Representations of Scotland

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Representations of Scotland
Version 2 11 November 2013 Rick
Instrell www.deep-learning.co.uk info_at_deep-learnin
g.co.uk
Association for Media Education in Scotland
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Aims

• To explore the concept of representation by
• Examining stereotypes of Scotland the Scots
• Relating these representations to concepts of
  ideology, myth and discourse
• Exemplifying ways of teaching representation
  through the analysis of film, advertising and
  print
• Exemplify ways of teaching representation through
  media production

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Representation

• Can be understood in a number of ways
• Process of translating concepts into words,
  sounds and images
• Continual re-presenting of stereotypes
• Re-presenting in new non-stereotyped ways
• Who represents whom and for what purpose?

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Representation the Real World

• How are representations related to the real
• world? Four possibilities
• Real world shapes representations
• Representations shape real world
• Relationship is two-way and interactive
• Distinction is false all we have is
  representation and there is no real world

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Mediation

• Media not a window on the world
• Media come between real world and the audience
  i.e. they mediate
• Media select what is and what is not
  represented and then portray their selections in
  particular ways rather than others
• Mass media construct representations to maximise
  audiences and hence profit

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Active and Passive Audience

• Naïve view of audience is that of passive
  recipient
• Audiences are active differential decoders and
  can resist dominant meanings
• Audiences are increasingly active creators of
  meaning and can represent their own perceptions
  of reality
• This can change power relations in society

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Summary Diagrams
Naïve view of media
Audience (passive)
Window (media neutral)
Real world
Media studies view of media
Audience (active differential decoders)
Mediation (media constructs representations by
processes of selection portrayal)
Real world
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Ideology

• Althusser ideology is the common-sense beliefs,
  meanings and activities through which we think,
  communicate and act
• Function of ideology in relation to power
  relations in society
• Dominant ideologies are means by which dominant
  groups maintain leadership without resource to
  physical coercion e.g. patriarchy the idea that
  men are superior to women
• Societys institutions are the purveyors of
  dominant ideology (family, education, media,
  religion, business, etc.)
• They attempt to form individual and shared
  beliefs along dominant lines as if these ideas
  are natural, universal and unchanging

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Hegemony

• Gramsci dominance is never total oppositional
  ideologies from subordinate groups express
  rejection of dominant ideologies e.g. feminism is
  an oppositional ideology which in its varied
  forms challenges patriarchy
• Hegemonic struggle between dominant and
  subordinate ideologies
• Texts often reflect these struggles
• We ourselves are the site of discursive struggles
  (interdiscourse)

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Myth

• Myth culturally-specific explanation of
• national history and character
• N.B. Myth can also be universal e.g. Joseph
  Campbells Heros Journey narrative found in
  stories from may different cultures

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Discourse

• Ideology myths are inscribed in discourse i.e.
  they are expressed in words, images and sounds
• So a text could be analysed in gender terms by
  tracing the struggle between patriarchal
  feminist discourses
• Ideologies and myths are ways of making texts
  intelligible to audiences
• They also give the individual a sense of
  collective and individual identity
• Identity has a sense of us and them

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Discourses of Scotland

• The debate over representations of Scotland can
  be traced
• to the 1981 the Scotch Myths exhibition and the
  1982
• Scotch Reels event. Three dominant discourses
  were
• identified
• Tartanry
• Kailyard
• Clydesideism

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Tartanry 1. Highlander

• Fierce but romantic kilted Highland man set
  against wild landscape

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Tartanry 1. Highlander
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Tartanry 1. Highlander
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Tartanry 2. Elegiac

• Nostalgic feeling for a lost way of life (related
  to Flodden, Culloden, Highland clearances)

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Tartanry 2. Elegiac
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Tartanry 3. Landscape

• Scotland as peripheral remote far from
  metropolitan heart of British culture

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Tartanry 4. Militarism

• Soldiers and pipers marching into bloody battle

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Tartanry 5. Carnivalesque

• Red-nosed, kilted, drunken, mean Scotsman

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Tartanry 5. Carnivalesque
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Tartanry 5. Carnivalesque contd.
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Tartanry 5. Carnivalesque contd.
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Tartanry 5. Carnivalesque contd.
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Kailyard

• Scotland as small towns full of characters (SR
  Crockett, JM Barrie, Ian MacLaren, Peoples
  Friend, Sunday Post)
• People have little interest in what goes on in
  the rest of the world
• Central characters of kailyard novels are
  prominent members of a the community
• Local intrigue and homespun wisdom
• Sentimental and couthy

'Where's My Good Little Girl?', 1882 by Thomas
Faed
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Kailyard 2
Whisky Galore!
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Urban Kailyard 1
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Discursive Unconscious

• Colin McArthur film and tv representations are
  tartan exteriors kailyard mores

Brigadoon
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Commercial Exploitation
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Commercial Exploitation
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Commercial Exploitation
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Commercial Exploitation
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Commercial Exploitation
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Post Cards
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Post Cards
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Tartan Day
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Modern Urban Kailyard 2

• Hybrid of kailyard and Clydesideism (Rab C
  Nesbitt, Chewin the Fat, Still Game)

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Modern Urban Kailyard 2
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Critique of Scotch Myths Debate

• John Caughie reductive and ignored texts that
  did not fit polemic (e.g. Bill Douglas trilogy
  My Childhood, My Ain Folk, My Way Home)
• Pam Cook nostalgia can play a productive role by
  releasing desire for resistance and social change
• Cairns Craig Scottish cultural renaissance of
  1980s and 1990s was involved in construction of
  new myths
• One could argue that Braveheart had a progressive
  impact in mobilising the vote for a Scottish
  parliament
• Beveridge and Turnbull meanings never passively
  consumed but are subject to active selection and
  adjustment e.g. Jacobite rebellion has led to
  tourist kitsch but also produced prose, poetry
  and song that symbolise rebellion and idealism

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Usefulness of Debate

• Texts can be analysed in terms of whether they
  express or interrogate the tartan/kailyard
  monster or represent those usually absent from
  the discourse e.g. children, women, ethnic
  minorities

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Moving on from Scotch Myths

• Scotch Myths debate needs to be moved on because
  Scotland has changed radically since early 1980s
• Debate around a restricted over-simplified number
  of discourses
• Debate framed within Marxist/post-Marxist
  problematic
• Tim Edensors analysis
• Gerry Hassans analysis

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Edensor on National Identity 1

• Edensor sees this national identity operating at
  both
• spectacular and mundane levels
• state level providing the legal and bureaucratic
  framework within which we act
• the spatial level the borders iconic sites
  rural, urban and domestic spaces
• performative level the rituals, ceremonies,
  sports, celebrations as well as everyday
  competences, embodied habits and daily, weekly
  and annual synchronised activities of everyday
  life.
• the material level shared meanings of everyday
  objects such as clothes, tools, food, drink,
  vehicles, ephemera as well as obvious carriers of
  national symbolism such as stamps, currency,
  official logos and flags

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Edensor on National Identity 2

• there need not be agreement as to the
  interpretation of shared objects, ideas and
  symbols
• a nations cultural resources provide the common
  ground on which discursive battles take place

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Scotland in early 1980s

• Gerry Hassan
• Decline of manufacturing sector
• Over 50 in trade union
• 52 living in council housing
• Political disempowerment under Thatcher
• Mass unemployment
• Economic and social dislocation
• Social conservatism in public and elite opinion
• Patronage by political and professional elite
• Stagnant cultural and artistic sector

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Scotland in 2006

• Dominance of service sector
• Declining trade union membership
• Home ownership
• Scottish parliament
• Lower unemployment
• Still deep degree of exclusion from employment
  market
• Liberalism in public and elite opinion
• Patronage still at work but under attack
• Dynamic cultural and artistic sector
• Significant migration from Eastern Europe

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Shift

• Individualised society shaped by lifestyle and
  consumption rather than social class
• Society more at ease with equality issues
• More feminised society
• Post-labourist, post-nationalist politics
• Globalisation and immigration
• Digital revolution

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Inadequate Response

• Mindset and stories have not changed
• Nostalgia for collectivism (forgets its
  suffocating nature)
• Urban kailyard (lost male world in Kelman and
  McIlvanney McLad culture of Tam Cowan and
  Stuart Cosgrove)
• Despite decline of working class more people see
  themselves as working class

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What needs changed?

• Need an ethic of living, set of stories that
  embody how we live now and in the future
• Has to capture
• Individualism
• Renewal of collectivist values
• Pluralism
• Complexity
• Rapid change
• Post-nationalist politics
• Need to map past, current and future stories

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Past Scottish Stories

• Hassan identifies 11 basic historical stories
• Enterprising Scotland
• Empire Scotland
• Enlightenment Scotland
• Educational Scotland
• Calvinist Scotland
• Tartan Scotland
• Kailyard Scotland
• Divided Scotland
• Collectivist Scotland
• Unionist Scotland
• Nationalist Scotland

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Current Stories

• Hassan identifies 4 post-devolution stories
• Holyrood debacle
• Toytown parliament
• Souped-up Labour cooncil
• Politically correct Scotland

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Future Scottish Stories

• Hassan identifies 6 post-devolution stories
• Labour minimalist devolution politics of
  continuity rather than change
• Black and white Scotland questions Scots
  ability to govern themselves
• And more positively
• Post-nationalist Scotland abandonment of
  old-fashioned nationalism
• Smart Scotland knowledge economy responding to
  global markets
• Adaptive Scotland personalised, flexible,
  collaborative
• New progressive Scotland confident Scotland
  which embraces change

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Rebranding the Nation 1

• Bond et al. identify processes involved in
• rebranding Scotland
• Reiteration
• a historically positive feature is mobilised
  within a contemporary context e.g. stressing
  education as a past and current Scottish strength
• Recapture
• a historically diminished feature is mobilised
  e.g. trying to correct a perceived
  entrepreneurial deficit which will recapture past
  economic success

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Rebranding the Nation 2

• Reinterpretation
• a historically negative feature is mobilised as
  having advantages or as being largely neutral
  e.g. the Scottish diaspora to North America is
  seen as a way of attracting those with Scots
  ancestry to return to Scotland to utilise their
  skills or wealth
• Repudiation
• negative features cannot be reinterpreted so are
  omitted from current constructions of national
  identity e.g. the dominance of an employment
  culture in the shipbuilding, steelmaking and
  mining industries seen to be a barrier an
  entrepreneurial economy based round small firms

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Brand Pyramid for Edinburgh Inspiring Capital
Campaign
ESSENCE
INSPIRING CAPITAL
WORLD LEADER IN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, EDUCATION,
ARTS WHOSE BEAUTY ATMOSPHERE INSPIRES
PERSONALITY
VALUES
INVENTION ASPIRATION SINCERITY DIVERSITY ELEGANCE
WARMTH
TONE OF VOICE
IMAGINATIVE DETERMINED
AUTHENTIC VIBRANT
CONFIDENT NOT LOUD NOT ARROGANT
NOT IMPERSONAL NOT BRASH NOT ALOOF
NOT COMPLICATED NOT INTIIDATING
NOT COLD
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Branding Edinburgh
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Branding Glasgow
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Branding Aberdeen(shire)
a brighter outlook
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Creating a Brand

• Design a new brand for promoting the Scottish
  Highlands as an upmarket tourist destination
• It usually helps to have a picture of your target
  audience (e.g. London city workers on the
  Underground)
• You should produce
• Strapline (slogan)
• Logo
• Typography
• Choice of colours
• and be able to justify each
• (N.B. You may want to use a brand pyramid)

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Bibliography 1

• Beveridge, C. and Turnbull, R. (1989) The Eclipse
  of Scottish Culture Inferiorism and the
  Intellectuals. Edinburgh Polygon.
• Bond, R., McCrone, D. and Brown, A. (2003)
  National Identity and Economic Development
  Reiteration, Recapture, Reinterpretation and
  Repudiation. In Nations and Nationalism,
  Vol.93 371-391.
• Caughie, J. (1990) Representing Scotland New
  Questions for Scottish Cinema. In E. Dick (ed.)
  (1990) From Limelight to Satellite a Scottish
  Film Book. London BFI/Scottish Film Council.
• Cook, P. (1996) Fashioning the Nation Costume
  and Identity in British Cinema. London BFI.
• Craig, C. (1982) Myths Against History Tartanry
  and Kailyard in 19th-Century Scottish
  Literature. In C. McArthur (ed.) (1982) Scotch
  Reels Scotland in Cinema and Television. London
  BFI Publishing.
• Craig, C. (1996) Out of History Narrative
  Paradigms in Scottish and British Culture.
  Edinburgh Polygon.
• Dick E. (ed.) (1990) From Limelight to Satellite
  a Scottish Film Book. London BFI/Scottish Film
  Council.

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Bibliography 2

• Edensor, T. (2002) National Identity, Popular
  Culture and Everyday Life. Oxford Berg.
• Hassan, G. (2005) That was Then and This is Now
  Imagining New Stories about a Northern Nation.
  In Scotland 2020 Hopeful Stories for a Northern
  Nation, edited by, Gerry Hassan, Eddie Gibb,
  Lydia Howland. www.demos.co.uk/files/Scotland2020.
  pdf
• McArthur, C. (ed.) (1982) Scotch Reels Scotland
  in Cinema and Television. London BFI Publishing.
• McArthur, C. (2003a) Whisky Galore! and The
  Maggie. London I.B. Taurus.
• McArthur, C. (2003b) Brigadoon, Braveheart
  and the Scots Distortions of Scotland in
  Hollywood Cinema. London I.B. Taurus.
• McCrone, D. (2001) Understanding Scotland the
  Sociology of a Nation (2nd edition). London
  Routledge.
• Petrie, D. (2000) Screening Scotland. London BFI
  Publishing.
• Petrie, D. (2004) Contemporary Scottish Fictions
  Film, Television and The Novel. Edinburgh
  Edinburgh University Press.