Jean BaudrillardInformation ≠ Communication

"We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning" (Baudrillard, 1994, p. 79)

• He presents 3 possible hypothesis in order to explain this statement

1. That information produces meaning but, as a result of the loss of signification, meaning is lost and meaning cannot be put back into content before it devours itself. This is the ideology of free speech, i.e. pirate radio.

2. Shannon's hypothesis states there is no significant relation between more information and less meaning as information has nothing to do with signification.

3. There is a strong link between the two; information is directly destructive of meaning and signification based on the dissuasive action of the media and mass media (including advertising?)

"Information devours its own content. It devours communication and the social" (Baudrillard, 1994, p. 80)

• He gives two reasons for this

1. Instead of information creating communication, as we believe it to, it exhausts itself by staging communication, as is all a simulation as it pretends to communicate.

2. Behind the mise-en-scene of communication, information dissolves meaning and the social in the masses. Therefore, the media are producers of the implosion of meaning in media.

• “Our mental pictures of the perfect body, house, meal and sexual relationship have been created through exposure to constantly recycled media depictions that have no basis in fact- but it is these images that create our expectations” (Griffen, 2012, p. 319)

• This is what Baudrillard calls the ‘hyperreal’. We are bombarded by the media with information and images which is meant to give signification to things. However, in reality, these these are simulations of the real and do not have any particular empirical validity- but these do shape how we live, what we believe, which therefore means that we are all living in a ‘hyperreal’ state, where nothing is actually ‘real’ itself.

• Hyperrealities impact on society is argued to blur the distinction between the what’s real and what’s representation, to the point that we are unsure if our experiences are real or not. Could you use reality TV as an example of this?

Examples of the Hypperreal: Simulations of the ‘real’

6. Cities are places which are entirely created (Las Vegas, Disney Land, Dubai)

7. Reality TV8. A retail store that looks completely stocked

and perfect due to facing, creating a world of endless products

9. A newly made building or item designed to look old

10. Video games such as second life11. Virtual reality 12. A life that cannot be (e.g. perfect celebrity

persona)

1. A magazine photo of a model that has been touched up

2. Films with characters and settings that have either been digitally enhanced or created entirely from CGI

3. A well manicured garden4. Common knowledge ‘facts’ which

are actually myths5. Professions sports athletes as

represented as super, invisible versions of human beings

Liesbet van ZoonenStereotypes, Ideology, and Pornography

Stereotypes and Socialization

• The author uses the example of television in order to show how women are either absent, or depicted as housewives and mothers, inferior and always subservient to men

• These are the ways in which the media produce symbolic images of women; how women should be and should act in society

• It is argued, from this viewpoint, that these depictions of women in the media are a reflection of societies dominant social value (which symbolically reduce or ‘puts down’ women)

• However, she also notes that these are conflicting views on these effects of media. Some studies support the previously stated hypothesis, while other say there are too many variables in order to definitely conclude the role of the media on women and society

• black women

• But the author points out that that we need to be careful with reductive cause-and-effect relationships. She notes that how we consume media is not passive, and that we have our own faculties in the way that we interpret these stereotypes

Ideology

• From a media perspective, media are the contemporary mediators of hegemony• This therefore brings us to ask: What are the hegemonic ideas disseminated

by the media? How does this effect how women are portrayed in the media? And, how does this get internalized by the audience?

• As a final remark to this exert, the author mentions that there is a shift taking place, one in which feminist thought leaning “towards perspectives in which meaning is understood as constructed out of the historically and socially situated negotiations between institutional producers of meaning and audiences as producers of meaning” – she notes that media studies (and feminist media studies) are undergoing a paradigm shift

What does this mean for Ideology and gender

Remember, ideology is defined as follows:The body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that guides an individual, social movement, institution, class, or large group

Given how women are portrayed in these top 500 films, which ideologies (and hegemonic ideas) are being disseminated, and how does this get internalized by the audience?

Female Beauty?

Masculinity?