GOFFMAN AND GENDER ADVERTISEMENTS

Question 1

What are some key features of Goffman’s background?

Answer 1

• Subtleties of social interaction (Links to Goffman focusing on ‘small behaviours’ in advertising. Less overt signs such as ‘hands, eyes, knees, facial expressions’)
• How do we make sense of everyday life?
• The presentation of self and how we form identity
• Asylums, stigma and total institutions (elements of all in gender advertisements)
• PLUS overlooked in feminist tradition (Judith Butler modelled on Goffman)

Question 2

What are the key features of Dramaturgy?

Answer 2

• The social world as a theatre with acts, setting, appearance and props
• Actors relying on one another (the rest of the cast) to keep the performance going
• If one actor fluffs his lines, misses their cue or timing - embarrassment may ensue

Question 3

What is Goffman’’s opinion on Gender?

Answer 3

• Gender is socially produced through social interaction (Gendered masks of how to be a ‘boy’ or a ‘girl’ from very young & can effect later on eg boys can’t cry)

Question 4

What question is he interested in when discussing gender?

Answer 4

How do these gendered masks come about?

Question 5

How does Goffman describe arrangement between the sexes?

Answer 5

Institutional Reflexivity

Gender = a flexible institution learned through others

Question 6

What are 5 examples of institutional reflexivity?

Answer 6

1) Gendered division of labour

2) Siblings as the socialiser
(growing up with brothers vs sisters)

3) Gendered division of toilets
(access to people’s backstage performances)

4) Selective job placement

5) The identification system
(actor being gendered BY their audience due to tone of voice, title, clothes etc)

Question 7

What is a quote from Goffman used to describe adverts?

Answer 7

Advertisements create a ‘pseudo reality that is better than real’ (1979)

This he refers to as ‘hyper realisation’

Question 8

What does Goffman conclude about Gender advertisements (dramaturgy)? with example

Answer 8

• eg a ‘family on holiday’ would follow cues of ‘having a nice time’
• We then take this cues from adverts to learn what it means to ‘have a good time’
• Idealised performances in adverts/ distorts what it means to be a human being/ have a good time

Question 9

What is the result of this stereotype in advertising?

Answer 9

The stereotype becomes a normative expectation in subsequent social performances and interactions in real life.

Question 10

What is a quote from the introduction of ‘Gender advertisements’ that describes women in adverts? (Gornick 1979)

Answer 10

‘women posing, acting, looking like children.’

‘Utterly deroid of the natural sobriety which one associates with adult men’

Question 11

What are 3 things Goffman concludes from Gender displays?

Answer 11

1) The subconscious displaying of gender tricks the consumer - the audience is led to believe that this is the true display of gender
2) The gender display in advertisements requires coding (and decoding)
3) ‘Depicted feminity’ men/ parent are dominant (women = passive)

THIS LEADS TO TYPOLOGIES OF GENDER DISPLAYS OR CODING/ DE CODING OF GENDER

Question 12

What are the 5 reoccurring stereotypes Goffman draws from women in advertisements?

Answer 12

1) FEMININE TOUCH
(mind elsewhere, passive, doe eyed, ritualistic touching)

2) RELATIVE SIZE AND FUNCTION RANKING
(women in subordinate position, involves some kind of instruction. Man = bigger)

3) RITUALISATION OF SUBORDINATION
(Women = bashful, submissive, childlike, playful in an unnatural fashion)

4) LICENSED WITHDRAWAL
(women are disorientated/ psychologically removed)

5) FAMILY
(domestic symmetry of father/ son, mother/ daughter)

Question 13

Does Goffman’s coding and typologies work in today’s social media climate?

Answer 13

Adverts are seamlessly embedded into our everyday. Every 3rd post on Instagram, it has become a social norm to compare yourself to this idea of reality that doesn’t exist.

Question 14

Are individuals reproducing Goffman’s typologies in the presentation of the self?

Answer 14

Due to it being so embedded as the ‘norm’ we may be subconsciously imitating advertisements without even realising we are. (expand on this)

Question 15

To what extent does Goffman retain a political stance? Do we need to politicise his ideas?

Answer 15

Due to the hypersexualisation of girls on TV/ music videos, it would take a feminist political stance to address this problem.

Question 16

The Portrayal of Women’s Images in Magazine Advertisements: Goffman’s Gender Analysis Revisited Was written by who? In what year?

Answer 16

Mee- Eun Kang (1997)

Question 17

What does Mee - Eun Kang conclude from this paper?

Answer 17

That the portrayal of women is not something that has got better with time. Since 1979 to this study in 1991, magazine advertisements are still showing the same steretyped images.

Question 18

Advertising is…

Answer 18

A social practice

Question 19

What do Rotzoll and Haefner argue? (1996)

Answer 19

That due to advertising being culturally bounded, it is is highly prone to disparate interpretations.

SO adverts are made and produced with ‘shared meanings’ as a part of it

Question 20

Decoding advertisements (1978) Williamson?

Answer 20

Meaning is created through the audience, rather than meaning being directed at them.

Question 21

What is a contemporary example?

Answer 21

Proteinworld 2015
- All over London underground
(peddling weight loss supplements) ‘are you beach body ready?’

= Making women feel physically inferior to the unrealistic body image of the bronzed model in order to sell their product.

(Women still presented as a decorative accessory in advertising there to look beautiful)

Question 22

What is happening in June 2019?

Answer 22

Advertising Standards Agency

“(advertisements) must not include gender stereotypes that are likely to cause harm or serious/widespread offence)

Question 23

How does social media link to this?

Answer 23

= advertisements re still wildly stereotypical especially in terms of perfume adverts

BUT a more specific example, is being presented with an ideal of perfection which is unattainable.

EG SKINNYTEA OR SKINNYTAN adverts. Still allowed to use ‘skinny’ as something to strive towards. Women are stereotyped as constantly striving for perfection/beauty.

Question 24

GOFFMAN TODAY

Answer 24

When walking into a department store = advertisements are still wildly stereotypical especially in terms of perfume adverts.

• Postures of people sitting on the floor ‘renders one dependent on the surround’
  Physically difficult to defend yourself when one assumes such a posture
• Touching of one’s own body and eye aversion also call for the ‘protectiveness and goodwill of others’, because these behaviours signal dissociation from the surroundings which
  ‘remove them psychologically from the social situation at large’