Elisa Giomi e Sveva Magaraggia, Relazioni brutali. Genere e violenza nella cultura mediale, Il Mulino, 2017
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17424
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Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Elisa Giomi and Sveva Magaraggia, Brutal relationships. Gender and violence in media culture, Il Mulino, 2017
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Book Reviews
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Elisa Giomi and Sveva Magaraggia, Brutal relationships. Gender and violence in media culture, Il Mulino, 2017
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Book Review                                                                  209
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                                      ***

    Elisa Giomi and Sveva Magaraggia
Relazioni brutali. Genere e violenza nella cultura mediale [Brutal rela-
tionships. Gender and violence in media culture], Bologna, Il Mulino,
2017, pp. 240

Tiziana Piccioni University of Padova

    Identity and differences are seen as the effects of relationships, techno-
science – thus media – as the expression of male instances. This work is to
be read as a thoughtful investigation to which Science and Technology
Studies feminist scholars have much contributed. Giomi and Magaraggia
have focused their attention on media products starting from the classical
assumption that, in order to narrate the social world, media draw concep-
tual and linguistic tools from the same social world, and, by narrating it,
they also build it in a certain measure. Within this framework, the authors
relate gender violence, gender order, and media representations one to the
other, in order to support the idea that violence representations contribute
to the process of gender status, and that gender representations supply the
construction of violence. They show how this double process is achieved
between different media objects gathered around two discursive knots, i.e.
violence against women and – on the other hand – violence performed by
210                                                           Tecnoscienza – 9 (2)

women. The acknowledgement of these two elements gives back the idea
of violence as of a complex, relational, and collective phenomenon –
against the simplistic approach to media representations. The authors thus
detect a red thread inside media discourse by following the perspective by
which media take part in the articulation of phenomena and contribute
together to our perception of reality. Thus, they confirm the existence of a
representation policy that informs media production practices. They get to
this point, by using a framework related to the social constitution of the
feminine. More precisely, the authors look at the violence developed within
the family and the couple transversally to social classes and geographic ar-
eas through the magnifying glass of a tradition of studies that interprets
them, not as a residual phenomenon, but as a function suited to keep the
social arrangement as it is.
    Such perspective includes in some points issues that seem to anticipate
a certain degree of an interdisciplinary perspectives. For instance, they
mention researches that take into account the consequences on the fetus of
the stress of women that undergo violence during pregnancy. Reference is
also made to the need man has of a mirror-woman able to give back an
increased image of himself; they quote Virginia Woolf as well as Jessica
Benjamin, psychoanalyst, when she writes of male narcissism bound to fe-
male sight (p. 34 and following). However, what they actually focus on, in
the volume, are the aspects of violence linked to the topic of gender –
meant as the organized sphere of practices and relationships that defines
the forms of manliness and womanliness. Intimate violence is thus inter-
preted as a way to keep power, or as the consequence of feeling vulnerable,
where elements like body, sexuality, various aspects of dominion, and their
social representations are fundamental.
    Public space versus domestic dimension as the cradle of gender vio-
lence, romanticization of intimate violence, reduction of the perpetrator to
victim of the same violence (seen as a disease that afflicts the same relation-
ship of the couple), normalization of violence. These are findings that con-
firm what shown by literature, also the international one, and that in Italy
have been recently denounced by the report of the parliamentary commis-
sion on femicide (Senato della Repubblica 2018).
    The sources taken into consideration for the research have been the
Italian press, infotainment shows, television series, as well as movies and
pop music, by following the narrations of violence and about women in
order to draw data to be analyzed.
    Among the most interesting contributions the book provides the debate
with, is the consideration of those controversial aspects that enliven the
public sphere related to the need to shed light also upon abuses suffered
by men (Bandelli 2017). Part of such reflections on abuses suffered by men
shows how the violence of women on men is often interpreted in such a
way to mitigate its extent and therefore denying that the woman criminal
has acted autonomously, intentionally, and consciously – be it in a law case,
Book Review                                                               211
be it by public opinion where women are always justified as being affected
by mental diseases. The book thus shows how media create a specific in-
terpretative pattern: women’s violent acting is represented in strong con-
tradiction with the mainstream idea of femininity and they link it to tenden-
cies like being mean, sexually deviated, or mad. What ensues is a dimin-
ished female capacity of action.
     When women are instead narrated as being intentionally violent, the
exceptionality frame is activated, together with a contrastive comparison
with true women, who are violent because they do not know how, or they
are not able to, avoid it. The number of violent heroines has grown in fic-
tion with features previously typically associated to men (physical strength,
courage, the use of weapons), they are represented as pathological and,
through a fetishization of their body, are led back within the dichotomy
passive-female/active-male. When, instead, the gender binary distinction is
questioned, it is questioned through a masculinization of the woman’s
body that inflicts violence. Thus, a further contribution to the articulation
of the female as the object of violence emerges. Such further contribution
favors therefore the reproduction of structures and hierarchies.
     Giomi and Magaraggia try here to make the role of media visible in the
perpetuation of an asymmetry. Anyhow, in order to understand such asym-
metry better, it would be useful to think not only to the contents. The social
work of the media is not reducible to the mere spreading of meanings –
something that complies also with perspective of the authors. It is partly a
process close of what Latour means when he speaks of mediation by which
the same elements of mediation are transformed. This happens also thanks
to the same development through a network of relationships, an aspect that
is not highlighted by Giomi’s and Magaraggia’s approach. Moreover, if it
is true – as conventional studies have taught us – that media contribute to
the formation of knowledge, believes, opinions, values, rules, behavioral
models, it is anyhow difficult to imagine how their contents alone can di-
rectly structure the reproduction of a configuration of the world. It is dif-
ficult to think of them as docile tools pre-set for the attainment of specific
interests to give an answer to the self-preserving needs of society. The out-
put cannot be foretold by the input in a mediation process (Latour 2005,
39). What is thus interesting to keep in mind are the various elements and
moments in which that mediation process is articulated.
     We should think of the competing mechanism between various
sources, of the information overload for the public, and of the need to offer
news that should cause alarm, for example (Castells 2009). There are also
elements like newsworthiness criteria that contribute to the gap between
reality and what media covers, as much as the spectacularizing processes
that answer various needs that involve the mere description of events and
situations. Some of the aspects that come from the study of the contents of
the media can thus be at least partly an unforeseen effect by the socio-tech-
nical acting that produces them. To know them for what they are could
212                                                            Tecnoscienza – 9 (2)

show greater adequacy of the actions by the institutions to reach the objec-
tive to contrast violence. Moreover, the study could be further developed
by including the sphere of the public that cannot be so neatly separated by
the one of production/circulation (Couldry 2012) – since research related
to the de-codification of violence on women is not that consistent and since
the studies on sexual objectification in the media show that it is a process
which could trigger violent phenomena, as highlighted by the authors. Im-
ageries themselves could offer opportunities for a breach or at least for
contrast. The point is that there are no autonomous media texts (Couldry
2000) although they are often studied as separate, as abstracted from all.
The observation of the social stereotypes and representations crystalized
by the media implies the risk of a textual determinism already underlined
by Cultural Studies.
    Finally, if on one hand the reading of the book confirms how media
contents are of great importance to understand some aspects of our cul-
ture, on the other it elicits the issue of the adequacy for media research of
the assumption of an analytical separation between the contents, their
fates, and the various levels of instances that articulate their agency. The
overcoming of such assumption is also clearly related to the issue of how
to join competences and resources to succeed in describing the relationship
between media and gender violence through a perspective related to vari-
ous mediation processes (Boczkowski and Siles 2014).



References
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      Foot (eds.) Media technologies: Essays on communication, materiality, and
      society, Cambridge, MIT Press, pp. 53-76
Castells M. (2009) Communication Power. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Couldry N. (2000) The Place of Media Power. London, Routledge.
Couldry N. (2012) Media, Society, World. Cambridge, Polity Press.
Bandelli D. (2017) Femicide, Gender and Violence, Cham, Palgrave Macmillian.
Latour B. (2005) Reassembling the Social. New York: Oxford University Press.
Senato della Repubblica (2018) XVII legislatura, Doc. XXII-bis, n. 9, Relazione
       finale della Commissione Parlamentare di inchiesta sul femminicidio. Rel.
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