Enero 27, 2007

Media and the Normalization of Violence Against Women

A new addition to indyblogs, Turtel, in New York, posted a great entry (a while ago, but I guess it showed up on my feedreader now because the blog was just added to indyblogs) about the frequency on TV of depictions of violent acts against women and how that serves to portray those acts as okay.

As Cialdini writes in science-speak, the problem is that “within the statement “Many people are doing this undesirable thing” lurks the powerful and undercutting normative message “Many people are doing this.” In other words, all the shows that have tons of people killing and raping women give the idea that that is normal behavior, even though they do communicate that its bad behavior. Within the statement “Many people are killing and raping women, and its bad” lurks the powerful and undercutting normative message, “Many people are killing and raping women.”

Shades of Barthes' "Mythologies"...

Posted by steev at Enero 27, 2007 08:33 AM
Comments
I'm no expert of any kind... but are they saying that people should be saying that few people are doing this or that no one is doing this so that it doesn't seem "normal?" That seems kind of messed up... doesn't the scope of the problem need to be acknowledged as well? I'm not sure I understand... Posted by: brian at Enero 27, 2007 09:24 AM