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Lz411 identity and men's lifestyle magazines
- 1. LZ411 – Critical Media theory Masculinity and Men’s magazines Aims today … •To explore the changing nature of masculine identity •To examine men’s lifestyle magazines as ‘ironic discourse’
- 2. Front covers of recent men’s and women’s magazines 2
- 3. Men’s Lifestyle magazines 1986 (65k) 1994 (450k) 2009(30k) 2013 (30k) 3
- 4. Loaded 2013: ‘More stylised and subtle’ 4
- 5. Magazine ABCs – Men’s magazines http://www.brandrepublic.com/news/1207575/magazine-abcs-mens-monthlies-hang-on-nuts-zoo- 5
- 6. Key issues: Media and Masculinity • Patriarchy and Masculinity • Dominant and alternative ideals of masculinity • Masculinity in crisis • The gay rights movement
- 7. Identity and the power of address • Texts address us in particular ways • We are ‘interpellated’ or ‘hailed’ by texts Louis Althusser – Marxist philosopher (1918-1990) • We fill in subject positions when responding to those texts
- 8. Interpellation Peter and Jane Books – Penguin 1964 - 1970
- 9. 1960s Peter and Jane series 1970s
- 11. Foucault on discourse and identity • The subject is the product of history • Discourses provide subject positions with which to make sense of the world Michel Foucault 1926-1984 • Subjects are subjected to the regulatory power of discourses
- 12. Masculinity in men’s magazines • Men’s magazines offer identity as enjoyment - sexual desire, humour, “havin’ a laugh”, the knowing ‘should know better’ attitude • To rearticulate and reaffirm what it means to be a young affluent (heterosexual) man in the late 20th, early 21st century
- 13. Irony in men’s magazines • However an ‘ambivalent masculinity’ ? - Ironic, distancing masculinity • A celebration simultaneously of both the ‘ultra male’, the sexual predator and the anti-hero, normal guy to avert criticism?
- 14. Hero and anti-Hero: ambivalent masculinity Lynx Advert – Astronaut Campaign (Bartle Bogle Hegarty) 2012-2013 14
- 15. Lecture task Read the article ‘The Foxtrot Fox’ : •How is the reader interpellated? In other words, what identities of masculinity are on offer in the article? •What coherence to the identities on offer is there? •What contradictions to the identities on offer is there?
- 16. Seminars • Reading – e-journal. Download and read. Guide is on http://lz411ross.wordpress.com • I will be bringing in examples of men’s lifestyle magazines to analyse using concepts from today’s lecture.
Editor's Notes
- AIMS TODAY To ask why so much interest in sex and the body in the high circulation women’s monthly To introduce Foucault’s notion of ‘technologies of the self’ To relate these ideas to representations of gender and the body
- Over the next two weeks we’ll be looking at men’s magazines and considering how the stories of masculinity they contain relate to the kinds of male identities they offer. We’ll be looking at theoretical perspectives on identity and gender and how discourse figures in the construction of identity. Why is it important to look at men’s and women’s lifestyle magazines and talk about them in terms of identity? Firstly they are an important part of the media landscape. They can appeal to both specialised audiences, music, clubbing, hobbies etc. or to more general audiences based around shared concerns, entertainment, celebrities, gender etc. In terms of gender identity, magazines offer the chance to look at the polarisation of gender identities in modern society and what these magazines say about modern men and women in terms of their values, lifestyles and aspirations.
- Men’s Health 245k. FHM 200k. Zoo 85k Loaded 53k Nuts 147k Men’s Fitness 68k Esquire 58k Wired 50k Free mags: shortlist 518k and Sport 305k See Gauntlett pages 167… Men’s magazines as lifestyle or general interest magazines haven’t been around for that long. There were always specialist hobby / interest magazines, e.g. Angling Times, Hobby Electronics etc. and of course there were the pornography titles such as playboy and penthouse. Arena magazine launched 1986 arguably (along with other upmarket weeklies) helped start the opening up of general interest men’s magazines. It focussed on fashion, entertainment and style and helped along with others to introduce the idea of male grooming without snickering. Initially with a circulation of 65000 peaking at over 90000 in 1996 by 2009 it was down to around 30000. The British edition was ended in 2009. Loaded launched in 1994 embracing whole heartedly the ‘lad culture’ of sex obsessed, football loving male stereotype. What was being constructed through the development of ‘lad’s mags’ in the 1990s was the figure of the new lad. This was an intelligent affluent man who wasn’t afraid to exhibit his strong heterosexuality but who at heart was only having a laugh. It was loud, it was brash, and it was a hedonistic celebration of masculinity. What was being discussed in the 1980s was how to successfully launch a lifestyle magazine aimed at men. The problem was that women for a long time had been addressed as women, in other words being a woman was part of the identity of women, there was a self-consciousness about being a woman. The same wasn’t true for men. They saw themselves as people who do things like fish, play golf go out drinking etc. Not as men per se. So for a successful men’s magazine to work several different factors needed to occur. The developing consumerism of society, i.e. consumption as lifestyle, whereby what you buy and what you’re seen with is an expression of who you are. However, men’s magazines (aimed at heterosexual men) had to overcome the connotations associated with consumption, particularly fashion, cosmetic product type consumption. i.e. homosexuality. Successful magazines thus adopted a ‘laddish’ tone through the language used, but significantly included significant amount of emphasis on women’s bodies and heterosexual sex. The lad is thus defined as a knowing lad, one who knows about feminism and even postfeminism but still chooses to act in a ‘laddy’ way which can never ultimately be taken too seriously. These magazines can then offer an identity position to reaffirm what it means to be a heterosexual man. Arguably therefore they were a part of a ‘backlash’ against feminism identified as a ‘crisis of masculinity’. Much more recently however there appears to be changes in the men’s magazine markets. The lads magazines are in trouble. Titles such as loaded, nuts and zoo have seen big declines in circulation. For example in the early 90s Loaded sold 450000 per month whilst now it sells 53k in august 2010, and down to under 40k in early 2011. The ‘lad culture’ of the 1990s and early 2000s appears to be waning, with more upmarket titles such as Esquire and GQ performing relatively better (not overall circulation but in terms of change to circulation). Readers appear to be moving away from the image frenzy of titles like Loaded to more content heavy titles.
- Editor Jamie Wallis told Press Gazette: "The interpretation of what a lads' mag is has clearly changed since Loaded launched in 1994. Moving to Simian Publishing, we want to use this opportunity to embrace the magazine's twentieth year by re-positioning ourselves more in line with the modern man by concentrating on fashion, music, entertainment and sport. We will still feature girls in the magazine, however these shoots will be more stylised and subtle. From http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/loaded-has-fourth-owner-three-years-plan-more-stylised-and-subtle-approach
- Source http://www.brandrepublic.com/news/1207575/magazine-abcs-mens-monthlies-hang-on-nuts-zoo-plunge/ Under pressure lads’ magazines experienced the biggest losses in year on year circulation in the men’s magazine sector in the first half of this year, according to ABC. Nuts magazine, which is owned by IPC Media, saw the biggest decline, with sales dropping 34.8 per cent to 58,781 year on year in the six months to June. Bauer-owned Zoo, meanwhile, saw a 23.1 per cent drop in circulation to 35,596 – making it the smallest men’s lifestyle title audited by ABC. The sales losses come as supermarkets Tesco and the Co-operative Group are encouraging the titles to make themselves more "modest". Bauer’s FHM saw the third largest drop in circulation for the year to June 2013. It now has a circulation of 106,370 – down 14.12 per cent. The best performing titles in the sector were free magazines. Square Mile’s circulation increased by 41.3 per cent to 48,957, while Shortlist and Sport were the biggest magazines in the group with circulations of 534,494 (up 1 per cent) and 305,684 (no change) respectively. The best performing paid-for was How It Works, which had a circulation rise of 11.5 per cent to 38,012. http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/mag-abcs-under-pressure-lads-mags-see-biggest-circulation-declines-mens-sector
- Some themes in media and masculinity from o’shaughnessy and stadler 4th edn pp 379-381 Patriarchy and masculinity – we live in a patriarchal society, one where genders are positioned unequally in the social hierarchy and where the different genders are valued differently. Patriarchy – the law of the father – through lineage, children take their father’s name and secondly through social institutions (legal and political) which are predominantly male institutions. For example there is still a significant wage differential and at the current rate of gap closure in pay, women aren’t expected to equal men until 2076. “Progress is still slow. If you take account of part-time work, women are still paid 20% less than men, and at this rate it will still take another 65 years before the gap has closed," she said.” Yvette Cooper shadow home secretary http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/nov/23/pay-gap-rich-poor-widens?INTCMP=SRCH Dominant and alternative ideals In different ages and in different cultures, different ideals of masculinity arise. One way of assessing this is of course to look to the mass media and get an idea of which types of masculinity are being foregrounded. Looking at film and tv stars and celebrities, adverts and models etc. gives us some idea. These are the archetypes of masculinity. Some are very persistent others reflect particular areas. Alongside these dominant images of masculinity, of course sit other more alternative types. The geek, the intellectual, the self-knowing self-deprecating type. The lad, the boy, the cheeky chappy, the father figure Masculinity in crisis The second wave of feminism 1960s/70s, the women’s rights movement and the gay rights movement brought with it a new examination of masculinity and a questioning of traditional male values and representation. Provider, doer, winner, strong, capable, competitive, naturally prone to violence and aggression. Alongside this crisis, is a growth in self help books and magazines for men, men’s movements which together point to identity crises for men The gay rights movement The movement also opened up questions around perceived / received notions of normalised/naturalised masculinity. These factors together mean that there has been increasing introspection by men on what it means to be a man in the 21st century. One thing to note is that ‘modern man’ is a more fluid identity than has been available before, which means there are more choices about appearance (even choosing consciously to think about appearance is a relatively new thing). Not only have women suffered under patriarchal, misogynistic, inequality but men too in the sense that they have in the past been offered limited unrealistic unobtainable masculine ideals.
- Must make very clear that this isn’t a kind of ‘how to’ process. It is a theory of identity and subjectivity based on a philosophy of language and culture. “Subjectivity and identity are constituted through the regulatory power of discourse”. (Barker and Galasiński 2001, p.30) Who you are (your subjectivity) is an ‘effect’ of discourse Discourses produce subject positions. When you take one up you then act/speak from that position Identity is therefore conceptualised as fluid What Althusser said is that we are continually be addressed in everyday life by others, by family, friends, the media etc. He gives the example of interpellation as follows: A police officer shouts ‘you there!’ to someone in the street. The person turns around. In turning around, the person has become a subject of the hailing because “he has recognised that the hail was ‘really ‘ addressed to him, that ‘it was really him who was hailed” and not someone else – Althusser 1969 cited in Lawler 2009: 115)
- See http://www.ladybirdflyawayhome.com/pages/peter_and_jane.htm We are continually addressed in certain ways by people, texts and institutions. By reacting we are taking up subject positions offered by those people, texts and institutions. E.g. you are being addressed now by the teacher and you are taking up a subject position as a student. Of course you can resist and that is where social conflict can happen through competing subject positions. So we are continually positioned by social and cultural practices. This process is interpellation from the french interpeller to call out, hail or question to appeal to (i.e. the calling or appealing to someone.) In the slides, who is the ‘reader’? Who is s/he being addressed as? To what extent would you say the texts are ideological? [i.e. containing “frameworks of thinking with a strong motivation to confirm the status quo or change the structure of our social world” (McDonald 2003, p.29)]
- And it’s fairly easy to see how texts address us in different ways at different times
- And so arguably it is with lifestyle magazines. They continually speak to us in certain ways, they continually offer subject positions from which to make sense of the world. The significance of discourse in this sense is when it appears as persistent fundamental narratives about how we see ourselves our lives and the people we are connected to. So a discourse represents a particular aspect of the world in some way, making it meaningful in some way, through collections of statements. This collection foucault called a ‘discursive formation’. Discourses are powerful in that they can have material effects. E.g. discourses of the exotic or savage ‘New world’ which themselves have roots in theological and racial discourses meant that the ‘New world’ was made meaningful as a place to be exploited and not only the natural resources but the people as resources too. i.e. slavery. More specifically sets of statements which provide ways of talking about the world in particular ways. These sets of statements work to exclude other possible ways of thinking/behaving/being. which constitutes ways of seeing the world and . “practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak” (Foucault 1972, p. 49). In this sense, ways of seeing the world. Intricately linked with power. See p. 292 hall 1992 to talk about subject positions. Also useful list on p45 hall 1997 about what would be needed to do a discourse analysis e.g. statements, rules, subjects, authority, institutions, new formations…. Foucauldian discourse analysis These different approaches can overlap. E.g. ‘critical discourse analysis’ aims to show how language use is involved with power relationships. e.g. how is language implicated in gender relationships? “a systematically organised set of statements … [which] … gives structure to the manner in which a particular topic, object, process is to be talked about” (Kress 1985, pp. 6-7 to ‘make sense of the world’.
- This break up or down of traditional roles and identities is characterised by an increased emphasis on introspection or reflexivity in the modern age. The break down of traditional ties and attachments and thus sources of identification is waning and thus what is left is an individual’s search for identity. In other words there’s a kind of turning inwards to examine issues of identification rather than traditional ties. “What to do? How to act? Who to be? These are focal questions for everyone living in circumstances of late modernity” (Giddens 1991:70) So the ongoing search for who we ‘really’ are is reflected in the self-help sections of bookshops, the internet, and of course magazines, seeking and acting on advice is part of modern identity. “pertains to descriptions of persons with which we emotionally identify” (Barker and Galasiński 2001, p.28) “refers to selfhood, to the characteristics and qualities that uniquely distinguish a person, a group, or a thing from others … connected to difference and sameness” (O’Shaughnessy and Stadler 2005, p.168) The Essential Self – unified, individual The Sociological Self – in relation to others The Postmodern Self – fragmented - ”formed and transformed continuously in relation to the ways we are represented or addressed in the cultural systems which surround us” The first and second are the commonest views on questions of identity, on questions of the self and others. The first describes an unchanging inner core of me, the essential ‘me’ fully centred and unified (in other words there is an unshakeable sense of who I am that exists throughout my life This core emerges at birth and unfolds as life proceeds. This of course is a very individualistic notion of identity. The essential self is persistent across time/place, individual responsibility , an inner core. The second describes the self as being in formation against what surrounds it, in other words the influences and values of significant others around the subject; around the social practices, language and values of the society. The individual is thus not ‘autonomous’ and ‘self-sufficient’ but instead is mediated by others. In other words the culture that surrounds the individual plays in important part in the construction of that individual. It is known as an ‘interactive’ account of identity and self. The third conception is more fluid and fragmented. It is said that in the modern (western) age, the dependable sociological categories which we were once sure about are no longer so clear. Structures of class, family, community etc. are not exactly disappearing but they are becoming more fluid, and contradictory. Change in society (outside the self) is reflected in change within the self. Identity is thus seen to be “formed and transformed continuously in relation to the ways we are represented or addressed in the cultural systems which surround us” (p.277). Any idea that there is a coherent centred self is simply the result of the stories we make of ourselves. In other words we construct these narratives of self to reassure ourselves that that is who we are. Modern societies are thus seen as places of rapid change rather than holding on to traditional unchanging values. We are who we are because of the historical circumstances we find ourselves in. However this is not wholly material. Discourses surround our ways of doing and acting. This implies that discourses precede the subject (i.e. people), it might give the impression that people are powerless in the face of discourses. This is a criticism of Foucault’s arguments about the regulatory power of discourse. Discourses also bring subjects into view.
- Some examples of discourses or narratives in men’s magazines: (from Gauntlett) Men like (to look at) women – This is interpellating a reader who gets pleasure from looking at women, semi clad, or semi sometimes fully naked Men don’t know too much about women – men are constructed as needing help or advice in how to deal with women. Often women are presented as complicated and so we don’t know too much about them hence the need for help Men like gadgets, cars and sport – addressed as consumers and sometimes participants – buying his way into status or ‘specialness’ Men need help – often constructed as needy or insecure, men here are interpellated as needing support in order to survive 21st century lifestyles, relationships and expectations. Men are fascinated by bravery and danger – heroism, danger, toughness in sport, personal danger or dangerous, experiences. Are there others?
- See Gill p213- 215 Why might there be such contradictions in the male identities presented in these such magazines? A reflection of the actual identity contradictions present for men in the 21st century. i.e. at a cross over time between traditional male values and the loss of those values To present a particular version of laddish masculinity and to protect the magazine and its readers from feminist and other critiques.
- See http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/article/1166387/lynx-consumers-world
- Coherence and contradiction in an FHM article. Traditional herioic masculinity and a discourse of the fallible, self-deprecating, anti-heroic masculinity” (Gill 2007:213) – Gender and the media