SEEN / the codes of gender

The codes of gender is a 2009 documentary written and directed by Sut Jhally. The documentary itself is a powerful analysis of gender codes in society and advertising, applying the theories of Erving Goffman and John Berger to help understand these culturally ingrained codes of gender that we have become conditioned to inherently believe. Goffman tells us that in order to see these codes in advertising, we need to subvert them to realize how strange they are.

The gender display is defined as the process whereby we perform the roles expected of us by social convention. Gender is not the result of birth or gender, but an act that we construct to define ourselves. They’re so deeply ingrained that we don’t even notice them anymore.  We feel the need to categorise people as male or female in order to interact with them.

The documentary discusses femininity and masculinity at length, comparing the codes of masculine and feminine identity and how they are used together in advertising to create something Goffman describes as commercial realism. Femininity has a subordinant relationship to masculinity.

“advertisers conventionalise our conventions, stylize what is already a stylization, make frivolous use of what is already something considerably out of our contextual controls. Their hype is hyper-ritualised.”

“boys have to push their way into manhood, and problematic effort is involved while girls merely have to unfold”

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/codes-gender/

:evie