The Codes of Gender

Identity and Performance in Pop Culture

Now Available! Duration: 73 min ISBN: 1-932869-39-5 Date Produced: 2009 Subtitles: English Filmmaker Info Transcript Related Links Press Reviews Praise for the Film

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The Codes of Gender
Identity and Performance in Pop Culture

Written and directed by MEF Executive Director Sut Jhally, The Codes of Gender applies the late sociologist Erving Goffman's groundbreaking analysis of advertising to the contemporary commercial landscape, showing how one of American popular culture's most influential forms communicates normative ideas about masculinity and femininity.

In striking visual detail, The Codes of Gender explores Goffman's central claim that gender ideals are the result of ritualized cultural performance, uncovering a remarkable pattern of masculine and feminine displays and poses. It looks beyond advertising as a medium that simply sells products, and beyond analyses of gender that focus on biological difference or issues of objectification and beauty, to provide a clear-eyed view of the two-tiered terrain of identity and power relations.

With its sustained focus on how our perceptions of what it means to be a man or a woman get reproduced and reinforced on the level of culture in our everyday lives, The Codes of Gender is certain to inspire discussion and debate across a range of disciplines.

Viewer Discretion Advisory: This program contains violence, nudity, and sexual themes.

DVD contains two versions: a full length version (73 minutes) and an abridged version (46 minutes) which has been edited for nudity and length.

Sections: Sex and Gender | The Feminine Touch | The Ritualization of Subordination | Licensed Withdrawal | Infantilization | The Codes of Masculinity | Trapped in the Code | History, Power, and Gender Display

Filmmaker Info

Written and Directed by: Sut Jhally
Editors: Sut Jhally, Andrew Killoy, Aaron Vega
Motion Graphics: Andrew Killoy
Script Editor: Jeremy Earp
Media Research: Loretta Alper
Additional Media Research: Scott Morris
Camera: David Rabinovitz
Audio Recording: Andrew Killoy
Sound Engineer: Rikk Desgres
Image Retouching: Shannon McKenna
DVD Authoring: Jason Young

Filmmaker's Bio

Sut Jhally | Writer, Director, Editor & Narrator

Sut Jhally is Professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Founder and Executive Director of the Media Education Foundation. He is one of the world's leading scholars looking at the role played by advertising and popular culture in the processes of social control and identity construction. The author of numerous books and articles on media (including The Codes of Advertising and Enlightened Racism) he is also an award-winning teacher (a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award at the University of Massachusetts, where the student newspaper has also voted him "Best professor"). In addition, he has been awarded the Distinguished Outreach Award, and was selected to deliver a Distinguished Faculty Lecture in 2007.

He is best known as the producer and director of a number of films and videos (including Dreamworlds: Desire/Sex/Power in Music Video; Tough Guise: Media, Violence and the Crisis of Masculinity; and Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire) that deal with issues ranging from gender, sexuality and race to commercialism, violence and politics. Born in Kenya, raised in England, educated in graduate studies in Canada, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Screenings

Southwestern Sociological Association annual meeting | Houston, TX | April 2, 2010
Pacific Sociological Association annual meeting | Oakland, CA | April 8 - 11, 2010
Central States Communication Association convention | Cincinnati, OH | April 17, 2010
Console-ing Passions | Eugene, OR | April 22 - 24, 2010
American Sociological Association's annual meeting | Atlanta, GA | August 14 - 17, 2010

Film Festivals

Awards

Related Links

Attracting Assault: Victims' Nonverbal Cues by Betty Grayson & Morris I. Stein, Journal of Communication
Gender Advertisements by Erving Goffman
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Erving Goffman
Ways of Seeing by John Berger

Press Reviews

Educational Media Reviews Online
Feminist Reviews Online

Praise for the Film

"Completely engrossing... For a generally jaded viewer such as I, perhaps the best measure of the effectiveness of this work is the fact that it made me see things I hadn't seen before and made me think in new ways about the ubiquitous images and messages that inundate and inform everyday life."
- Gary Handman | Educational Media Reviews Online

"The Codes of Gender will be of interest to all who question the visual images of what is deemed natural and normal. The film is well-made and presented, and it serves as a fitting tribute to Goffman (who died in Philadelphia in 1982). His work was underestimated when he was alive, but his contributions to 'the codes of gender' are as equally valid today as they were thirty years ago."
- Anna Hamling | Feminist Review