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A2 MEDIA STUDIES G325:
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES – REPRESENTATION
RE//PRESENTATION (of reality)
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Rules or conventions by which signs are put together to create meaning.
Signs often work through a series of codes that are, like signs, socially
constructed &, therefore, agreed upon by society as a whole: dress codes
– colour codes – non-verbal codes – technical codes.
Andrew Crisell, Understanding Radio (1994) identifies silence as an
important code used in radio texts alongside more obvious codes such as
words, sounds & music. These codes, then, govern representation.
What rules or conventions have shaped my productions?
Thriller Music Video Magazine Advertisement/Website Digipak
Example of dress code:
Example of colour code:
Example of non-verbal code:
Example of technical code:
What examples of representation might there be, intentionally or not, in
my:
Thriller
Music Video
Mag Ad/Website
Digipak
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Semiology (Greek word semeion) = SIGN
An attempt to create a science of the study of sign systems & their role in
the construction & reconstruction of meaning in media texts.
Concentrates primarily on the text itself & the signs and codes that are
contained within.
Barthes (see below) applied these ideas of semiotics to everyday life &
popular culture.
Therefore, if you look at how meanings are constructed in your product,
you can suggest how they represent the reconstruction of meaning to an
audience.
INFORMATION
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)
Produced structuralist (see below) work that first promoted the idea of
semiology, seeing language as a cultural creation & a social system that
was governed by a set of rules.
Charles Peirce (1839-1914)
Took Saussure’s ideas & applied to other social constructs in society
(itself governed by sets of rules).
Roland Barthes (1913-1980)
Barthes was influenced by Saussure & became one of the most
influential theorists applying semiotic analysis to daily life, popular
culture & contemporary issues.
This approach argues that identifying underlying structures is allimportant in undertaking analysis: linguistics = grammatical structures;
social structures = family units etc.
Semiotic analysis is a useful tool in the deconstruction of texts > reveals
the underlying meanings that are ‘suspended’ within a text > further
analysis allows consideration of the ideologies that underpin texts &
their construction.
Q: If I look at the representations I have created of, say, males & female
in my product, what are the basic meanings that I have created?
Q: If I apply semiotic analysis to these representations can I discover any
further underlying meanings &, if I probe deeper, can I find any
evidence of ideologies present?
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Q: What other areas (codes) do I need to analyse the representation of
(race, class, colours...)?
Please list:
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We, the audience, are called ‘readers’ – this helps to suggest a greater
degree of creativity & involvement in the construction of the text’s
meaning. “Reading’ is something we learn to do & is shaped by our
social & cultural background: we are likely to bring something of our
own ‘cultural baggage’ to the text.
Barthes: “The birth of the reader is the death of the author.” Mythologies
1972.
Q: What do you think that Barthes meant by this?
Q: Apply Barthes’ quote to your 4 products; what different readings
might audiences have of the representations contained within your
products?
Thriller
Music Video
Mag Ad/Website
Digipak
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Fiske & Hartley in Reading Television (1978) describe the sign:
Signifier + signified = sign; a physical object + a mental concept or
meaning conveyed by the signifier. This, then, becomes the
representation that the reader has decoded.
A music video is a sign.
It consists of a signifier - the music video itself - and something that is
signified - the ‘ideas’ or ‘meaning’ behind the set of images and sounds
used in the video.
Q: Apply this simple procedure to your 4 products, suggesting at least
one representation that is signified by your signifier?
Signifier =
Signified (represents) =
Signifier =
Signified (represents) =
Signifier =
Signified (represents) =
Signifier =
Signified (represents) =
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Peirce > 3 types of signs: symbolic (or arbitrary); iconic; indexical.
Symbolic – no obvious connection between sign & object > the word
CAT has no obvious link with small furry animal > only works because
we know the rules that say C-A-T, when put in a certain order, mean or
‘signify’ that small furry animal (if ‘we’ was French then it would be CH-A-T). They are arbitrary because they can have several meanings
depending upon who is reading the sign.
The Union Jack.
Q: List the as many groups as you can that have different meanings of
the representation of this flag (some prompts at bottom of page)?
Indexical – a direct connection with what is being ‘signified’.
Smoke is often used as an indexical sign for _ _ _ _
A tear running down a face is an indexical sign for
______
(British monarchy, Unionists in Ulster, mods in Quadrophenia (1979) or BNP)
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Iconic – like religious paintings, or photographs, these signs have a
physical similarity to the objects they that they ‘signify’.
Q: What does this iconic sign represent?
Q: What does this iconic sign represent?
It is iconic signs which are especially significant in the study of the
visual image; because iconic signs so closely resemble the item that they
represent, that they seem natural = easy to confuse the sign with reality
itself = important implications for the way in which we read the
representation of reality in the media.
Q: Looking at the visual images in your 4 products, what iconic signs can
you see and how might an audience confuse these representations with
reality?
Thriller
Music Video
Mag Ad/Website
Digipak
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Media texts can have several meanings depending on the way in which
the signs are read & the background of the individual ‘reader’ = open to
many interpretations, ambiguous or polysemic. Sometimes, however,
there is a preferred meaning that is indicated by the way the text has
been produced & presented to the reader.
Q: Try to look at your 4 products with ‘fresh’ eyes: is there a preferred
meaning for the representations that you have created & presented; are
any of your representations polysemic?
Thriller
Preferred:
Polysemic:
Music Video
Preferred:
Polysemic:
Mag Ad/Website
Preferred:
Polysemic:
Digipak
Preferred:
Polysemic:
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The fixing or limiting of a particular set of meanings to an image.
Common forms include captions underneath photographs & brand
names across perfume advertisements.
Q: Find several good examples of images that have been ‘anchored’ from
the internet, then try to think of how you might have anchored meaning
in any of the representations that you have created in your 4 products?
Thriller
Music Video
Mag Ad/Website
Digipak
DENOTATION
CONNOTATION
Barthes: what an image actually shows & is immediately
apparent, rather than the assumptions an individual
reader may make about it.
The meaning of a sign which is arrived at through the
cultural experiences a reader brings to it.
Q: How does this apply to my products?
The photograph of _________________________________
on my digipak denotes _____________________________
__________________________________________________
(describe the image using technical codes), this representation
connotes __________________________________________
__________________________________________________
(suggest the meaning, or meanings, that the image should/could represent)
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PROCESS MODEL
An earlier model which considers the audience’s
OF
interaction with the media as part of a linear process:
COMMUNICATION SENDER>CHANNEL>MESSAGE>RECEIVER where
the meaning of the text is thought to be ‘fixed’ by the
producer.
Semiotic analysis has replaced this model, can you
suggest why (what is wrong with this model) & give
an example?
PROBLEMS WITH
SEMIOTICS
1. Not really a ‘science’ in the way that Barthes
claimed, & because of polysemic readings there is
some difficulty in judging which interpretations are
most valid.
2. Difficult to measure the effect of the audience or
reader in creating signs: e.g. flowers left after death of
Diana, Princess of Wales, could ‘signify’ national
mourning but could not say whether people were
expressing their sorrow or media manipulation of that
sorrow.
3. Critics suggest that denotation stage is not very
useful because it is so artificial & all readers
automatically ‘add’ connotations.
Q: What do you think of these 3 problems and can you
apply any of them to any area of your 4 products?
1.
2.
3.
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REPRESENTATION
Your reflective writing will be a fluid interplay between the personal (as
a wo/man) & the academic (as a student analysing your own creative
outcomes in theoretical contexts).
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“Striptease is based on a contradiction. Woman is desexualised at the
very moment when she is stripped naked. We may therefore say that we
are dealing here with a spectacle based on fear.” Mythologies (1972). He is
suggesting that clothes sexualise women more than the naked body
itself, which is why the female stripper leaves the stage at the point of
removing the last garment. We can see evidence of this in all media &
especially in… the appearance of female pop artists.
(paraphrasing J McDougall, in OCR Media Studies for A2 (2009)).
Q: Can you apply this approach to the representation of a female (or
male, to take it one step further) artist in your music video / mag
ad/website / digipak or actor in your thriller?
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“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been
split between active/male & passive/female. The determining male gaze
projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled
accordingly.” (Mulvey in Humm 1992). Mulvey’s hugely influential
theory (The male Gaze) is actually quite simple: men look at women &
the media reinforce this by filming or photographing women from a
male point of view – so the norm for media representation is that the
camera is male.
Q: Looking at your 4 products, is there any evidence to suggest that the
representations in your products are from a male perspective & are
therefore applicable to the male gaze theory?
Thriller
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Music Video
Mag Ad/Website
Digipak
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REPRESENTATION
Your reflective writing will be a fluid interplay between the personal (as
a wo/man) & the academic (as a student analysing your own creative
outcomes in theoretical contexts).
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Literally, the love of looking. A term derived from the predominantly
male gaze of Hollywood cinema, which enjoys objectifying women into
mere objects to be looked at (rather than subjects with their own voice &
subjectivity). The term, as used in feminist film criticism, is heavily
influenced by Freudian & Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Q: Can you identify any representations in your 4 products that have
objectified women & are scopophilic OR have you consciously avoided
scopophilia in creating your representations?
Thriller
Music Video
Mag Ad/Website
Digipak
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REPRESENTATION
Your reflective writing will be a fluid interplay between the personal (as a
wo/man) & the academic (as a student analysing your own creative
outcomes in theoretical contexts).
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“Historically people & movements have been called feminist when they
recognised the connections between social inequalities, deprivations &
gender differences. Currently feminists are pursuing questions about the
consequences for women & men when gender oppressions intersect with
other forms of oppression, with homophobia, classism, ageism, disability
& racism.” Humm (1992).
17 years on is there more symbolic oppression in the media than at the
time of Humm’s description? > the xenophobic reaction to Islam in the
post 9/11 context, & the gradual erosion of civil liberties which is partly
facilitated by media representations of ‘the threat’.
Sometimes media studies has to be political; selling music as a commodity
through media art whilst remaining embedded in political cultural
practices that make a difference to how we treat each other in daily social
life. (paraphrasing J McDougall, in OCR Media Studies for A2 (2009)).
Q: Have you sold music as a commodity in your media art & have you
used representations that might make a difference to the daily interaction
of people?
Music Video
Mag Ad/Website
Digipak
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REPRESENTATION
Your reflective writing will be a fluid interplay between the personal (as
a wo/man) & the academic (as a student analysing your own creative
outcomes in theoretical contexts).
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You have already applied Dyer’s theory about the construction of a star
image to your music video; this can also be applied to the website &
digipak.
In The Matter of Images (1993) Dyer points out the dangers of thinking
rigidly in terms of stereotypes when dealing with representation. “A
stereotype can be complex, varied, intense & contradictory, an image of
otherness in which it is still possible to find oneself.” Stereotypes, he
points out, are not always or necessarily negative, although some, such
as the black mammy of Hollywood, are very limiting. The process of
stereotyping involves power; the power of the dominant groups to
mould the accepted social view of themselves & of those groups that
they perceive as marginal. This view can change as so-called marginal
groups gain in
self-awareness, expression & power.
“A really useful study of representation can only take place within an
overall awareness of the dominant ideology, the chief component of
which... is the assumption of heterosexuality as a dominant, structuring
outlook & viewpoint.” (Chris Jones in An Introduction To Film Studies
(1996)).
Q: How have you applied, or thought about, stereotyping in your 4
products - what dominant groups are in operation in your products –
have you assumed a heterosexual viewpoint (not necessarily on
purpose)?
Thriller
Music Video
Mag Ad/Website
Digipak
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It might be useful to ask the same questions as Dyer, in an article on
popular television in which he was considering the different
connotations of the concept of representation:
1. What sense of the world is this programme (music video, website,
digipak, thriller) making?
Thriller
Music Video
Mag Ad/Website
Digipak
2. What does it claim is typical of the world & what deviant?
Thriller
Music Video
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3. Who is really speaking? For whom?
Thriller
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4. What does it represent to us, & why?
Thriller
Music Video
Mag Ad/Website
Digipak
“Taking Popular Television Seriously” Dyer (1985).