The Night Before the Morning After
Who?
... and because if the kids with the furry masks want to hang out with you ... you hang out with them ....
Be warned: Gender Advertisements, by the late sociologist Erving Goffman, is one of those books that changes your life forever.
No, not life-changing like reading The Communist Manifesto in the 1970s inspired an Argentino ex-lecturer of mine to start shooting police officers. But you will never be able to ignore or simply endure advertisements again, of which you already receive between 500 and 1000 every day.
Of course, society and advertising have evolved considerably since the book was written over 30 years ago, but indeed it is precisely because of the attention given to them that the most egregious examples of sexism in advertising that Goffman identified are much less common today. Others however, have actually gotten worse, advertising to children for instance now an embarrassment compared to the relatively gender-neutral tone of the early-1980s (compare these to this, this, and this), and also there is now so much partial nudity in advertisements that several researchers argue that a new category has had to be added to Goffman’s framework to analyze it.
However, partial nudity isn’t objectifying or sexist per se: rather, it is the manner and context in which it is applied. And if that is the case, then you can imagine how problematic applying Goffman’s framework as a whole to Korean advertisements is, in which such different cultural codes operate.
Or do they? In at least one case, yes: social status usually trumps all other considerations in Korea, and so having one person (usually a man) elevated above another (usually a woman) in an advertisement, perhaps by him sitting and her reclining on the floor in front of him, by no means implies superiority, rendering that subcategory of Goffman’s “Ritualization of Subordination” category problematic. Still others, such as cute and/or childlike depictions of women, or having them staring off into the distance rather than directly back at the viewer (a subcategory of “Licensed Withdrawal”), are not necessarily sexist in light of East Asian notions of metrosexuality and politeness respectively, as helpfully pointed out by reader Melissa. And in point of fact the only analysis (Nam et al, 2007) that has looked at men as well as women in Korean magazine advertisements did find that Korean men were depicted much more childishly and “withdrawn” than Western men in them.
Still, while this point is easy to miss in posts that necessarily give only a few illustrative examples, surveys of depictions of men and women in advertisements using Goffman’s framework are made to determine if there are statistically significant differences between them as a whole. And if these are found, then there are a number of different cultural and anthropological explanations that can be suggested in addition to feminist ones; Occidentalism, for instance, may have played a role in the above result, or the fact that it is quite acceptable for Korean 20-somethings of both sexes to behave in a manner that many Westerners might consider childish (see here for possible reasons for this). Alternatively, Nam et al (2007) found that Western women were much more likely than Korean women to be depicted in a lower physical position than men, such as by him standing and her reclining in a chair on on the floor, but while this could be interpreted positively (for Korean women), much more likely is the fact that status trumps all other considerations in Korea, and so to be physically lower than someone else by no means implies that one is the inferior. Accordingly, there were no statistical differences between Korean men and women in this regard.
Other differences however, like the fact that regardless of the social norms I’ve discussed, Korean women are still depicted childishly or withdrawn more often than Korean men for instance, are extremely difficult to account for other than in terms of their inferior social and economic status in Korea. Or in other words, while an individual advertisement depicting a woman like a child isn’t necessarily sexist in itself, that there’s more of them than there are of men is certainly evidence of sexism. Moreover, I fail to see how noticing discrepancies like this is somehow Eurocentric of me, or “looking at Korean society through Western eyes.” Which is not at all to say that Melissa argued that, but others have.
In response, in what was originally intended to be a single post here I wanted to discuss the problems Kang (1997), Hovland et al (2005), and Nam et al (2007) had with Goffman’s framework, the alterations they made to it, and the latter two’s discussion of how appropriate various categories of it were to the Korean context.
In particular, the last found that Western men and women were more likely to be depicted as partially nude than their Korean counterparts, but with allowances again for Occidentalism, and the fact that Korean female models will rarely appear in lingerie advertisements (of which the authors were unaware, and so didn’t account for), they argue that this is again evidence of sexism because in fact “many scantily garbed women [emit] a sense of independence and confidence.” While I’d be a bit more circumspect than that myself, fortunately having long since on moved on from the days when I automatically equated bikinis with feminist liberation, they do have a point, particularly in a society where the majority of women were too scared to wear them 5-10 years ago.
Also, I wanted to discuss the “female-stereotypical” depictions of Korean men in advertisements like Melissa identified, posing a challenge as they do to especially Western men’s notions of masculinity. Unfortunately however, for reasons of space and ease of reading those will have to wait for Part 2 and perhaps even a Part 3. Instead, having provided a grounding in this post, let me devote the rest of it to a practical example of another discrepancy in the ways men and women are portrayed in advertisements, one that I stumbled onto by accident in the process of investigating the Evisu (에비수) advertisement at the beginning of the post.
Featuring Jung Yun-ho (정윤호; also know as “U-know”) of the boy band TVXQ (I don’t know who the woman is), the first thing it reminded me of was this:
Of which I wrote this back in November 2008:
Personally, it took me a few moments to figure out what this advertisement is supposed to represent exactly: were the couple prisoners? No…why would their sunglasses be tied up too? How apart parts from a model kit then? No…then they’d be disassembled, and besides which the man appears to be raised from the white background a little, a rather awkward position for a model component. And then I realized that he’s actually standing, which would mean that the woman is too, although I can surely be forgiven for thinking that she’s lying down.
So probably they’re supposed to be like a Barbie and Ken doll set in a box, like you find in a toy store. But then why is the women tied down so helplessly, whereas the man, ostensibly also tied down, looks – as the photographer points out – firmly grounded and in control? I haven’t been looking (sorry), but I dare say that Barbie and Ken dolls don’t leave the Mattel factory like that in real life. So why would the advertisers choose to depict them like that?
Granted, it’s a much more extreme example than the own with Yun-ho. But while I don’t mean to equate the two, that is indeed what it reminded me of, and the final question I pose is just as relevant.
But in terms of Goffman’s framework itself, probably this is more similar:
And with that, let me add “participation shields,” a subcategory of Licensed Withdrawal, to add to all those others I’ve already elaborated on here, here, here, and here as well as those in this post. This is what Goffman (1979) had to say about it:
It is possible to look in on a social situation from a distance or from a one-way panel – a “participation shield” – and be little seen oneself, in which case one can, in effect, partake of the the events but not be exposed to scrutiny or address. A splitting up this results between some of the gains and some of the costs of face-to-face interaction. I might note that when one’s participation is thus shielded, simultaneous maintenance of dissociated side involvements would seem to be facilitated, since these could hardly intrude between oneself and one’s availability to the others in the situation – one not being available at all.
A ritualization of participation shielding occurs when one presents oneself as if on the edge of the situation or otherwise shielded from it physically, when in fact one is quite accessible to those in it. Still further ritualization is found in commercial posings. (p.70)
Then he gives examples of using walls as shields, then window frames, then various objects, then animals, and finally people:
…with the consequent opportunity to overlay distance with a differentiating expression, in the extreme, collusive betrayal of one’s shield. (p. 72)
Here are some examples he provides, from my scan of page 73:
And I think the Evisu advertisement is a good example of that last point, as Jung Yun-ho’s aggressive, confrontational stance is betrayed by that of the inquisitive, unconcerned expression of the woman partially hiding behind him. But lest I contradict myself and read too much into one image (and I’ll grant that those above are deliberately much more extreme cases), again let’s consider the discrepancies among the advertisements currently on the Evisu website. In particular, when the woman and Jung Yun-ho are by themselves, both have strong, confident stances, good examples of the “Independence/Self-Assurance” category first suggested by Kang (1997) and expanded on Nam (2007) which I’ll be discussing in Part 2:
So why then, in most of the few Evisu advertisements that have a man and a woman together, are the women relegated so to speak? But don’t just take my word for it. Instead, see all of them for yourself, starting from the most glaring example to the least:
Note also that only the woman has the “head cant” in each, which I discuss here.
But here is one example that is the complete opposite to all the above:
And I include this one also as it’s the only other one with two people, although strictly speaking it shouldn’t be counted:
Personally I think that the woman on the right above is not quite as “out of it” as she in her advertisements with a man, but I’ll grant that that’s open to debate, as is how much she is using the man as a participation shield in that second advertisement in which she is wearing black gloves. But that’s precisely the point: again, those are all the advertisements with more than one person in them on the Evisu website as a I type this (please note that the first one with Jung Yun-ho isn’t on the website though), and so please make your own minds up about whether there is a discrepancy in the way the men and women are depicted in them. Naturally, I think it’s obvious that there is, but if you agree and yet have a non-feminist, culturally-based argument for its existence however, then I’m all ears.
Meanwhile, a note on the sources for this post: if they look very familiar to regular readers, then that’s because there have been so few surveys of Korean advertisements made using Goffman’s framework. Moreover, even Nam et al’s (2007) is based on magazines from 2002 and 2003, hopelessly out of date for a society as fast-changing as Korea, and so I’ve long wanted to conduct my own survey(s) to compensate. That would involve far too much work for just one person unfortunately, and so if any readers are interested in co-authoring a conference paper and/or journal article on the topic, please let me know!^^
• Goffman, E. (1979), Gender Advertisements.
• Hovland, R. et.al. (2005) ‘Gender Role Portrayals in American and Korean Advertisements’, Sex Roles: A Journal of Research December 2005, pp. 887-899 (although I have a physical copy, unfortunately this is no longer downloadable; I’d appreciate it if anyone with library access could email a PDF).
• Kang, M. (1997) ‘The Portrayal of Women’s Images in Magazine Advertisements: Goffman’s Gender Analysis Revisited’, Sex Roles: A Journal of Research December 1997 (ditto on downloading)
• Nam, K. et. al. (2007) ‘Gender Role Stereotypes Depicted by Western and Korean Advertising Models in Korean Adolescent Girls’ Magazines‘, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, TBA, San Francisco, CA Online (2007), pp. 1-31.
Update: If you’ve enjoyed this post, then you may also be interested in this one at Sociological Images that describes how even the “physiology and anatomy” theme of a university website also genders the stances of the physiological representation of both sexes, the man standing straight, looking ahead, and having even weight distribution, but the female form being “almost classically passive, hands held behind her back, weight distribution uneven” in contrast.
It’s a long way off yet (April 22), but tomorrow I will be planning my semester so its time to plan how and what I am doing for Earthday.
At the blog, Teach Paperless (author anonymous), I found some information on the subject. That blogger uses student blogs as notebooks and, well, enough other things to convince him/her to set up a blog.
I am not sure if using a computer and other devices, particularly including a projector, will put less stress on the environment than using paper. Further, students have already bought their books – I suppose I can tell the students to leave them at home so that added mass won’t be carried up the mountain my university is situated upon.
Still, I am also interested in using technology in the classroom, so I am likely to have a paperless day for that reason alone.
Of course, I am not so blinkered that I think ‘paperless’= ‘computers’. We can do other things, without using computers or paper. I will have to think about this further. Well, I have time.
Out of college, out of money and out of luck in a lackluster economy with millions of people out of work, Jeremy Salzman felt trapped after college graduation, facing a certain loss of freedom and an uncertain stretch under the watchful eyes of his parents.
yld_mgr.place_ad_here("right_slot");So when the newly-minted graduate of the University of Michigan had to choose between returning to Atlanta to look for a job or signing on for a hitch as an English teacher in South Korea, it was a no-brainer.
He’s now teaching kids in a private school 7,000 miles away, with no professors or parents to answer to, no homework, and maybe best of all, no rules and no curfew.
Like tens of thousands of young Americans with degrees, but few job prospects, Salzman, 23, took off for South Korea to teach. The only requirements — no criminal record and a bachelor’s degree in anything.
And the school paid his airfare, is putting him up in a small apartment and will buy him a ticket home when his contract ends.
Sounds like a good gig to me! Oh, wait, I'm already doing it too. Seriously, though, leaving the country might be a decent way to escape the recession that's gripped the country.
So far, he’s having the time of his life, and also, he feels, providing invaluable help to youngsters there. He works at least eight hours daily, then parties by night, often into the wee hours, with other expatriates, most from the U.S. or Canada, but some from Britain, Ireland, South Africa and New Zealand.
He goes to a gym daily, swills SoJu, a stiff vodka-like drink, fills up on Korean barbeque and sees “amazing” sights.
“I am not an English major, and people in America would not want me to teach their kids English…what I am good at and enjoy doing is helping kids become successful at something.”
He adds: “I came to live out a once in a lifetime experience that I won’t have the opportunity to do again when I have a real job.”
My dear readers, define for me - what exactly is a "real job"? I am presently closer to 30 than I am 20, and have spent virtually every weekday doing a job for money since the day I graduated college. 50 years ago, a 'real job' was the job you might start once graduating school, keep for 30 years, then retire with a gold watch on your wrist. These days? I dare say a 'real job' is where you do some kind of work for money. Fair?
Kind sir, tell the world why "people in America would not want me to teach their kids English"?
Another perspective not quoted on Brian's post:Stephen Gronsbell, 26, of east Cobb, who has a bachelor’s in psychology from UGA and a BS in history education from Kennesaw State, took a job in Seoul because he couldn’t find a gig back home.
“The beginning teacher salary in Cobb County is around $39,000 and I am being paid 2.2 million won ($1,900) per month,” Gronsbell says. “It is not as much pay, but when you figure everything else out, things look different. I was provided round-trip airfare and free housing in a furnished one-bedroom apartment about 10 minutes walking distance from my school. Income tax is only about 3 percent of my salary.”
While I won't dare to say this person is a 'qualified' teacher, having a piece of paper stating your degree in History Education might put you a level above the average college graduate. Assuming the figures quoted are correct, that's a heck of a pay cut.
Since the term 'qualified' has yet to receive a proper definition by the Korean government, let's separate three possible definitions:
The last part has less to do with teaching and more to do with being a recent college graduate:
“I certainly miss hanging out with him,” says Jeremy’s dad, Martin Salzman, 55, an Atlanta lawyer. He says his son doesn’t really know what he’s going to do when he comes home but “I don’t think he ever wants to be a teacher.”
Jeremy’s mom, Beth, says she’s proud of him but that he “needed to clear his head.”
Jeremy knows it’ll be weird when he returns but doesn’t miss much, except deli food.
“I would love to eat a turkey sandwich from Publix about now,” he says.
In Europe, a number of young adults take what's called a 'gap year' - a break from studying to travel, explore, volunteer, or otherwise become independent for a set length of time. It's a bit uncommon for Americans, but it's becoming more common all the time. It's a great chance to get away and experiment before settling down into - dare I say it? - adulthood. While it's usually a year in length, the experiences often contribute to one's worldview and future lifestyle. As that great philosopher, Ferris Bueller, once said, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it."
If you remember only one thing from this post, remember this: coming to teach in Korea might be a decent job for you. Might. If you're 22 or 23 and just graduated college, I'm sorry, this is probably not the right opportunity for you. This is a job, after all, not playtime with kids. If you are a certified teacher that can't find a job in your hometown, don't expect to find the same type of school as you might find in a classroom elsewhere or the same interest in quality education. You won't spend the same amount of time preparing for class, most likely because it's not expected. The expectations for teachers are low enough, and thus far most foreign English teachers have met them. It's kind of like winning at limbo while the bar is still at chest height, though.
Fine, then: the locals have set the standards low to become an English teacher in Korea. As a result, the foreigners have taken advantage of the low standards and sometimes treat it like a vacation. There's enough blame to go around. If you come to Korea to teach English, treat it like the real job it is. Your apartment and plane ticket may be provided gratis, but it's still a real job. Take it seriously. How?
According to this blurb in the Korea Herald, the Prime Minister's office has opened a suggestion box for the month of March.Are there rules or regulations that are gumming up your groove, in areas like "immigration, personal identification, status change, economic activities or daily lives of non-Koreans, foreign spouses of Koreans or overseas Koreans"? Can you think of regulations or systems that are discriminatory?Drop a line to [email protected] or send a fax to (02) 2100-2323 sometime this month, and if they like your ideas, you might even win some gift certificates.Tell your friends. Tell all your friends.
One of the hopefuls said "I had a hard time to adapt to school life (in the U.S.) after I finished my army service and it was very stressful." ...
"I witnessed a lot of Korean students having difficulties in studying there as it is much easier to gain academic credits in Korea," she added.
Cho, who transferred from Pennsylvania State University to Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, also said he saw many Korean friends who were forced to return to Korea due to their poor academic achievements.I think that one of the biggest hurdles for Korean students, whether they were admitted with legitimate application materials or not, is the incredible difference between the style of academia between the United States and Korea. Now I went to an exceedingly liberal minded school (Sarah Lawrence, which models the majority of its classes on small seminars and individual tutorials in which you carry out thesis like research...for every class) but there are some general education trends that we can examine.
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