REPRESENTATION

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What is it? And what does it involve?

• When we talk about representation, we are talking about how people, things, places religions, nationalities - or whatever - are shown in the Media.

• It’s one of the most studied topics in Media Studies and engaging with it can open our eyes to how the Media works, how society is structured and how we ourselves form ideas about the world.

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Gender- femininity

Representation of women in media

Whitewashing

Representation of ethnicity (Islam- unreliable)

Black stereotypes

 

How will you engage?

• You will be engaging with questions about how women are represented in the media

• How people from different countries or religions are stereotyped

• You might be thinking about how the representations of famous people are constructed or who it is who is actually making these representations and what they are trying to achieve

• Most importantly of all, you will start considering the extent to which own ideas about the world are actually constructions - built, artificial things, often influenced heavily by the Media.

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Start by establishing the DENOTATION

Denotation = To translate a sign  to meanings

ICONOGRAPHY

the visual images and symbols used in a work of art or the study or interpretation of these.

Binary Opposition is the system by which, in language and thought, two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one another.

CONNOTATION- an idea or feeling which a word invokes for a person in addition in its literal or primary meaning…...ie That meaning, basically, is the REPRESENTATION which is being constructed.  

Consider a ‘representation’ as being an idea (or a system of ideas) made up of icons

Question : Can you list some of the icons which create the representation here?

 

Dominant Representation

• The overall effect of the low angle shot, the direct address, the dark palette, the muscles, tattoos and guns and so  on is to create a representation of a threatening man who is prone to violence and who also embodies a strange mix of materialism ( the bing) and religious belief (the crucifixes)

• This is representation of young black men that we are familiar with? Yes, we’ve seen it a million times

 

Questions - We will look at the REPRESENTATION of Gender as opposed to RACE. A promotional shot of Keira Knightley intended for King Arthur. One obviously Photoshopped - to make her on women in general ‘More attractive’

 

Why do you suppose people get so annoyed by it?

Because people (mostly “feminists) think that is representation of a woman being photoshopped to adhere to society’s unrealistic image of the ideal woman, instead of accepting that people do not need to be photoshopped and are beautiful the way they are. This creates unreasonable beauty standards for both men and women in the real world.

Look at what is actually being changed her

Breasts, tanner skin tone, contoured muscular, thinner hip and belly, darkened hair, red hair, more attractive facial features

Even the background is changed into a dark velvet red, which commonly represents lust and seduction.

What icons are being arranged?

the idea of the “perfect” woman, attractiveness to the audience

What representation is being constructed?

Femininity, sex appeal

What is the underlying message about what it means to be attractive?

Nowadays, the definition of women being attractive is having a larger chest, being slim and not having muscles.  

Who is the likely audience for this film and these images

• Men

Are they likely to be affected by such presentations and the ideas which underpin them.

Is there a lot of racism in China?

• Why it might or might not be perceived as racist using the appropriate vocabulary (media language)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC3hgCeZKeY

    This ad is racist because it represents popular belief in China that black people are not ideal, which is downright racist. The meaning of this ad is connoting that  black people cannot be sexy. Visual hierarchy show that the guy is the main character because he is in the middle. The blond girl is the closest to the guy, this shows that the blond girl is the most attractive.

 

Artificiality  removed can cause uproar - Why?

Largely impossible for most women to achieve or even come close to this sort of perfection

When the artificiality of it is revealed, it can cause uproar.

When the unphotoshopped image of Beyonce, above on the right, was released, showing that their skin was actually pretty much the same as that of most people, it was considered worthy of much attention.

 

The Ralph Lauren advert

On the advert on the right famously Photoshopped a model (also seen not photoshopped on the left) to the point where her head was actually wider than her pelvis.

Can become a problem if audiences, particularly younger, more vulnerable audiences, don’t realise that they are actually impossible to replicate in real life.

 

 

This magazine is a typical example of female and male representation in mainstream Western media. The women are portrayed as objects, as the man has his arm around them as if they are is “property”. This is typical sexualisation of women in the media: they are wearing close to no clothing, with their “assets” showing and looking up to the man. There is an extremely strong sense of sex appeal.  The women are the dominant representation of attractiveness in the modern world: a “hot” body, physically fit, big breasts, a skinny figure and a pleasing face.

objectifying  / sexualised / passive / dominant representation

Position of power/ Lust/ Taller/ Active

Using a man, who is the tallest and in the middle. His shirt is open to reveal his muscled torso, which is a sign of sex appeal. This is also typical representation of male attractiveness in the mainstream media. He is wearing red, which conveys power, seduction, passion and lust. Visual hierarchy demonstrates his dominance.

 

They depend on the man; they are eager for his attention and he meanwhile is very superior in the way he ignores them.

The shot contributes to this - he gets to be more or less clothed, while they don’t and he gets to look at the camera ( connoting confidence ) while they only get to look at him.

Finally, the women on the left is stroking the woman beside her. This suggestion of lesbianim seems designed to offer gratification to a male audience; there is no chance we will ever see for example kid rock stroking another man in order to gratify a female audience.

 

GQ Magazine cover analysis:

The women on the cover of the magazines are hypersexualised, and portrayed as objects. The men, on the other hand are fully dressed and represented as respected, powerful and successful figures.

 

ACTIVE AND PASSIVE :

• Common complaint is that men are often seen as active, central characters

• WOmen are passive and secondary

• In tradition proppian narrative of, course, the only character type who is generally female is the very passive damsel and distress.

• Not much has changed, it could be argued

• TASK: Propp's= theory - What is it again???

 

DOMINANT REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN :

• Women, clearly, are often judged primarily on their physical attractiveness and ‘attractiveness’ itself is not a flexible concept

• “Attractive” women are thin, often with exaggerated sexual characteristics (breasts, buttocks, even lips), with long glossy hair and perfect skin

• This is a dominant representation, it is what is ‘normal’ in the media

 

CONCEPT OF AUDIENCE MODELING :

• Idea you need to be perfect

• Role model for audience

• The concept of how audiences copy what they see or read in the media

 

KEY AUDIENCES :

 

Active : what the audience does with the media

• Choice : illusion of choice

• Control : audiences as producers/influence

•                 : isolation

 

Passive :

• What media does to an audience

 

Laura Mulvey - Male Gaze?

Powerful idea; basically, that since the majority of people working in the media are male - the writers, designers, directors, camera, operators- then it is to be expected that  what they make will be made from a male point of view and with a male audience in mind - that is, with a male gaze.

 

This is not necessarily deliberate, but rather an unavoidable consequence of having an industry dominated by men.

(Note : Mulvey was writing in the seventies)

 

So Mulvey tells us that women are all too often sexualised in media representations.

 

A related idea is the virgin/whore dichotomy, a Freudian idea which has since been developed by various people.

 

This tells us that it doesn’t really matter what women do in a narrative since all that actually matters is their sexual behaviour.

 

They are either actively sexual (‘whores’) or  ‘ good girls’ who resist sex or reserve it for marriage (‘virgins’).  

 

Regardless of what else they do, this aspect will determine whether the audience is positioned to like them or sympathise with them or not.

• Passive objectification

 

Freudian

There is an infamous ‘ double standard’ at a play here since women are  judged in this way but men aren’t.

A very obvious example can be found in Taylor Swift's ‘You belong to me’ video. There are two representations of femininity in the video ; one ‘good’ and one ‘bad’. The ‘bad’ girl is punished for being openly sexual.

The ‘good’ girl is rewarded - note the symbolic wedding at the end

The man, meanwhile, can apparently do whatever he wants and not be judged at all

 

Dominant and Alternative Representations

An example might be the image above; it’s taking a lot of the iconography commonly associated with me- the power tools, goggles, even the bold ‘masculine’ font, low angle shot and so on- and applied it to a woman instead.

 

• Alternative representations are sometimes used to distinguish artists or media texts from more mainstream texts ; in this way, they might appeal to an audience who don’t like to think of themselves as mainstream.

• Marilyn Manson is a hard rock musician, and this is a genre which is commonly associated with rebellion, and thus, is particularly fond of

 

GIRL POWER :

• alternative representations often pass into the mainstream and become dominant. for example, several years ago it became more common to start representing women and both sexually attractive and confident and dominant.

• This reflects in the ways society thinks about femininity ( when we study and discuss how the media reflects social change, we call it, unimaginatively, REFLECTION THEORY.) Bands like The Spice Girls were completely based on this new idea. They called it ‘Girl Power’ - Media students call it POSTFEMINISM.

 

RACE/ETHNICITY :

 

Representation of Race :

• OJ Simpson was an extremely famous sportsman and actor in the US in 1994 when he was charged with the murder of his ex wife and her new partner. His police photo (on the far left) was reproduced on the cover of Time magazine, as shown here.

• Note how the image has been darkened and shadows added

 

Why was this done?

Why was this so offensive?

 

TOKENISM and MEDIA INVISIBILITY :

Traditionally, many groups of people were simply entirely absent from the Media - it was rare to see black, or Asian, or gay, or disabled people, for example, and when they were represented it tended to be in very stereotypical ways.

 

A common problem now is that embers of ethnic minorities are used in a TOKENISTIC way, that is, in a thoughtless an ultimately patronising way which is intended to suggest inclusivity where none actually exists.

 

Tokenism in Rogue One:

 

Finally - Representation of Stars

Star Persona : or Richard Dyer's STAR THEORY (mention both and u get a *)

 

Dyer’s idea, focused mainly on his study of movies, was that ‘stars’ are not ‘real people’ so much as they are texts, constructed by institutions, designed to appeal to audiences. That is, there is such a person as Justin Bieber, but the person we think of AS Justin Bieber's -  bratty, talented, rebellious, romantically entangle with Selena Gomez and so on - is almost certainly a media invention. We do not know the ‘real’ Bieber, merely what we are shown by the people responsible for creating and protecting his image. He, is then, a representation.

Star Persona, Dyer calls it - to match the needs of their audiences. We see that their personas - the way in which they are represented - is not their actual personality; it is an artificial construct and as such it can be changed at any time.

 

Dyer's Utopian Theory - (I have bored you enough - so you tell me what it is all about with an example to boot)

• He believes that audiences consume media products with a clear set of pleasures to draw from that experience.

• Links in with Katz and Blumler Uses and Gratifications theory

• Both suggest the audiences consume media because they want to escape reality as reality is full of negatives and stress.

• The idea that the media creates a perfect world where they can mould the personality of all the celebrities to influence a specific audience

 

HORROR :

• Iconography (generic)

• Representation

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