Challenging Representations
Challenging popular representations in media can be an effective way to appeal to intended audiences, particularly those seeking more nuanced and thought-provoking content. Here's a discussion on how and why challenging these representations can resonate with audiences:
Popular media representations often reflect and reinforce prevailing societal norms and stereotypes. While these representations may be familiar and comfortable for some audiences, they can also perpetuate harmful narratives and limit diverse perspectives. By challenging these popular representations, media creators have the opportunity to engage audiences in new ways, fostering critical thinking and potentially shifting cultural narratives.
One way in which challenging popular representations can appeal to audiences is by providing a sense of authenticity and relatability. For marginalized or underrepresented groups, seeing their experiences depicted in a more nuanced and accurate manner can be a powerful and validating experience. It acknowledges their lived realities and allows them to connect with the content on a deeper level.
Additionally, challenging popular representations can appeal to audiences seeking fresh and thought-provoking content. Constant exposure to the same narratives and stereotypes can lead to a sense of boredom or disengagement. By subverting expectations and offering alternative perspectives, media creators can captivate audiences who crave intellectual stimulation and artistic innovation.
Furthermore, challenging popular representations can foster important conversations and raise awareness about societal issues. When media works confront harmful stereotypes or shed light on underrepresented experiences, they can serve as catalysts for public discourse and social change. Audiences who are socially conscious or seeking to broaden their understanding may be drawn to these works for their educational and awareness-raising potential.
However, it is crucial to approach the challenge of popular representations with nuance and sensitivity. Simply subverting stereotypes without offering depth or authenticity can come across as contrived or tokenistic, alienating the very audiences the work aims to engage. Effective challenges to popular representations require thorough research, consultation with relevant communities, and a genuine commitment to amplifying underrepresented voices and experiences.
Additionally, media creators must consider their intended audiences and tailor their approach accordingly. Challenging popular representations too aggressively or without sufficient context may alienate audiences who are not yet ready to confront their preconceptions. A gradual and thoughtful approach, combined with compelling storytelling, can be more effective in engaging and persuading audiences.
Ultimately, challenging popular representations in media can be a powerful tool for connecting with audiences seeking authenticity, intellectual stimulation, and social awareness. By offering fresh perspectives and amplifying underrepresented voices, media creators can not only appeal to their intended audiences but also contribute to broader cultural shifts and promote greater understanding and empathy within society.
Watch the videos below and see how one offers a dominant representation and the other challenges that representation. See more about Gillette's representation of men here.
False, biased, and politically expedient representations can do a lot of damage. A few years ago, I completed a doctorate which explores some of the damage done by Western, ethnocentric approaches to aid in the impoverished and war-torn country of Cambodia. We went there to help, but we really screwed things up.
My thesis is in two parts; a feature film and a written exegesis. Here's an excerpt from my written exegesis, which highlights the problem. See if you can unpack any problems inherent in the UN and Aela Callan's approach to journalism and representation of men and masculinity in the Global South.
It’s a Man’s World
The fifteenth of October 2012 marked the end of an era. The man who had become known as the last of the god-kings, Father of Cambodia, responsible for taking the country back from the French, embracing modernity while at the same time celebrating culture and the arts, Norodom Sihanouk, passed away and so began months of mourning. At the beginning of February 2013, the population of Phnom Penh swelled with rural Cambodians wanting to pay their last respects at the former king’s cremation, which was to be held by the Royal Palace. The city also swarmed with foreign dignitaries and reporters from around the globe.
One of the reporters present was an Australian, Aela Callan, who was not there to report on the deceased King, but to make a documentary film on the problem of gang-rape in Cambodia, called It’s a Man’s World. Once complete, the film painted a picture of Cambodian men as violent rapists, with much of the presentation being rooted in statistics generated by a UN Multi-country Study on Men and Masculinities in Asia and the Pacific. The UN soon published their findings, inspiring such sensational headlines as, “Nearly quarter of men in Asia-Pacific admit to committing rape” and, “Almost A QUARTER of men admit to being rapists across parts of Asia, UN report finds”, as well as news articles describing Cambodia as a society in which twenty percent of men were rapists.
The title of Aela’s film, It’s a Man’s World, appears to imply that ‘men’ would relish the opportunity to be violent gang-rapists with impunity, should such an opportunity arise. Even given the extraordinary figures generated by the study, this generalisation seems unjustified and highly exaggerated. It, along with the other headlines about Cambodian rapists, reinforces the representation of Khmer men as perpetuated by the, “sole genre of published work that even mentions masculinity”, which Jacobsen describes. One thing was for sure; the UN study had been translated to a gloomy representation of Cambodian men in the news. By extension, the impact of these kinds of publications could be considered in terms of how parents feel about their daughters marring men who are twenty precent likely to be rapists, and the knock-on effect this might have on Cambodian men.
The full report from the UN study was soon to be launched at the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) conference in Bangkok. I anticipated that the research I had begun might serve to bring fresh perspective to the understanding of the context in which gendered violence occurs in Cambodia, not only benefitting Khmer men, but women and children as well. The conference offered an opportunity to learn something about how the ‘gendered violence industry’ works and to consider how my research might complement other work done in this arena...
The report from the UN study was available at the conference so it was possible to glean some idea of how the figures were obtained. At a glance, it became evident that the language used for gathering data was very different to the language used in newspaper reports. According to the official report, the word ‘rape’ was not used in any survey questions, and in response to the data collected in the first country surveyed, Bangladesh, the researchers added extra questions on sexual partner violence, broadening their definition of ‘rape’. For example, in the women’s survey, a question about partner rape came in two parts; it asked if they had been,“physically forced to have sexual intercourse when [they] did not want to,” or “had sexual intercourse when [they] did not want to because [they were] afraid of what [their] partner might do”. Fearing what a partner might do if one does not have sexual intercourse with him and actually being forced to have sexual intercourse can be quite different things, but they are caught with the same net. While the respondent’s fear should be addressed respectfully and appropriately, the survey offers no way of determining whether her fear is caused by her husband’s violent or abusive behaviour or rooted in something else, such as cultural beliefs, social expectations or previous abusive relationships etcetera. It seems possible, then, that the questions posed might have created at least some false-positive responses. According to the report, all these women were raped - which makes their partners rapists.
Here is the Abstract from the written component of my doctorate thesis, which might help frame the situation:
A great deal of western research on post Khmer Rouge Cambodia has been directed at the social devastation that followed the Khmer Rouge reign and on the abuse, exploitation and violence against Cambodian women and children in particular. In this discourse Cambodian men are either ignored or presented as contributing to the problems of women and children. The research in this thesis does away with such a binary perspective and assumes that the problems of Cambodian women and children will be solved only when Cambodian men are incorporated as an element of the solution. Accordingly the thesis re-examines some of the problems encountered by Cambodian women and children by considering these from the perspective of Cambodian men. The thesis does this by modelling an abstract Cambodian family unit using real life accounts from a large group of Cambodian informants and rendering these accounts as a linear narrative for a feature film entitled Bngvel (Eng. Turn).
Ethnographic data was collected and recorded over six years in a rural Cambodian context often with real-time feedback from key informants. These accounts and observations were used to construct a script depicting the life of a Cambodian father as he strives to provide for this wife and two children in both rural and urban contexts. All the recordings for the film took place on location in the rural province of Takeo, and in the capital city of Phnom Penh, using ordinary Khmer people as actors and the majority of the production crew. While the scripted account invokes many of the problems investigated by previous research, the accounts that arise from the Cambodian informants presents a picture that is much more complex than the simple victim/perpetrator narratives that characterised the earlier research. The film modelling suggests that solutions to social problems in Cambodia will be found when Cambodian men and women are able to address their problems together.
The film and the written thesis can be accessed here. Alternatively, feel free to watch it below. It's pretty slow moving, as it tries to humanise these men who have been framed as monsters for decades.