Abdullahi Abubakar Kaka

212140715

Sociology of media

Representation/ encoding and decoding

Representation is a part of event which is discursive, that is something that takes place

covering a very wide range of subjects. It can also be the act of showing, displaying and

representing something which is already in existence. It is an act of giving meaning to a

particular object or subject. The word has double meaning, first to present, and second to

depict. Nevertheless, the notion of something is already there in existence, so it might vary

from people to people. In politics representation means standing-in for some people which

are already in existence. In law it is a statement made by one party to induce another party

to get into a contract. In arts, it is an image or likeness of something. Furthermore,

representation is a meaning attached to a certain object and how it is presented. As we can

see representation will not have a specific meaning to everybody. There will never be one

fixed interpretation on what is going on, there is nothing fixed in the first place to represent,

because we all do not know the true meaning of it or what people make of it, or the

meaning the people gave to it. The meaning in which people give to a certain event depends

on how it is represented. Representation is a part of event in which is discoursed i.e. reality.

Reality doesn’t exist outside representation, because the notion of reality depends on what

is presented to us as real, and that which is presented is a representation of something

which is not necessarily real. To understand what representation means we have to

consider, how meaning is created through culture. Culture is like a map to meaning, a world

which exists but ambiguous to its meaning. Meaning arises within the shared conceptual
maps which groups or members of a society share together. Conceptual map is a way of

giving things purpose to what they stand for and what they are used for, without culture we

won’t be able to map out the things in world. We have to keep in mind that the classification

is not something that is printed in the genes of all human beings, we all learn it within our

society, which teaches us to become cultural subjects. To become cultural subjects you have

to share nerves of meaning with other people in your society. As you can see then our

culture its self is a system of representation. Nevertheless, culture can only operate only if

we communicate in a certain way, this is a social interaction called culture by language. By

language, we mean variety of concepts, for example electronic language, digital language,

musical language, writers language, facial gestures etc… all these externalise the meaning

which we are making about the world, there is where representation takes place or

representation starts. Discourse (meaning and language), according to Stuart Hall, “nothing

meaningful exists outside discourse” i.e. the frame work of understanding and

interpretation. For example a square board can be a notice board, white board, and

projector screen or architecture board, at first glance it is just a board, but when it is within a

certain context and rules of a certain language, a meaning will be created. In the language of

the students, while placed in front of a class room, this makes it a white board which is used

for learning. So without language meaning cannot be exchanged in the world, so we can say

without language there will be no representation. To further illustrate, to explain

representation power cannot be taken out of the equation, because it is through the use of

power meaning is somewhat presented. To illustrate, take this example, when we say “a

British person”, the first thing/picture that comes to the mind of the reader is a white, calm,

English speaking man with blue eyes, but I am referring to the athlete Moh Farrah, who is
black but also British.

Here we could see that, the masculine domination over women is displayed, male

dominance is created through power which is vested on men, and this created an identity.

Due to the power, we created an ideology in our brain that a British man looks like this or

that. The process of identification is usually featured in representation, as we learnt from

the famous Lacant’s theory “we identify with what we see on the screen”. In this case, we

are used to the notion that a British person is always white and bold. Representation is not

as easy as it seem, to define it, we must have the knowledge of semiotics, signs, what the

sign signifies, who is behind the signification (i.e. the signifier). Power always tries to fix an

ideology to its subjects fixed meaning through language and images, here the stereotypical

ideology and myth which depicts British person as white in our societies is what made

creates meaning to which is represented in our minds. What we know about the world is

how it is presented, in recent years when the media represents middle east as a war zone

with no peace, automatically when we hear the word middle east we picture war in Syria

people dying in Iraq etc… this is what the meaning and ideology which power tries to give us

through representing it in the media. This is a bad representation of certain society. Also

when power tries to fixed positive representation about a certain event or subject then it

becomes impossible, so as to fix bad representation also is almost impossible to do.

According to my understanding, representation is a circle of ideas which depicts (gives

meanings to) other ideas in any form or context. According to Stuart Hall representation is

the act of representing meaning that already exist. The scene from my case study, How I Met

Your Mother, as I explained in the first paper, this series is about friends living together. In a

particular scene, Lily and Marshal are married, so as married couple they are having

argument on what name they should give their child when they give birth. They were seating

in a bar when Marshal came with a list of names which are all male names as usual. Ted told

him to take out some names because they are black basket baller’s names it won’t suit a

white kid. Lily did not like the names because she has some problems with children bearing

the same name in her kindergarten class, so she rejected all the names Marshal mentioned.

Robin came in to the scene with her own sentiment about the name Becky, because her co-

anchor is bearing the name, and she is not a very good person. Lily had some names which

she wanted but unfortunately they are all female names and Marshal (her husband) also had

problems with girls bearing those names. Barney came into the scene with his own

sentiment. Marshal called his best friend Ted for advice and Ted told Marshal that his list is

too masculine with no girls on the list. In terms of representation, this scene reflects family

ties, stereotypical thoughts, friendship, feminism, modernity and male dominance. In every

family there used to be problems with decision-making, husband and wife tend to argue

when it comes to sensitive issues like giving name to their children, mostly the wife wants a

name from her choice and the husband also wants a name from his side. Therefore, when it

comes to family argument we could say it is in hegemony with reality and it reflects reality.

Nevertheless, not all families have this kind of worries, but majority of families have this

problem, the distortion is friends would not interfere with the decision making between

couples, in the old ages (19th century) it is a wrong to discuss sensitive family issue with
friends in some cultures, but due to modernization in recent years (21st century) there is no

boundaries in what should be discussed with friends, this distorts reality in some ways. The

stereotypes about names of black basket ballers will not suit white kids because they are

white is also a distortion to truth and reality. The male want to dominate over their female

counterparts due to male ego, we clearly see Marshal trying to take domination over Lily

with his list, and said her list “lame”. The bar represents liberal society, but it has a distortion

to reality couples don’t discuss family issues in a bar. Normally a bar is a place where you go

out and have fun with friends.

As constructionist approach, in the middle/centre of the image below we can see Barney is

the only one standing, the focus of attention which simply could be interpreted as the main

character of the image or someone who is up to something, Ted and Robin on the right of

the screen are looking straight at him, their attention is also attached to Barney, who is

depicted as someone they look up to. Lily is looking at Robin while Marshal is looking at Ted,

we could say that Ted and Robin are looking at Barney as they feel like he is a hero to them,

because both of them are single not married. While Marshal and Lily are not interested in in

what Barney is doing and sympathizing with Ted and Robin because they are not in a

relationship. Also the image depicts friendship, friends in a bar seating together and talking

about something serious. We could recall Las Meninas, it is a painting with the painter in it,

the princess, the maids, and dog, the drawing of the Spanish king and queen from the rear

mirror and the guard by the door. In this picture, unlike the image in Foucault’s Las Meninas

where the point of attraction is not fixed, we have a fixed point of attraction which is Barney.

Nevertheless, we should also consider the background extras who are seated and all not

facing the camera apart from Barney, this represents the liberal society where everybody
minds his/her business and friends go there to have a drink. We can also say there is colour

separation between Marshal and Lily which can depict misunderstand while Ted and Robin

have the same colour which can depict affinity.

http://www.cokeandpopcorn.ch/watch-how-i-met-your-mother-season-6-episode-6-

online.php.

In encoding and decoding a message from the producers to the audiences, the audience are

classified into 3 different groups, those that agree with the encoded message (dominant or

hegemony), those that partially agree with what the producer encode but tries to relate it to

their personal experiences (negotiated), and those who totally disagree with what the

producers encoded. We have to also consider the background, framework and technical

infrastructure of both the producers and the audience. To make analysis on how the

audience read a certain program, basically (How I Met Your Mother) Stuart Hall stated in his

writing that “by the word reading we mean not only the capacity to identify and decode a
certain number of signs but also the subjective capacity to put them into creative relation

between themselves and with other signs. A capacity which is by itself the condition for a

complete awareness of ones total environment”. The narrative of my program consist of

flashbacks, flash forwards and present time, this made it a complex narrative. However, it is

a universal TV series which consist of several events on how Ted Mosby met his wife. Ted

Mosby who represent the single decent American person, he is portrayed as a gentle man

with long term mature thoughts about his determination and future perspective of meeting

the right woman for him, his future wife. He met several ladies, and finally in that season he

met the right woman for him. It has hybrid genre with which consist of sitcom, romantic

comedy and melodrama. It was shot in America portraying American life style, nevertheless

the targeted audience of this series is universal. The producers entertain the audience by

creating funny scenes and episodes, there is always an off-screen sound (crowd laughing) in

each funny scene which tells the audience when to laugh, in much cases the audience laugh

due to the off-screen sound. According to Stuart Hall, when the encoded message and the

decoded message are similar or the producer achieve his/her intention to pass a message to

the audience and the audience comply with the encoded message, then that is hegemonic or

dominant. To further the narrative some plot twist are added to twist the audiences feeling.

For example tragedy (death of Marshal’s dad), romance or fun game. Mostly the romantic

scenes are identified by the audiences, and also tragic moments are also to create twist to

the audiences which really worked in this series. Furthermore, not everything goes as

planned by the producers, some are dominant, while some are restrictive and some
negotiable. According to my internet research, the audience got bored of the use of too

many flash backs by the producers. In the scene where Marshal and Barney made a 5slaps

bet on a video, Marshal wins the bet, therefore he has to slap Barney 5 times. Over 90% of

the audience enjoyed the episode, most audience consider it to be a fun thing to have a slap

bet. Betting in American cultural text is a usual and legalised thing to do. Cultural text by

Abu-Lughod is determine by the integrated relationship between the producer and the

consumer, where he gave an example in his writing about Egyptian Zaynab who has troubles

in her life due to cultural differences between the upper Egyptians and the village life in

Egypt. What I am trying to say here is that betting is culturally moral in some cultures while

immoral in in other cultures. Nevertheless, the audience from Saudi Arabia where betting is

forbidden find the betting game fun. Maryam who is from Saudi wrote “I love Marshal and

the slap bet is fun”, you can see how the program has impact on its audiences this scene is

totally in hegemony with the audience. Nevertheless, Remy Raymond wrote “didn’t really

like the slap bet is not fun at all…” This is a restrictive decoding by the fan who didn’t get to

see the slap scene as fun but rather waste of time, and regarded it as wrong. With the off-

screen laughter which is non diegetic to the slap scene, the producers tries to encode a

funny scene but fails, the message is wrongly transmitted or rejected by the audience. While

I was scrolling another Yemeni fan wrote, “ I didn’t get the slap bet as funny but I would love

to have such a bet with my brother so I can slap him”, this shows that the scene can also be

negotiable in terms of decoding, this Yemeni fan didn’t find it funny but wanted to try it. This

is clearly an act of negotiating with the producers of the program. Those characters of this
series are seen in different views, when it comes to audience decoding of meaning. Ted

Mosby who is a represented by the producers as a gentle man, single and searching for the

right woman for himself, has been decoded in different ways. Starting from a fan Yacine who

did not decode Ted as a gentle man but a fool for taking very long to meet the right woman,

Yacine did not decode the message correctly as how the producers wanted him to see Ted,

in this case we can say we have a restrictive decoding. While another fan thought that Ted is

a nice guy looking for the right woman but Ted would have met her earlier than the series is

taking it. He wrote “if Ted really wanted to meet the he would have asked her roommate in

the 3rd season or he would have done something else right. But for most of the audience the

see ted as a nice guy, with kind heart, and deserves to meet the right woman. Those fans

who decoded Ted as the way the producers wants him to be represented are in hegemony

with the producers of the series. Barney Stinson who is been represented as a player who

doesn’t have anything to loose, loved by all ladies, smart, hardworking and extremely funny.

Barney has the legendary record of dating over 200 women in the series, this made him look

like someone who has no tendency of falling in love with any other woman, but Barney

loved Robin so much that they got married. Most of the audience like Barneys character, it is

in hegemony with a lot of comment which I read so far from the internet, a fan wrote Barney

is my mentor, I love everything about him, he makes me smile and he is legendary. This

shows that this particular fan decoded the message from the producers as it is encoded,

which makes it dominant/ in hegemony with the fan and audience. Nevertheless, another

fan wrote, Barney is crazy and inhumane, why would he break up with Laura (a girl he was
supposed to marry but broke up with her the first day he met her parent), she loves him.

You see this can be said to be restrictive in such a way that the fan didn’t get what the

producers are trying to portray (Barney is meant to be a player), also it can be said to be

negotiable decoding because the fan gave a reason that Laura loves him, it is not like the fan

didn’t understand or didn’t decode Barney as a player but she thought he will be able to be

with Laura. Further Characters such as Lilly and Marsha who are married are represented as

understanding couple whom have been in relationship for a long time, most of the

comments I found on the internet are in hegemony with the producers of the series.

Marcela Silva wrote “Marshal and Lily are the best couple ever” this decodes hegemony and

dominance of the producers and their audience. I could not find any restrictive audience

view online about Marshal and Lily. Robin is the last character who has been the most talked

about in this series, she is just a female replica of Barney, and she is portrayed as

independent woman with several boyfriends. In my internet research Robin is seen by the

audience as she is represented by the producers, a fan Jack Edward said Robin and Barney

deserve to be together because they are both like each other. In this case we can say that it

is in hegemony with what the producers try to portray.

To conclude, representation is an act of representing some ideas, in media what we usually

see is a representation of our thought, cultural backgrounds and ideologies. The series “how

I met your mother”, represents the American life style in so many way, which included the

quest for a happy life and how difficult it can get for one to find happiness. Further, the

internet audience’s reactions are usually in hegemony with the producers, but also
sometimes gets the message wrongly and that affects the storyline and also the narrative of

the series. Basically, the narrative is in hegemony and somewhat negotiable with 90% of the

internet audiences I could not find much restrictive decoding from the internet.