White Weddings Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture, 2nd edition by Chrys Ingraham

Chapter 4: McBride Meets McDreamy: Television Weddings, the Internet, and Popular Film

Television Weddings, the Internet, and Popular Film This chapter assesses three cultural sites––wedding movies, television shows, and the internet––for evidence of the power relations organizing both allowed and disallowed meanings. Each of the examples studied makes use of the traditional white wedding theme with a white bride in a white wedding gown—or the “McBride” model. Also, in each instance the actors cast in the film, program, or video are white.

The Media and the Heterosexual Imaginary The visual media constitutes the most affective site in the wedding-industrial and ideological complexes. By providing compelling images, popular film, television, and the internet commodify weddings and create the market, the desire, and the demand for the white wedding. Essentially, the media both construct and reflect dominant belief systems.

The Media and the Heterosexual Imaginary To conduct an ideology critique of media representations of white weddings begins with identifying: The foundational assumptions upon which depictions are based: 1) First, by the string of associations that are used; 2) Second, by what is given primacy; 3) Third, by the meanings given to key concepts. The ways in which institutionalized heterosexuality is naturalized, e.g., through its organizing rituals.

The Media and the Heterosexual Imaginary To assess the construction of the heterosexual imaginary: Review the definition Examine how the site is connected to the institutionalization of heterosexuality What is concealed from view? What is being naturalized? What meaning systems are being used? What is taken for granted? What illusions and/or assumptions are operating? What contradictions are being concealed? What ideologies are organizing the depiction or representation of heterosexuality? The heterosexual imaginary is defined on p. 26: It is that way of thinking that relies on romantic and sacred notions of heterosexuality in order to create and maintain the illusion of well-being and oneness. This definition is derived from Althusser’s notion of ideology as “the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.”

The Media and the Heterosexual Imaginary One of the ways meaning-making processes work is by providing the viewer with stories and visuals that represent our class position, bind us to it, and manage the contradictions we see in the world around us. Films, television, and internet videos are well liked in part because the tales they present are intelligible to us. The comprehensibility they produce is a product of dominant ideologies.

The Media and the Heterosexual Imaginary One of the central objectives of the mass media is to provide the images necessary to reproduce the ruling order. The heterosexual imaginary makes the social order appear more manageable and comfortable. The media authorize particular social behaviors and beliefs and demonstrate where the margin of acceptability begins and ends and what the consequences of non-compliance are. The film industry legitimizes ruling interests and gains our compliance with practices that keep power in place.

The Media, Weddings, and the Heterosexual Imaginary Weddings in popular film and television contribute to the creation of many taken-for-granted beliefs, values, and assumptions about weddings. The wedding-ideological complex works to naturalize romance, weddings, marriage, and heterosexuality rather than present them as the result of meaning-making systems that organize what may or may not be the “natural” world.

The Media, Weddings, and the Heterosexual Imaginary The increased prevalence of weddings in popular film and television provides an important opportunity to examine and make visible what the culture “permits” us to believe about romance, weddings, marriage, and heterosexuality. Patterns coalesce in the telling of film or television wedding stories to produce a taken-for-granted social order that naturalizes practices that are anything but natural. The creation of social givens, such as weddings and heterosexuality, requires the use of a variety of meaning-making strategies that invite both affirmation and participation in the practices of the dominant class.

The Media, Weddings, and the Heterosexual Imaginary In the popular films and television shows covered in this chapter, four ideological themes dominate: 1) romantic love and heterogender; 2) marriage and heterosexual supremacy; 3) social difference and hierarchies; 4) class and accumulation. Note: These ideologies rely upon one another and frequently intersect .

Conclusions White weddings operate as a standardizing practice for late-twentieth and twenty-first-century capitalist patriarchy. The images used in the media examples in this chapter: Convey the illusion that the institution of heterosexuality is stable, made up of promises and dreams fulfilled and invulnerable to crisis or disruption;

Conclusions, cont’d: Are both the product of resistance to the realities of contemporary heterosexuality and the construction of propertied interests that depend upon the dominant depiction of the white wedding. Teach us that what counts as “marriage” is compliance with tradition, patriarchy, and the white, middle class heterogendered social order.

Conclusions, cont’d: Render it unimaginable to have feelings of love and a desire for commitment without investing in marriage and the expensive white wedding; Imply that gay people must be erased in order for heterosexuality to maintain its dominance; Reproduce the notion that weddings and marriage are for white people.