Reproduction of Gender Ideology in Russian Consumer Culture: the Iconography of the ‘Russian Mother’ (original) (raw)
Related papers
Advertisements and Depiction of the Woman Image: A Critique on Feminism
Journal of English Language and Literature, 2018
By promulgating the principle of equal status for the women, the movement of feminism has questioned, criticized, and protested against the conventional images of woman. By re-defining the existence of woman it compelled both men and women of the society to comprehend the identity of the woman from a different, hitherto neglected perspective. However, with the rampant socio-cultural changes due to the globalization, feminism has been trapped in new trauma. In this post-capital, post-post-modern world, all the revolutionary ideas are swiped away. Amidst this, several rejected values are re-nurturing their roots. This revival has made many revolutionary movements and thoughts dead. By watching the media that is the complete product of globalization and especially the advertisements that are the effective means of communication and manifesting tools of the contemporary culture one is sure to ask whether like all other disciplines there is the death of feminism. The presen...
ANALYSIS OF ADVERTISEMENT GENDER IMAGES IN SOCIAL-ICONOGRAPHIC CONTEXT
The paper presents the results of iconographic content analysis of gender images for Ukrainian TV advertising. Iconographic methodology of codification of gender images used in advertising is employed and the structural interpretation of the study results is given. It is shown that the most popular gender images in advertising field are the “Feminine Model”, “Masculine model”, “Feminist”, “Caring mother”, and the image “Housewife”. Less popular are the images “Man Professional”, “Androgyne”, “Passive Man”. It is concluded that the mostly used models in the advertisement field of Ukrainian TV are the stereotype images (the “Feminine Model”, the “Masculine Model”, “Housewife”, “Сaring mother”) that, in aggregate, occupy about 5/6 of the total amount of gender-related advertisements. The non-stereotype images such as “Androgyne”, “Feminist”, and “Passive man” totally constitute about 1/6 from this amount, respectively. It is observed that female images are presented considerably more (2/3 with respect to the total amount of gender-related advertising) than male (respectively, about 1/3). Key words: advertising, iconographic content-analysis, visuality, image, gender.
Reading Femininity, Beauty and Consumption in Russian Women’s Magazines
Western-origin women’s lifestyle magazines have enjoyed great success in post-Soviet Russia, and represent part of the globalisation of the post-Soviet media landscape. Existing studies of post-Soviet Russian women’s magazines have tended to focus on either magazine content or reader interpretations, their role in the media marketplace, or representations of themes such as glamour culture or conspicuous consumption. Based on a discourse analysis of the three Russian women’s lifestyle magazines Elle, Liza and Cosmopolitan, and interviews with 39 Russian women, the thesis interrogates femininity norms in contemporary Russia. This thesis addresses a gap in the literature in foregrounding a feminist approach to a combined analysis of both the content of the magazines, and how readers decode the magazines. Portrayals of embodied femininity in women’s magazines are a chief focus, in addition to reader decodings of these portrayals. The thesis shows how certain forms of aesthetic and cultural capital are linked to femininity, and how women’s magazines discursively construct normative femininity via portraying these forms of cultural capital as necessary for women. It also relates particular ways of performing femininity, such as conspicuous consumption and beauty labour, to wider patriarchal discourses in Russian society. Furthermore, the thesis engages with pertinent debates around cultural globalisation in relation to post-Soviet media and culture, and addresses both change and continuity in post-Soviet gender norms; not only from the Soviet era into the present, but across an oft-perceived East/West axis via the horizontalization and glocalisation of culture. The thesis discusses two main aspects of change: 1) the role now played by conspicuous consumption in social constructions of normative femininity; and 2) the expectation of ever increasing resources women are now expected to devote to beauty labour as part of performing normative femininity. However, I also argue that it is appropriate from a gender studies perspective to highlight Russian society as patriarchal as well as post-socialist. As such, I highlight the cross-cultural experiences women in contemporary Russia women share with women in other parts of the world. Accordingly, the research suggests that women’s lifestyle magazines in the post-Soviet era have drawn on more established gender discourses in Soviet-Russian society as a means of facilitating the introduction of relatively new norms and practices, particularly linked to a culture of conspicuous consumption.
As we all know, the general aim of the conference was stated as, " …exploring the intersections of gender with contemporary culture and consumption. ". When I read this, I thought that it might go well with the main aim of my paper, which is to see how and which codes about the mother and motherhood are utilized in the newspaper advertisements for the Mother's Day presents. In the course of time, the Mother's Day has turned out to be an almost obligatory occasion of purchasing a present for the mother. Thus, it became widespread with a function of commercialization and commodification of mother-images. In its celebrating, honoring and gift-wrapping content and manner, both the Mother's Day itself and the advertisements for presents obviously make plenty of representations of mother-images visible. The codes about the images of motherhood, and indeed the childhood; as being the other end of the stereotype mother-child dyad, are conveyed amply through those representations. Thus, through certain verbal and visual representations the ads for presents indicate and draw our attention to the omnipresence of those images both within cultural practices and on the discursive level. In other words, the concentrated forms of the mother images in the ads are one among other cultural practices to reveal the conceptualization of motherhood as an 'elaborated institution'. As being one of the crucial tools for endurance and perpetuation of the culture of capitalism, advertising stands at the very intersection of consumption and visual culture.
In the existing literature, the relatively stable period of the 1970s, in Russia, is characterised by the rise of 'socialist consumer modernity,' while the affluent 2000s were the time when a new phenomenon, 'the culture of glamour,' emerged. Both periods parallel some cultural developments in the western world: the 1970s-1980s supposedly saw the rise of late modernity whereby individuals, freed from constraints of social structures, engage in ongoing process of self-reflexivity and self-fashioning, through consumption. In this paper, drawing on the interviews with 20 middle-aged women from Moscow, I examine the limitations on self-fashioning as a means of achieving and maintaining a position of privilege. I particularly focus on the women's concerns about failing to engage in normative practices of self-care, including anti-ageing cosmetic procedures, and hence failing to embody feminine dispositions that had value in their middle-class milieu. The analysis of such concerns helps to discern the ways different markers of identity (gender, class and age) interplay and act as enablers or constraints in the mundane struggle for power at the interpersonal level.
The Representation of Motherhood in Television Advertisements
2nd International Conference on Social Sciences, 2013
Television is one of the most popular sources of entertainment in the modern world. This observation is applicable to Sri Lanka where 80% of households have televisions. Advertising plays a crucial role in the modern world, since they form the life source of television and other forms of mass communication. The representation of motherhood in television advertisements forms the focus area of this paper with the belief that the advertising"s image of motherhood could influence the collective consciousness of society in terms of defining motherhood and exerting undue pressure on women. Given the gap in research during the recent past, this study attempts to draw a statistical profile of primetime advertising in Sri Lanka and analyze the representation of motherhood in advertisements from a quantitative and qualitative perspective. Advertisements from top advertisers of the country have been chosen for further analysis after monitoring three television channels during August, 2012. Statistical evaluations reveal that in television, advertisements occupy 17%-25% of primetime. A feminist analysis of the content and ideological subtexts of advertisements reveals that they rely on stereotypical portrayals and define womanhood and motherhood in rigid and limited terms. In Sri Lanka, the bulk of advertisements (71%) portray women as mothers and wives. Viewers are bombarded with images of beautiful wives and mothers who enthusiastically fulfill their responsibilities within the domestic sphere. Such stereotypical representations not only reflect sexist understandings about women and men but also reinforce unjust gender ideologies which are already part of the collective consciousness of society. The conclusion of this study is that most advertisements relegate women to traditional gender roles within which women are second-class citizens whose value is relative to their domestic performance and ability to procreate and nurture. Springing from a pool of collective knowledge that is highly sexist, the advertising"s image of motherhood contributes to form limited definitions of and strenuous demands on women, trapping them inside rigid concepts of normalcy.
As we know the mass media reproduce social relations and broadcast it in society. It's a fact that cannot be denied. Hence, the media can be read as a map that can be providing clues about the community. On one hand media can be determined by the economic, political and social dynamics in society. And on other hand the media has a potential that has to change these dynamics. So the media reflect power relations in society and the same time the media has an ability to produce them again, to change, to develop, and to stick them to other formats. Therefore the media reflect the dominant ideology in society and beside of that the media force other social phenomenon to make obeisance of this ideology. On the other hand, the media contemporary youth in modern society by providing examples of models in front of young people create and forces them to look like this model. Hence, an aim of this thesis is considered to identify the women images which have been presented in the media and to analyze these images by semiotics.
The transformation of gender visualization in photography: Soviet and Russian multisemiotics
Discursos Fotograficos, 2018
The article is devoted to the analysis of the construction of new system of gender images in the sociopolitical conditions in Russia during the last thirty ages. Based on Kress and Van Leeuwen multisemiotic theory and the ideas A. Dudareva, I.Groshev and M. Petrova, we conducted a research of gender images of women in the Soviet Union and modern Russian advertising. The data comes from 300 images of the Russian men and women in advertising. These 300 images were specifically chosen by the author in order to be acceptable for coding. As the result of the study, we developed the typology of gender images of woman in Russian advertisement. Our conclusion was that economic, political and socio-cultural factors were the main factors in the transformation of gender images in modern Russia. The gender of a woman, her body and figures as shown in the media, very often were object of sexual exploitation, when the impact of using the image and play with human sexual passion forces her to commit certain actions, such as buying goods. This characteristic of our commercialization of gender images turns a person, both men * Doctoral degree in Theology (Estern Pontifical Institute (Rome).