Media Blog: Examples of Class in Sexualized Media

The depiction of class in media is used to reflect the values of our society. One example of the use of class in media is the Jerry Springer show. Jerry Springer features topics on his show that are considered taboo and often ignored by mainstream media. Many of his guests appear to be of a lower social class and often do not follow normative behaviors, sexual or otherwise, they are obviously uneducated and lack "proper" etiquette".Show topics, such as the one I chose titled, "You Stole my Man", are usually sexual in nature and aim to shock and disturb the audience in some way. This is similar to Laura Kipnis' interpretation of Hustler which she says, "made its mission to disturb and unsettle its readers, both psycho-sexually and socio-sexually" (Kipnis, p. 375). Another example of class in sexualized media is Hooters. In addition to the restaurant chain, Hooters also produces media such as a calender, two magazines and has an airline with various forms of media attached to it. Hooters acts as a sort of go between for the family restaurant and a strip club. The chesty women who work there are scantily clad but because they are not topless, a quality of decency is still maintained enough for even a regular family man to take part and not weigh too heavily on his conscious while still getting a thrill from the experience. Hooters clearly targets the average middle class blue collar worker type with it's cheap and low quality food. Their logo, an owl with large eyes that resemble breasts with nipples, and their slogan, "More than a mouthful" are both charged with sexual connotation while another slogan, "Delightfully tacky yet unrefined" is telling of their target audience. Tacky is just another word for tasteless and unrefined alludes to a lack of manners, "a mechanism of class distinction" (Kipnis, p. 377).
The 90's sit com "Married With Children" is a great example of what Constance Penley refers to in her article "The Whitetrashing of Porn", that "the joke is usually on the man", a theme common in early porn stag films. In the show, Peg Bundy is the sexed up house wife and her husband, Al Bundy, the overworked middle class buffoon. His inadequecy at work, home and in the bedroom is the butt of jokes on the show. "Sex emerges as an area of humiliation for men, not as one of domination and power over women" (Kipnis). The musical movie, "Romance and Cigarettes", another example of sexualized media with class distinction, takes place in Manhattan's armpit, suburban New Jersey. The location alone is telling of the social class the characters reside and set effects such as costume and design confirm this. The cheating husband, a blue collar steel worker, is shown numerous time in "wife beater" tanks and is generally represented as a fat slob that needs a woman to take care of him. The movie is charged with sexuality and uses non- normative words for mainstream media, such as cunt and cock, and has a very dirty and raw feeling to it. The musical aspect of it sets it apart as a comedy in what otherwise may have been a rather depressing drama film. Penley notes that musical films are "porn's closest kin" and can be traced back to the bawdy songs and dirty jokes that inspired the low-level humor in early stag films.
That birth is sexual is one of society's best kept secrets. Laura Kipnis, in her articel (Male) Desire and (Female) Disgust: Reading Hustler" talks about the bourgeois, in their attempt to be civilized "seek to suppress in themselves every characteristic they feel to be animal" (Kipnis, p. 377). Birth is one of the last animal- like behaviors that humans must still undergo and the fact that it has been hidden away in hospitals (temples to science) and silenced with epidurals is reflective of society's desire not only to silence women but also to "remove the distasteful from the sight of society" (Kipnis, p. 377). In the article "Too Posh to Push", featured in Time magazine, the author looks at the cesarean fad among celebrities and high class women that are choosing this as a clean, convenient alternative to the "grossness" of birth. The fact that it is women of a specific class making these choices (according to the article) shows a relation to Kipnis' proposition that the lower stratum of the body is equated to lower social class.

1. Jerry Springer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=886sAIv8L1Y

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