G235: Critical
Perspectives in Media
Theoretical Evaluation
of Production
1b) Representation
Aims/Objectives
• To reinforce basic representation
theory.
• To have a basic understanding of how
to evaluate your coursework against
key representation theory.
Representation
• 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 (the preferred syntagm) (Levi – Strauss,
1958).
• 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?
• In terms of your coursework you will be looking at
representation in terms of :
• MARXISM
• FEMINISM
• POSTMODERNISM
• STEREOTYPES
Ideologies and Representation (MARXISM)
• A hegemonic view of society – fundamental inequalities in
power between social groups. Groups in power exercise
their influence culturally rather than by force.
• Concept has origins in Marxist theory - ruling capitalist
class are able to protect their economic interests.
• Representations are encoded into mass media texts in
order to do this – reinforce dominant ideologies in society.
Tim O’Sullivan et al. (1998) 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.
• Links to Roland Barthes (1973)
Myth – ideologies work through
symbolic codes – mythic in the
sense of having the appearance of
being ‘natural’ or ‘commonsense’.
• Judith Williamson (1978) detailed that
advertisements (film posters, adverts for music
texts you created) draw heavily on myths – they
use cultural signifiers to represent qualities which
can be realised through the consumption of the
product. (fulfilment of needs – Maslow).
• In the case of magazine texts and adverts they
are encoded specifically to represent an
aspirational lifestyle offering audiences images of
an ideal self and ideal partner (Carl Rogers,1980).
• 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.
• In terms of documentaries – how are our
national, regional identities, historical identities
constructed through the mediation of a text?
• David Gauntlett (2002) argues that “identities are
not ‘given’ but are constructed and negotiated.”
• Marxist Louis Althusser (1971) looked
at the way audiences were ‘hailed’ in
a process known as interpellation.
This idea is the social/ideological
practice of misrecognising yourself
based on a ‘false consciousness’
mediated by media representations.
• In terms of music videos – do we aspire to emulate
the artists – ‘shaman’ as defined by Carlsson
(1999) through the representations?
• Does this lead to a further analysis of sub-cultures
– representations in videos actually provide
identities - ideological basis for fans. Sarah
Thornton (1995) described “subcultural capital” as
the cultural knowledge and commodities acquired
by members of subcultures raised their status and
helped them differentiate – key to representations.
• 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.
• Look at the idea of the 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.”
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 music video and 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.
• Barthes (1972) view on sexualisation of
females in texts is this:
• “Striptease is based on contradiction.
Woman is desexualised at the very moment
when she is stripped naked”. He is
suggesting it is clothes that sexualise her
more – loads of evidence of this in pop
videos. Can this be subverted in your texts
by your representations or not?
• Paul Willis (1990) states, based on a
postmodern return to feminism,
that “pop stars are symbolic vehicles
with which young women
understand themselves more
fully...shaping their personalities to
fit the stars’ alleged preferences”.
Gay Gaze
• It can be argued that we can also have a ‘gay
male gaze’ (Steve Neale, 1992). Images which
show men in passive, submissive, sexualised
poses – lying down, looking up at the camera so
that the viewer is dominant can be described as
homoerotic. In this case the male subject will
have hands behind their heads in a pose which
could suggest relaxation but could also be read
as submissive and non-aggressive.
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, Daniel
Strinati (1995) details that “reality is now only
definable in terms of the reflections of the mirror”.
• Jean-Francious 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. Think
Disneyland.
• We can apply this to texts that claim to
represent reality – documentary, news.
Merrin (2005) argues that “the media
do not reflect and represent the reality
of the public 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.
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.
• He suggests this is a particularly interesting potential use
of stereotypes, in which the character is constructed, at
the level of dress, performance, etc., as a stereotype but is
deliberatIey given a narrative function that is not implicit
in the stereotype, thus throwing into question the
assumptions signalled by the stereotypical iconography.
• As part of stereotyping to create meaning in ‘factual’
texts such as news, television theorist John Hartley
(1982) argues that aspects such as the presenters’
voices are stereotyped in order to create shorthand
meanings for audiences at a particular but of drama,
action, light-heartedness etc.
• This means they are personalised and this
personalisation creates characteristics which become
stereotyped for the audience.
Essay
“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.
