Think of this question as the first part of your revision...
“Representations in media texts are often simplistic and reinforce dominant ideologies so that audiences can make sense of them”. Evaluate the ways that you have used/challenged simplistic representations in one of the media products you have produced.
who, what, where
how, stereotypes, theories
why, audience
INTRO- refer to quote, agree/ disagree
refer to question, introduce coursework
MAIN BODY- go through different representations used
and stereotypes
and theories
around 4/5
(who- male + female, age group- target audience age, costume- simple young laid back, what- dancing/ smiling not taking themselves to seriously)
CONCLUSION- sum everything up
refer to question
Monday 29 April 2013
Representation texts from powerpoint
You will be able to describe what representation is.• Be able to identify the types of groups that are represented? You will be able to discuss representation in your products
The media does not represent and construct reality, but instead represents it?
Representation - Definition• How the media shows us things about society – but this is through careful mediation. Hence re-presentation.• For representation to be meaningful to audiences there needs to be a shared recognition of people, situations, ideas etc.• All representations therefore have ideologies behind them.
Certain paradigms are encoded into texts and others are left out in order to give a preferred representation (Levi – Strauss, 1958).
Representing is about constructing reality, it is supposed to contain versimilitued and simplify people’s understanding of life.• Representation refers to the construction in any medium (especially the mass media) of aspects of �reality� such as people, places, objects, events, cultural identities and other abstract concepts
Such representations may be in speech or writing as well as still or moving pictures.• The term refers to the processes involved as well as to its products. For instance, in relation to the key markers of identity - Class, Age, Gender and Ethnicity (the cage of identity) - representation involves not only how identities are represented (or rather constructed) within the text but also how they are constructed in the processes of production and reception by people whose identities are also differentially marked in relation to such demographic factors.
Consider, for instance, the issue of the gaze. How do men look at images of women, women at men, men at men and women at women?
Richard Dyer (1983) posed a few questions when analysing media representations in general.
• 1. What sense of the world is it making?• 2. What does it imply? Is it typical of the world or deviant?• 3. Who is it speaking to? For whom? To whom?• 4. What does it represent to us and why? How do we respond to the representation?
How do you think the following groups are represented in the media?Types of people:
• Class • Age • Gender • Ethnicity • Sexuality • Disability
Theories• Particularly in relation to film – objectification of women’s bodies in the media has been a constant theme.• Laura Mulvey (1975) argues that the dominant point of view is masculine. The female body is displayed for the male gaze in order to provide erotic pleasure for the male (vouyerism). Women are therefore objectified by the camera lens and whatever gender the spectator/audience is positioned to accept the masculine POV.
John Berger ‘Ways Of Seeing’ (1972)“Men act and women appear”. “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at”.“Women are aware of being seen by a male spectator”
Jib Fowles (1996) “in advertising, males gaze and females are gazed at”.
Paul Messaris (1997) “female models addressed to women....appear to imply a male point of view”.• In terms of magazine covers of women,
Janice Winship (1987) has been an extremely influential theorist. “The gaze between cover model and women readers marks the complicity between women seeing themselves in the image masculine culture has defined”.
Jean-Francois Lyotard (1984) and Jean Baudrillard (1980) share the belief that the idea of ‘truth’ needs to be deconstructed so that dominant ideas (that Lyotard argues are “grand narratives”) can be challenged.
Baudrillard discussed the concept of hyperreality – we inhabit a society that is no longer made up of any original thing for a sign to represent – it is the sign that is now the meaning. He argued that we live in a society of simulacra – simulations of reality that replace the real. Remember Disneyland?
Merrin (2005) argues that “the media do not reflect and represent reality but instead produce it, employing this simulation to justify their own continuing existence”.
David Gilmore• Man the protector• Man the provider• Man the impregnator
We often judge a text’s realism against our own ‘situated culture’. What is ‘real’ can therefore become subjective.• Stereotypes can be used to enhance realism - a news programme, documentary, film text etc about football hooligans, for e.g, will all use very conventional images that are associated with the realism that audiences will identify with such as shots of football grounds, public houses etc.
Stereotypes?• O’Sullivan et al (1998) details that a stereotype is a label that involves a process of categorisation and evaluation.• We can call stereotypes shorthand to narratives because such simplistic representations define our understanding of media texts – e.g we know who is good and who is evil.
First coined by Walter Lippmann (1956) the word stereotype wasn’t meant to be negative and was simply meant as a shortcut or ordering process.• In ideological terms, stereotyping is a means by which support is provided by one group’s differential against another.
Orrin E. Klapps (1962) distinction between stereotypes and social types is helpful.• Klapp defines social types as representations of those who belong to society.• They are the kinds of people that one expects, and is led to expect, to find in ones society, whereas stereotypes are those who do not belong, who are outside of ones society.
Richard Dyer (1977) suggests Klapp’s distinction can be reworked in terms of the types produced by different social groups according to their sense of who belongs and who doesnt, who is in and who is not
Tessa Perkins (1979) says, however, that stereotyping is not a simple process. She identified that some of the many ways that stereotypes are assumed to operate aren’t true.• They aren’t always negative (French good cooks)• They aren’t always about minority groups or those less powerful (upper class twits)• They are not always false – supported by empirical evidence.• They are not always rigid and unchanging. Perkins argues that if stereotypes were always so simple then they would not work culturally and over time. Martin Barker (1989) - stereotypes are condemned for misrepresenting the ‘real world’. (e.g. Reinforcing that the (false) stereotype that women are available for sex at any time) . He also says stereotypes are condemned for being too close to real world (e.g. showing women in home servicing men, which many still do).• Bears out Perkins’ point that for stereotypes to work they need audience recognition.
The media does not represent and construct reality, but instead represents it?
Representation - Definition• How the media shows us things about society – but this is through careful mediation. Hence re-presentation.• For representation to be meaningful to audiences there needs to be a shared recognition of people, situations, ideas etc.• All representations therefore have ideologies behind them.
Certain paradigms are encoded into texts and others are left out in order to give a preferred representation (Levi – Strauss, 1958).
Representing is about constructing reality, it is supposed to contain versimilitued and simplify people’s understanding of life.• Representation refers to the construction in any medium (especially the mass media) of aspects of �reality� such as people, places, objects, events, cultural identities and other abstract concepts
Such representations may be in speech or writing as well as still or moving pictures.• The term refers to the processes involved as well as to its products. For instance, in relation to the key markers of identity - Class, Age, Gender and Ethnicity (the cage of identity) - representation involves not only how identities are represented (or rather constructed) within the text but also how they are constructed in the processes of production and reception by people whose identities are also differentially marked in relation to such demographic factors.
Consider, for instance, the issue of the gaze. How do men look at images of women, women at men, men at men and women at women?
Richard Dyer (1983) posed a few questions when analysing media representations in general.
• 1. What sense of the world is it making?• 2. What does it imply? Is it typical of the world or deviant?• 3. Who is it speaking to? For whom? To whom?• 4. What does it represent to us and why? How do we respond to the representation?
How do you think the following groups are represented in the media?Types of people:
• Class • Age • Gender • Ethnicity • Sexuality • Disability
Theories• Particularly in relation to film – objectification of women’s bodies in the media has been a constant theme.• Laura Mulvey (1975) argues that the dominant point of view is masculine. The female body is displayed for the male gaze in order to provide erotic pleasure for the male (vouyerism). Women are therefore objectified by the camera lens and whatever gender the spectator/audience is positioned to accept the masculine POV.
John Berger ‘Ways Of Seeing’ (1972)“Men act and women appear”. “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at”.“Women are aware of being seen by a male spectator”
Jib Fowles (1996) “in advertising, males gaze and females are gazed at”.
Paul Messaris (1997) “female models addressed to women....appear to imply a male point of view”.• In terms of magazine covers of women,
Janice Winship (1987) has been an extremely influential theorist. “The gaze between cover model and women readers marks the complicity between women seeing themselves in the image masculine culture has defined”.
Jean-Francois Lyotard (1984) and Jean Baudrillard (1980) share the belief that the idea of ‘truth’ needs to be deconstructed so that dominant ideas (that Lyotard argues are “grand narratives”) can be challenged.
Baudrillard discussed the concept of hyperreality – we inhabit a society that is no longer made up of any original thing for a sign to represent – it is the sign that is now the meaning. He argued that we live in a society of simulacra – simulations of reality that replace the real. Remember Disneyland?
Merrin (2005) argues that “the media do not reflect and represent reality but instead produce it, employing this simulation to justify their own continuing existence”.
David Gilmore• Man the protector• Man the provider• Man the impregnator
We often judge a text’s realism against our own ‘situated culture’. What is ‘real’ can therefore become subjective.• Stereotypes can be used to enhance realism - a news programme, documentary, film text etc about football hooligans, for e.g, will all use very conventional images that are associated with the realism that audiences will identify with such as shots of football grounds, public houses etc.
Stereotypes?• O’Sullivan et al (1998) details that a stereotype is a label that involves a process of categorisation and evaluation.• We can call stereotypes shorthand to narratives because such simplistic representations define our understanding of media texts – e.g we know who is good and who is evil.
First coined by Walter Lippmann (1956) the word stereotype wasn’t meant to be negative and was simply meant as a shortcut or ordering process.• In ideological terms, stereotyping is a means by which support is provided by one group’s differential against another.
Orrin E. Klapps (1962) distinction between stereotypes and social types is helpful.• Klapp defines social types as representations of those who belong to society.• They are the kinds of people that one expects, and is led to expect, to find in ones society, whereas stereotypes are those who do not belong, who are outside of ones society.
Richard Dyer (1977) suggests Klapp’s distinction can be reworked in terms of the types produced by different social groups according to their sense of who belongs and who doesnt, who is in and who is not
Tessa Perkins (1979) says, however, that stereotyping is not a simple process. She identified that some of the many ways that stereotypes are assumed to operate aren’t true.• They aren’t always negative (French good cooks)• They aren’t always about minority groups or those less powerful (upper class twits)• They are not always false – supported by empirical evidence.• They are not always rigid and unchanging. Perkins argues that if stereotypes were always so simple then they would not work culturally and over time. Martin Barker (1989) - stereotypes are condemned for misrepresenting the ‘real world’. (e.g. Reinforcing that the (false) stereotype that women are available for sex at any time) . He also says stereotypes are condemned for being too close to real world (e.g. showing women in home servicing men, which many still do).• Bears out Perkins’ point that for stereotypes to work they need audience recognition.
Wednesday 17 April 2013
Audience theories
Is your text popular for a mass audience?
Julian McDougall (2009) suggests that in the online age it is getting harder to conceive a media audience as a stable, identifiable group.
Most dance music would be classed targeting a Niche / Alternative audience
We wanted the our audience to lean more towards a mass audience and although the song is ad dance genre it was very popular when released and has a fun pop twist but when the video and band was created we realised it perhaps leaned more towards a niche/ alternative audience.
Wednesday 10 April 2013
Media language Theory
Connotation of our music video= Dj mixer (fun, party lively)
Charles Sanders Pierce (1931)
–there are three types of sign that we use every day to createmeaning; iconic, indexical and symbolic signs.
•Icon/iconic
: a mode in which the signifier is perceived as
resembling
or imitating thesignified (recognizably looking, sounding, feeling, tasting or smelling like it) - being similar inpossessing some of its qualities: e.g. a portrait, a cartoon, a scale-model, onomatopoeia,metaphors, 'realistic' sounds in 'programme music', sound effects in radio drama, a dubbedfilm soundtrack, imitative gestures.
•Index/indexical
: a mode in which the signifier is
directly connected
in some way (physicallyor causally) to the signified - this link can be observed or inferred: e.g. 'natural signs' (smoke,thunder, footprints, echoes, non-synthetic odours and flavours), medical symptoms (pain, arash, pulse-rate), measuring instruments (weathercock, thermometer, clock, spirit-level).
•Symbol/symbolic
: a mode in which the signifier does not resemble the signified but which isfundamentally arbitrary or purely conventional - so that the relationship must be learnt: e.g.language in general (plus specific languages, alphabetical letters, punctuation marks, words,phrases and sentences), numbers, morse code, traffic lights, national flags.
media language
Evaluate your coursework in relation to a media concept.
MEDIA LANGUAGE
MEDIA LANGUAGE
Camera=
Different shots.. Mainly mid shot’s used (female artist), close up’s (dj mixer), long shots (dj against background), camera panning (slow point in the song), zooming in and out (dj mixer).
Still and central framing (as the female artist sings and dances), Two shot (shot with the male and female together)
Editing=
Controlling speed (speeding up and slowing down areas), cuts (cutting between shots), reversing and replaying (reversing/ fast forwarding different shots and replaying them- dj), lip-syncing (female artist is mouthing the words), contrast of the shots (altering colour and brightness of shots).
Lighting=
Disco lights (disco lights were used in the background), screen (the screen projected different colours and flashing lights).
Sound=
Dance song- yeahyeahyeah’s- heads will roll (remix)
Synchronous (matches the action- dance track and the artist dancing/lively)
Diegetic sound (dj is used and lip-syncing female)
Tempo (fast tempo)
Mise- en-scene=
Location (screens, background)
Style (casual dress sense, simple, young)
Casting (teenage, attractive, normal)
Monday 8 April 2013
Theories
MALE GAZE
In her 1975 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", Laura Mulvey introduced the second-wave feminist concept of "male gaze" as a feature of gender power asymmetry in film.
The concept was present in earlier studies of the gaze, but it was Mulvey who brought it to the forefront. Mulvey stated that women were objectified in film because heterosexual men were in control of the camera.
The male gaze occurs when the camera puts the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man. It may linger over the curves of a woman's body, for instance.
The woman is usually displayed on two different levels: as an erotic object for both the characters within the film, as well as the spectator who is watching the film.
The man emerges as the dominant power within the created film fantasy. The woman is passive to the active gaze from the man. This adds an element of 'patriarchal' order.
FACIAL EXPRESSIONS Marjorie Ferguson (1980) identified four types of facial expression in the cover photos of British women’s magazines:
In a study of advertisements in women’s magazines, Trevor Millum offers these categories of female expressions:
In her 1975 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", Laura Mulvey introduced the second-wave feminist concept of "male gaze" as a feature of gender power asymmetry in film.
The concept was present in earlier studies of the gaze, but it was Mulvey who brought it to the forefront. Mulvey stated that women were objectified in film because heterosexual men were in control of the camera.
The male gaze occurs when the camera puts the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man. It may linger over the curves of a woman's body, for instance.
The woman is usually displayed on two different levels: as an erotic object for both the characters within the film, as well as the spectator who is watching the film.
The man emerges as the dominant power within the created film fantasy. The woman is passive to the active gaze from the man. This adds an element of 'patriarchal' order.
FACIAL EXPRESSIONS Marjorie Ferguson (1980) identified four types of facial expression in the cover photos of British women’s magazines:
- Chocolate Box: half or full-smile, lips together or slightly parted, teeth barely visible, full or three-quarter face to camera. Projected mood: blandly pleasing, warm bath warmth, where uniformity of features in their smooth perfection is devoid of uniqueness or of individuality.
- Invitational: emphasis on the eyes, mouth shut or with only a hint of a smile, head to one side or looking back to camera. Projected mood: suggestive of mischief or mystery, the hint of contact potential rather than sexual promise, the cover equivalent of advertising’s soft sell.
- Super-smiler: full face, wide open toothy smile, head thrust forward or chin thrown back, hair often wind-blown. Projected mood: aggressive, ‘look-at-me’ demanding, the hard sell, ‘big come-on’ approach.
- Romantic or Sexual: a fourth and more general classification devised to include male and female ‘two-somes’; or the dreamy, heavy-lidded, unsmiling big-heads, or the overtly sensual or sexual. Projected moods: possible ‘available’ and definitely ‘available’.
In a study of advertisements in women’s magazines, Trevor Millum offers these categories of female expressions:
- Soft/introverted: eyes often shut or half-closed, the mouth slightly open/pouting, rarely smiling; an inward-looking trance-like reverie, removed from earthly things.
- Cool/level: indifferent, self-sufficient, arrogant, slightly insolent, haughty, aloof, confident, reserved; wide eyes, full lips straight or slightly parted, and obtrusive hair, often blonde. The eyes usually look the reader in the eye, as perhaps the woman regards herself in the mirror.
- Seductive: similar to the cool/level look in many respects - the eyes are less wide, perhaps shaded, the expression is less reserved but still self-sufficient and confident; milder versions may include a slight smile.
- Narcissistic: similarities to the cool/level and soft/introverted looks, rather closer to the latter: a satisfied smile, closed or half-closed eyes, self-enclosed, oblivious, content - ‘activity directed inward’.
- Carefree: nymphlike, active, healthy, gay, vibrant, outdoor girl; long unrestrained outward-flowing hair, more outward-going than the above, often smiling or grinning.
- Kittenlike: coy, naïve (perhaps in a deliberate, studied way), a friendlier and more girlish version of the cool/level look, sometimes almost twee.
- Maternal: motherly, matronly, mature, wise, experienced and kind, carrying a sort of authority; shorter hair, slight smile and gentle eyes - mouth may sometimes be stern, but eyes twinkle.
- Practical: concentrating, engaged on the business in hand, mouth closed, eyes object-directed, sometimes a slight frown; hair often short or tied back.
- Comic: deliberately ridiculous, exaggerated, acting the fool, pulling faces for the benefit of a real or imaginary audience, sometimes close to a sort of archness.
- Catalogue: a neutral look as of a dummy, artificial, waxlike; features may be in any position, but most likely to be with eyes open wide and a smile, but the look remains vacant and empty; personality has been removed. (Millum 1975, 97-8)
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