Impact of Gender Roles in Comics: A Study on Character Depictions, Study notes of Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

Download Impact of Gender Roles in Comics: A Study on Character Depictions and more Study notes Introduction to Cultural Anthropology in PDF only on Docsity! Cartoon Analysis: The impact of character depictions in popular comics on gender roles. Leanne Mehaffy Andrea Thrapp University of Iowa Introduction The purpose of our research was to find out how male and female characters are portrayed in popular comics. Comic strips represent sources for identifying cultural norms, beliefs, and values. Previous studies have compared relationships among male and female characters and their gender role stereotypes. Barcus (1963) stated that the comic strip is a major means of conveying information about the culture. We believe that this topic is important because people of all age groups within the United States read the popular comic strips that we analyzed. People that read these comics are exposed to the authors’ interpretations of the “ideal” family life, class, and gender roles. Cantor (1999) stated that comics such as “The Simpsons,” show the family as a part of the larger community and in effect affirms the kind of community that can sustain the family. Social Learning Theory is an environmental perspective that assumes that behavior is learned through experience and that situations, behaviors, values, and attitudes collected throughout life, shape who we are (Mazur & Sommer, 159 (Bandura, 1969)). Using this perspective demonstrates that when a person views behaviors and values from a media source, such as comics, can influence how they perceive themselves. The interesting thing about comics is that their audience is highly variable in age and has a higher exposure rate than other written forms of media to varying age groups. Due to the large audience that comics have, it is 1 important to study its possible impact on society’s ideas of gender roles. Therefore the reason that comics are so popular is because many families like to compare themselves to these representative images of the American family. People are exposed to various newspapers that have daily portrayals of the eight cartoons we selected. There are also numerous online resources that give a database for these comics. By individuals habitually reading the authors’ interpretations of characters’ lifestyles, it can influence the reader’s thinking about social interactions. Brabant and Mooney (1995 (Witek, 1989)) stated that the artist places the characters in social settings and these settings provide researchers with valuable analytical tools to study societal definitions of appropriateness. Another reason for examining comic strips is that researchers have used comics as cultural artifacts (Brabant and Mooney, 271). Comics reflect attitudinal changes by use of humor over time. By using comics as a research tool, we can utilize these attitudinal changes within this written form of media to analyze social changes. Comics give us a way to study social trends and family styles over time. Comics are also a useful cultural study tool because they have appeared in publications since the early 1900s and can unintentionally reflect a particular social group’s place in society (Hanlon, Farnsworth, Murray, 297). Literature Review Five journal articles that we read were pertinent to our analysis on comics. The first article we read was “Sex Role Stereotyping in the Sunday Comics: A Twenty Year Update.” The dependent variable being studied was sexual stereotyping. In 1994 the researchers used six months of Sunday comic strips and the total N=78. Following the format used in 1974 and 1984, 2 studied in this article was attitudes towards homosexuals. The population contained 92 participants with ages ranging from 18 to 55. The average age was 21 with 50 of the participants being male and 42 were female. The authors assessed attitudes before and after viewing a film. All participants were given a questionnaire using “Herek’s Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men” (ATLG) scale. The randomly assigned treatment group experienced more favorable attitudes toward homosexuals after viewing a film containing homosexuals than the control group. The authors expected that the repeated exposure to such material would shape more positive attitudes, behaviors, and values regarding diverse family films. Hypotheses H1: Women and men represented in comics have traditional gender roles. H2: Male characters appear more frequently in comics than female characters. H3: Females characters are more likely to be portrayed as passive compared to males. H4: Female characters were more likely to be portrayed in caregiving roles. H5: Comics portray nuclear families in their content more than any other type of family. For our hypotheses we assumed that men and women tend to have more traditional occupations or roles. For instance, men portrayed in the comics tend to work as computer technicians, construction workers, or firemen where women tend to be waitresses, hair dressers, or stay-at-home moms. Within the last few decades women have entered the work force, so we wanted to analyze whether this social change has also been portrayed in comic strips. Men are more likely portrayed as the monetary provider in a family than women. Even though women 5 may be entering the work force at a greater rate, men are still more likely to be the primary monetary providers for their families. Another one of our assumptions was that women tend to be more nurturing to their children and other family members than men. As portrayed in other sources of media, women tend to provide greater emotional support for the people around them than men. Women are also portrayed as being passive compared to male characters. We predict that males appear more frequently in comic strips than female characters and the families are usually portrayed as being a traditional nuclear family. Data & Methods Our primary method for data collection was newspapers. Our units of analysis were individual comic characters. The dependent variable we studied was traditional occupations. We looked through the most common and widely known newspapers in the area for the most popular comic strips. We used such papers as the Iowa City Press-Citizen, Cedar Rapids Gazette, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, and New York Times. After finding which comic strips were most commonly occurring among all five newspapers, we narrowed our choices down to eight different comics. We used an inductive method in our research by observing comics and then creating our hypotheses. We used a deductive approach by starting with our hypotheses on whether men and women were portrayed differently in comics. While looking at the comics, we found ten different independent variables that would be useful for our analysis. We coded them into the following categories: Sex of author Character sexualization Character attitudes Occupation Family life Age of character Human character Perceived status of character 6 Caregiving roles Monetary provider Cartoon title After we chose our variables, we defined the variables sexualization and traditional occupation for clarification. For example, we considered a character sexualized for a female if she wore skimpy clothing, had a curvaceous body, had exposed body parts, or she was meant to be portrayed in a sexual manner. We excluded skin exposure in certain circumstances such as a child’s diaper change or a child taking a bath. We considered males to be sexualized if they had a depiction of a macho body, had exposed body parts, or were wearing tight clothing. Another term we defined was traditional occupation. Female characters were considered having a traditional occupation if the position they had was predominantly worked by women. Examples of this would be a teacher, flight attendant, cook, or homemaker. Male occupations were considered traditional in the same manner. Men that worked in executive office positions, construction, engineers, or as business owners were considered to have traditional male-oriented occupations. Under some of the other variables such as caregiving roles, we coded 1 as nurturing, 2 as non-nurturing, and 3 as not applicable. For character attitude we have passive equaling 1, aggressive as 2, both attitudes as 3, and neither attitude equaling 4. With the gender of characters, we have 1 equaling female and 2 as male. By following this structure we kept number one as equaling females or female traits among these and the other variables. Our next step was beginning our analysis. We analyzed 30 days of recent cartoons in 8 different comics. The comics we chose were: Baby Blues Dilbert For Better or Worse Peanuts Family Circus Zits Blondie Cathy 7 and other various forms of media do relay messages about social expectations of interactions and ideals of what is the “norm”. We didn’t really have problems using the variables that we chose. What we would have liked to analyze, if we had more time, was the background of the authors (ex. Age, socioeconomic status, married life, etc.). We would have liked to learn more about the authors’ lifestyles to see if they had any impact on the depiction of their comic strips. 10 References Brabant, Sarah, and Linda A. Mooney. 1995. “The Social Construction of Family Life in the Sunday Comics: Race as a Consideration.” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 30:1:113- 133. Brabant, Sarah, and Linda A. Mooney. 1997. “Sex Role Stereotyping in the Sunday Comics: A Twenty Year Update.” Sex Roles 37:3-4: 269-281. Hanlon, Heather, Judy Farnsworth, and Judy Murray. 1997. “Ageing in American Comic Strips: 1972-1992.” Cambridge University Press 17:293-304. Mazur, Michelle, and Tara M. Emmers-Sommer. 2002. “The Effect of Movie Portrayals on Audience Attitudes about Nontraditional Families and Sexual Orientation.” Journal of Homosexuality 44:1:157-182. Tiggemann, Marika, and Belinda McGill. 2004. “The Role of Social Comparison in the Effect of Magazine Advertisements on Women’s Mood and Body Dissatisfaction.” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 23:1:23-44. http://www.babyblues.com http://www.blondie.com http://www.comics.com http://www.familycircus.com http://www.fborfw.com/strip_fix/archives/2004_09.php http://www.kingfeatures.com http://www.seattlepi.nwsource.com/fun http://www.ucomics.com/cathyindex.html 11 Appendix Data Set Code sheets Original variable list 12