G235: Critical Perspectives in Media

1

• G235 Critical Perspectives in Media
• Theoretical Evaluation of Production
• 1b) Representation

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Aims/Objectives

• To reinforce basic representation theory.
• To have a basic understanding of how to evaluate
  your coursework against key representation
  theory.

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Representation

• 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 (the preferred syntagm)
  (Levi Strauss, 1958).

4

• 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?

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• In terms of your coursework you will be looking
  at representation in terms of
• MARXISM
• FEMINISM
• POSTMODERNISM
• STEREOTYPES

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• Ideologies and Representation (MARXISM)
• A hegemonic view of society fundamental
  inequalities in power between social groups.
  Groups in power exercise their influence
  culturally rather than by force.
• Concept has origins in Marxist theory - ruling
  capitalist class are able to protect their
  economic interests.
• Representations are encoded into mass media
  texts in order to do this reinforce dominant
  ideologies in society.

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• Tim OSullivan et al. (1998) Ideology refers to
  a set of ideas which produces a partial and
  selective view of reality. Notion of ideology
  entails widely held ideas or beliefs which are
  seen as common sense and become naturalised.
• What is important is that, in Marxist terms, the
  medias role may be seen as
• Circulating and reinforcing dominant ideologies
• (less frequently) undermining and challenging
  such ideologies.

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• Links to Roland Barthes (1973) Myth ideologies
  work through symbolic codes mythic in the sense
  of having the appearance of being natural or
  commonsense.

9

• Judith Williamson (1978) detailed that
  advertisements (film posters, adverts for music
  texts you created) draw heavily on myths they
  use cultural signifiers to represent qualities
  which can be realised through the consumption of
  the product. (fulfilment of needs Maslow).
• In the case of magazine texts and adverts they
  are encoded specifically to represent an
  aspirational lifestyle offering audiences images
  of an ideal self and ideal partner (Carl
  Rogers,1980).

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• Rosalind Brunt (1992) details that ideologies are
  never simply ideas in peoples heads but are
  indeed myths that we live by and which contribute
  to our self worth.
• In terms of documentaries how are our national,
  regional identities, historical identities
  constructed through the mediation of a text?
• David Gauntlett (2002) argues that identities
  are not given but are constructed and
  negotiated.

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• Marxist Louis Althusser (1971) looked at the way
  audiences were hailed in a process known as
  interpellation. This idea is the
  social/ideological practice of misrecognising
  yourself based on a false consciousness
  mediated by media representations.

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• In terms of music videos do we aspire to
  emulate the artists shaman as defined by
  Carlsson (1999) through the representations?
• Does this lead to a further analysis of
  sub-cultures representations in videos actually
  provide identities - ideological basis for fans.
  Sarah Thornton (1995) described subcultural
  capital as the cultural knowledge and
  commodities acquired by members of subcultures
  raised their status and helped them differentiate
  key to representations.

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• Michel Maffesoli (1985) identified the idea of
  the urban tribe members of these small groups
  tend to have similar worldwide views, dress
  styles and common behaviours leads to the
  decline of individualism.
• Look at the idea of the Collective Identity.
• David Gauntlett (2007) argues that Identity is
  complicated. Everybody thinks theyve got one.
  Artists play with the idea of identity in modern
  society.

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Gender and Ideology (FEMINISM)

• Masculinity and femininity are socially
  constructed.
• Ideas about gender are produced and reflected in
  language O Sullivan et al (1998).
• Feminism is a label that refers to a broad range
  of views containing one shared assumption
  gender inequalities in society, historically
  masculine power (patriarchy) exercised at right
  of womens interests and rights.

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• Particularly in relation to music video and film
  objectification of womens 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.

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• 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

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• 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.

18

• In Slasher movies the psychopath is finally
  stopped by a character, which Carol J.
  Clover(1992), calls the Final Girl.
• The Final Girl is always a pure, innocent girl
  who abstains from sex and may be less attractive
  than the other female characters. The message
  here is clear, in horror movies, if you are a
  women, Sex Death.

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• Barthes (1972) view on sexualisation of females
  in texts is this
• Striptease is based on contradiction. Woman is
  desexualised at the very moment when she is
  stripped naked. He is suggesting it is clothes
  that sexualise her more loads of evidence of
  this in pop videos. Can this be subverted in your
  texts by your representations or not?

20

• Paul Willis (1990) states, based on a postmodern
  return to feminism, that pop stars are symbolic
  vehicles with which young women understand
  themselves more fully...shaping their
  personalities to fit the stars alleged
  preferences.

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Gay Gaze

• It can be argued that we can also have a gay
  male gaze (Steve Neale, 1992). Images which show
  men in passive, submissive, sexualised poses
  lying down, looking up at the camera so that the
  viewer is dominant can be described as
  homoerotic. In this case the male subject will
  have hands behind their heads in a pose which
  could suggest relaxation but could also be read
  as submissive and non-aggressive.

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POSTMODERNISM AND REPRESENTATIONS OF REALITY

• In a media saturated world, the distinction
  between reality and media representations becomes
  blurred or invisible to us (Julian McDougall,
  2009).
• Modern period came before people were concerned
  with representing reality, but now this gets
  mixed around and we end up with pastiche, parody
  and intertextuality. For example, Daniel Strinati
  (1995) details that reality is now only
  definable in terms of the reflections of the
  mirror.

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• Jean-Francious 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.

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• 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.
  Think Disneyland.

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• We can apply this to texts that claim to
  represent reality documentary, news. Merrin
  (2005) argues that the media do not reflect and
  represent the reality of the public but instead
  produce it, employing this simulation to justify
  their own continuing existence.

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• We often judge a texts 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.

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Stereotypes?

• OSullivan 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.

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• First coined by Walter Lippmann (1956) the word
  stereotype wasnt 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 groups
  differential against another.

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• Orrin E. Klapp's (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 one's society,
  whereas stereotypes are those who do not belong,
  who are outside of one's society.

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• Richard Dyer (1977) suggests Klapps distinction
  can be reworked in terms of the types produced by
  different social groups according to their sense
  of who belongs and who doesn't, who is 'in' and
  who is not

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• 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 arent true.
• They arent always negative (French good cooks)
• They arent 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.

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• 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.

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• Dyer (1977) details that if we are to be told
  that we are going to see a film about an
  alcoholic then we will know that it will be a
  tale either of sordid decline or of inspiring
  redemption.
• He suggests this is a particularly interesting
  potential use of stereotypes, in which the
  character is constructed, at the level of dress,
  performance, etc., as a stereotype but is
  deliberatIey given a narrative function that is
  not implicit in the stereotype, thus throwing
  into question the assumptions signalled by the
  stereotypical iconography.

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• As part of stereotyping to create meaning in
  factual texts such as news, television theorist
  John Hartley (1982) argues that aspects such as
  the presenters voices are stereotyped in order
  to create shorthand meanings for audiences at a
  particular but of drama, action,
  light-heartedness etc.
• This means they are personalised and this
  personalisation creates characteristics which
  become stereotyped for the audience.

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Essay

• 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.