume that a television picture of Tony Blair approximates to a real life impression of the living politician. We might have never met the man yet we are very likely to recognize him in the street due to exposure of his image on television. Similarly, Tony Blair's voice will be 'known' to us from what we have heard in news reports and interviews with the man.

Nevertheless, our television experience of him will be based, not on Tony Blair 'the man', but on information stored, and transmitted as electrical pulses and fired at a phosphorescent screen in our living room as a series of coloured, or black-and-white dots. These images will have been selected from hours of footage and reduced to a few minutes (at most) of meticulously edited sound and visual 'bites'. Images of the politician at a conference, for example, will have been carefully framed, lit, juxtaposed with other material and placed within the frame of a report, with comment and analysis to guide the viewer. Just as with our sensual experience of any event or person, a massive amount of information will be excluded from this representation. What has happened just outside the literal screen frame ? Perhaps there is a glass autocue from which he is reading. There may be someone wandering about aimlessly just out of shot, or yawning, or clapping wildly. At a political meeting there is often a large crowd of hecklers, but the audience at home will not hear a single murmur from them as the uni-directional microphones only 'hear' what the Prime Minister is saying.

We can go beyond this to consider how all representations, even those of our own senses, can never contain or exhaust the whole of the represented scene. Hence we rarely stop to consider what the newsreader looks like from above, or behind, or at a microscopic level. All representations contain only a fraction of what could have been presented, thus all are selective abstractions. Equally, all representations must, at any one time, have a single point of view (one camera in one position, one writer, one or more microphones giving a single 'perspective'.)

This is all so obvious that it is easy to miss the implications of the fact that all representations are a) selective, b) limited or framed, c) univocal (i.e. from only one position) d) the result of mechanical processing or mediation. Far from representing the whole scene or context, representations 'contain' an almost infinitely small percentage of the totality. Nevertheless, because this is true of the way in which we represent the world to ourselves (television and other mass media mimic our own perception processes) we tend to accept it without question and are quite capable of entirely forgetting that such representations have been mediated, or processed, by anyone but ourselves.

Richard Dyer (1985) identifies four different connotations of the term representation in relation to television. The first use of the word is, in the sense outlined above, as a

re-presentation of the world, subject to television's selection, emphasis and technical/aesthetic codes. The second sense is as 'being representative of', or typical of, the real world. Are television representations of women, children, ethnic groups, different classes, and so on, typical of how those groups are in society ? The third meaning of representation implies a democratic notion of being spoken for, or fairly represented. The question arises here of who is speaking on our behalf. Dyer illustrates this point with reference to representations of women in a male dominated media:

'For every image of a woman, it is important to ask who is speaking for women at that point. In the vast majority of cases, the answer would be a man. The same is true of other groups excluded from the mainstream of speech in our society. Television so often speaks on our behalf without letting us speak for ourselves.'

Finally, when considering representation, questions of audience are important because what the programme represents to them is, arguably, the crucial meaning of the text (see chapter Audience). The four questions Dyer suggests we ask of any television programme are therefore:

'What sense of the world is this programme making ? What does it claim is typical of the world and what deviant ? Who is really speaking ? For whom ? What is represented to us, and why ?'

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Representation by Type

The media construct representations by the use of a kind of shorthand, that involves various easily recognizable types and conventions. It is, after all, fundamental to all media processes that representations are limited, simplified and made sense of through recognizable codes . Without these codes or conventions, the representations would be 'unreadable' because they would each be idiomatic (i.e. unique). Imagine, for instance, a news report shot from every possible camera angle, or a soap opera with characters utterly unlike anyone ever encountered on the screen before.

According to Burton (1990) the media are responsible for the representation of social groups by building certain types of people, made up of repeated elements such as appearance and behaviour. These elements carry meanings about character, relationships and about how we are meant to view and value the types. Burton distinguishes three levels at which this process occurs:

Types found on television such as the shopkeeper, or the eccentric old lady who solves crimes, are frequently recognizable without being, necessarily, stereotypes. This may be, as Burton suggests, because they are not drawn 'strongly' enough, they may lack a clear set of characteristics reinforced by years of repetition (such as the beret-wearing Frenchman riding a bicycle with a string of onions around his neck), or that (as in the case of the elderly female detective) they are so particular, and drawn in such detail, that they cannot be easily applied to any real group in society.

Stereotypes are always closely bound up with issues of representation. A stereotype was originally a piece of metal plate that was used to make sure that all subsequent pieces of metal were cut to exactly the same size. The term stereotyping today has come to mean the continuous repetition of ideas about groups of people in the media. It involves taking an easily grasped feature or characteristic assumed to belong to a group and making it representative of the whole group. These simplified representations of human appearance, character and beliefs become established through years of repetition in the media, as well as through assumptions in everyday conversation. Stereotypes have qualities of being instantly recognizable, usually through key details of appearance. They have attached to them implicit judgements about a group (covert value messages). As Burton notes:

'Stereotypes are not necessarily bad in themselves - it depends on how they are used and what value judgements they unlock. For example, a 'safety in the home' advertisement including a comfortable Granny in a rocking chair, which is used to make children aware of the dangers from electric sockets in the home, could be said to be OK. It represents Granny as kind and careful. It is being used for a socially approvable purpose. Whether older females wish to be seen in this way is another matter, ot course..'

Where the image of a group of individuals is distorted to the point that it appears ridiculous, grotesque or evil such stereotypes may also be described as caricatures (a term usually reserved for exaggerated or deliberately humorous images of individuals). Nazi images of Jews, for example, or Spitting Image puppets of tabloid journalists (shown as pigs) are clear examples of caricatures. (see Nazi Filmmaking in Chapter 'Documentary')

Archetypes, Burton suggests, are the most intense example of types and are also very deeply embedded in culture. They are the arch heroes, heroines and villains who epitomize the deepest beliefs, values and perhaps prejudices of a society. Superman is an archetype, just as all the heroes from mythology are archetypes. Archetypal characters are not limited to a particular genre:

'For instance the power-hungry villain who wants to destroy the world might turn up in spy thrillers, science fiction or horror stories. Qualities of courage or beauty, goodness or evil, are drawn most firmly and sharply in these archetypes. They are the stuff of comic strips (Jane), of cheap television (Buck Rogers), of low budget film (the Mad Max series). They may be enjoyable in the story, whatever the medium, but they also take us into the realms of fantasy.' (Burton 1990)

Stereotypes

For media and cultural studies, as well as social psychology, the most important of the three common types of representation described by Burton is the stereotype because stereotypes illustrate crucial power relations and attitudes towards categories of people in a particular society, at a given time. These categories include nationality (e.g., the Scots), 'race' (e.g., Latin), gender (male or female), class (e.g., middle class), age (e.g., teenage), sexuality (e.g, bi-sexual), occupations (e.g., social workers) and deviant groups (e.g., illegal drug users). Refer to chapters 'Situation Comedy', 'Police' and 'Soap Opera' for more detailed examples of stereotyping.

Tessa Perkins defines stereotypes as group concepts (held by a social group, about a social group) which give rise to simple structures that often hide complexity, based on an 'inferior judgemental process' (i.e., one which is in some sense less than fully rational). She argues that, against common sense notions of stereotypes:

Stereotypes are not always 'false': Cowboys do wear hats; some gay men do grow moustaches, many businessmen do smoke cigars, and so on. The interesting question is to what extent social groups consciously adopt stereotypical signs in order to identify themselves, and to what extent the mass media orchestrate or amplify these deliberate social acts of communication.

Stereotypes can, at least in part, be positive: Germans are stereotypically efficient, the French great lovers, black people good at sport and so on. However, these are nearly always back-handed compliments - the Germans may be seen as ruthlessly efficient, the French obsessed with sex and blacks good at sport because it is a physical rather than intellectual quality.

They can be held about one's own social group: The English have several stereotypical images of themselves (from loveable Cockney rogue to upper-class twit). By the same token women can hold stereotypical images of women, blacks can hold racist views, and so on.

They are not always concerned with oppressed groups: There are stereotypes of aristocrats as arrogant and stuck up, Americans as loud, brash and vulgar, males as chauvinist pigs and numerous others that are in various ways socially dominant.

They are not always about minority groups of which we have little direct experience: Stereotypes of women and men, with whom we all have experience, are widespread. To see stereotypes as applying only to distant and alien minorites obscures the ways in which stereotypes affect our everyday dealings with people.

They can be simple and complex at the same time: the 'dumb blonde' stereotype, of which Marilyn Monroe was the most famous representative, paradoxically combines lack of intelligence and wit; child-like innocence and sexuality; naivety with the power to manipulate; an exploited, subordinate position and cult status.

They are not rigid or unchanging: the cloth-capped, Labour-voting, constantly-striking British worker stereotype of the 1960s became the affluent, consumerist, Conservative-voting, self-serving 'Loadsamoney' stereotype of the working class in the 1980s . Stereotypes evolve and adapt since they relate to struggles around power which may differ in scale and change over time. A general stereotype (the latin man) took on a specific and negative focus during the British and Argentine war of 1982. This negative stereotype was quickly forgotten by the media that fostered it (such as the dropping of the Sun's 'Argie-Bargie' cartoon strip) as memories of the war faded.

We do not simply 'believe' or 'disbelieve' in stereotypes: they can 'work' for us or communicate to us without our necessarily 'agreeing' with them. An Irish person can 'get' a joke, or even laugh at it, without liking it, or agreeing with what it says about the Irish.

They do not necessarily influence our behaviour and attitudes: it is possible to 'hold' a stereotype without believing it to be true. The reaction of a viewer to a stereotype will depend on a complex set of social, historical and individual experiences. Watching Harry Enfield's 'Old Gits' may produce revulsion at such a crude stereotype, or hilarity at the comic excess of their portrayal, or a combination of the two. It may reinforce a notion of old people as miserable, bad tempered and socially useless, or it may challenge the commonly employed comic stereotype through crude caricature .

Perkins insists that her rethinking of stereotypes is not a denial of the significance of stereotypes amongst the various mechanisms of ideological control. Stereotyping, as has been shown, works in relation to groups, usually to the advantage of the dominant groups. Furthermore stereotyping often makes such dominant views seem 'natural' or 'normal', and not the result of a systematic process of construction. Despite her qualifications to common sense assumption, stereotypes, for Perkins, remain both inaccurate (because they are selective in important ways) and a source of social oppression (since they conceal the true causes of social domination).

For the summary of Tessa Perkins essay above I am indebted to Andrew Goodwin's chapter 'Understanding Stereotypes' which appears in Media Studies for Adults (1988) BFI.

Content Analysis

Much of the research conducted into stereotypes in the media has used content analysis. Content analysis is a statistical method for gathering data about a number of texts. This might be as simple as counting the number of times a woman or man appears in a kitchen in a given number of television adverts. The figures are usually expressed as percentages. Hence a study by Dominick and Rauch (1972), for instance, found that 3% of men compared to 14% of women appeared in kitchens in television advertisements. Those using content analysis have sometimes claimed that is an objective and empirical research technique. Critics of this view point to the problems of agreeing on the categories to be used. How can anybody make a scientific claim to have counted the number of married, single, attractive or unattractive, middle-class or working-class characters in a number of programmes ? How are these terms agreed upon or applied to texts where the information is not available (where the marital status of the person is not made explicit, for example) ?

Furthermore, there are sometimes problems with using raw statistics to draw conclusions. If Jerry hits Tom eighteen times over the head with a frying pan, does that mean eighteen 'violent acts' must be added to the day'en on television, radio or in newspapers and magazines. In a famous article in 1978 Gaye Tuchman summarised this research over a twenty-five year period , arguing that women are 'symbolically annihilated by the media through absence, condemnation or trivialisation.' On prime-time television it was found, men outnumbered women by three to one. Women counted for only 26 per cent of characters in all soaps, serials and dramas. Game shows and quizzes were, almost without exception, presented by men, and where there were panels they were invariably made up of three men and one woman. (Gill)

Other researchers have arrived at similar conclusions. The sociologists Sternglanz and Serbin conducted an analysis of popular children's TV in 1974 which found that males outnumbered females 2 to 1. Males were typically aggressive, constructive and rewarded for action; while females were passive, deferential and rewarded for re-action. In research for a BBC Heart of the Matter in 1987 it was shown that in news only 1 per cent of the news items were regarded as 'women's issues' (the difficulty of categories is apparent here), whilst only 9 per cent of experts interviewed were women; and that of those interviewed because of their occupation, such as pensioners, students, managers, trade unionists, nurses, only 1.2 per cent were women.

In 1990 Dr Guy Cumberbatch carried out an extensive research project for the Broadcasting Standards Council which found that men outnumbered women by two to one in advertisements, and the vast majority of adverts - 89 per cent - used a male voice. Youth and beauty were found to be distinctive features of women in the adverts: only a quarter of women shown were judged to be over 30, compared with three quarters of men, while the slim, model or 'ideal' category applied to more than one in three women, compared to one in 10 men. Furthermore, men were more than twice as likely to be shown in paid employment and when men were shown in work settings, how they performed in those jobs was an integral part of the advertiser's message. By contrast, when women appeared in work settings, their relationships were emphasised.

What all this content analysis research has in common, is a concern that women are not being portrayed accurately, that representations of women in the media do not reflect real women and their roles in contemporary society. Researchers have asked why, for example, advertisers continue to use a representation of ' the family' (working husband, 'housewife' and two children) when only 5 per cent of British people live in such a home ?

As Barratt notes, the findings of such content analysis are rather crude measures of sex stereotyping. They do not account for the wide range of stereotypes of gender such as 'the mother-in-law', the 'secretary', the 'call-girl' and so on. Nor do they capture the subtleties of stereotyping. Some of the limitations of content analysis have been recognized by the researchers themselves, and in some cases properly addressed. Dr Guy Cumberbatch's study of advertising surprisingly found men more likely to be cooking than women - 32 per cent against 24 per cent. However, when men cooked it was shown as a special and skilled activity - as in an Oxo advertisement, where candles on the table signalled it was a special occassion.

Despite this kind of recognition that is emerging in content analysis, quantitative research will always miss the subtleties drawn out by qualitative research. More women may have been shown in board room settings in recent years, for example, but how have they been shown ? The journalist Judith Williamson, writing in the women's magazine Cosmopolitan in 1990, takes up the issue:

'Feminists have long campaigned against images of women as wives, mothers, cooks, providers: we know we're capable of more than dishing up fish fingers and baked beans. But the women of today's ads are like the Seventies' dream turned into a nightmare. Where once we longed for the image of a woman with a briefcase, chairing a meeting or answering two phones, advertising now seems to be packed with glamorously dynamic, crushing women who can invariably beat men at their own game.

But there is something disturbingly brittle about this creature of the late Eighties: she is portrayed simultaneously as cutting, yet always on the brink of snapping herself. One of the most telling ads was the K Shoes commercial ("for the well heeled"), where a woman marches through an office to staple a "private and confidential" goodbye note on to the boss's tie, snips two balls off his executive toy and then almost spoils her exit by catching her heel on a grid at the door. The man is shown starting to smirk - but she pulls up the piece of metal, detaches it from her shoe and hands it to his secretary, regaining her cool.The slogan: "Whatever you break off, it won't be one of our heels.

Ms Tough-as-Nails triumphs in this particular scenario. But what the ad really plays on is the fear of tripping up. Only K heel saves her from humiliation; no other ending is allowed. We are meant to get a kick from the fact that she wins. But no one asks, who wants to play Being Spiteful anyway ?'

What this article points up is how 'objective' content analysis (that might show an increase in the number of women in positions of power) can only ever give a part of the picture. Research at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, with its theoretical roots in semiotics and structuralism, has used qualitative methods to investigate representations of women in the media and found them to contain the kind of contradictions described (in a different 'style') by the Cosmopolitan article. Feminist language and aspirations were found to be co-opted or incorporated into a masculine world. Advertisers used the vocabulary of women's rights - words like 'rights', 'choice' and 'freedom' - in such a way as to empty them of their progressive meaning, in order to sell a product. Gill suggests that advertisers use traditional feminist language, as in the 'the right to choose' (for abortion) so that:

'..what was essentially a collective political demand is reduced to an individual personal one... This transformation of meaning has turned the feminist idea that 'the personal is political' on its head - by reducing the political to personal choices.'

The various fantasy roles played by many women in advertising, including that of 'the boardroom director' who outsmarts her male colleagues, have been criticised as bearing no relation to the real world. Few women are top executives and the impossibly slim and attractive business women may say more about male desires than female ones. These criticisms have been made against liberal feminists, some of whom have argued that by changing the representations of women in the media, society can, in time, learn to change traditional sex roles. According to its critics, what liberal feminism, like the content analysis with which it is often associated, fails to recognize is that in many cases apparently negative stereotypes may express at a simplified and symbolic level, real social relations. Hence the dumb blonde stereotype, according to Tessa Perkins, refers to the subordinate status of women in western societies and in that sense is quite accurate. Barratt (1986) summarises this position:

'Women typically do find themselves in roles that are seen as less intellectually demanding. Women are often defined in terms of their physical attractiveness to men. But, as Richard Dyer argues, the stereotype goes further to suggest that such differences are inborn - they imply 'natural' differences between the sexes. It suggests, or reinforces, the view that women's social position is caused by differences in their aptitude and ability. In doing so it conceals the possibility that such differences may be the effect of their inferior position in a male dominated society. Thus it confuses cause and effect, and in doing so, serves the ideological function of making female disadvantage seem just, acceptable, and legitimate. The 'dumb blonde' stereotype is not, therefore, necessarily inaccurate, it reflects back the reality of women's exploited experience, but in doing so makes it seem inevitable and natural.' (original emphasis)

Clearly, this is a controversial area, and one where it is easy to argue a chicken and egg case without any clear resolution. The position of liberal feminists can, at any rate, be contrasted with that of radical feminists, for whom gender inequalities are systematic and rooted in patriarchal relations. These fundamentally sexist relations, radical feminists argue, are the key defining characteristic of society, and cannot be changed merely by improving equality of opportunity legislation or putting more women into more visible or senior roles in the media. The media, it is suggested, are owned and controlled by men and are used to reflect the images of women which they desire. The issues which affect women, including discrimination at work and in education, sexual harassment, the problems of baby care, social isolation and the attitudes of police towards rape cases are marginalised or trivialised.

Socialist feminists, on the other hand, blame capitalism (rather than simply men) as an economic structure responsible for the exploited and disadvantaged position of women in society. Trowler (1989) summarises the perspective of socialist feminism:

'Women give their labour cheaply. They serve as a reserve army of workers who can be called on when the need arises and then sent back into the home. They are also useful to the capitalist class for breeding purposes; they bring the next generation of workers into the world. In addition they help to sustain and pacify the male workers by providing a comfortable home, meals and sexual services for them. Finally, they are super-exploited by capitalism as consumers and as sex objects.'

Pornography

Pornography, many women argue, is the clearest expression of patriarchal/capitalist exploitation and degradation of women. The richest man in Britain in the mid-nineties was Paul Raymond, who controlled 50 per cent of the pornography market and had accumulated a fortune of 1,700 million pounds (Davies). The industry today is worth over 52 million pounds a year, and video sales are one of the fastest growing areas of the 'entertainment' industry. A major concern is that as pornography becomes more 'acceptable' a climate in which the abuse of women and children is commonplace becomes created. According to one investigation by Nick Davies for the Guardian in 1994:

'The pornography industry in Britain has been riding on an escalator and as Soho and the illegal dealers have moved upwards towards more bizarre and violent material, so the legal "top shelf" dealers have moved up behind to take their place. They now sell, through newsagents, material that would once have been hard to handle under the counters of Soho. So far from being different and distinct, the two markets - the respectable and the hard core - have been intimately connected. And, as time goes by, the distinction is increasingly hard to spot.

Scotland Yard noticed this escalation at work last year when the then head of the Obscene Publications Squad, Michael Hames, analysed a small stack of paperwork which he had seized from hard-core mail order firms. "We looked at the material which was being ordered and found that about 70 per cent of the requests were for material at the extreme end - rape, torture, eating of excrement, urination. This was not about consensual sex, heterosexual or homosexual. This was much more bizarre than it had been.'

Davies continues that "top shelf', 'respectable' magazines such as Penthouse carry advertising for hard-core pornographic videos: 'For example, SFP Trading from Brighton are using their columns to distribute 65 videos of women being beaten up.' From legal pornography it is a short and easily negotiated path to the illegal , sometimes imported material, of violent rape, child and animal sex and 'snuff movies' where the victims are killed on camera. Pornography, many women's and victim support groups argue, acts like advertising implying that these women and the things they are doing or having done to them are the desirable norm. A further implication is that women enjoy these acts, no matter how bizarre or violent.

Liberal, radical and socialist feminists all agree that pornography degrades women. The cause of such a phenomenon, may be debated, but feminists of all persuasions agree that they are symptomatic of much wider degrading and biased representations of women in the media, and that such portrayals have a negative effect.

Pluralism

Pluralists, and those who support an unrestricted media market, argue that if women's bodies have been objectified, so have men's, and that, as far as pornography is concerned, the industry only meets a demand that already exists in society. Furthermore, they contend, the media cannot be held responsible for all the ills of society. The media does not create or perpetuate inequality but merely reflects it back to us. Hence, if images of women in a domestic setting occur more often than images of men, for example, then this is because it is women who buy these products, and advertisers should not be blamed for attempting to reach their 'target audience'.

Pluralists believe that while the media used to be sexist, they no longer are. Quite the opposite, the media in a desire to be 'politically correct' actually over-compensate for women and frequently allot them roles in the media which do not reflect the reality of male-female relations outside of television studios. Many of these arguments are found in conservative-leaning newspapers and magazines. 'Television adverts declare war on men' is the headline of one such article that begins:

'Advertisers have declared war on men. A new wave of television commercials is wooing female consumers by portraying the male as oafish, insensitive and incompetent. In the latest, for Prudential pensions, millions of viewers see a young couple sitting on a sofa. He is insipid, she is bouncy. He has greasy hair, she is fresh-faced.

"We want to be able to live a little," he says in a thick Birmingham accent. "I want to be able to live a lot," she replies. "We want to be able to enjoy the garden," he says. "I want to be able to stuff the garden, buy a big yacht and disappear around the world," she replies. "We want to be together," he says. Contemptuously, she is silent.

The commercial has achieved the rare distinction of attracting a complaint to the Independent Television Commission, the industry watchdog, on the grounds of discrimination against men The ITC expects more to follow as television advertisers continue the image war against men.'

Pluralists also counter feminist objections to the use of women's bodies in advertising by pointing out that since Nick Kamen stripped to his boxer shorts to wash his jeans in a Levis' advertisement in the mid-eighties, the uncovered male body has become a central feature of modern advertising, aimed at both men and women. As with the image of slim, young women found in advertising, these are not representations of ordinary men, but tall, handsome and muscular models.

In Washes Whiter a television retrospective on advertising up to the early 1990s, the programme makers make clear how representations of women and men have changed dramatically since the early 1950s. Amongst a welter of types and bizarrely contradictory representations of men, for example, certain broad trends were shown to have emerged. The sober 'family man', gave way to a rugged (James Bond inspired) 'independent' image of the 1960s, and a more blatantly 'macho' image of the 1970s. The 'yuppie' or business executive mode was popular in the 1980s and a more sensitive 'new man' is shown emerging in the 1990s (characterised by the Audi driver who dashes to the hospital with his son to witness the birth of a second baby).

Both feminists and pluralists would agree that these changing representations of men and women signal changes in the society that produced them. Pluralist would argue they show how sexism is a thing of the past, and that men and women now enjoy broadly equal status in the media. Feminists, by contrast, would argue that while some gains have been made the outward appearance of equality that manifests itself in television is a smokescreen, which disguises enduring inequalities, exploitation and violence towards women.

(see also chapters 'Police' (the 1980s and 1990s), 'Sitcom' (Sitcom and represenation) and 'Soap' (A Woman's Genre ?)

Representation of Age

'The term 'ageism' does not carry nearly the same value, or weight, as the equivalent terms 'sexism' and 'racism'. There is, as yet, no 'Age Relations Act', or 'Commission for Age Equality', and few industrial tribunals bother to deal with biased selection procedures, or unfair dismissal, on the grounds of age. Perhaps this is because we are all 'of an age', and will all (it is hoped) grow old. Nevertheless, ageist assumptions, do not only affect old people - they affect everybody.

Age in Western industrialised societies is very closely associated with economic activity. The young and the old, it is assumed, do not work, and their status reflects this basic economic fact. In reality millions of children have part time work, and retired persons are economically active in a number of ways, increasingly because they have no choice. In developing countries both children and old people significantly contribute to the welfare of the community. Children may carry water, serve food, work in the fields, produce handicrafts or sell things on behalf of the family. Old people may do any of the above, and also advise and teach younger generations. The status conferred by age is a reflection of the respect for experience given to older members of closely knit communities. Only in developing countries, where factories have long replaced the family as the main site of production, is it considered normal for the generations to be cut off from each other quite so dramatically. Isolation and institutionalisation - the young in schools, and the old in 'homes' - widens the generation gap further every year.

This particular set of economic circumstances, as Alvarado (et al) argue, has produced an ideology and a characteristic set of representations for different age groups. These, broadly, are that: children are helpless and innocent; teenagers irresponsible and rebellious; middle-aged people responsible and conformist; and old people vulnerable and a 'burden' on society. Of course these representations vary across and between the age groups. Therefore television aimed at a 'young' audience, for instance, such as DEF 2, The Word, The Passenger or Rough Guide will project 'youth' in a different way to the less frequent mainstream representations of youth, which tend to concentrate on acts of deviancy such as drug-taking.

Children

Children's television, and the changes in its content and presentation over the years, is an interesting measure of how society regards children. Three main strands of children's television can be detected. Firstly, there is a commercial strand, which targets children as consumers of action and formula cartoons, humour, quizzes and games. This is the dominant mode of address and in the United States (where much of the material originates) was, for many years, the only type of programming available. Wheen (1985) quotes Peggy Charen who founded the American pressure group Action for Children's Television:

'when ACT began there were about sixteen minutes of commercials per hour for children ... Saturday mornings were wall-to-wall monster cartoons filled with a lot of messages to eat sugary food and buy expensive toys.'

These genres and messages still form the backbone of children's programming which regularly exploit children's identification with action and cartoon heroes to sell 'spin-off' toys. Commercial programming is usually highly stereotypical with an enduring emphasis on aggressive or dominant male characterisation; passive, sentimental female representations, 'brainy' characters who wear glasses, working-class villains and so on.

The second strand in children's television is an educational, public service element which is now somewhat in decline. At one time children's television in Britain was insistently 'educational' with the schedules full of somewhat patronising and 'worthy' programmes like Blue Peter, Magpie, How and the aptly named Why Don't You Switch off the Television and Do Something Better Instead . These often assumed that children had the inclination and resources to engage in endless pseudo-craftwork sessions. The highly successful Sesame Street, a programme initially rejected by the three commercial networks, was exported to fifty countries and was typical of the move to integrate commercial elements (cartoons, puppets and various advertising techniques) into attempts to teach basic literacy.

The third, and most recent strand, came from the long-delayed recognition that many 'children' enjoy, or even prefer, 'adult' programmes. The scheduling of American situation comedies aimed at young audiences and the similar re-orientation of cheap daytime soaps (often from Australia) at times previously regarded as the domain of children, is evidence of this shift in attitudes. The phenomenon is also, at least in part, a reflection of budgetry constraints (these imports are very cheap), but it does signal an acceptance that children can deal with complex and sometimes controversial issues. Phil Redmond's Grange Hill was one of the earliest signs that television companies could make representations of, and to, children that were honest about their lives, their problems and their pleasures. It is this last strand which has only begun to challenge the traditional representations of children as 'inactive, apolitical, asexual, classless, raceless, and , above all, totally dependent.' (Alvarado et al 1987)

Youth

The break from these traditional definitions of childhood marks out much of the representational territory of 'youth': class, race, sexuality, politics, action and independence have long been hallmarks of media images of youth. However, what is 'youth' ? In certain respects the term is a concept exclusive to industrial consumer cultures, an extension of the teenage phenomenon - that came into being, or was created (depending on your point of view) in the 1950s - as a market for mass media products such as rock and roll music and 'teenage' movies. Before this time, and in most countries around the world today, adulthood was, and is, the state directly after childhood. Children become 'young' men and women. Only in the west do they become 'teenagers', a kind of limbo-state between childhood and adulthood, frequently and sneeringly described as 'having all the freedoms of adults and none of the responsibilities.'

In this sense, 'youth' represents the boundary between child and adult. Children, it is assumed, belong to their family of origin, don't work, are single, asexual and not responsible for their actions. The assumptions regarding adults, on the other hand, are that they are sexual, married, in work and are responsible for their actions. Youth transgresses all of these 'binary oppositions' (see chapter Semiotics and Structuralism). Young people often neither live with their families of origin, nor their families of destination, but are found in bedsits, halls of residence and shared houses. They frequently socialise in anonymous spaces such as night clubs, are working sporadically, or not at all, and are in relationships that mean they are neither married nor single. In many cases this limbo extends to sexual identity as this is a time when cross-dressing and sexual experimentation can occur. They are always being told to act responsibly, but are not seriously expected to do so. This, it should be stressed, is the 'assumption' or stereotype of youth.

Some observers have suggested that a characteristic of modern industrial society is that this space, or boundary between child and adult ( which we call 'youth') has widened considerably, and now extends well beyond the teenage years. As Edmund Leach has remarked, it is the ambiguous boundaries between two 'unified fields', in this case 'child' and 'adult', that are most often hedged about with ritual and taboo, and are subject to society's closest inspection. Hence the fascination with 'youth', and youth's transgressions. This goes some of the way towards explaining sensationalist representations of young people in the media. As Hebdige (1988) points out, for example, the most common depiction of young people in news and documentary is with the image of 'youth-as-trouble':

'...in our society, youth is present only when its presence is a problem, or is regarded as a problem. More precisely, the category "youth" gets mobilised in official documentary discourse, in concerned or outraged editorials and features, or in the supposedly disinterested tracts emanating from the social sciences at those times when young people make their presence felt by going "out of bounds". Resisting through rituals, dressing strangely, striking bizarre attitudes, breaking rules, breaking bottles, windows, heads, issuing rhetorical challenges to the law, all these constitute "going out of bounds". '

A glance at other television and film representations of young people would seem to bear this observation out. Films such as Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden, The Wild One, The Blackboard Jungle, West Side Story, Christiana F, Quadrophenia, Scum, Trainspotting, Kids and many others are regarded as definitive and highly influential, precisely because they deal with issues of sex, violence, criminality, dissidence, rebellion, drug-taking and deviancy. These powerful, if stereotypical, representations of youth are often considered to be more challenging than equivalent representations on television. For instance, the film Scum, about life in Borstal, started life as a television drama but was not screened as it was regarded as too controversial. Nevertheless, these films construct the essence of the stereotypical 'youth' which are finally re-invented for the small screen in a more containable form, as the countless misfits, hooligans, drug addicts, loners, gangs, rebels and young lovers that populate various fictional and non-fictional television genres.

_

Old People

Representations of old age, in many cases, constitute a return to the stereotypical characteristics of childhood listed previously. Growing old is no longer (if it ever were) a state where an individual can enjoy the respect of their community and the material rewards and comforts of a lifetime's labour. It is, instead, a condition to be delayed and avoided, through plastic surgery and hormone treatment, if necessary. The media is full of images of youthful faces, which are used to sell virtually everything down to the pleasure of living itself. As with women, there is evidence of a 'symbolic annihilation', or 'structuring absence', of older people, with 11 per cent of the population who are over 65, reduced to only 2.3 per cent of the television population. These remaining images are dominated by those older white men who are still in positions of power. Women and black men past retirement age, in particular, if shown at all, are usually seen as needy, vulnerable, unhealthy or mentally regressive. (Alvarado et al 1987) continues this point:

'Beyond the likes of 'youthful' Joan Collins, images of women over 40 are almost non-existent, unless you count mother-in-law jokes. Older women indeed constitute almost a sub-class within older people, as they often lack the occupational pensions of men and also live considerably longer. Women who have raised families find it almost impossible to rejoin the labour market except in low-paid jobs. Patriarchal sexual relations mean that youth is an intrinsic component to women's sexual value (whereas the older, experienced and middle-class male is considered sexually attractive) so that the older woman is deemed to be, paradoxically, either asexual or rampantly frustrated. Not surprisingly, a significant proportion of the cosmetic industry's profits are made by encouraging women to keep young and beautiful.'

Only in soap operas are older women regularly found as permanent characters, and even here they are often portrayed as vaguely 'comic', bad-tempered, forgetful, nosy and interfering. When older men appear they are almost invariably irascible (Percy Sugden, Victor Meldrew, 'The Old Gits' of Harry Enfield fame and Old Steptoe). The sexuality of these older people, where it occurs at all, is always used for humorous purposes - as in Last of the Summer Wine. As the population at, or beyond, retirement age continues to grow it will be interesting to see if these overwhelmingly negative, comic or grotesque images continue to dominate television representations of old people.

Representation of Race

The term 'race' is a problematic one because there is little or no biological evidence to support the use of the term at all. The British 'race' for example, is made up of generations of invaders and migrants: Britons, Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings, Normans, Slavs, Jews, Italians, Afro-Caribbeans and Asians being amongst the most numerous. Almost every nation is made up of a similar 'mix' of races who intermarry and share elements of their culture and language. Only in the remotest parts of the world such as the Kalahari desert, or Amazon jungle, is it possible to find relatively 'pure' races. Nevertheless, Nazi 'theories' of eugenics - based on racial 'superiority and purity' - still hold considerable sway over far right parties such as the British and French National Front.

There is a long and shameful history of representations of race in 'western' nations stretching back through the Third Reich to the days of British and American slavery and beyond. These representations have been closely identified with efforts to dehumanise, ridicule, exploit, and, in the case of European Jews, 'exterminate' a group, for no other reason than their racial origin (see section Nazi Filmmaking in chapter 'Documentary' ). In Britain and America images of black people have remained an area of ongoing controversy. Hollywood movies and cartoons, many still shown on television today, are full of black people portrayed as cheerful, rolling-eyed simpletons. In The Black and White Minstrel Show, white performers 'blacked up' to sing and dance, perpetuating degrading Hollywood stereotypes of black people. The show, which ran until 1976, was until that time, according to Milner (1983) 'the single most regular exposure of 'black' people on the television screen'.

Racial stereotypes have also been frequently found in situation comedy, a form which abounds in stereotypes of many groups, arguably because the half hour format demands easily recognizable characters and situations. O'Sullivan et al (1994) observe that,

'the 'simple' and 'quaint' delivery of English by ethnic minorities has been a constant source of ridicule, as in 'It Ain't Half Hot Mum' (Indians living under colonial control), 'Fawlty Towers' (Manuel, the half-witted Spanish waiter) and 'Mind Your Language' ( a foreign student class containing several crude stereotypes). All of these are 1970s British television sitcoms, frequently repeated since.'

Other racial representations within situation comedy, as O'Sullivan notes, include the black characters of Rising Damp and In Sickness and In Health who are the focus of racial bigotry by the lead characters. While the audience is supposed to laugh at these bigots for their foolishness, some audiences, it is suggested, will enjoy the racial insults, producing an 'oppositional', racially prejudiced reading. Instead of becoming the focus of racial conflict, some commentators argue, black characters should appear in 'normal' situations where the colour of their skin is not an issue.

The other concern about representation of ethnic minorites is that black people are seen too often as a 'social problem'. Images of black criminals, drug takers, rioters, gangs, dysfunctional families and trouble-makers have been far more common than any positive or neutral representations. Despite journalistic codes which advise that the colour of a person's skin need only be mentioned if it is relevant, negatively defined news values which play on popular fears often result in a stress on skin colour in stories. Furthermore, black pressure groups have accused the media of underplaying racially motivated attacks and overplaying 'muggings' perpetrated by black people (see the work of Stuart Hall outlined in chapter Ideology).

Research by Hartmann and Husband (1974) supports this view and has shown that white children in areas with few blacks see race more in terms of conflict than those in areas of high black residency. The researchers explained this partly in terms of news values, in particular, the preference for presenting the news in terms of 'drama', problems and conflict. In the case of race, such values can lead, as has been said, to a strong emphasis on events such as 'muggings', 'riots' and 'illegal immigration'. As a result, children whose ideas of black people come mainly from the media tend to build up a negative stereotype of black people.

However, the media also stand accused of being unrealistically over-positive as well as negative. It has been argued that many programmes, especially on television in the United States, which frequently present black people and women as having successful, independent careers do not reflect the real composition of high-earning professions, which are still dominated by white, male, middle class Americans. The Cosby Show and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air about a wealthy black families, have been criticised in these terms. Criticism has also been made that racial issues such as discrimination and abuse are ignored or underplayed in these series. The representation of the Huxtable family in the Cosby Show, for example, is unrealistic, according to some, as racial issues would certainly arise at some point with a 'regular' black family. Virginia Mathews points out this dilemma of the 'burden' of representation in an article in The Listener:

'When we reflect society as it is - with all its prevailing class, sex and racial bigotry - we are accused of pandering to ignorance. But when we attempt to challenge stereotypes, we are accused of peddling fantasy, not reality.'

John Tulloch argues in his essay 'Television and Black Britons' that only when black people are more fairly 'represented' in terms of numbers of actors, journalists, directors and producers that the issue of screen representation can be resolved:

'The objective of proponents of 'integrated casting' is for greater black representations in broadcast fiction and news programmes, with a range, not of black characters, but characters who happen to be black.'

He, nevertheless, concedes that the situation has improved with programmes such as Channel 4's multicultural situation comedy The Desmonds, BBC 2's drama Shalom Salaam and Eastenders where a number of black characters play a more balanced range of roles from petty criminals to parents and couples in love. Nevertheless, Tulloch points to the continuing lack of black faces in television advertising in particular, and under-representation of black people in television production generally, to make the controversial case that 'blacks have little to lose and much to gain' from the loss of the old 'corporate' public service model of television that has, in his view, been responsible for this situation (see chapter 'Sitcom').

Other Stereotypes

In many ways television can be said to stereotype all groups in society. Yes Minister and The New Statesman offer examples of the comic representations and stereotypes of dominant elites. Nevertheless, some marginal groups are either absent entirely from television (handicapped characters for instance), or are reduced to crude caricatures. There are a series of stereotypes of sexuality - homosexual men are quickly identified by a mincing walk and camp voices, for instance, and a common stereotype of lesbians (where they appear at all) is as butch, dungaree-wearing feminists. Regional characteristics are routinely boiled down to a few tired cliches - straw sucking west country yokels, bitter supping northerners and toffee-nosed southerners. The cast of Eastenders and Coronation Street, for example, is largely composed of middle-class actors imitating what they imagine to be authentic accents and characters. For the most part they are a collection of stock representations so it is refreshing to see sympathetic local actors breathing life into their characters when they are given roles in these soaps.

The rare images of dissent by unionists, feminists, poll-tax demonstrators, road protestors, environmental activists, anti-racist marchers, students and so on ( where they occur at all) are generally brief, negative and dismissive. The camera often picks out the images that are easiest and most recognizable: placard waving workers, protestors being pulled from trees, braided hair and nose rings, violent clashes with police - these are the 'image bites' that sum up, in a single minute of news reporting, complex and critical issues. It represents what Fiske has described as 'innoculation' - the process whereby mass audiences are 'exposed' to a tiny dose of the 'threatening agent', to strengthen society against its effect. In this way, grass roots activity, away from the stage-managed political theatre of Westminster can be ridiculed and rejected.

Stereotyping, therefore, is an ideological process which obscures fundamental arrangements in society made in the interests of the more powerful (see chapter 'Ideology'). Stereotyping makes these 'arrangements': such as sexual, racial, regional and class discrimination, appear natural rather than cultural. Stereotyping has been described as one strategy amongst many used to secure the power and influence of the dominant groups in society. As such it is vital, according to this reading, that the means of representation (the mass media and television) which are so essential to the democratic health of a country, ultimately lie in the hands of the public, and not a wealthy and unelected elite.

Exercises

Conduct an investigation into the representation of men. Consider how far you think these binary opposites, adapted from Nelson (1985) are useful as a means of explaining the construction of gender difference on television.

masculine : feminine

active ; passive

presence : absence

primary : secondary

independent : dependent

intellect : imagination

logical : illogical

head : heart

mind : body

culture : nature

Exercise:

Resident: 'What are you rebelling against, Johnny ?''

Johnny: 'Whaddya got ?''

(Marlon Brando in 'The Wild One' 1954)

Try to find examples of 'youth rebellion' on contemporary television. Does it exist anymore ? If not, how is 'youth' represented ?

Essay/Exercise:

The cartoon 'Beavis and Butthead' plays with, and reworks, contemporary stereotypes of young males. What are these stereotypes ?

Exercise/Essay:

'Women are enslaved to the beauty industry.' (Naomi Wolf) What evidence is there for this view in the media's representations of women ?

Essay/Exercise:

Examine the representation of any group in a recent television programme or news report.

_Sources

Barrat, D. (1986) 'Media Sociology' Routledge

Cole, T. 'Researching Race and Racism' Social Studies Review November 1989

Cooke, T. (1990) 'Mediation, Representation, Stereotyping' Pendleton Sixth Form College (unpublished)

Davies, N. 'Under Cover Kings' The Guardian November 28 1994

Dominic and Rauch (1972) quoted by Fiske in Hartley, J. et al (eds) (1994) 'Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies' Routledge

Dyer, R. 'Taking Popular Television Seriously' in Drummond, P and Lusted, D. (eds) (1985) 'Popular TV and Schooling' BFI

Gill, R. 'Altered Images ?: women in the media.' Social Studies Review September 1988

Goodwin, A. 'Media Studies for Adults' (1988) BFI.

Hall, S. (1986) 'Bending the Reality: the State of the Media' quoted in Nicholas, J. (et al) (1996) 'Media Communication and Production' Nelson

Hebdige, D. (1982) 'Hiding in the Light: On Images and Things' Routledge

Kennedy, H. 'Women on Show' New Society 25 March 1988

Leach, E. (1976) 'Culture and Communication' Cambridge University Press

Leach, E. (1982) 'Social Anthropology' Fontana

Milner, D. (1983) 'Children and Race Ten Years On' Ward Lock quoted by Tulloch (1990)

Nelson, C. (1985) "Envoys of Otherness" quoted by Fiske (1987) in 'Television Culture' Routledge

Perkins, T. (1979) 'Rethinking Stereotypes' in Barrett, M. (et al) (eds) 'Ideology and Cultural Production' Croom Helm

Trowler, P. (1989) 'Investigating the Media' Tavistock

Tulloch, J. 'Television and Black Britons' in Goodwin, A et al. (1990) 'Understanding Television' Routledge

Williamson, J. 'Ads Nauseam' Cosmopolitan January 1990