CITATION AND COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:
Cite as: Shields, V. R. (1999, May). From Disney to Calvin Klein: The implications of Sense-Making for gendered audience reception of entertainment and advertising. Paper presented at a non-divisional workshop held at the meeting of the International Communication Association, San Francisco.
© Vickie Rutledge Shields (1999).

ESSENCE OF PROJECT:
This presentation draws from two distinct Sense-Making studies focusing on media audiences in order to compare major findings about gendered audience reception. The first study is the author’s on-going research on the reception of advertisements coded with idealized female bodies. More specifically, this research aims at seeking a better understanding of the ways in which images of the ideal female body in the mass Media are implicated in on-going constructions, negotiations and/or maintainings of gender identities by females and males. The research problematizes difference by suspending the assumption that the most insightful points of comparison of decoding idealized images will be between males and females—a gender comparison. By taking a situational approach as opposed to a demographic one, important differences within gender categories are allowed to emerge. The second study is a work-in-progress. Under my direction Laurie Wurth, an M.A. student in Mass Communication at Bowling Green State University, is completing a thesis that interrogates the effects of the ideology of femininity in Disney’s films on women over the course of their lifetimes. Using Sense-Making interviews this research taps into adult women’s perceptions of Disney’s influence on the their thoughts, feelings and behaviors at different points in their life histories. Pilot research conducted in the spring of 1998, suggests that the findings from this study will reveal that “fairytale” gender relations offered up over and over again in Disney films can have a profound effect on what women come to expect from real gender relationships. Both studies used a similar a type of abbreviated time-line interview and both studies are focusing on issues of gender. Therefore, the comparative value of the two studies should be particularly useful. Interview protocols were designed to allow for responses that could later speak to current theoretical debates at the intersections of these sometimes complimentary and sometimes contradictory literatures: critical social theory (centered on questions of structure/agency), feminist media studies, cultural studies theory (particularly Stuart Hall’s theory of ‘articulation’). The findings will be presented together as a commentary on the implications of Sense-Making for advancing audience reception, particularly gender differences/similarities in audience decoding.

THE REASONS I TOOK THIS ROAD:
I knew from extensive research and my own personal experience that growing up and living daily with an idealized and extremely narrow prescription of femininity as perpetuated by all forms of mass media can have very powerful effects on girls’/women’s sense of self-worth, body image, their relationship to one another and to men. Advertising, in particular, serves to prescribe very specific (in reality unattainable) constructions of gender identities for women and men in relation to women. Feminist media studies provide insightful textual analyses of how this is achieved through the positioning of viewers as gendered subjects of advertisements, film and television, however, the way women and men make sense of these images in their own lives was not discernible from textual analyses. Laurie Wurth began her research after reading extensive feminist critiques of fairytales and their effects on cultural myths and women’s expectations from gender relationships. The Disney formula prescribes an equally constrained set of gender expectations that are proposed over and over again to audiences. Feminist scholars have elaborated on three potentially harmful archetypes that appear over and over again - the heroine is the “perfect girl”, the “not self-conscious beauty,” and the “tireless domestic servant.” The villainess is “narcissistic,”“powerful and therefore evil.” Although she found the critiques convincing, she was intrigued by how real women might discourse about their experiences with Disney’s fairytales, especially if the method she chose was powerful enough to elicit insight into the influence of the films on women at different points in their lives. We want to gain insight into how these respective images influence respondents’ sense of gender identity. We want to know who are affected most and what accounts for the effects.

THE BEST OF WHAT I HAVE ACHIEVED:
Advertising images: 1) I have gained a greater insight into the processes and situational factors involved in female negotiations with idealized images in the media. My research has uncovered a life-history pattern that is similar amongst most female respondents. Equally exciting are the stories of women who have not suffered the direct effects of these images on their on-going constructions of gender identities. These women’s stories have given me insight into how, where and when future interventions can be made in the lives of young girls to help give them “emotional armor,” or gain “psychological distance,” from these images, thus serving to dispel the power of the images. 2) My initial research suggests that those who are left out of idealized representations altogether, the symbolically annihilated, are not liberated by the omission, but instead feel particularly oppressed by it—they see themselves as so far removed from society’s ideal of beautiful that they could never be defined or define themselves as “attractive.” 3) I have gained a disturbing yet compelling insight into the fate of young male viewers. A new generation of males have grown up with the objectified male body, especially in ads. My initial research suggests that many of the injurious consequences reserved for women in the past, such as eating disorders and negative body image, may be on the increase for young males. I plan to pursue future research specifically in this area.

Disney images: Pilot research and initial data analysis have revealed: 1) Women interviewed are initially unaware of the potential negative images that Walt Disney’s films may be encoded with. It is only when given the opportunity for reflection that they begin to examine the deeper meanings embedded in the text and how it has influenced their lives. For example, most women will not at first glance see the movies as portraying negative images of females, they will nostalgically remember Disney as being a part of their “fantasy world” of childhood. 2) As the interview progresses, women begin to become critical of Disney’s sex stereotypes. They often begin to reveal a disappointment with their real-life as compared to the fantasy world Disney created. They may wish that they were given more realistic portrayals of female roles and lives. 3) Harmful expectations or views in these women are strongest during the teen years and early 20’s and began to dissipate during the late 20’s and early 30’s. For example, if the fairy tales created an unrealistic expectation of courtship and marriage, the real-life experiences of these women would have altered this vision. Also, images of “beauty” will begin to become less important and more realistic. For example, the women may have started to tire of trying to live up to the “ideal body image” and begin to accept who they are as they mature.

WHAT HAS BEEN HELPFUL:
The richness of the data collected allows for longevity as an on-going research agenda. Because both interview protocols allow respondents to circle their realities, connecting the viewing experiences in their own way to their own life-road, the value of the patterns that continue to emerge does not diminish with time. A structured, yet open-ended interview protocol allowed for comparison across interviews that an unstructured, open-ended interview would not. Further, the use of a similar protocol for these two studies will allow comparison across these two qualitative studies

WHAT I HAVE STRUGGLED WITH:
The consistent struggle for me has been reconciling critical, cultural studies and feminist epistemologies with Sense-Making as a theory and methodology. For most critical and cultural studies empirical work, the unit of analysis is the social group, consumer group or subculture. For most feminist empirical work the unit of analysis is groups of women or individual female experience. Most of these schools of thought are highly suspicious of any theory or methodology that has a cognitive emphasis. Laurie Wurth: “I have noticed different comfort levels with the Sense-Making interviewing style. Because I know a little bit about the personalities of several of my respondents, it seems as if the more ‘analytical’ respondents struggled with the responses, thought the questions were ‘too deep,’ or weren’t sure how to comment about their experiences with Disney films. However, overall, Sense-Making is still able to obtain the meaningful data from these respondents that I am sure other interviewing styles would not.”

WHAT WOULD HELP NOW:
1) We would be greatly helped by discussion of the relationship between structures of patriarchy and media and agency, especially in terms of effects over the lifetimes of women and men. 2) We would be helped by a discussion of whether or not an analytical comparison such as proposed here, between qualitative Sense-Making studies using similar methods and theoretical frames to examine different yet related popular media, is useful in advancing audience reception research around issues of gender.

PROJECT ABSTRACT:
Advertising images increasingly pervade our everyday lives. It is this ubiquitous quality of advertising that is central to the study of advertising and gender. Images of idealized femininity are some of the most dominant and consistent messages produced by advertisers. Their pervasiveness has called forth popular and academic discourses about how these images are implicated in the on-going construction and maintenance of gender identities and social relationships between women and men. Intervening in debates about female spectatorship of the female body, the paper takes issue with the claim that Mulvey’s “male gaze” be jettisoned. Rightly, the concept is criticized for asserting female spectators occupy only masculine subject positions. But to insist that female spectatorship is divorced from the male gaze, is also problematic. The author’s reception analysis of 40 female and male responses to ideal female bodies in advertising, suggests that female spectatorship while not reducible to the male gaze, is nonetheless produced in/through/against it. Production of female viewing positions usually involves historically constituted subjects negotiating/resisting dominant gender codes in texts. The research problematizes “difference” by suspending the assumption that the most insightful points of comparison of decoding idealized images will be between males and females—a gender comparison. By taking a situational approach as opposed to a demographic one, important differences among women are allowed to emerge.

The fairy tale is one of the most popular and enduring story genres in modern society. Perhaps no versions of the stories of Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty are more well-known and recognizable in this culture than Walt Disney’s film versions. Their popularity seems to make them impervious to criticism by the mass audience. However, a critical reading of the text of Disney’s fairy tale films reveals a gendered world structured under patriarchy. The female heroines all portray characteristics of beauty, household labor, marriage and female-female relationships that are competitive, exaggerated and unrealistic. Mass communication scholars argue media messages of this type contribute to the socialization of children to specific gender roles. Feminist scholars argue these messages cause psychological and sociological harm that begins in childhood and continues throughout adulthood. Yet, adult women find pleasure in and continue to seek out and consume Disney’s fairy tale films as well as romantic genres similar to Disney’s formula. The study is a Sense-Making audience analysis of ten women that attempts to better understands how the messages in Disney films has influenced their views and lives in relation to gender and gender roles.

REFERENCES:
(For references to works by Dervin and colleagues, see Dervin’s writings: Chronological listing.)

Bordo, S. (1993). Unbearable weight. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.

Dow, B. (1996). Dazed and Disneyfied. Women’s Studies in Communication, 19, 251-266.

Dubino, J. (1993). The Cinderella complex: Romance fiction, patriarchy and capitalism. Journal of Popular Culture, 27, 103-117.

Lazier, L. & Kendrick, A. G. (1993). Women in advertisements: Sizing up the images, roles and functions. In P. J. Creedon (Ed.), Women in mass communication, 2nd ed, (pp. 199-219). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Lieberman, M. K. (1986). ‘Some day my prince will come’: Female acculturation through the fairy tale. In J. Zipes (Ed.), Don’t bet on the prince: Contemporary feminist fairy tales in North America and England (pp. 185-200). New York: Methuen.

Pribram, E. D. (Ed.). (1988). Female spectators: Looking at film and television. London: Verso.

OTHER MATERIALS BY THIS AUTHOR ON THIS WEB SITE:
See:http://communication.sbs.ohio-state.edu/sense-making/AAauthors/authorlistshieldsv.html