Introduction
After finishing our study of Woman, the most salient conclusion we could and should make is that Woman is a boring and straightforward magazine that presents a singular and straightforward patriarchal ideology to its mass market target audience.
In doing so, it reinforces stereotypical hegemonic ideologies surrounding women, and it does so in the most blunt and effective way possible. By cultivating the ideology that women are simple, straightforward, weak and frankly boring, it constructs a world where these ideologies continue unquestioned.
Yes, Woman magazine is a product of its time, and reflects the dominant ideologies of the 1960’s, but it only reflects the mainstream ideologies of the 1960’s. At a time when women were fighting for rights, the contraceptive pill was changing the ways in which we view sex, and psychedelic drugs and music were pushing in to the mainstream, Woman seems even more mainstream by comparison.
If anything, Woman was already old-fashioned in 1964, and its existence was predicated only on its ability to maintain social order and the status quo.
But, media doesn’t just have to keep order, it can change the world. The next product we will explore is very much about shattering the ideological, hegemonic powers that magazines like Women so carefully constructed!
The treachery of images (Rene Magritte, 1928)
Why is this image so enduring, even today?
What does this image question?
LHOOQ (Marcel Duchamp, 1919)
How does this product work? What knowledge is required for the audience to make sense of this image? What is the function and/or purpose of such an image?
I Shop Therefore I Am (Barbara Kruger, 1987)
Here, the combinatory elements of text and image and graphic design combine to construct a symbolic code for the
Distracted Boyfriend jpg (Unknown, 2017)
This is one of the first known examples of the 'distracted boyfriend' meme.
What is a 'meme'?
Why did somebody (we do not know who) take this image and add text to it?
We live in an age of photorealistic computer generated SFX, and immersive, multibillion dollar media franchises that span digitally convergent media platforms. Why do we look at crudely created images like this on our impossibly high spec pocket computers?
