Page 108 - Culture Media Language Working Papers in Cultural Studies

HOUSEWIVES AND THE MASS MEDIA 97

The disc jockey, as well as providing relief from isolation, links the isolated
individual woman with the knowledge that there are others in the same position. 3
Similarly, this can be seen as a functional effect of ‘phone-in’ programmes. One
of the women says: ‘I like listening to the people that phone in. I like the
conversations …. I suppose it’s ‘cos I’m on me own.’ These programmes not
only provide contact with the ‘outside’ world; they also reinforce the privatized
isolation by reaffirming the consensual position—there are thousands of other
women in the same situation, in a sort of ‘collective isolation’.
Radio can be seen, then, as providing women with a musical reminder of their
4
leisure activities before they married. It also, as they say, keeps them up to date
with new records. Since they do not have any spare money to buy records, this is
an important way in which they can listen to music. Since listening to music and
dancing are the leisure activities which they would most like to pursue, radio is
also a substitute for the real world of music and discos which they have lost.
Also, it provides a crucial relief from their isolation. The chatter of the disc
jockey may appear inane and trivial, but the popularity of radio, both in national
and local terms and in the responses of the women in this study, would appear to
suggest that it fulfils certain functions in providing music to keep them ‘happy
and on the move’. Radio creates its own audience through its constant reference
to forthcoming programmes and items within programmes. As the jingle at the
beginning of this section suggests, the women in this study do appear to regard
Radio 1 as a friend, and they certainly view the disc jockeys as important means
of negotiating or managing the tensions caused by the isolation in their lives.

Television—‘two worlds’
Linda No, I never watch the news, never!
The ideology of a masculine and a feminine world of activities and interests and
the separation of those gender-specific interests is never more explicitly
expressed than in the women’s reactions and responses to television programmes.
Here both class-and gender-specific differences are of vital importance, in terms
of both which programmes the women choose to watch or reject and their
definition and selection of what are appropriately masculine and feminine
programmes and topics. Also, they select television programmes much more
consciously than radio programmes. This must partly be a consequence of the
fact that they have more freedom during the evenings, and they can make active
choices because they are no longer subject to constant interruptions caused by
their responsibility for domestic labour and child care. This is in contrast to their
listening to the radio during the day, when radio programmes are selected
primarily as ‘easy listening’, a background while they do their housework or look
after the children.
There is an active choice of programmes which are understood to constitute
the ‘woman’s world’, coupled with a complete rejection of programmes which