Sold on Gender:

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Sold on Gender

• How Japanese TV uses gender to sell products,
  social roles and cultural values.

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Todd Joseph Miles Holden

• Professor of Mediated Sociology
• Graduate School of International Cultural Studies
  (GSICS)
• Tohoku University
• Sendai, Japan

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Starters

• Consider the Following Ad

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About this Ad

• In many ways this is a typical ad
• It is a typical of ads that are product centered
• It is typical of gendered ads in Japan
• It is typical of Japanese gender ads

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About this Ad

• A typical product centered ad
• Adopting a rhetorical approach of pre-post (or
  before and after the product)

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About this Ad

• It is typical of gendered ads
• It presents women in pink
• It focuses on female touch
• It undresses women
• It partials women
• It uses a male as the authority to reinforce the
  product message or legitimize the product

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About this Ad

• In is also typical of Japanese gender ads
• unaji
• It is typical of Japanese ads
• And it is typical of gendered ads in Japan
• That adopt a rhetorical approach of pre-post (or
  before and after the product)

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Genderism and the Ad

• It is also typical in other ways
• Specifically, regarding gender
• Here it offers specific Genderisms
• To coin a term by Goffman
• And, employing Goffman, we would point to the
• Partialing
• The use of pink to denote women
• The use of a man to serve as authoritative
  (closing) voice

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Genderism and the Japanese Ad

• My work (Holden 2001) confirming Goffman
• Showing each of his genderisms in the Japanese
  context
• Feminine touch
• Subordination to authority
• Family--male removed
• But in TV seeing other aspects
• Greater partialing
• More sexualization
• More female gaze -- male attraction and
  passivity

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Genderism and the Japanese Ad

• My work confirming Goffman

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About the Ad

• But what is most noteworthy about this ad is that
  it works to naturalize gender in ways that differ
  from the cultural universals present in ads in
  other countries around the world
• In short, beyond the feminine touch that Goffman
  found
• or the partialing that Holden found
• Or the male authority that numerous researchers
  have varified
• There is a set of genderizations that recur
  only in specific contexts
• Thus we find unaji as an important

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Cultural Universals
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Versus Local Universals

• What this ad also reveals are local universals
  -- genderisms that are present only in the
  specific contect -- here Japan
• In particualr, the focus here is on unaji --
  the presentation by women of their exposed nape
• Or in this case, the cameras attention to this
  part of a womans anatomy
• This reminds us that genderisms are not all
  universal that there are local manifestations of
  significance. That are repetitive and meaningful.
  

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About Ads and TV why this matters
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About the Data in this Study

• Secondary analysis of a study by Michael Prieler
  (Tohoku University, Doctoral Candidate)
• A study of foreign content in Japanese TV
  commercials
• Sample 4 One-Week periods over the course of one
  year, 2004-2005
• Channels All private television stations in
  Sendai, Japan
• TBC (Tohoku Hoso/TBC)
• OX (Sendai Hoso/Fuji Terebi)
• KHB (Tonihon Hoso/Asahi Terebi)
• MMT (Miyagi Terebi/Nihon Terei).
• Recorded time 6.00 a.m. to 2.00 a.m (20 hours
  per day)

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About the Data in this Study

• Due to the high repetition of commercials, it was
  decided to rotate the recording of the 4
  stations, such that
• each channel was recorded daily for 10 hours
• in alternating fashion
• from 600 to 1600 and from 1600 to 200
• using 2 VTRs
• recording simultaneously.

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Data CollectionFirst Stage of Recording
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The Complete Data Set
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Most Broadcast Ads August 23 - 29, 2004
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So if car ads are so pervasive

• What does a car ad look like?
• Of course there are many kinds
• But among the common types are those that
  naturalize and/or center women.

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(No Transcript)
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Summary

• A recent Japanese ad presents a helpless husband
  at home caring for his 5 year-old child while his
  wife is away on a business trip. When she
  returns, resplendent in blue business suit, she
  is greeted by a husband content with his
  successful laundry chores (aided by the child).
  The man is decked out in pink. Just like this,
  Japanese television advertising makes extensive
  use of gender to sell product. In so doing, ads
  send powerful, socially re/productive messages
  concerning (to name a few) autonomy,
  possibility, competency, domain, role, and
  sexuality. Moreover, as the example above
  suggests, ads are not averse to reflecting
  contemporary societal trends, for instance the
  changing composition of the workforce and
  parental responsibilities.

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Summary

• Drawing on a sample of 6,000 ads, systematically
  collected in 2004-05, and supplemented by samples
  accumulated over the past decade, this paper
  employs qualitative content analysis, detailing
  the various ways Japanese advertising sells
  conceptions of gender. Drawing on previous
  published work (e.g. Holden 1999, 2001), it
  documents how Japanese ads reflect but move
  beyond Goffmans (1976) signal work. Specifically
  highlighted is changing family composition, sex
  role stereotyping (e.g. Furnham and Mak 1999
  Milner and Collins 2000), power dynamics between
  men and women (e.g. Rudman and Verdi 1993) , the
  erotic spectacle (Frith and Mueller 2003) or
  endemic sexualization particularly of females
  (Reid et al. 1984 Reichert et al. 1999), the
  importance of touch (Goffman ibid cf. Kim 1992),
  and accretion of affection in everyday commercial
  communication.