G235: Critical Perspectives in Media

Theoretical Evaluation of Production

Question 1(b) Representation

Aims/Objectives
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

Big question

The media does not represent and construct reality, but instead represents it?

Representation
Representing is about constructing reality, it is supposed to contain verisimilitude and simplify peoples 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

Gender

How are men and women represented in films? What roles do men and women have in films? What do they look like, which seven character types are they?

Representations of sexuality in cinema

How are gays/lesbians represented? What roles do gay/lesbian characters have in films? What do they look like, which seven character types are they?

Representation ethnicity
How is ethnicity represented? What roles do these characters play in films? Which seven character types are they?

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).

 1. 2. 3. 4.

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

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.

 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. David Gauntlett (2002) argues that identities are not given but are constructed and negotiated.

 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. 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.

2. 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.

 Particularly in relation to 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.

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.

 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.

3. 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, Dominic Strinati (1995) details that reality is now only definable in terms of the reflections of the mirror.

 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?

 We can apply this to texts that claim to represent reality social realist films? 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.

 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.

4. 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.

 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.

 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.

 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

 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.

 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.

 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. This is a particularly interesting potential use of stereotypes, in which the character is constructed, at the level of costume, performance, etc., as a stereotype but is deliberately given a narrative function that is not implicit in the stereotype, thus throwing into question the assumptions signalled by the stereotypical iconography.

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.