G235: Critical
Perspectives in Media
Theoretical Evaluation
of Production
Question 1(b)
Representation
Aims/Objectives
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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
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Representing is about constructing reality, it is supposed to contain
versimilitued and simplify people’s 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?
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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
media’s 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
they’ve 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 women’s interests and
rights.
• Particularly in relation to film –
objectification of women’s 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 text’s 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?
• O’Sullivan 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 wasn’t 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
group’s 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 Klapp’s
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 aren’t
true.
• They aren’t always negative (French good cooks)
• They aren’t 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.