Sex, Love, and Romance in the Mass Media

Analysis and Criticism of Unrealistic Portrayals and Their Influence

Mary-Lou Galician

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135616502
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Kommunikationswissenschaften

This accessible yet research-based text offers both foundational theories and practical applications of analysis and criticism of mass media portrayals of sex, love, and romance in a wide variety of mass media, from entertainment to advertising to news. The multidisciplinary methodological perspective comes out of a media literacy approach and embraces a variety of traditions along the quantitative-qualitative continuum. Focused on portrayals of male-female coupleship, the book is centered around the 12 major myths and stereotypes of Galician's Dr. FUN!'s Mass Media Love Quiz ©, each of which has a corresponding Dr. Galician Prescription® that encapsulates healthy strategies--rarely found in the mass media--to counteract that myth or stereotype. Readers learn how to identify, illustrate, deconstruct, evaluate, and reframe the mass media's mythic and stereotypic portrayals of sex, love, and romance. They also learn how to use their own formal critical evaluations to clarify their own values and--as media consumers or mass communication creators--to share their insights with others. Thus, the learning objectives encompass all three major educational domains: cognitive, affective, and behavioral.

Part I of this book covers the five foundations:

• myths and stereotypes of love and coupleship
• models of realistic and constructive love and coupleship
• mass media storytelling approaches, techniques, and devices
• research and theories of mass media effects; and
• strategies and skills of media literacy

Part II is devoted to exploring the myths and stereotypes identified in the Quiz. Following several brief case studies and a summary of related research and commentary, each chapter focuses on analyses and criticisms of portrayals of sex, love, and romance in the content of news and advertising, as well as entertainment using Galician's Seven-Step Dis -illusioning Directions. Each chapter concludes with a " Dis -illusion Digest."

While critical of unrealistic portrayals and the damage they can cause unsuspecting media consumers, Galician--a media literacy advocate--is not anti-media. Rather, her goal is to empower consumers to use these portrayals with more awareness of their possible consequences, to resist adopting them as models for actual behavior, and to consciously reframe them into more realistic, productive scenarios. This unique text is an engaging classroom resource for media literacy, media and relationships, and media and society coursework.

PART I
Foundations of Analysis & Criticism of Sex, Love, & Romance in the Mass Media

INTRODUCTION
Key Foundational Terms & Concepts

I-1. IDEALS & ILLUSIONS (UNREALISTIC MODELS)
Myths & Stereotypes of Love Coupleship

I-2. DIAGNOSES & DIS-ILLUSIONS (REALISTIC MODELS
Designs for Rational Love & Coupleshi

I-3. MASS MEDIA NARRATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS
Mass Media Storytelling: Approaches, Techniques, & Device

I-4. THE INFLUENCE OF THE MASS MEDIA
Research & Theories of Mass Media Effects on Individuals & Societ

I-5. STRATEGIES & SKILLS OF MEDIA LITERACY
Tools for Media Analysis & Criticism

INTRODUCTION

Key Foundational Terms & Concepts

The beginning is the chiefest part of any work.

– Plato, Greek philosopher (4th Century B.C.E.)

Romantic love and mass media share a long association. The Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh – one of the world’s oldest narratives of friendship and sex, love, and romance (compiled orally as long ago as 5,000 years in the third or second millennium B.C.E.!) – comprised 12 clay tablets of 300 lines of verse each when they were later written down in cuneiform for the royal library in 600 B.C.E. Nineveh (Mason, 1970; McLeish, 1996).

The very word romance dates from 12th century “courtly love” romans (“stories”), first disseminated to the masses by troubadours – precursors, in a sense, of modern mass media recording artists – and later by the very first mass medium’s early chapbooks and romance novels (Stone, 1988).

“If no one had learned to read,” offered Barreca (1993), quoting an unnamed “French philosopher” in her own book, Perfect Husbands & Other Fairy Tales: Demystifying Marriage, Men, and Romance, “very few people would be in love” (pp. 146–147).

Love is complex and complicated. Passionate love – “romance” – has become a precondition for most coupled relationships (Lauer & Lauer, 1994). Unfortunately, “romance,” by definition, is the opposite of reality, and one liability of romance is that it creates unrealistic expectations that can lead to a considerable amount of “misery, disappointment, and dis-illusionment” in coupleships (Crosby, 1991, p. 20). The divorce rate in the United States is now half the marriage rate (National Center for Health Statistics, 2001). The personal and societal costs are enormous.

Many social critics, relationship therapists, and popular books about coupleship have accused the mass media of brainwashing consumers with portrayals of romanticized love that is unattainable as a goal and unhealthy as a model and, thereby, contributing to the construction of these unrealistic expectations (Dyer, 1976; Fromm, 1956; Johnson, 1983; Norwood, 1985; Peele, 1975; Russianoff, 1981; Shapiro & Kroeger, 1991; Shostrom & Kavanaugh, 1971). For example, Katz and Liu (1988) warned:

A large part of the problem is the glorification of false love through the media, which hold out insubstantial but glamorous relations as a never-ending lure. . . .[T]he relationships portrayed by the media are a symbol of status rather than of emotional health or personal well-being, (p. 329)

WHY STUDY MASS MEDIA PORTRAYALS OF SEX, LOVE, & ROMANCE?

It’s important to gain the knowledge and skills to resist the power of mass media portrayals that promote unrealistic expectations of sex, love, and romance. As they did for me, these unrealistic portrayals can have serious negative consequences for so many of us – males and females, young and old, singles and couples. It’s particularly important to take some of that power back and be more in charge of our beliefs and behaviors. We don’t have to give up the mass media we enjoy, but we need to resist being seduced by them.

In Part I, we build a foundation of some of the basics underlying the subject as a first step in constituting a repertoire of tools and strategies we can use.

WHAT ARE THE FIVE FOUNDATIONS?

We’ll examine five foundations for analysis and criticism of unrealistic portrayals of sex, love, and romance in the mass media. Each foundation is covered in a separate chapter.

Chapter 1-1 surveys the major myths and stereotypes that undergird the unrealistic models dominating today’s mass media portrayals of sex, love, and romance.

Chapter 1-2 describes realistic models of love – based on scientific research – proposed by social psychologists and endorsed by relationship therapists (but rarely seen in the mass media!).

You’ll find a host of reasons why these more healthy rational relationships are rarely depicted when you examine Chapter 1-3’s checklist of mass media story-telling approaches, techniques, & devices.

Chapter 1-4 highlights key research and theories of the effects of mass media on individuals and society and concludes with key findings of studies of mass-mediated sex, love, and romance.

The final foundations chapter (1-5) (a bridge to the applications of media analysis and criticism in Part II) details some of the strategies and skills of media literacy – the ability to “read” print and electronic mass media messages (texts) with keen awareness of their impact on us as individuals and as a society – and specifies the seven-step approach to analysis and criticism we’ll use.

WHAT DO THE KEY FOUNDATIONAL TERMS & CONCEPTS MEAN?

”When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice; “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

– Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll

Before we begin to focus on each of these five foundations, let’s first clarify the meanings of some key terms and concepts that we’ll examine in more depth throughout Part I:

• Sex, Love, & Romance

• Mass Media (and Mass Media Influence)

• Unrealistic Portrayals

• Analysis & Criticism.

What Are “Sex,” “Love,” & “Romance”?

We’ll start with love, because it’s really the larger and more complex concept. Sex and romance are often discussed as subcategories of love.

“Love”

What is this thing called love?
This funny thing called love?
Just who can solve its mystery?
Why should it make a fool of me?
I saw you there one wonderful day
You took my heart and threw it away
That’s why I ask the Lawd in Heaven above
What is this thing called love?

– Cole Porter, Popular Songwriter

Limitations of Our Language. Our language has only one word for “this thing called love,” which we also frequently (mis)use to mean “like” (as in “I love this movie.”). French – the so-called “Language of Love” – has only “aimer” (“to love”), which also means “to like.” Ancient Greek, however, had at least seven words that translate as “love” – each with a specific meaning:

• agape (pronounced “AH-gah-pay” or “ah-GAH-pay”) – selfless, spiritual love; also conceived as love of God

• eros – passion; sexual, erotic love; most associated with romance

• ludus – playful love

• mania – obsessive, clingy love

• philia – liking, friendship (even of things, as in philosophy, love of wisdom [sophia])

• pragma – goal-oriented, functional love

• storge (pronounced STORE-GAY) – affection; familial or patriotic love or duty.

In The Four Loves, the eminent Oxford University literature professor C.S. Lewis (1960) – who wrote quite a bit about “the Lawd above” (and who was portrayed by Anthony Hopkins in Shadowlands, the 1993 movie based on the stage play that relates his fascinating love story with an American divorcee he married in his later years) – ranked four of these types of love from “simplest” to “most complex/highest” and presented them in that order:

• Chapter 1: Affection (storge; pietas in Latin)

• Chapter 2: Friendship (philia; amicitia or dilectio in Latin)

• Chapter 3: Eros (eros; amor in Latin)

• Chapter 4: Charity (agape; caritas in Latin).

One of the most respected and prolific scholars on the subject of love, Yale psychology and education professor Robert J. Sternberg (1987, 1998), has acknowledged that no single definition describes love throughout the ages or across cultures. Although philosophers, theologians, and poets have investigated the nature of love for centuries, love research as a scientific field is relatively new in the wider array of disciplines that now investigate love – social and behavioral psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology, human communication, women’s studies, men’s studies, family studies, evolutionary biology, and mass communication. For these experts as well as for the general public, love means different things to different people at different historical periods and in different cultures.

The Language of Love. Love is a noun and a verb. Is it a feeling or a thought or a behavior – or all three? This brief list of synonyms generated by my word processing program’s Thesaurus gives you an idea of how complex the concept really is and why it’s so difficult to define, even by people who study it seriously:

affection, affinity, amour, amorousness, attachment, attraction, commitment, compassion, concern, devotion, fondness, heart, kinship, passion, religion, warmth

– and those are just the nouns! Here are the verbs:

adore, admire, cherish, dote on, idolize, respect, revere, venerate, worship.

When I searched barnesandnoble.com for current books with “Love is” in their titles, I got 910, including Love Is a Special Way of Feeling, Love Is a Family; Love Is a Choice, Love Is a Decision, Love Is Letting Go of Fear, Love Is a Racket, Love Is Stronger than Death, Love Is Forever, Love Is Hell, and Love Is a Dog from...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• STOP!: Before You Begin to Read This Book, Take Dr. FUN’s Mass Media Love Quiz©
• DR. FUN’S MASS MEDIA LOVE QUIZ©: Created by Dr. Mary-Lou Galician
• Contents at a Glance
• Table of Contents
• Preface: Why I Wrote This Book for You
• Introduction: “The Romanticization of Love in the Mass Media”
• Part I: Foundations of Analysis & Criticism of Sex, Love, & Romance in the Mass Media
• Part II: Applications of Analysis & Criticism of Sex, Love, & Romance in the Mass Media
• Epilogue
• DON’T STOP! “The End Is Where We Start From”
• Appendix A: Sample Completed Worksheet
• Appendix B: Sample Analysis & Criticism
• Index