If you’ve seen Killing Us Softly 3 or Killing Us Softly 4, the two most recent installments of pioneering scholar and media literacy educator Jean Kilbourne‘s video series examining images of  women, sexism and sexuality in advertising, you’ve heard the copy of this famous ad for Dep styling products. The underlying message of this ridiculous ad is that-surprise-no matter what our breasts look like, they’re not right and in need of improvement.

We all know that ads exist for one sole purpose- to sell products by appealing to our emotions and socially constructed desires. In a culture that has an insatiable breast fetish, our breasts have consistently appeared at the top of the ever-growing list of unacceptable body parts and there’s always some product to fix our pesky problem areas or avoid them in the first place with “preventative maintenance.”

And here we’re offered Kush Support, the miraculous sleep support for big breasts. Because now we don’t have too merely worry about their size, shape and degree of perkiness but we can fret over the potential chest wrinkles big breasts create as a result of sleeping on our sides. And because of our increased insecurities and body anxieties, we’ll buy a cheesy plastic cylinder that actually looks like a cheap dildo and our problems will be solved!

I was first introduced to Kilbourne’s work in 2001 with the 3rd and most recent installment (at the time) of her legendary lecture on images of women in advertising, Killing Us Softly 3. Coupling wit and sass with an eye-opening examination of taken-for-granted themes in advertising, Kilbourne helped me develop a more critical and analytical eye. I was truly changed and continued to show that film every semester for the next 9 years.

After nearly a decade, I can recite every line from her film and am less surprised (but no less outraged by) by the disturbing, and often horrific images created by ad execs and other media makers. But the film is no less relevant or important and, sadly, the images she deconstructs have remained fairly unchanged. Every semester, my new crop of students continue to be shocked awake by her film, the blinder peeled away. Her words and the images she discusses continue to be important and meaningful despite the 4 decades that she has spent discussing this topic.  After all, not much has changed. This is why I am so happy that Kilbourne and the Media Education Foundation have released an updated version, Killing Us Softly 4.

For more on the themes and patterns mentioned in her series of films, read Kilbourne’s book Can’t But My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel.

Check out Jennifer Pozner‘s 2001 article and interview with Kilbourne, You’re soaking in it, an examination of “advertising’s increasing encroachment into every niche of mass media impact our culture in general, and women in particular.”

That’s right.

RapeLay, a video game that has gone viral since people, especially women’s rights groups, have reacted in outrage (and rightly so). Rapelay, a video game that, as CNN reports, makes Grand Theft Auto (the game that stirred up a firestorm of criticism upon its release in 2008) appear as harmless and “clean as Pac-man.”

Given the statistics on domestic violence, assault, and rape, it is difficult for me to conceptualize this video game as a “game.” Our media landscape is (and has been) populated with endless streams of images and messages glorifying, eroticizing and diminishing the serious nature of violence against women, an issue that some have called a hidden pandemic and others have labeled an epidemic of global proportions.

Viewing repetitive and stable images decreases our sensitivity to an issue, it normalizes the images and themes contained therein. Violence against women is an issue that we, as a culture, are already desensitized to on many levels. The systematic objectification and dismemberment of women (see Jean Kilbourne‘s film Killing Us Softly 3 and read her book, Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel) is rampant in and a staple fixture of our mediated culture, reinforcing images of aggression and violence against women as normative and unremarkable.

“Games” that continue to use images of gratuitous and unapologetic violence as a source of “entertainment” frighten me because the inevitable results are horrifying. We know that dating violence among young people is increasing. We also know that the level of mediation and amount of time young people are exposed to messages constructed by the mass media, including video game makers, is increasing (there are even treatment programs for young people addicted to video games). Taking these variables into consideration and recognizing the correlation between the level of mediation and one’s attitudes, expectations and behaviors creates a dismal picture for girls and women (and this isn’t even taking the construction of gender and the corresponding expectation of violent masculinity and submissive femininity as normative into consideration).

Given that, I think it is safe to say that rape, virtual or real, is never simply a game, at least not for the victims of that violence, virtual or real, and its social, physical and emotional consequences. In the end, we’re all negatively effected by a culture that makes violence against *anyone* a game.

NOTE: Since posting this, Rachel O and Justine have directed me to this article that reports that this game came out in 2006 and that the Western media discovered it in 2009. The article goes on to state that the makers of the game did not break any rules in Japan but decided to clean up their act after an emergency meeting was held by Japan’s Ethics Organization of Computer Software. The article claims that this game is outdated and CNN’s motives for reporting on this game are linked to another issue (see full article). Whether or not the game is outdated or out of print, the fact that this game was created, was (and possibly is being) played is disturbing, not to mention that this game was/is one of many in Japan (and in other countries) that continues to dismiss and glorify violence against women. Cleaning up potential game titles and renaming the “rape genre” doesn’t convince me that this game is not worth discussing. Unlike CNN”s article I don’t place blame and the creators of their video games. I am analyzing the issue of violent entertainment and the portrayal of women in video games and this video game is simply the platform. For an excellent critique of hypermasculine and hyperviolent video games, see Anita Sarkeesian’s remix “Too Many Dicks.”

For a disturbing commentary (rape is a sexual fantasy and should be OK? Isn’t it just as violent as the other violence she discusses?), see below (thanks, Krista):

We owe her immense gratitude for shifting the lens on advertising and making advertising a subject of inquiry to take seriously. I’ve been influenced, inspired and indebted to her since I saw Killing Us Softly 3: Advertising’s Image of Women in 2001. I mean, I’d been a feminist for nearly a decade at that point, studying the mass media for approximately 6 years and I knew advertisers weren’t exactly the most noble of folks. Advertisers have always been in existence to sell a product by any means necessary.

But to see  ad after ad, reinforcing the same images and themes over and over again was mind blowing. Her film was the final piece of the puzzle. I continued to examine and collect ads in the same way Kilbourne did at the beginning of her inquiry decades before.

Each semester my students collect and deconstruct ads. In my newly created class, Women and Popular Culture (my dream class if you will), Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency created a blog for the students and myself to share our observations, thoughts and create a collective resource base and solidify the community. It is in this incredible virtual space that my students posted 3 ads they chose to deconstruct. Kristin E. caught on to the intensity of these advertising messages after seeing one after the other posted, creating an eerie and pornified collage. She took it upon herself to take many of the images the class had posted and put them together. After all these years, to examine the ads in this way, is still shocking and disturbing.

Take a peek.

NOTE: Edited April 16, 2010 after several people emailed me about the spoof ad in the round-up. I’m glad some people are paying attention and are already familiar with ad spoofs and culture jamming. Can *you* spot the spoof ad? Do you know who created it? Answer below in the comments.

But, this one…Via Feministing.com, this one is one of the most revolting advertisements I have ever seen.

Geena Davis has been a long-standing advocate for the analysis of media images and gender socialization.  She founded the See Jane Project in 2004 and the Geena Davis Institute of Gender in Media (GDIGM).

In 2005, Geena Davis and her institute partnered with the esteemed media analyst, Dr. Stacy Smith at the Annenberg School of Communication at USC. Prompted by Davis’ informal observations regarding the portrayals of gender in media directed at children, GDIGM and the research team organized under the direction of Dr. Smith watched over 5oo hours of children’s programming that summer.

Research showed that in 101 top-grossing G-rated movies released between 1990 and 2005, three out of four characters were male. Girls accounted for only 17 percent of the film’s narrators and 17 percent of the characters in crowd scenes. Only seven of the 101 movies were nearly gender-balanced, with a ratio of less than 1.5 males per 1 female character. “Although many people would argue that things seem to be getting better, our data shows that this is not the case,” says the principal investigator, Stacy L. Smith, an associate professor at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication, where the research was carried out.

What was revealed was not only the disparity of images between male and female characters but the typical gender socialization that continues throughout adulthood.  As media analyst George Gerbner pointed out many years ago, it is not the introduction of one image or message that causes a change in one’s attitude of one’s self or the worl they inhabit that is worth noting.  It is the repetitive and continuous stream of images that consistently reinforce the same values and norms from our earliest years throughout the life course.  This concept is know as cultivation.  Cultivation refers to the stability of these prolific messages versus the change-oriented model.

When one considers the process of cultivation in a media saturated culture, it is the seemingly benign, obvious messages that we don’t consciously take note of that constructs our sense of reality.  In turn, this framework informs and shapes our expectations of who we and others should be and we consider these attitudes and behaviors as normative and natural.

Considering the work of Stacy Smith, Jackson Katz, Byron Hurt, Sut Jhally, Jean Kilbourne and many others that have actively studied gender and the media, it is not surprising that media directed at children hardly differs from media directed at adult men and women.  Cartoons aimed at girls and boys carry the same messages/plots/themes/characters that “chick flicks” and “dick flicks” reinforce in adulthood.

Girls/women are encouraged to focus on beauty and relationships with men,  After all, you must be beautiful to get a guy.  Boys/men are encouraged to be tough, adventurous and independent.  Considering the prolific and ubiquitous nature of the contemporary media, it is no surprise that young girls strive to be beautiful through more and more extreme measures.  They are repeatedly told early on that girls/women must be beautiful in order to be validated in order to be considered worthy of a relationship.  Boys/men are told repeatedly that real boys/men are tough and independent or they are considered weak and effeminate.

Essentialism, the notion that gendered behavior is inherent and “natural,” is not surprising considering a climate that cultivates attitudes, behaviors and expectations of girls/women and boys/men within a structured environment that provides a steady stream of images that constantly reinforce themselves.  The images become unremarkable or un-noteworthy.

In this mediated cultural climate, negative sanctions in the form of derogatory names and physical punishment is also unsurprising.  If gendered characteristics and their expected behaviors are sen as inevitable and natural, punishment for one’s transgression is seen as inevitable.  And, that’s where the danger resides.