Beyond stereotype analysis in critical media literacy: case study of reading and writing gender in pop music videos

ABSTRACT

In this article we explore the utility but also limitations of gender stereotyping lessons, a common undertaking by teachers introducing media analysis to youth. We document our collaboration with a Canadian high school teacher as she translated her understanding of critical media literacy into practice in a unit addressing questions about the gendered nature of pop music videos. Informed by feminist cultural studies, we explore challenges that arose when teaching about gender stereotyping. Factors that circumscribed deeper inquiry included (a) discussing whether media texts were unrealistic rather than focusing on meaning-making practices; (b) inattention to hidden yet active media texts that worked to sustain dominant meanings; (c) lack of access to counter-frames; (d) inattention to intersectionality so that gender was conflated with sex and sexuality, allowing heteronormativity to go unrecognized; and (e) the ambiguities of how sexual power operates in commercial pop culture, making it difficult for students to discern feminist parody.

KEYWORDS:

• Politics of representation
• teaching for social justice
• postfeminism
• femininity
• masculinity
• sexuality
• celebrity
• gender stereotyping

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 This and all names except Zavi’s are pseudonyms.

2 Another factor may have been the students’ electing to enrol in Marketing 11, perhaps signalling relative acceptance of the prevailing social order compared to those electing, say, critical media education.

3 See, for example, intersectional analyses by Reason (2019) and Ferreday (2017) of Rihanna’s later revenge-fantasy music videos.

4 For educators who want more background on gender and gender analysis, we recommend Woolley and Airton (2020).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 410-2010-0052].

Notes on contributors

Deirdre M. Kelly

Deirdre M. Kelly is Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of Last Chance High: How Girls and Boys Drop In and Out of Alternative Schools and Pregnant with Meaning: Teen Mothers and the Politics of Inclusive Schooling and co-author of “Girl Power”: Girls Reinventing Girlhood. Kelly’s research interests include teaching for social justice and democracy, gender and youth studies, critical media literacy, and news and entertainment media as public policy pedagogy. Her work has appeared in journals such as Teachers College Record, Studies in Philosophy and Education, Girlhood Studies, and Equity & Excellence in Education.

Dawn H. Currie

Dawn H. Currie is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. She is also past Chair of the Undergraduate Programme in Women’s Studies and past Graduate Advisor for the Centre for Research in Women and Gender Studies. Her research interests include girl cultures, feminist media education, feminist theory, and feminist methodology. She is the author of Girl Talk: Adolescent Magazines and Their Readers and co-author of “Girl Power”: Girls Reinventing Girlhood. With Deirdre Kelly, Currie is in the process of completing a book manuscript provisionally titled Pop Culture and Power: Teaching Media for Social Justice.