What colour is an Airbender? If this question is not at the top of your mind, it’s because you haven’t been following the controversy surrounding the casting of the film The Last Airbender, set to premiere in early July. The question of ethnicity in the film’s casting casts a valuable light on many of Hollywood’s decisions when it comes to race and gender – and the attitudes and assumptions that underlie them.

It's a question that most parents of young daughters face: "Has she hit the 'princess phase' yet?" Not all parents are upset by this, of course: many happily buy their girls princess costumes, toys and accessories ranging from shoes to purses, all in pink. Some, though, despair of the powerful gender stereotyping this delivers to young girls and each new piece of princess gear can be a source of conflict.

The source of much of this princess culture is Disney, of course, and this winter the studio is extending its reach by introducing its first African-American princess, Tiana, in the animated film The Princess and The Frog. Princesses are big business for Disney: since 2000, when the company began to tie together all the merchandising for any of its characters who might conceivably be called "princesses," the line has become one of the company's biggest earners. Disney's Andy Mooney, who spearheaded the creation of the princess line, told the New York Times  that he got the idea from seeing girls at Disney on Ice shows who were dressed in non-Disney princess costumes, but there's no doubt that in the years since the company has pushed the line into almost every imaginable aspect of a child's life, from beddings to Band-Aids to lip balm. Not surprisingly, the marketing of Princess Tiana began well in advance of the movie's December 11 premiere: more than 45,000 dolls based on the character had already been sold by mid-November, while actors portraying her were already performing in "Tiana's Showboat Jubilee" at Disneyland and Disney World. 

The creation of Princess Tiana would seem to be an attempt to expand into the one market as yet untouched by princesses: African-Amerian girls. The official list of Disney princesses includes, along with born princess Snow White and married-to-royalty Cinderella, two entirely non-royal characters, Mulan and Pocahontas, who are Chinese and Native respectively. The last two characters, though, rarely appear on merchandise -- less, perhaps, due to their ethnic origin than the fact that neither fits well with the "princess aesthetic": in their movies Pocahontas appears in tolerably realistic (if somewhat revealing) Native garb and Mulan actively rejects feminine attire in order to masquerade as a male soldier. Tiana, though, is carefully crafted to fit the princess mould, with an hourglass figure, many glamorous dresses, and even a tiara. Of course, she spends much of the movie in the shape of a frog, but that's not the image that will adorn lunchboxes everywhere. If the movie is at all successful, an entire new population of young girls will soon have caught princess fever.

Is this necessarily a bad thing, though? After all, princesses -- whether born to royalty at the beginning of a story or married into it by the end -- have been fairy-tale protagonists for hundreds of years; the characters of Cinderella and Snow White long predate their Disney incarnations. The appeal of princesses is not hard to see: the unearned wealth and privilege of being a princess makes it a close parallel to classic boys' fantasies of being demigods or orphans rocketed at birth from a distant planet. Where the male and female versions diverge is that where the boys imagine gaining powers and abilities from their special status, being a princess instead brings girls wealth, beauty and romance. It's not surprising, then, that many parents are concerned about just what gender roles their daughters are being trained to play.

Graphic by Jeff Brunner

One common feature of the many articles on this phenomenon is that young girls resist any criticism or alteration of their princesses. In the New York Times article cited above, the writer's daughter asks repeatedly if her mother likes her princess heroines; in her article in The Los Angeles Times  Rosa Brooks fails to convince her daughters that princesses are more likely to end up at a guillotine than a fairy-tale wedding; and Tracee Sioux, who writes a blog titled The Girl Revolution, describes her unsuccessful efforts to steer her daughter away from princesses. Nor can girls be easily swayed by stories that try to subvert the classic princess: "Frogs and snails and feminist tales: Preschool children and gender," a 1989 study by Bronwyn Davies, found that both boys and girls often rejected stories that tried to alter the traditional gender roles found in fairy tales.

Is it really gender roles that children are so attached to, though, or is it the fairy-tale narratives on which they are experts? A recent article by Karen Wohlwend, "Damsels in Discourse: Girls Consuming and Producing Identity Texts Through Disney Princess Play,"  finds that while children engaging in "media play" with princess characters feel a strong loyalty to the original narratives, they are not averse to changing things like the gender of secondary characters (turning Prince Charming into a princess, for instance) or making the protagonist more active, especially if that means giving themselves a larger and more entertaining role to play. (One of the girls in Wohlwend's study finds a way to involve a comatose Sleeping Beauty in a swordfight.)

The children in Wohlwend's study, though, are kindergarteners; though they might have been exposed to quite a lot of princess-related media by this age, they’re still in the early stages of forming gender identities. As girls get older, the worrying aspects of princess culture -- the passivity, consumerism, and so on -- may become more and more confining. As Lyn Mikel Brown, co-author of Packaging Girlhood  writes, the issue is not princess play but the sheer dominance of princess culture: “When one thing is so dominant, then it’s no longer a choice: it’s a mandate, cannibalizing all other forms of play. There’s the illusion of more choices out there for girls, but if you look around, you’ll see their choices are steadily narrowing.” Her co-author, Sharon Lamb, points out as well that the road travelled by princesses is a narrow one, leading to the hypersexualized roles now being sold to ‘tween and teen girls: "There’s a trap at the end of that rainbow, because the natural progression from pale, innocent pink is not to other colors. It’s to hot, sexy pink -- exactly the kind of sexualization parents are trying to avoid.”

How should parents deal with the arrival of the "princess phase"? One option is simply to say “no” -- something parents should never be afraid to do. But an outright ban may backfire by making all things princess even more desirable. What may be more effective is to make sure that girls (and boys) are also exposed to more positive female role models. There are many children's books with strong female characters; kids' movies with good female leads can be harder to find, but the anime produced by Studio Ghibli -- such as Kiki's Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro -- is a good place to start.

Most important is that parents engage with their children's media and be ready to discuss the images and events they see. Don't be confrontational, but ask questions: do you think you can really make an angry person nice like Belle does to the Beast? Is it worth it to give up your voice, and your family, for a boy the way Ariel does? If Mulan spends most of her movie dressed as a boy, why is she in girls' clothes on the merchandising? There may be no escaping the "princess phase," but teaching kids to view media critically can help make sure your princess doesn't grow up expecting a handsome prince -- or a fairy godmother -- to solve all her problems.

MNet Resources

Teachers can address the presence of gender stereotypes in fairy tales and other children's media through the less Once Upon a Time (for Grades 2 to 6).
 
Media Stereotyping: Media Portrayals of Girls and Women looks at the ways that mass media can stereotype girls and women; the effects this can have on girls' body image, self-esteem and views of gender roles; and provides tips for kids and parents on resisting stereotypes and working for change.

Marketing and Consumerism: Special Issues for Tweens and Teens  talks about how young girls and boys are sold rigid gender identities by consumer culture.

Some concerns have been raised about the portrayal of race in the movie The Princess and the Frog. To help kids deal with racial and ethnic stereotypes, consult Media Portrayals of Ethnic and Visible Minorities .

In the first part of this blog we looked at some of the challenges and barriers facing people with disabilities when it comes to the Internet and other new media. In this final part we turn to possible strategies for making the virtual world fully accessible to all.

Some advances are being made in making new media accessible, though it is largely being done by universities, non-profit organizations and hobbyists rather than the media industry. Mobile ASL (American Sign Language), for instance, is a project at the University of Washington to allow sign language conversations over cell phones. Because North American wireless networks still have a fairly limited bandwidth, special compression techniques are required to be able to carry the real time video needed for sign language. Because the hands and face communicate most of the meaning in ASL, the project lets cameras prioritize the recording of those areas to make the most efficient use of the bandwidth available.

Similarly, the American Federation for the Blind has begun the Cell Phone Accessibility Project  to make it easier for people with vision impairments to use cell phones. In the United States cell phone manufacturers are already required to make them accessible under section 255 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996; the Cell Phone Accessibility Project aims to survey which models of cell phone are not accessible and push for changes to their design. Special software, such as Talks and Mobilespeak, has also been developed to allow visually impaired people to send and receive text messages, but these are currently limited to only a few carrier networks. Unfortunately, this removes the privacy of text messages, which are a major part of their appeal, especially to teens; a few companies have begun to market products such as Samsung’s Touch Messenger phone that allow texting and other cell phone functions using Braille. These products are not yet widely available, however.

The Web Accessibility Initiative  is a project aimed at providing access to the Web to people with disabilities. It provides both Web page developers and designers of browsers such as Firefox and Internet Explorer with information on what issues people with disabilities face while online and techniques for making sites more accessible, such as their Quick Tips to Make Accessible Web Sites They’re also at the forefront of ensuring that new aspects of the Web, such as Web 2.0 and mobile phone browsers, are accessible from the start. Primarily, though, they’re best known for developing the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which aim to provide an international standard for bringing full accessibility to the Web. One Web site that has made particular efforts to be accessible is BBC News, which has created a special site called Accessible Newsreader that can be navigated with a single click and reads news stories through a computer-generated voice. 
 
Vischeck lets you test how an image or Web site would look to people with different forms of colour blindness. This way programmers and Web page designers can test to see if people with colour blindness will miss any important information. Not only that, but Vischeck includes a utility for “Daltonizing” images, altering them so that people with colour blindness will more fully perceive the contrast between colours.

When it comes to making video games accessible, there are three different approaches. The first is to adapt existing games, such as the modified version of Doom III titled Doom 3C. In this case all of the sounds in the game, such as dialogue with other characters, approaching footsteps and monster noises, have been captioned as they would be in a film or TV show. As well, Reid Kimball, the developer, added a “radar” function that shows players the direction sounds are coming from, allowing them to be used as game cues as they would be by hearing players. (More detailed information is available at the Accessibility Games Web site.)A more recent example is Eelke Folmer’s Blind Hero which will convert the video instructions in Guitar Hero and similar games to a buzzing signal in the different figures of a glove controller.

The second approach is to create games specifically to be played by people with different disabilities. For instance, there is a small market of audio games created for people with visual impairments; these roughly 300 games cover the gamut from adventure to action and even a driving game. These games rely heavily on distinctive sounds to communicate what’s going on, and use stereo speakers or headphones to help you situate things in the game, such as letting you line up a target before shooting. The Audio Games Web site features an archive of downloadable games such as Sonic Invaders, Pacman Talks and both Star Trek and Star Wars games.

For people with a physical disability, the control schemes of video games – which often involve using one or more joysticks, buttons, or a mouse and keyboard – present an insurmountable barrier to play. One Switch Games creates games that are designed to be played with limited motion. Like audio games they tend towards the retro, mimicking simple games such as Space Invaders and Frogger, but they have the production values of modern games. (The Accessible Newsreader site listed above includes links to a number of such games.) One Switch Games and similar organizations also develop alternate controllers for popular game systems such as the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, but in general game manufacturers are not friendly towards such efforts; Mark Felling, an engineer who founded Broadened Horizons to make new technology more accessible, has said that he has received no help from Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo in his efforts to create accessible controllers.

The third approach is to make games that are as accessible as possible while still appealing to mainstream audiences. There are few examples of games like this so far, but groups such as the Game Accessibility Project provide resources for developers that can help them make each game as accessible as possible to the widest number of people. For instance, captioning is a relatively easy way to make games accessible to people with hearing disabilities, and the option to slow the speed of a game can make it much more accessible to people with physical disabilities. A game studio that has taken up this challenge is Fire Hose Games which created the game AudiOdyssey to be played by sighted and vision-impaired gamers. (This slideshow sets out founder Eitan Glinert’s philosophy towards accessibility in games and his experiences developing AudiOdyssey.) AbleGamers is an example of a site that provides support for gamers with disabilities, with news about accessible gaming and reviews of commercial games based on their accessibility to people with different disabilities.
 
A wider world

It’s important to keep pushing for accessibility in all parts of our society, new media included. Not only do people with disabilities deserve to have access to these experiences, there are a number of ways in which new technologies can improve their lives. For instance the Jitterbug, a cell phone marketed at seniors, can be tremendously useful for people with physical disabilities because of its oversized buttons, large text and option for voice commands. As well, recent research has shown that video games – particularly casual, puzzle-based games such as Tetris – can help children with ADD and ADHD deal with their condition. CapAbility Games, a project at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is developing computer games designed to teach people who have suffered brain injuries and have a physical disability ways to increase their independence, such as a virtual world that simulates grocery shopping while in a wheelchair. 

With their ability to simulate reality, games can help us make our world more accessible in another way, too: Handigo, a game designed by Handicap International and Ubisoft, shows players what it is like to have different kinds of disabilities; two mini-games show what it is like to navigate the world with impaired vision or in a wheelchair. While these games are somewhat simple, they may just be the beginning of a new era in accessibility awareness. This video, which gives a sense of what it’s like to be schizophrenic, is a bold step in using the simulation tools of new media to further the full integration of persons with disabilities into society. Imagine how much easier it would be for people with disabilities if their teachers, employers, peers and families had some experience of what it’s like to have limited vision or hearing, to have mobility limitations, to be dyslexic or even autistic? Full accessibility is a challenge for us all, and perhaps in time games can be a help and not a hindrance in that challenge.

Note: This is the first part of a two-part blog. The second part can be read here.

It’s ironic that as computers and other communications technology have become more accessible to the general public over the last thirty years, they have actually become less accessible to a segment of the population, one to whom access is everything: people with disabilities. More ironic still is that the history of communications technology is intimately tied to the drive to integrate people with disabilities more fully into society. From Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the telephone as a result of his research into hearing loss, to Vinton Cerf, who was hard of hearing and developed the TCP/IP protocol that underlies the Internet to help him communicate better with other engineers, addressing disability has been essential to the development of communications technology. Today, though, many new media and communications technology are produced with little or no thought to accessibility.

No audio: cell phones and media players

Let’s begin with that staple of teenage communication, the cell phone. While landlines have long had accessibility tools for people with hearing impairments, such as the Telecommunications Device for the Deaf or TDD (TTY in Canada), many cell phones are not compatible with these devices. (Voice Over Internet Protocol services have a similar problem.) At the same time, text messages – which are actually a more popular use for cell phones than voice calls among teens  – can neither be sent nor read by people with impaired vision. Those who have any degree of motion-related disability in their hands, from arthritis to cerebral palsy, will find texting or even dialling the tiny buttons found on most cell phones impossible.

MP3 problems such as the iPod raise similar concerns. While it’s obviously not possible to adapt them to the fully deaf, many hearing-impaired people have better hearing in some registers than others. Most MP3 players, though, can only adjust the volume and not bass, treble or even balance between speakers, excluding many potential users with partial hearing. For those with impaired vision, meanwhile, these devices can be nearly impossible to use, with menus of small, non-adjustable text to navigate, most often using buttons that are nearly indistinguishable by touch. The iPod, with its scroll wheel, is particularly inaccessible when it comes to those with motion-related disabilities in their hands.

The virtual staircase: personal computers and the Internet

For many people with disabilities personal computers and the Internet have been a boon, as we’ll see below, offering opportunities to work and socialize in a context where ability is almost irrelevant. As the old command-line operating systems have given way to the graphical user interface of the Macintosh and Windows, and the text-based world of Usenet and BBSes have evolved into the graphics-based World Wide Web, for people with vision impairments and some motion-related disabilities they have actually become less accessible: a recent study of 1,000 Web sites found that 81% failed to reach a minimum standard of accessibility under the guidelines of the World Wide Web Consortium’s Content Accessibility program. None of the sites surveyed reached the highest level of accessibility, and only eight reached the second-highest.

Peter Dworkin, commenting on David Pogue’s blog on the New York Times Web site, noted that computer programming was once a viable career for blind people; now “the whole concept of a graphical user interface (GUI) using a mouse to make gestures and icons to represent files presents an untenable solution for the blind by its very nature.” Similarly, for many people with motion impairments using a keyboard to type commands, though sometimes laborious, was easier than making the very specific movements necessary to control a mouse.

Screen reading software does exist for people with vision impairments, but it has many limitations. To begin with, in most programs and Web pages information is organized visually, so that a sighted person can tell immediately what is important and what is not; a screen reader has no way of doing so and must read every piece of text from the top of the screen to the bottom. As well, graphics are read simply as “graphic” unless programmers and designers have taken the time to add descriptive tags, and buttons are similarly often just labelled “button.”

Although the Web presents fewer barriers for people with hearing impairments, some do exist. The most significant is the general lack of captioning on online games and especially video; neither Hulu nor Netflix have standards for captioning or require content to be captioned (this is especially galling in cases like Hulu, where the same content would be captioned if viewed on TV.) However, this may be changing: YouTube, the Internet's top video site, began captioning its videos in November of this year, using speech-to-text technology to automatically generate the subtitles.

Left on the sidelines: video games

Video games have become one of the most popular forms of recreation for both kids and adults, but they remain largely inaccessible to people with disabilities. The word video may suggest that it’s unlikely that visually impaired people will be able to play them, but this isn’t necessarily the case: Brice Mellen, a teenager who was blind from birth, became widely known for his skills in fighting games such as Mortal Kombat and Soulcalibur. Mellen relied heavily on audio cues to understand what was going on in the game, but not all games feature such cues, and few games are designed with any thought to how a person with a visual impairment might experience it.

For people with hearing impairments, the situation is reversed: many games use audio to communicate key information – dialogue with game characters, hints of what is going on nearby, or even instructions on how to complete game tasks. Unlike movies or television, not many games include closed captioning – Zork: Grand Inquisitor (1997) and Half-Life 2 (2004) are two of the very few examples.

Even a sensory disability that may have less of an impact in daily life, such as colour blindness, can significantly affect how someone experiences a video game. Colour is often very important in distinguishing things such as which side a character is on, whether a door can be opened or not, or even whether or not a particular item will cause instant death.

One reason that little attention has been paid to making video games accessible may be that they are perceived as being entertainment of little value. Recent research, however – most notably the Digital Youth Research Project – has shown that playing video games is an important part of kids’ lives, providing a common topic of conversation. Children and teens with disabilities, if unable to play video games, are left out of this part of youth culture. Moreover, people with disabilities report a variety of positive effects of playing video games such as stress relief, improved concentration and hand-eye co-ordination, learning of important skills and a sense of achievement. Some experts, such as psychiatrist Dr. Carl Arinoldo, suggest that video games may have greater positive effects for people with disabilities who suffer from depression because “with some forms of depression, a person may be very focused on something that clearly amounts to a misperception of reality. So the chance to distance themselves from the perceived negative situation and relax may allow them to think more clearly and consider the situation later in a more realistic manner.” It’s certainly clear that people with disabilities are keen to play those games that are accessible: a recent study shows that one in five players of “casual” games (games which require less time commitment, are generally played online, and usually are free or can be played for a nominal cost) has a disability of some sort. (For comparison, eighteen per cent of the population of the U.S., and 14% of Canadians, have a disability according to census data.)

In our next blog we'll turn to solutions and look at some of the things that are being done to help people with disabilities use and access new media.

On November 5, MNet Media Education Specialist Matthew Johnson participated in the Association of Canadian Studies' conference Knowing Ourselves: The Challenge of Teaching History of Canadian Official Minority Language Communities, speaking on the topic Media, Diversity and Our History. What follows is an expanded version of his remarks.

Is media education relevant to teaching history?

The connection between history and media education may not be an obvious one. Mass media are, after all, a modern phenomenon, and when media is discussed in most history courses it's almost always in the context of the meaning or significance of particular media products. But media studies aren't just about media products: it’s about how different media shape how we think and how we see the world.

To begin with, students see the world through media. If they have any prior knowledge of history, it likely comes from movies or TV – and we have to be aware of the ways that affects how they see history. Not just the factual errors and misconceptions found in movies on historical subjects, though there are certainly plenty of those, but the assumptions and implications that come with a medium and genre. For instance, you'll never see a historical film that tries to communicate how people in the past thought or saw the world differently than we do. You couldn't possibly understand the Middle Ages, or Ancient Greece, without having some knowledge of their mindset -- but when those periods are portrayed in the mass media the characters are fundamentally modern people with funny clothes. This isn't just a consequence of bad filmmaking, it's a consequence of commercial filmmaking as a genre and a medium: to be successful a movie has to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, and having characters with motivations and thought processes that are difficult to understand is going to make that more difficult. (So it is that we wind up with freedom-loving, non-pedophilic Spartans in movies like 300.) This is where media education can help students ask the critical questions needed to challenge and contextualize historical depictions such as these.

We frequently use media products to teach history, and not just movies and TV shows. Another medium that we deal with in history, especially at the secondary level, is the textbook. These, too, we tend to take for granted, but as with other media, they reflect their medium and genre. If students are going to not just memorize facts but actually do history, they need to learn to read textbooks as a media product and not just a text.

Most importantly, in a very real way history is media study. As historians we look at media products -- the primary sources on which history is built -- and ask questions like Who wrote this? What purpose did it serve? In what context was it written? Is there any reason to believe it's misleading or biased? What's missing from the story it tells? These are, in fact, all essential media studies questions. For most of history, the sources that have reached us are those that were written down, copied and preserved: each of these has a significance that may not be immediately obvious today. When literacy was rare, to make a written document had a significant cost; so, too, did copying a document before the invention of the printing press. These facts mean that a primary document isn't simply a neutral record: it embodies a power structure, an economic system and a point of view. It is not unusual for us to question the role of media -- such as radio, television and the Internet – in shaping our perceptions of modern history. The same scrutiny needs to be given to the primary documents from which we form our understanding of the past.

How can history teachers integrate media education into their classrooms?

Teachers do not have to be media experts to bring a media education approach to their practice. Media education is fundamentally about asking the right questions, not knowing the right answers, and we can draw those questions from five key media literacy concepts:
 
Media are constructions. Media products don't just come into existence: they are created by human beings. They have a purpose and are made with particular forms and techniques. Teachers can have their students consider the decisions that were made in creating a media product as well as the factors that influenced its production. Consider, for instance, the Lawrence Olivier version of Henry V: how did its purpose (to inspire the British public) affect its content? What were the effects of the circumstances of its production (it was made during the German attacks on England, at a time when there was fear of a full-scale invasion)? Compare the climactic Agincourt scene to the same scene in the Kenneth Branagh version. How does the same essential content communicate very different meanings in the two texts?

Audiences negotiate meaning. The meaning of a media product is not static: it is created in collaboration with the audience, and different audiences interpret media differently. This is why to fully understand the effects of stereotyping and absent voices we have to try to see things from the perspective of those affected. Take, for instance, the famous painting of the Death of Wolfe, which is often presented in textbooks as the moment when Canada was born -- in English-language textbooks, at least:

How would a francophone student interpret this image differently? Look at the Native character to Wolfe's left -- how would a Native student view this painting? How would an African-Canadian student feel about being portrayed as absent from the "birth of Canada"? Consider, too, that we are not the painting's original audience: we are different from those who first saw it in the 18th Century, those who canonized it in the 19th, or those who enshrined it in textbooks in the 20th Century.
 
Media have commercial implications. Few media products are created without some economic considerations. Most of the media products we use in classrooms are created to make money, and that affects how they are made. Even the most faithful historical movie has to follow the “Hollywood format”: consider how the very bleak, chaotic and realistic opening scene of Saving Private Ryan is followed by a much more standard action-adventure film that rewards audiences in a more comfortable and familiar way. As far back as Herodotus history has been written as entertainment, and this shapes our study of it.

Textbooks have commercial implications too: students should find out who at their school or school board makes the decision about which textbook to buy, and consider how that might have influenced what was left in and left out. James W. Loewen's excellent book Lies My Teacher Told Me examines just this question, and while the textbooks we use may not be as egregious as some of the examples he cites (such as a history of Mississippi that did not mention a single African-American), some of the reasons he identifies for why particular facts are included or left out of textbooks may be more familiar (for instance, U.S. history textbooks must devote space to Chester A. Arthur -- an entirely forgettable president -- if they hope to sell copies in Vermont, his home state.)

Even if they are not intended to make money media products cost money to create, copy and preserve, and that influences the content -- it's a big reason why the history of the rich and powerful comes to us from media products like documents, paintings and tapestries while we largely have to recreate the history of the lower classes from physical evidence.

Values and ideological messages underpin all media.  Even if media products are not created to promote a particular agenda -- as nearly all primary sources, and most textbooks, were -- the cultural values and assumptions of their creators are inevitably reflected in the text. This can be a difficult concept for students to grasp for the same reason that fish don't know they're in water; most often, the assumptions found in the media works we consume are the same assumptions we ourselves hold. It takes an intentional change of perspective in order to even recognize that we have these assumptions, never mind challenging them.

Consider, for instance, the cover of this Canadian history textbook for Grades 3-8. Not that it's precisely inaccurate (though I don't think any coastal Native peoples wore feather headdresses of this type), but by its selection of this image it glosses over the fact that most of the Native peoples that the early Canadian settlers dealt with, such as the Iroquois and the Huron, were settled, agricultural societies. Undoubtedly neither the author, illustrator nor publisher had any intention of demeaning or misrepresenting Natives; it is the fact that this familiar image went entirely unquestioned that shows how important it is to consider the assumptions and values that lie behind each media product. (This textbook was published in 2002, by the way.)

Each medium has a unique aesthetic form. The medium in which history is written or told influences its meaning. A history textbook will follow different codes and conventions than a movie, or a comic book. These conventions can have a significant effect on the meaning we take from a text. For example, consider this photo of the Charlottetown Conference:

The posed quality of 19th Century photos, as well as the lack of colour, contribute to a received meaning of the event as being sober and serious -- one that’s entirely at odds with the fact that everyone in this picture was hung over when it was taken.

Textbooks, too, have their own aesthetic form. Nearly all are locked into a strict chronological format; not an unnatural choice for history, but also not always the best way to discuss or explain complex processes and events. Textbooks have a number of genre conventions as well: James Loewen has pointed out that textbooks rely heavily on the passive voice -- "chaos seems always to be breaking out or about to break out" -- obscuring the genuine causes (and the debate that surrounds possible causes) of events.
 
MNet Resources

Teachers wanting to bring a media education approach to their history classrooms can get started with some of MNet's resources. To begin with, the presentation Media Education: Make It Happen,  available as both a booklet and a slideshow, covers the media education content of this blog in more detail. Several of the lessons in MNet's Lesson Library deal with these topics as well: for instance "Hurricane Katrina and the 'Two-Photo Controversy'" examines how in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, media coverage -- the first draft of history -- reflected the bias and assumptions of the mainstream media. The lesson "Suffragettes and Iron Ladies"  examines how both history and new media reflect bias in their coverage of female politicians. For a broader examination of these issues, teachers can consult our Media Issues section on Stereotyping. Finally, to help students understand the potentially touchy subjects of prejudice, bias and misinformation, teachers can use the educational game Allies and Aliens which addresses these issues through a science-fiction metaphor.

The last year has been an unusually busy one for watchers of gender representation in the news media, with not one but two high-profile women involved in the U.S. presidential race. The way in which these two politicians were covered provides a view of how gender in politics is portrayed in the media, and how this can help to explain just how unusual those two women are.

Let's begin with a composite of media portrayals of the typical politician. Whether a portrayal is positive or negative, some characteristics occur in nearly all such portrayals: politicians are driven, confident, well-organized, committed to their cause (or else corrupt and beholden to special interests -- but in that case still determined to achieve their purpose), and above all willing and able to achieve their goals through conflict. When these characteristics are embodied in a positive portrayal, the result is a character like The West Wing's President Bartlett: loyal to his principles, tough, clever and ruthless enough to get things done.

Now let's turn to a composite of the female characters found in media, particularly the media most consumed by young girls. How many female characters on Nickelodeon or Family Channel have two or more of these characteristics? If a character has any of the traits on that list, can they show them openly, or must they (like Hannah Montana) hide them from their peers? Are they the characters whom the viewer is meant to hate, like the inappropriately-confident Sharpay of High School Musical? In order to find sympathetic characters with any of these traits you need to go to animation, and even then to shows for the very young (Dora the Explorer) or for adults (The Simpsons).

The problem is not only with the portrayal of women but also that of politics. Stereotyping politics as an essentially masculine endeavour creates an "echo chamber" that more-or-less guarantees that it will be practiced in a stereotypically masculine way. The U.S. Founding Fathers saw politics ideally as a part-time profession, so that one would both serve the public and be a part of it, but today politics is seen as a commitment that makes it nearly impossible to have a family life. Despite the aspects of democracy that make consensus-building necessary for success -- whether it's our multi-party Parliament or the U.S. government's checks and balances -- the narrative of politics is almost always one of conflict and conquest. In short, the media's picture of politics is no more accurate than its portrayal of girls and women.

The treatment of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin in the recent U.S. presidential election is instructive. While each certainly received some legitimate criticism, many of the attacks on them had to do with gender: that they were insufficiently feminine as women, overly feminine as politicians, or both at once. Hillary Clinton received criticism for being too "cold" and "staged" -- long analyses were written of her forced-sounding laugh, for instance -- while at the same time having her candidacy trivialized by discussions of her wardrobe and fashion sense. Sarah Palin, meanwhile, was mocked for her past as a beauty pageant contestant (a memorable Saturday Night Live sketch suggested her contribution to the Republican campaign consisted of "fancy pageant walking") and simultaneously attacked for her perceived shortcomings as a mother (her daughter's unwed pregnancy, for instance.) Female politicians, in short, face a two-edged sword in the media, portrayed either as too feminine or not feminine enough.

There may be hope, however. As rough a ride as they received, Palin and particularly Clinton have made strides in forcing the media to take female politicians seriously, if in no other way simply by being serious candidates. In the less politicized role of Secretary of State, Clinton may -- like House majority leader Nancy Pelosi -- provide a model of a female politician whose two identities contain no apparent contradiction. Meanwhile, the media picture of politics itself may be changing, not due to a female politician but a male one: with his preference for consensus over conflict, his "team of rivals" leadership style, his emotional openness (as evidenced by his first, more personal memoir) and his active involvement in his family, Barack Obama may redefine our idea of just what a politician is.

Questions for classroom discussion

The activity below is taken from the MNet resource The Girl in the Mirror. Click here to view the entire lesson. An interactive version of this activity is also available here.

Portrait of a politician

Based on a class discussion of the nature of politics and political action, ask students who would be able to succeed at politics as you have defined it. What characteristics would s/he have? What strengths or qualities would s/he need to succeed? Write the heading “Portrait of a politician” over the third column on the board and list the students’ suggestions below it.  (Likely suggestions: a successful politician must be confident, forceful, willing to fight for what s/he believes in, good at tactics and strategy, persuasive, charismatic, well-organized, ruthless, a leader, inspiring, committed.)

Stereotypes in media products  

Ask students if they know what the word stereotype means. With the class’s participation, explain that it means an idea of what a person is like based on what group s/he belongs to, rather than his/her individual qualities. To make sure students get the idea, ask if they know of any stereotyped ideas adults have of young people.

Ask students where stereotypes come from, and make sure that in the following discussion the media are listed as a source. Ask students what media products girls and young women consume. The list will likely include the following:
 
• Disney products
• Family Channel, Nickelodeon and other tween-oriented shows
• Tween and teen movies
• Teen magazines
• “Grown-up” TV (make sure to get details on different kinds of shows – sitcoms, dramas, reality, etc)
• Music (again, get details – what genres, sources)

Divide the class into five groups (or more if the class suggested other media products you think are worth considering). Have each group consider one of the media products and develop a list of what stereotypes of girls and women that medium or media product communicates. (Provide the group doing teen magazines with the examples you brought to class.) Make sure students understand that they are not listing which qualities they believe girls and women possess, but which qualities these media products suggest they do.

Once the groups have made their lists, write the heading “Female stereotype” on the fourth quarter of the board and collect the groups’ findings under it. Ask students: how many stereotyped qualities came from more than one source? Do some sources give substantially different pictures of what girls and women are like, or do the different media generally agree?

Comparing stereotypes

Have the class look over column three (“Portrait of a politician”) and column four (“Female stereotype”). Are there any qualities or characteristics that are found in both columns? (Probably not.) Are there any qualities or characteristics found in one column that are the opposite of those found in the other? (Examples: ruthless/caring; well-organized/ditzy; willing to fight/wants to please.)

Based on this comparison, ask the class: if you believed in the picture of girls we get from the media, would you think girls would make good politicians? Ask the girls: if you believed in this stereotype, would you think you might make a good politician? Would you think you could get involved in political action?

The hottest media story in the past week has been the instantly infamous New Yorker cover portraying Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as terrorists. Though the Obama campaign has been measured in its response, media outlets – and particularly bloggers – have been vocal in their disapproval. Some have suggested that the cover crosses the line from satire into hate speech, while others accuse The New Yorker of giving ‘aid and comfort to the enemy’ by visually depicting the smears and misconceptions that have been aimed at the candidate.

As the adage puts it, sex sells, and even such venerable institutions as Newsweek have used it in such covers as June 1989’s “Hurrah for the Bra” (no picture, sorry). For editors, though, sex is a problematic way of creating controversy: too little and there’s no story, too much and your cover won’t be displayed. One solution has been to use images that are relatively tame in terms of exposure but controversial due to context. The classic example of this is Vanity Fair’s August 1991 cover featuring Demi Moore naked and pregnant. Despite the relative tameness of the cover image – it is less revealing than the average Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition cover – it led to widespread debate and, in some cases, outrage; in many places the magazine was covered or even pulled from shelves. The issue was not that Moore was naked but that she was pregnant: a sexualized “glamour shot” of a mother-to-be proved to be too much for some readers to bear.

Most magazine editors tread warily when dealing with religion, an inherently controversial topic. For those courting controversy, though, it is invaluable. One of the most infamous Time covers is the one at left, both for the message and the format. In an unusual move for Time  – which made its reputation presenting photojournalism – there is no image, only text. The text itself, red on a black background, is also unique. Most arresting, though, is the question it poses: Is God Dead? Writers like Richard Dawkins can still be provocative by raising similar questions today; in 1966 it was considered incendiary. Testament to the power of this cover is the fact that nobody remembers what the cover story was actually about: the Death of God movement, a loose group of theologians who were grappling in different ways with the apparent absence of God from the modern world. While the movement was quickly forgotten the cover was not, being widely referred to in such pop culture artefacts as the movie Rosemary’s Baby.

In the United States, of course, race is guaranteed to be the most controversial topic (as The New Yorker’s editor has no doubt learned). Race alone, though (except racial caricature), isn’t enough to cause a stir. But when it is combined with one of the other controversial issues, such as religion (as seen at left, in the April 1968 issue of Esquire titled “The Passion of Muhammad Ali,” where the boxer is portrayed as Saint Sebastian, riddled with arrows) or sex (as in the April 2008 cover of Vogue showing LeBron James clutching white model Gisele Bundchen in a King Kong-like pose,) race seems to act as an accelerant: what might be mildly controversial becomes very controversial.

 

  

 

 

 

 This may be where The New Yorker went wrong: underestimating just how much the messages about race, religion, patriotism and terrorism would add up to. There was no question they knew the cover would be controversial – as editor David Remnick told the Huffington Post, “What I think it does is hold up a mirror to the prejudice and dark imaginings about Barack Obama's – both Obamas' – past, and their politics.” They likely did not guess just how controversial it would be, expecting it to draw the same amount of attention as some of Barry Blitt’s earlier satirical covers (the magazine has put a gallery of covers on its Web page, which you can see here.) Unlike the other covers, though – such as the one above satirizing George W. Bush’s relationship with Vice President Cheney – the cover combines controversial topics: besides the picture of Osama Bin Laden it brings religion into the picture by depicting Obama in a costume associated with the Taliban, and the issue of race is underscored by Michelle Obama’s Black Panther costume and the fist-bump greeting the two share.

That fist-bump points to the other reason why the cover’s controversy may have exceeded expectations: it was based on a news hook that did not remain news for long enough. Unlike in the issue at left, where readers could be expected to remember both U.S. Senator Larry Craig’s arrest for “foot touching” in a men’s room and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York, the Obama cover was based on something that faded quickly: Fox News host E.D. Hill’s referring to the fist-bump gesture – properly called, according to word maven William Saffire, a “dap” – as a “terrorist fist jab.” If that story had remained in the news it might have been clearer that it was Fox News, and other media outlets of a similar political bent, that were the targets of the cover’s satire.

• Do you think the New Yorker cover went too far in courting controversy? Why or why not?
• Do you think most people who see the cover will recognize it as satire? Why or why not?
• How do you think that this controversy will affect The New Yorker’s sales? Why?
• Compare the Obama cover to the two other New Yorker covers pictured above. Do you think Obama has been treated any differently from the subjects of the other covers? Why or why not?
• How do you think this controversy will affect the Obama campaign? Why?
•  Why do you think covers involving pregnancy and motherhood are so much more controversial than those that simply involve sex?
•  There are few recent examples of magazine covers that use religion to cause controversy. Why do you think that is?
•  Why do you think race is the most controversial topic of the three? Do you think that would hold true for magazines published in Canada? Why or why not?

• What are some common characteristics associated with sitcom TV ad dads?
   
• Are these characteristics consistent with how dads are portrayed in other TV genres (e.g., dramas) or other types of media, such as music and movies?
   
• Why do you think these portrayals exist? Do you think this is an accurate depiction of “the dad of today”? If no, how would you portray fathers on television?
   
• Stereotypes are "fixed" or "set" beliefs about a group of people and that when we apply stereotypes, we assume that all members of a group are the same.  What impact would these stereotypes have on our understanding of a father’s role in the family?
   
• What other gender stereotypes do you think exist in movies and TV shows? List some of the stereotypes of people your age and gender. How do these stereotypes compare with people you know in real life?

• The more people complain, the more the CRTC is likely to act.
    
• With strong public pressure, the station will correct itself; otherwise it will face three options: loss of audience, loss of advertisers and sponsors, and potential loss of license.
   
• Avoid making your case into a "freedom of speech' or a "free press" case. Media agencies under public criticism often use the "free press" argument to defend their practices. They often try to depict your group as another special interest group trying to impose its views. This argument almost always works.
   
• Mobilize external support for your case. Turn to other professional and public interest groups to add legitimacy to your claims.
   
• Often the most biased programs are the open-line talk shows, in which the host allows callers to state their views. The conscientious host will try to cut off, or correct prejudicial callers immediately. Should she/he not, call the show's producer and the station manager immediately to protest. Avoid debating on the air. Chances are you will become defensive or irritated, which may present a negative impression of your case to the audience.
   
• If you are a group's representative invited to speak on a certain show, avoid those hosted by sensationalist personalities. These hosts often try to further distort the issue. Decline all invitations, and choose instead those stations with conscientious and professional hosts.

The following is a list of media education resources 
for teachers and parents on the topic of Halloween.

What Do Halloween Costumes Say? 
This lesson created by Teaching Tolerance addresses 
stereotyping in Halloween costumes marketed to 
students. 

Too Spicy Costumes Rile Parents 
This article from the Charlotte Observer looks at how 
costumes marketed to children and teens have become 
more risqué. The article includes tips to parents on how 
to handle this issue in the home. 

Ensuring a Happy Halloween 
This article from the Common Sense Media Web site 
offers guidelines on how to select Halloween movies 
for kids based on age level. This site also recommends 
the best Halloween movies for kids in their 
Top Picks – Movies section.