Gendered Editing and Camerawork Techniques in Advertisements for Children’s Toys on British Television

A great many studies have explored the depiction of the sexes and of various gender roles on television; Barrie Gunter (1986) offers a useful review whilst Kevin Durkin (1985) has reviewed such research in relation to children. Gender-related research has also included many studies of the non-programme genre of the television advertisement (e.g. Courtney and Whipple 1983, Bretl and Cantor 1988, Craig 1992). A relatively small number of studies have focused on commercials targeted primarily at children (e.g. Doolittle and Pepper 1973, Winick et al. 1973, Verna 1975, Barcus 1977, Cattin and Jain 1979, Macklin and Kolbe 1984, Kolbe 1991, Young 1990, Smith 1994, Kolbe and Muehling 1995). Whilst the content of television ads has been widely studied in relation to gender issues (albeit largely in the North American context) there have been far less studies of the form of commercials, such as the angles of shots and the use of ‘cuts’. Yet at least to some extent ‘the medium is the message’: even more than in other televisual genres, the form or style of an advertisement is richly meaningful, and ad-makers routinely link this to gender connotations (Messaris 1997, xv). A number of researchers have noted the interpretative importance of television’s ‘formal features’ for children (e.g. Salomon 1981, Huston et al. 1981, Wright and Huston 1981, Calvert et al. 1982, Meyer 1983, Huston and Wright 1983, Wright and Huston 1983, Hodge and Tripp 1986, Fitch et al. 1993, Chandler 1997); a brief summary is offered by Condry (1989: 154-6). However, the function of such features of the medium as differentiated gender markers in children’s advertisements has not been extensively researched. In the late 1970s a group of American researchers noted significant differences in the editing and camerawork employed in commercials aimed at boys and those aimed at girls (Welch et al. 1979) but we are not aware of more recent or non-US studies of this issue. The purpose of the current study was to establish the existence and nature of any gendered differences in the formal features of commercials for toys which have been broadcast on television in the UK.

The pioneering study of this issue is ‘Subtle Sex-Role Cues in Children’s Commercials’ by Renate L. Welch, Aletha Huston-Stein, John C. Wright and Robert Plehal at the University of Kansas, Lawrence (see also Huston et al. 1984). This small-scale study has subsequently been widely cited. The researchers undertook content analysis of 20 toy commercials in each of three categories: male, female and ‘neutral’. They inferred the intended audiences not from the sex-typed nature of the products but from the sex of the children in the commercials, so that their ‘male’ ads featured only males, their ‘female’ ads only females, and their mixed ads approximately even numbers of both sexes. They found that markedly different production techniques were employed for the boys’ and girls’ advertisements studied. Voices in mixed audience and boys’ ads were largely male; female voices were largely limited to female commercials. The researchers suggested that ‘this pattern suggests that males are portrayed as the authorities in most content areas except that small domain reserved solely for females’ (207). The boys’ ads, along with those directed at a mixed audience, had higher cutting rates than ads directed at girls. The ads for boys had more ‘abrupt, instantaneous shifts in view’ (206). In contrast, those directed at girls had more fades and dissolves. Male ads featured more loud music and sound effects whilst ads for girls had soft background music. ‘At the very subtle level of visual and auditory images’, the authors note, the advertisements in their sample reflected ‘stereotypes of females as quiet, soft, gentle, and inactive’ (207).

Methodology

Around twenty years on from the American study by Welch and her colleagues, we chose to investigate a sample of children’s television commercials broadcast in the UK. To gather relevant data we used content analysis. This technique has produced useful findings regarding such issues as the differential frequency with which men and women appear in various roles in television genres. It has been used in a number of studies of television and of advertisements generally and also of television commercials aimed at children (e.g. Winick et al. 1973). The term ‘content’ analysis may be potentially misleading, since it may be applied (as in the current study) to the form as well as the manifest content of texts. Indeed, the use of content analysis may be particularly valuable in highlighting the use of various formal features of the medium, and in this study it was upon these that we focused.

Content analysis is not without its critics. For example, some researchers who employ only qualitative techniques reject content analysis, associating it with the ideology of objectivism. It is true that content analysis is sometimes accompanied by unwarranted declarations of ‘objectivity’. Selectivity and interpretation are unavoidable. However vast the study, a particular collection of texts must be initially selected as a sample, and the identification of relevant features is always subject to individual interpretation in accordance with the aims of a particular study. Even if the purpose of a study is clearly defined, no two researchers would be likely to generate the same initial categories in a collection of texts. As Winick et al. (1973: 47) note, in a content analysis based on advertisements containing a wide assortment of tangible and intangible elements, content item definitions cannot be refined to a point where all subjectivity is eliminated from the coding process. It is not necessary to subscribe to the ideology of objectivity in order to employ content analysis.

Perhaps the most penetrating criticism of the technique is when attempts are made to equate content and meaning, especially if one professes that meaning arises only through the processes of textual interpretation. Gillian Dyer (1982: 108) points out that a basic assumption of content analysis is that there is a relationship between the frequency with which certain items appear in an advertisement, the intentions of the producer or advertising agency and the audience response. However, viewers may not interpret the content of an advertisement in the ways which might have been intended by ad-makers, and some elements of content identified by analysts may not have been consciously built into the advertisement. Significance, in its richest sense, cannot be reduced to the frequency with which classifiable features appear, so looking beyond formal counts is always essential. Although the equation of content and meaning should be rejected, there can be no dispute that texts do have content and that the generation of meanings is not unconstrained by such content. As long as one avoids reductive assumptions about how such content will be interpreted by others, content analysis can provide useful data: for example, data about statistically significant differences between features in one set of texts compared with another; differences that may not be obvious from simple observation. Furthermore, the use of such a technique is not incompatible with associated qualitative studies of how individuals interpret the same texts. Since content analysis is a technique for a certain kind of textual analysis, the investigation of meaning (i.e. the sense that children make of advertisements) requires other techniques such as ethnographic interviews. Whilst the issue of sense-making by the intended viewers is not discussed in this paper, the study reported here forms part of a broader investigation by one of the authors (MG), who is currently researching the interpretation of television advertisements by children in relation to gender-related issues.

In order to provide a structure for the content analysis, we drew up a series of hypotheses based on themes which arose from a review of the literature. Those explored in this paper are as follows:

• More varied camerawork can be found in advertisements directed at boys than in those directed at girls.
• More shots are used within each advertisement aimed at boys and consequently the average duration of each shot is shorter.
• More fades and dissolves are used in advertisements aimed at girls.
• Auditory features, such as sound effects and music, are more obvious and more varied in advertisements aimed at boys.
• More male than female voice-overs are used overall, even in advertisements for girls.

Having reviewed existing findings and formulated a series of hypotheses, the next stage was to select a number of advertisements that could be classed as being intended specifically for children. The selected sample included only those advertisements for toys in the period leading up to the Christmas of 1996. Toys were selected because little attention has been paid to them in the past (cf. Winick et al. 1973), despite the fact that play is an integral part of childhood and the development of the self.

Recordings were made of the advertisements broadcast on the HTV Wales channel (the regional version of ITV) between 7.00 a.m. and 9.30 a.m. on a number of Saturdays from the beginning of November to the middle of December 1996. Saturday mornings were targeted both for reasons of convenience and because there tends to be a greater number of advertisements aimed at children at this time. Taking samples of toy advertisements in the period leading up to Christmas led to an accumulation of a large number of examples. Barcus (1977: 120) noted a threefold increase in toy advertisements between April and November, and a relative decrease in all other product types, emphasizing the strategic targeting of advertisements around particular times of the year. The Christmas period is characterized by a concentration of commercials promoting toys. We deliberately chose to focus on this period in the hope that it might offer the clearest examples of any tendency towards gendered production styles. It also enabled us to collect a large number of such advertisements in a short period of time.

There were two key coding tasks. One concerned the identification of the target audiences for each of the advertisements; the other concerned the classification of various formal features of the advertisement. After the advertisements for toys had been selected from the recordings, each ad was then classified (by MG) in terms of whether it seemed to be intended for boys, girls or a mixed audience. The initial audience classification for each advertisement involved considering both the nature of the actual product and the sex of the key characters shown on the screen. This involved making assumptions about the toy preferences of boys and girls. Where boys and girls were shown interacting both with one another and with the product in question, the advertisement was classed as being targeted at a mixed audience. To increase the validity of these gendered product classifications, ten other individuals (five male and five female) were recruited to code the advertisements according to how they perceived the target audiences. The coders were selected through non-probabilistic sampling of parents known to one of the authors (MG), and they ranged in age from 21 to 55 years. They were approached in their homes and shown a 35-minute edited video containing each of the 117 different advertisements in the sample. The coders were required to make verbal responses to the video concerning their judgements of the target audience for each advertisement, and their reasons.

In terms of the level of complete consensus, where all ten coders agreed without dispute about the intended audience for the advertisement, a total of 85 advertisements in this sample emerged as having clearly defined audience categories, resulting in an inter-coder reliability level of 72.6%. We elected to read the data in terms of the majority response to an advertisement, where six or more coders agreed on the intended target audience. In this instance, the audiences for 115 of the 117 advertisements in the sample were agreed, resulting in an inter-coder reliability level of 98.3%; a strong level of consensus. Different coders were thus in broad agreement about the audience categories to which particular ads were assigned.

Multiple coding goes some way towards avoiding what would otherwise be an interpretational vicious-circle, whereby advertisements which have been subjectively judged as being targeted primarily at males, females or a mixed audience are then examined for differences which may have contributed to the original judgements. However, this problem cannot be wholly eradicated since we can never be completely detached from the societal conventions that subconsciously influence our thinking. In terms of the various reasons given by the coders for their choice of target audience, a number of interesting issues about style and content emerged. The majority of the advertisements judged to be for girls showed toys that were pink, soft and cuddly, designed to be played with indoors, and marketed to encourage mother-baby role-play, household activities and the pursuit of female beauty. In stark contrast, advertisements judged to be for boys showed acts of aggression, dark colours, and an emphasis on competitive behaviour accompanied by noise and speed.

After establishing the apparent target sex for each product, the various ‘technical’ features of each advertisement were considered, focusing on those which had already been identified in published research. After we decided which features would be recorded, these were identified by working shot-by-shot through each advertisement in the sample. In this case, a shot was defined as being a filmed sequence uninterrupted by a transition (a cut or dissolve). The formal features considered in this paper are:

• camerawork features: shot sizes, angle of shots, camera movement, and focus; and
• editing features: transitions (cuts and dissolves), duration of shots, particular types of music, and voice-overs.

To analyse the statistical significance of noticeable differences observed in the raw counts of features, we used the Chi-Square test of independence.

Findings

In summarizing the classifications of the sample in terms of the target gender, it is useful to adopt the distinctions made by linguists and semioticians between ‘tokens’ and ‘types’. In the case of this sample, the count of tokens is a count of the total number of advertisements, regardless of whether any samples are repeated; a count of types, in this case, is a count of the number of different advertisements shown. For the purpose of the content analysis, we are only concerned with the types in this sample. Overall, the sample included a total of 117 different advertisements. After incorporating the results of the inter-coder reliability study, 43 advertisements were classed as being aimed at boys, 43 as being aimed at girls, and 31 designed for a mixed audience. A summary of the counts of tokens and types is provided in Table 1.

Having completed the Chi-Square tests and general observations regarding the various features contained in the advertisements in this sample, we considered the findings in relation to the original hypotheses.

Hypothesis One was that more varied camerawork can be found in advertisements directed at boys than in those directed at girls. In terms of the observed camera patterns, the boys’ ads differed markedly from both the girls’ ads and the mixed ads in the use of shot sizes: the boys’ ads used more long shots than both of the other types and slightly less mid-shots than the girls’ ads (though they used an identical percentage of close-ups to the girls’ ads, the mixed ads using more). It is sometimes reported that programmes targeted primarily at women tend to have more close-ups than other programmes, though we know of no relevant empirical evidence; Tania Modleski (1982) has argued that close-ups provide training in the ‘feminine’ skills of ‘reading people’ (cited in Fiske 1987, 183). Bearing such remarks in mind, we might have predicted that there would be more close-ups in the girls’ ads, but this is not so: in this sample, the mixed ads have more close-ups (and the smallest proportion of long shots). Nor does the phenomenon of ‘face-ism’ seem to apply here: this term was coined to describe an emphasis in visual media on the faces of men and the bodies of women (Archer et al. 1983). If we compare the depiction of males with that of females in each of the three shots sizes in all ads there is no statistically significant difference. Neither of these two reported patterns seemed to apply to our sample, so perhaps these are confined to televisual material targeted at adults.

The counts for the uses of slow motion, high speed and split screen were highest for the boys (though figures were too small for comparisons to be statistically testable). The boys’ and the girls’ ads differed in the use of overhead shots and blurred focus: the boys’ ads used both of these features more often. The girls’ ads differed from the mixed ads’ in their lesser use of the canted shot and in their more frequent use of peds up and down. Of the camerawork features in which there were statistically significant differences between boys’ ads and girls’ ads, peds were the only camerawork feature which girls’ ads used more than boys’ ads. It is difficult to know what to make of this difference.

Although the counts were too small for statistical testing, the ‘tilt up’ action was used exclusively in the girls’ ads: this seems to mimic the action of looking up from a subservient position towards someone or something in a superior position. ‘Tilt down’ shots occurred only in boys’ advertisements (and once in a mixed ad); this seems to mimic the action of looking down upon someone or something lowly from a position of superiority. One might perhaps argue that the use of tilts up and down echo stereotypical notions of what it means to be male or female. Erving Goffman’s Gender Advertisements (1979) explored the depictions of male and female figures in magazine advertisements. Probably the most relevant of his observations in the context of this paper is that ‘men tend to be located higher than women’ in these ads, symbolically reflecting the routine subordination of women to men in society (Goffman 1979, 43). A more recent empirical study of American magazines confirmed that females are far more likely to be depicted in a subordinate position (Masse and Rosenblum 1988, cited in Fowles 1996, 211; see also Fowles 1996, 227).

Blurred shots were primarily found in boys’ ads. Salomon (1981) argues that the camera provides a model of the mental process of focusing on specific parts of the stimulus. It may be that the technique of blurring is a symbolic representation of the way in which the eye focuses and the mind registers particular situations. It is a feature of ‘subjective’ camerawork and may perhaps be used to make boys feel as if they were there in the scene, seeing for themselves— actively involved rather than passively watching staged events (Messaris 1997, 32).

Each of the three types of ads - boys’ ads, girls’ ads and mixed ads - was fairly distinctive in their use of the basic shot angles (high, low and level). Overall, then we may note somewhat greater variety of shots in the boys’ ads than in the girls’ ads.

Hypothesis Two was that more shots are used in advertisements aimed at boys and consequently the average duration of each shot is shorter. Clearly, the current findings strongly support the existing research. In the ads directed at boys the average duration of each shot was shorter than in the advertisements for girls, and the statistical difference between the two types in this respect was considerable. Since the differences are in fractions of a second the difference is not likely to be immediately obvious to the casual observer. The highlighting of such differences illustrates one of the advantages of content analysis. The rapid pacing of ads for boys echoes the stereotype of masculinity as action-oriented.

Hypothesis Three was that there are more fades and dissolves in advertisements aimed at girls. The findings of the current study in this respect clearly support existing research in this field. This analysis demonstrated that the girls’ advertisements stereotypically reflect the consensus that girls are assumed by advertisers to prefer gradual and gentle transitions, while boys are assumed to favour more abrupt changes of scene. So-called ‘soft’ transitions (fades/dissolves) tend to be seen as ‘feminine’, while ‘harsh’ transitions tend to be viewed as ‘masculine’ (Welch et al. 1979). Even young viewers recognize such coding (Huston et al. 1984).

Hypothesis Four was that auditory features such as sounds effects and music are more obvious and more varied in advertisements aimed at boys. Although the raw counts showed that the boys’ advertisements more often employed sound effects than the ads aimed at girls the numbers were too small for statistical testing. The music in the boys’ advertisements was more strident, with more instances of rock music than any other group. Rock music was thus (stereotypically) gendered as a masculine feature. Slapstick music was almost exclusively a feature of the ads for a mixed audience. Such music may perhaps be seen as appealing to all children’s sense of the absurd and comical, irrespective of sex. Perhaps the advertising of gender-specific products is seen as a more serious business than the promotion of toys with universal appeal. None of the advertisements directed at girls used music from film or television programmes, whilst six of the boys’ ads did, suggesting that media parallels and cross-media merchandising may be more usually associated with products intended for boys. In general, the findings regarding these auditory features once more supported previous research in this field.

Hypothesis Five was that more male than female voice-overs are used overall, even in advertisements for girls. There were no female voice-overs whatsoever in the advertisements aimed at boys in this sample; there were also more male voice-overs in the advertisements for mixed audiences. This overall pattern is perhaps hardly surprising in the light of research which suggests that, whilst the percentage of female voice-overs increased in the 1970s and 1980s, as much as 80% of voice-overs in commercials (not just children’s ads) are male, ‘inflecting this gender with an aura of authority and ominiscience’ (Fowles 1996, 208-9, 211; see also Bretl and Cantor 1988). However, in stark juxtaposition to the use of male voice-overs in adult advertisements directed at women, in our sample of children’s commercials there were many more female than male voice-overs in the advertisements directed at girls. Gerran Thomas, a departmental colleague, made a most interesting point when he asked: ‘When exactly do girls become women in the world of advertising?’ At what point, indeed, do male voices take over from female voices in addressing women?

Our findings in the current study of advertisements shown on British television generally support the findings of Welch et al. (1979) from nearly twenty years before in the USA, although we had expected (or perhaps hoped) that there would have been a noticeable shift in recent years in line with the gradual movement away from traditional gender-related stereotypes in televisual content (Fowles 1996, 211).

So far we have confined ourselves to conventional content analysis. But content analysis is only one mode of textual analysis and we do not regard its use as incompatible with the use of others. We have found it analytically useful here to draw on a concept derived from an approach with which content analysis is rarely combined (though see Leiss et al. 1990 and Jhally 1990): we refer here to semiotics. From the perspective of semiotics, constructing an advertisement involves a multitude of stylistic choices between alternative ‘paradigms’ within the various technical ‘codes’ of the medium and the genre. For instance, within the televisual editing code such paradigms include using a cut or a dissolve, whilst within the code of camerawork they include using a long shot or a close-up. Where there are clearcut alternative paradigms then the form most commonly used in similar contexts is ‘unmarked’ whilst alternative forms are ‘marked’. The technical options are accorded different values. The unmarked option seems to be neutral, normal and ‘natural’ whilst the marked form is presented as unusual and ‘different’. A gendered category of ads (boys’ ads or girls’ ads) can be seen as unmarked when it is similar to the mixed ads. It is marked when its use of a particular formal feature differs from the mixed ads, especially if it also differs from the ads directed primarily at the other sex (unless there are distinctive differences between all three categories). So we may note that the girls’ ads were the marked category in relation to these features: canted shots, peds up and down, cuts and dissolves, shot duration, jingles and voices.

The existence of marked forms is not simply a structural feature of semiotic systems such as television commercials. As Kathryn Woodward notes, ‘it is through the marking out of… differences that social order is produced and maintained’ (Woodward 1997: 33). The unmarked form is ‘transparent’, drawing no attention to its invisibly privileged status: such forms reflect the naturalization of dominant cultural values. Alternative paradigms are typically gendered and are consistently weighted in favour of the male. As Trevor Millum puts it, ‘To be male is to be in some way normal, to be female is to be different, to depart from the norm, to be abnormal’ (Millum 1975, 71).

More often than not, formal features in the mixed ads in our sample were similar to those in the ads directed at boys. This applies to canted and overhead shots, peds up and down, blurring, cuts and dissolves, shot duration, the use of jingles and voices. The similarity of mixed ads to boys’ ads found in our study serves to normalise the male option and to present the female as ‘other’. Where the ads directed primarily at one sex differ markedly from those directed at a mixed audience these features may be taken as marking a distinctive trait which is being associated with that sex. Only in two special cases in our sample did the boys’ ads exhibit formal features which distinguished them from the mixed ads, making these forms the marked features. These particular features thus seem to be distinctively ‘male’: shot sizes and rock music, the latter being easier to account for than the former. Additionally, all three categories (boys’ ads, girls’ ads and mixed ads) displayed their own distinctive patterns in relation to the basic repertoire of angles of shots (low, high and level), whilst ‘slapstick’ music seemed to be a distinctive feature of mixed ads.

Why might these gendered differences in editing and camerawork exist? Addressing this question was not part of the current study, but a little speculation may be in order here. We have no easy answers. The advertising of certain products primarily to one sex rather than another is probably an inescapable part of the targeting of advertisements, and one might understand that this might sometimes tend to lead to the favouring of certain differentiated production techniques. The advertisers no doubt operate on the pragmatic assumption that girls will readily accept a ‘masculine’ mode of address whilst boys will systematically reject anything regarded as ‘feminine’. But it remains disturbing that the editing and camerawork features of commercials which are aimed at both boys and girls seem to be consistently more similar to those in ads aimed primarily at boys than to those aimed primarily at girls, highlighting girls as ‘other’. The differentiated use of formal techniques according to the sex of the primary audience may sometimes be a deliberate policy on the part of the producers of toy commercials rationalized on the basis that this seems appropriate for the product. It may even be justified on the grounds that it seems to succeed in attracting the intended audience. It may well be a largely unconscious habit, part of a tacit professional code of gendered techniques in the use of a medium acquired through repeated exposure to the same genre and to others within the same medium.

Outside the genre of commercials, the well-known stereotypical preferences of men for the action-adventure genre with its rapid cuts and loud audio features and of women for romantic drama with soft dissolves and quiet music is likely to be a major influence on those who make commercials. But commercials themselves may be one of the factors which lead to the shaping of such preferences. At the same time as children are learning to ‘read’ the semiotic codes of television they are learning that such codes are gender-differentiated. Young viewers use the formal features of the medium to determine whether they are designed for them or not (Wright and Huston 1983). Children as young as 6-years-old can distinguish ads targeted at males from those aimed at females by their distinctive formats and visual styles (Huston et al. 1984). Welch et al. commented that:

Without ever really thinking about it, a child of either sex can come to decode production features that have been stereotypically associated with masculine content as conveying the aura and expectation of male-appropriateness to any content with which these features are associated. The converse would hold for forms associated with manifestly feminine content. (Welsh et al. 1979, 208)

The messages about masculine and feminine behavior conveyed by the features mentioned here may be more influential than the blatant stereotypes presented in the content. Because these messages are subtle, they may generally go unrecognized, making them more difficult for adults to counter via training or modeling. They are more likely to be passively and unconsciously accepted by the child viewer, and may be more generalizable to other situations than the more obvious and specific content stereotypes. (Welsh et al. 1979, 208)

The authors reserve the right to publish online versions of this paper. The work described here was supported in part by a grant from the James Pantyfedwen Foundation, Aberystwyth for which the authors express their thanks.

References