sexuality, and ethnicity that are embedded into the stories in movies or television shows. The latter suggests, in McLuhan’s (1964) phrase, that “the medium is the message.” In this argument, the characteristics of a medium (print versus televisual, for instance) has an effect over and above the content of the material that is transmitted, and therefore the effects of the medium should be studied. In this argument, books are seen to affect us differently than television (Postman, 2010), and the Internet is said to affect us differently than earlier media (Couch, 1996; Carr, 2008). In this chapter, we will focus on the effect of content rather than modality, looking particularly at cultivation theory and framing effects.
Cultivation Theory
Gerbner (1998) puts forward the notion of cultivation, which describes “the independent contributions television viewing makes to viewer conceptions of social reality” (p. 180). He argues that television became the central storyteller of the twentieth century (displacing communities and religious authorities). The stories matter, he argues, because they shape people’s perceptions of the world. He writes, “What is most likely to cultivate stable and common conceptions of reality is, therefore, the overall pattern of programming to which total communities are regularly exposed over long periods of time” (p. 179). Studies that use cultivation theory tend to compare people who watch a lot of television to those who watch much less television, looking for differences between the two groups.
Gerbner and his colleagues tracked the content of American television drama from 1969, including the number of violent incidents depicted to support their contention that how violence is depicted is very important:
The cultivation perspective has shown that television violence illustrates and provides lessons about power. Violence shows who’s on top and who’s on the bottom, who gets hurt and who does the hurting.
(Signorielli, 2003: 42)
American television drama suggests that white women are more likely than other people to be victims of serious crime such as murder; however, in the real world of America, men are more likely to be murdered than women, and black men more likely than white men (Parrott and Parrott, 2015). Gerbner and his team argue that television viewing (and the consequent consumption of skewed information in television stories) affects viewers’ perceptions. For instance, Gerbner (1995) argues that heavy television viewing leads people to feel insecure in their social environment:
Our analysis based on large national probability sample surveys indicates that long‐term, regular exposure to television tends to make an independent contribution to the feeling of living in a mean and gloomy world. The “lessons” range from aggression to desensitization and to a sense of vulnerability and dependence. (p. 73)
Gerbner (1998) highlights a series of studies suggesting skewed perceptions among heavy television viewers, about crime rates, how trustworthy people are, understandings of work roles, assumptions about gender roles and gender expression, and so on. Interestingly, Morgan (1989) suggests that television encourages people to hold multiple unexamined opinions, by showing that the more television individuals watch, the greater the degree of contradictory opinions they express in surveys.
Framing
Framing refers to the ways that news media package their coverage. A frame provides a relatively coherent way to make sense of an issue (Gamson and Modigliani, 1989). How a news story is framed can significantly change people’s perception of it. Framing has also been used to understand the effects of the popular arts. Binder (1993), for instance, shows how opinion pieces in the mainstream press framed heavy metal and rap music, often suggesting that these genres were harmful to society.5 She writes, “Frames help receivers make sense of social occurrences because they organize events into recognizable patterns and help individuals understand what actions they can then take in light of these events” (pp. 754‐55).
Framing can be applied directly to cultural objects. Streib, Ayala, and Wixted (2017), for instance, look at the framing of social class in children’s movies. They studied top‐grossing movies that were rated G in the US (for General Audiences). They found that social class was presented inaccurately and in ways that legitimate inequality. Children’s movie characters were disproportionately from privileged classes, with only four percent of primary characters shown as poor (p. 6). The poor are also blamed if they stay poor. For instance, Remy, the leading rat in Ratatouille, was born poor (see Illustration 3.1). All rats are poor, according to the movie, but because he is different, Remy is able to pull himself out of the gutter. Remy believes that the poor have bad taste, for instance they eat garbage. In contrast, his own taste in edibles is superior. He is portrayed as hard working and ambitious, as well as highly moral (he does not like to steal food), and he succeeds in being recognized as a talented chef. In contrast, his father, brother, and the rest of the rats are portrayed as lazy and duplicitous, and therefore deserving of being poor.
Illustration 3.1 DVD Cover Sleeve for Ratatouille (2007). Remy, a poor rat whose good taste and hard work led to success.
(Author’s collection; photo by author.)
Streib et al. also found that “frames of class conditions” (p. 7) downplay challenges involved in being poor or working class. For instance, they point out that in Aladdin, the eponymous main character is homeless and needs to steal food, but the movie presents the challenges of being an orphan living on the streets as equivalent to the struggles of princess Jasmine, who suffers living in her castle because she is watched constantly. Aladdin is poor, but also virtuous, sharing food with people in even more need than himself. In none of the movies do working class characters worry about how they will pay for housing, food, or other necessities. Working class characters also perceive their jobs as fun. For instance, the servants in Beauty and the Beast work as they please, enjoying themselves, despite their grumpy employer. Working class characters (the servants in Beauty and the Beast, soldiers in Mulan, or the cars of Radiator Springs in Cars, for instance) are presented as loving and looking out for each other. They are willing to accept upper‐class characters into their fold, but only if the latter will relax a bit. In this way, Streib et al. argue that the “frame of a warm and communal working class suggests that class inequality is benign. Rather than a threat to the upper classes, the working class is portrayed as happy to care for the upper classes and treat the upper class’ interests as their own” (p. 10). Upper classes are presented in two ways, kind and caring (or relatedly, in need of proving compassion, which they then do), or as callous. Interestingly, while the framing of some characters as callous suggests that the class structure can sometimes cause harm, at the end of the movie, the callous characters have all been punished for their unjustified attitudes and they lose their positions. Again, the social division is presented as benign. Social mobility is shown as easy to achieve with the right attitude and a bit of hard work. In conclusion, Streib et al. write, the frames “may encourage viewers to think of the class system as open and fair while discouraging greater consciousness of the systematic ways that the class structure advantages some and limits mobility of others” (p. 17).
Montemurro and Chewning (2018) write, “Popular culture shapes our ideas about gender, sexualities, and aging by providing scripts or dominant narratives” (p. 463). They study how the American television comedy Hot in Cleveland frames sexual desirability of older women. Their research demonstrates how
