4.2 Cinema

This section is a continuation to the previous one but this time the aim is show the representation of Arab women in cinema. But before going deep into this, it would be useful to have an idea first about cinema itself and its relation to women. Cinema can be regarded as an industrialized art that is used to generate money, like all kinds of media. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith defined cinema in the introduction of his book The Oxford History of World Cinema (1996) saying alt is the great unresolved equation between art and industry. It was the first, and is arguably still the greatest, of the industrialized art forms which have dominated the cultural life of the twentieth centurya (Smith, 1996, p. xix). This shows that cinema has penetrated people as lives and became a part of them that is not easy to overcome.

In its beginnings, cinema was found only in a handful of countries such as France, USA, Germany, and Britain, and then it knew its way outside,

Chapter 4 Case study

In the last chapter, the portrayal of Arab women in the Arab media has been put under full light, examining both the written and the visual format.

In this chapter, however, the focus will be on examples from each so as to prove what has been stated above but the focus will be limited to the Moroccan context.

Concerning the written media, the focus will be on advertisements since they are found in the written media, but when it comes to the visual one, the example would be a movie to be analyzed since movies are also found in the internet as they are available on television.

The focus here will be on the Moroccan context.

4.1 Advertisements

One of the functions of advertisements is to unveil the outside world for the women who see in them how other women live their lives in an idealized world, even though the scenes depicted are not necessarily the representatives of women as reality.

Through these images advertisers not only

3.2.2 The internet

Before the advent of the Internet, the communication networks were very much limited, there were only phone lines or sent letters, but thanks to this medium of communication, things have become easier. All what people need is to sit in front of a computer and get connected which will allow them to meet people all around the world, no matter how much they are far away. The Internet is argued to be dangerous; but in fact it has its positive and negative sides just like any other aspect of life.

The Internet use has become popular in the beginning of 1990as, since then; it has had a great impact on both people and cultures. According to Media Virus (1996) the Internet is growing bigger and bigger and it has gone beyond our ability. Rushkoff writes; aThe computer net is an ever- expending new territory and it is growing faster than our ability to document or civilize ita (Rushkoff, 1996, p.235). This means that the Internet is becoming nowadays

3.2 Arab women in visual media

3.2.1 Television

Television is one of media types that is worth studying as a result of its style, scope and insights. It is a part of our everyday life, a very important tool that is growing in importance every single day. Television is considered as a danger by Pierre Bourdieu in his book On Television when he says: al think that television poses a serious danger for all the various areas of cultural production- for art, for literature, for science, for philosophy, and for lawa (Bourdieu, 1998 p.ll). This means that television may be a bless and a curse in the same time; it helps the same way it harms individuals.

Television has come out when it was needed, when it was a necessity in a time social as well as political changes have taken place. It was then a means through which news are transmitted to people. Raymond Williams writes in his Television: Technology and Cultural reform concerning the advent of television aTelevision emerged,

3.1.2 Magazines

The secret of the popularity of womenas magazines lay in their coverage of news as well as entertainment. They are normally directed to women since they call themselves womenas magazines; thus they define their readers as women. In most cases these magazines concentrate on issues such as femininity, beauty, family and children. This focus on femininity has made womenas magazines different from other magazines and thus unique in their nature.

Different scholars in the field of media have wondered what the appropriate way of studying women magazines is. Is it to consider them as texts? aMany have focused on womenas magazines at a textual levela (Yeats, 2003, p.6), or in relation to the readers? aOthers have argued that womenas magazines can be understood by exploring the ways in which their readers consume thema (Yeats, 2003, p.6), or in relation to their production which is the minority aA few studies have maintained that womenas magazines are best approached through an analysis of their conditions of production (Yeats, 2003, p.6). All

3.1 Arab women in written media

When talking about media, there are things to be considered like for example which kind of media is referred to. Katz has explained it in her book The Media Handbook saying that aThe world of media can be very broadly divided into two types- print and electronic. Print media include magazines and newspapers, whereas electronic media cover radio, television and the interneta (Katz, 2008, p.2). In other words, media can be categorized into two categories; the written media which has to do with published text that she referred to as aprint mediaa and the visual one that has to do with visual images including television and the internet referred to by Katz as aelectronic mediaa.

The relation of Arab women to the Arab media has been under study for many years as a result of mostly its negativity and its power to affect them in real life. Although the situation is positively changing, the movement in this direction is still quite slow. Media can be

Chapter 3 Women and media

For many years, the images of women in the media have been a burning issue and a tropical subject to study. Women have been given a distorted presentation in both advertisements and television serials; either they are shown as a sexual object or as ignorant mothers and housewives. Such description enforces the stereotypical views men have about women and thus keep them always in a subjugated position. According to the report of the Committee of Equal Opportunities for Women and Men, women image in media is negative indeed since they are rarely shown in appropriate position. The report states aThey are shown at work in only 8

One of the controversial issues that are nowadays debated especially among feminists and womenas right advocates is the portrayal of women in media, how they are represented and what to be done about such a negative representation. The relation between media and women has never been good, generally speaking, as it is going to be shown later, and this

2.3 Critical analysis of the media

The critical analysis of the media approach is concerned with the way the mass media and the social structure go hand in hand. It puts emphasis on how the messages transmitted by the media are being received and how they were produced. The prior aim is not to understand these produced images or to locate the effect of the media but rather to look at the mass media through certain critical ideologies. Critical studies see the mass media as part of the processes of control and as reproducing the present situation through the constant reassertion of dominant ideology.

The critical analysis focus on the media content to look to what extend there is bias in what is being presented. It can be used to indicate the presence of a racist massages, for example in some TV programs the image of black people is represented negatively as trouble makers. Harvard and MacDonald (1993) explained the situation saying aBlack people are usually treated as a problem by

2.2 Interpreting the media

If analyzing the images and the concepts one has in mind, he/ she would come quickly to the conclusion that they correspond to what he /she sees through the media. Most of them are acquired and shaped by the magazines we read or the movies or advertisements we watch. What is being transmitted then is much more complicated that needs to be interpreted in the right way for it is a discourse which contains specific cultural and social meanings. It is a discourse rather than mere images.

In this respect, interpreting mass media is an approach to question what the audience have understood and what lessons they have learned rather than emphasizing the effective side of it. Such interpretation allows the viewer to catch the real and the hidden meanings behind these images as not to be misled into other directions. These approaches rely on a direct observations and analysis to dig out the underlying meanings. It does help the viewer to have a critical mind that

Chapter 2

Media analysis

Media study involves a wide range of research techniques like for example social surveys, observations and most importantly the analysis of its content. As stated earlier, media is something we are all exposed to; we know it, and we make use of it that is exactly why it is worth studying. The idea has been brilliantly put by Karen Ross and Carolyn Byerely in their book Women and Media: International perspectives. They argue aWe live in a mediated world. Even remote geographic areas are infiltrated by advertising newspapers, magazines, radios, televisions, music, films, and other print and broadcast mediaa ( Ross Byerely, 2006, p.l). Media then has become a necessity.

The study of the media involves enormous perspectives and aims which is a good point since it gives researchers the opportunity to tackle such an issue from different angles and hopefully introduce different methodologies and mechanisms by which it can be understood and interpreted in different ways. Harvard and MacDonald defined mass media as follows:

When we