Beauty and the Beast: Gendered and Raced Discourse in the News
| Published date | 01 December 2005 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663905057593 |
| Date | 01 December 2005 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST:
GENDERED AND RACED
DISCOURSE IN THE NEWS
PAULA WILCOX
University of Brighton, UK
ABSTRACT
This article explores the implications of the extent to which the mythic intrudes on
the everyday in newspaper reporting, taking as a case study the drive-by shooting of
two young, black women in Birmingham in 2003. An analysis of news headlines and
texts demonstrates the use of mythical language and imagery in this case (as in other
high-profile cases) as compared with the usual reporting of homicides in the press.
Notions of innocence and guilt are explored through the construction of gendered
and raced bodies in the case study. The article finds that this media discourse relies
for its impact on the simultaneous and mutually dependent construction of fabular
gendered and raced ideas; of exceptional innocence and purity (unusually) attached to
black femininity (beauty) and of exceptional and volatile violence (usually) attached
to black masculinity (the beast). Moreover, the discourse is constructed such that guilt
for the gun crime extends beyond the individual perpetrators to the black community
as a whole. While media coverage reflects a realistic fear of gun crime, the article
concludes that media discourse in this case directs fear towards the black
community/male as the dangerous ‘other’, and that this is crucially underpinned by
polarized gendered discourse.
KEY WORDS
black femininity; black masculinity; gendered discourse; innocence; guilt; violence
INTRODUCTION
THE PURPOSE of this article is to explore the extent to which the mythic
intrudes on the everyday in newspaper reporting of high-profile
violent crimes, focusing especially on the murder of two young, black
SOCIAL &LEGAL STUDIES Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi, www.sagepublications.com
0964 6639, Vol. 14(4), 515–532
DOI: 10.1177/0964663905057593
women on the streets of Aston in Birmingham on 3 January 2003. Encom-
passing elements of drugs, gangs and shootings, the murders embody an
extreme type of urban crime we are still more used to associating with crime
literature than with reality. Yet this crime occurred, two young women died
and much pain was felt, especially by those bereaved, but also by the local
and wider community. Drawing on feminist scholarship and critical legal
theory I want to explore the stories constructed about this crime in news-
papers, and their mythical dimensions, before turning at the end of the article
to consider the mythical in relation to the outside realities of such crimes.
I am particularly concerned with the normalizing of gendered and raced
discourse in news reporting within the moral framework of the myth. News-
paper discourse following the Birmingham shootings attaches extremes of
innocence to its victims and extremes of dangerousness to its perpetrators,
flagging up the possibility that this discourse may be ‘subsuming the
complexity and contingency of contemporary crime problems within a
fabular moral structure’ (Sparks, 1992: 161). At the same time the focus of
‘guilt’ appears to spread beyond the individuals concerned to the wider black
community, raising questions about how this fabular moral structure may be
connected with ‘othering’. I examine, therefore, the use of the dichotomy
‘innocence/guilt’ in the cultural context of deep divisions of gender, ‘race’
and class. By gender, ‘race’ and class I refer to the socially constructed values
attached to these concepts in historically specific periods, not to any assump-
tion of biologically based categories.
NEWSPAPER REPRESENTATION OF VIOLENT CRIME
Representation of crime in the press highlights interpersonal violence in
public space, focusing most often on victims rather than perpetrators (Reiner
et al., 2003: 24). In relation to the Birmingham shootings there was intense
press coverage of this incident over the period of a week, with follow-up
reports at longer intervals thereafter; most homicide cases fail to get reported
at all nationally. So this is an exceptional case and there are a number of
reasons why these murders gained such intense, high-profile news coverage.
First, this was a gun crime appealing to classic news values (Chibnall, 1977)
with alleged links to drug gangs. Second, the timing of the shootings, just
after New Year, when traditionally there is a dearth of news, meant it was
more likely to be covered. Third, four young women were doing what thou-
sands of other revellers were doing all over Britain – celebrating the New
Year. Fourth, the perpetrators were identified as black, and while crime
stories usually give little or no information about perpetrators, an increasing
proportion of perpetrators are reported as being from ethnic minorities, up
from 1 per cent in the period 1945–64 to 6 per cent from 1981–91 (Reiner et
al., 2003). From observation of news coverage of similar crimes, perpetrators
are rarely overtly identified as white. Finally, the high-profile coverage is
perhaps especially due to the fact that most victims of homicide in public are
516 SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 14(4)
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