Yousman, Gender, Race, and Class in Media 6e
SAGE Publications, 2021
Test Bank
PART VI: GROWING UP WITH CONTEMPORARY MEDIA
Multiple Choice
1. The global status of television can be claimed because similar debates over
television’s role in ______ have emerged globally.
a. the entertainment market
b. political activism
c. advertising
d. the lives of children
2. While this is not a new argument in the discourse of cultural imperialism, American
programming for children has been strongly criticized around the world primarily for
being stereotypical of ______.
a. geopolitical relations
b. economics and finances
c. gender and race
d. women and feminists
3. In the last decade, Disney has made some significant changes in its representations
and storylines, but it remains at odds with ______ by globally distributing entertainment
narratives that simultaneously soften and normalize messages of social-class hierarchy
and antisocial hyper-individualism.
a. authoritarianism and cultural representation
b. societal progression and gender role representations
c. democracy and social responsibility
d. social responsibility and cultural authenticity
4. A consistent ______ organizes moral conflicts and elite responses to challenge in all
Disney features.
a. hierarchical aura
b. ethical paradigm
c. cultural contradiction
d. heteronormative structure
Yousman, Gender, Race, and Class in Media 6e
SAGE Publications, 2021
5. Many of these images are of celebrities—women who have fast become the role
models of today. With their wealth, designer clothes, expensive homes, and flashy
lifestyles, these women do seem enviable to girls and young women since they appear
to embody a type of power that demands ______.
a. publicity and fame
b. attention and visibility
c. money and empowerment
d. to be taken seriously
6. The American Psychological Association’s study on the sexualization of girls found
that there was ample evidence to conclude that sexualizing girls “has negative effects in
a variety of domains.” Some of these effects include ______.
a. less awareness of sexually transmitted diseases but an increase in mental health,
and higher self-confidence
b. more risky sexual activity and higher rates of depression, but with less social
inhibitions, they tended to have more active social lives
c. higher suicide and self-harm rates but engaged in risky sexual activities less often
d. more risky sexual behavior, higher rates of eating disorders, depression, and low self-
esteem
7. According to the article, under a critical public and media eye, ______ walk a fine line
in terms of their engagement in “sexualized” performances, perpetually risking harsh
condemnation and concomitant falls in popularity.
a. male artists
b. female artists
c. both male and female artists
d. gender nonconforming artists
8. Social media is the first ______ in history where girls and women participate at equal
or greater levels than boys and men as content producers, distributors, and consumers.
a. artistic site
b. digital community
c. mass media platform
Yousman, Gender, Race, and Class in Media 6e
SAGE Publications, 2021
d. public forum
9. Some Internet commentators have argued that ______ will inevitably adapt to social
media in a manner that reduces the threat of privacy invasion or even eliminates the
need for privacy altogether.
a. cultural norms
b. social norms
c. political norms
d. advertising
10. While some critics have depicted video games as benign and even emancipatory,
portraying them as opportunities for players to experiment with new virtual identities,
hone their hand-eye motor skills, engage in harmless pleasures, or even challenge
capitalism, other critics have been notably less sanguine, with mental health
professionals, for example, warning of ______.
a. how much time people spend playing video games
b. the highly addictive qualities of video games
c. the damage to one’s eyes that might occur when staring at a television screen
d. the effects video games might have on older players
11. Even when the content of video games is not overtly violent, the medium conveys
an educative “message” that instrumental manipulation of the world, self, and other is
both ______.
a. positive and helpful
b. unavoidable and influential
c. negative and detrimental
d. natural and desirable
12. ______ is the process by which one group reproduces and reinforces distinctions,
dominance, and subordination against those without power.
a. Othering
b. Exclusionism
c. Internment
Yousman, Gender, Race, and Class in Media 6e
SAGE Publications, 2021
d. Neoliberalism
13. Children’s television is such an important area to study and critique because it can
______.
a. contain political content that parents could find concerning
b. teach young viewers that princes and princesses exist
c. have a significant impact in developing values in young viewers and can contain
hidden messages
d. feature characters who eat junk food and thus discourage good eating habits in
young viewers
True/False
1. High hopes and great expectations have been expressed worldwide that television
would enrich children’s lives, stimulate their imagination and creativity, broaden their
education and knowledge, encourage multicultural tolerance, narrow social gaps, and
stimulate development and democratization processes.
2. The practice of individual consumption of entertainment commodities (which further
dampens consumerism) supports collective reflections and discussions that make it
difficult to reach democratic impulses and relations.
3. Media targeted to women create a social reality that is so overwhelmingly consistent
it is almost a closed system of messages. In this way, it is the sheer ubiquity of the
hypersexualized images that gives them power since they normalize and publicize a
coherent story about women, femininity, and sexuality. Because these messages are
everywhere, they take on an aura of such familiarity that we believe them to be our very
own personal and individual ways of thinking.
4. As the article states, ultimately, both sides of the slut/not slut binary exercise similar
effects of strategically separating Jessica’s own subjectivity from the slut, disgust
Yousman, Gender, Race, and Class in Media 6e
SAGE Publications, 2021
manages the separation from a “slutty” Lady Gaga in the interview with Joely, whereas
disavowal of the slut in her father’s presence allows Jessica to protect her position
within regulatory age-based requirements related to girls’ sexuality.
5. In this account, the self-manufacture of erotic images constitutes, in effect, a form of
unpaid sex work that conflates female bodily display with prostitution even in the context
of an intimate relationship.
6. The author argues that the best thing about video game culture is the way it burrows
down into the marrow of human consciousness to influence the moral.
7. The children’s program Thomas and Friends is about a group of talking,
anthropomorphic walruses who lecture children on the benefits of good manners and
proper citizenry.
Essay
1. Explain one of the ways in which media impacted you as a child.
2. How is gender identity contextualized? In what ways, positive and negative?
3. One of the biggest criticisms of Zack Snyder’s film 300 is the overt racialization of the
Persians (especially since the Persian King Xerxes I was portrayed by a Brazilian
actor). What is racialization and how does it impact our society?
4. Williams and Korn’s article discussed the Thomas and Friends movie Hero of the
Rails which engages in othering and problematic coding of those from different
ethnicities as strange. Imagine that you’ve been hired to re-write the basic premise of
the film. What would you change? How would you eliminate the othering that takes
place in the film to reflect a more inclusive attitude that children could understand?