Representations

You will all be familiar with this term as a key concept to help you analyse an
unseen media text, but this term is also used and an area of academic theory in
Media Studies. You will need to become well read and confident in this area of
theory and research. You will need to know all the related theory, debates,
political, historical and social context.
The syllabus highlights the following areas for studying Representations':
Two detailed studies of the images of particular groups or places across a range
of media.
Alternative images of these groups or places across the media.
General issues of representation and stereotyping within the media.
Problems of producing fair and and accurate media representations.
Representations and power in the Media.
Reasons for dominant representations (e.g. historic, economic, social, political,
etc).
Here are some notes, briefly outlining the key theories about Media
Representations. There is a brief summary of each theory taken from your class
work together.

Karl Marx and Antonio Gramsci Marxist perspectives

Karl Marx was interested in power. He did a lot of work thinking about how
societies are structured and how they are unfair. His main idea was that the
masses (he called them the proletariat) were controlled or dominated by the
elite (the bourgeoisie). The powerful elite (bourgeoisie) own the means of
production and therefore they have power over the workers (proletariat). This
unfair social dominance serves the elite but it is exploitative of the workers and
society is kept like this because it suits those at the top. The main way this is
done is through the superstructure of society (the way people are influenced)
namely religion, education, law, politics. He called all this stuff the ideological
state apparatus. If this didnt work, then the bourgeoisie would crush their
working classes using the military state apparatus like the army and the police.

Although print and cinema were around when Marx was writing, the media was
less prolific than it is now and lifestyle advertising was not in full swing he
doesnt focus on the media all that much although he does consider propaganda.
Gramsci took his ideas on in the 1920s and the Birmingham School (Hall and
Williams) took them on again in the 70s and 80s These Marxist media theorists
applied some of Marxs key ideas to the mass media especially ideas about
ideological influence (HEGEMONY).
This idea of Hegemony is very important to representation theory because the
way people and groups are represented and the messages and ideology we
receive as the mass audience could influence public opinion. For example, in
some right wing news media (such as the daily mail) we often see pretty
negative representations of immigrants Shows like 24 produced by Fox (part
of News Corp International) often depict asian and muslim people as potential
terrorists. It is important to interrogate how such ideologies serve the elite and
influence the masses.
Lets have a look at Top Boy (produced for Channel 4). What do we know about
Channel 4? In what what can a Marxist reading of this text help us understand it
in a fuller and enriched way?

The Male Gaze Laura Mulvey Feminist Theory Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema Written in 1975
The cinema apparatus of Hollywood cinema puts the audience in a masculine
subject position with the woman on the screen seen as an object of desire. Film
and cinematography are structures upon ideas. Protagonists tended to be men.
Mulvey suggests two distinct modes of male gaze voueuristic (women as
whores) and fetishistic women as unreachable madonnas. (Also narcissistic
women watching film see themselves reflected on the screen). (Film texts:
Alien, Jackie Brown vs Foxy Brown).
Here are some clips from a variety of media texts. Try applying Mulveys theory
to these clips
People who criticise her ideas say that she is ignoring the fact that all genders
male and female want to feel dominated and overwhelmed by the cinema
experience. Also, she ignores the fact that men are capable of metaphoric
transvestism whereby they are able to view the film from the perspective of a
woman. (Thelma and Louise, The Piano, Knocked Up, Brick Lane).
Lacan Psychoanalysis and The Mirror
Lacans theory of the mirror is an idea around the idea of identity. He considers
the point at which a person develops a sense of self and conscious identity. He
considers the point at which a child recognises their own reflection and begin to
consider how others peceive them, modifying their appearence to satisfy their
perceptions of how others see them. Mulvey extends this idea when she writes
about the silver screen which she suggest operates like a metaphorical mirror;
reflecting back to the female viewer representations of female identity, but these
representations are not genuine reflections of the viewer but rather male
perceptions of idealised femininity.
Queer Theory Judith Butler
Emerging out of field of Gender studies (the study of males and female roles
historically, politically, socially etc). Queer theory challenges the idea that
gender being male or female is part of the essential self, that it is fixed,
immovable in other words Queer theory suggest that our male or female
gender does not control all aspects of our identity or how we perceive other
peoples identity. In other other words gender, particularly as it is represented in
performance on TV, Film etc, is fluid, flexible depending on the context in which
it is seen. For example an audience can see Tom Cruise playing a straight
pilot in The Right Stuff and interpret his gender, although male, as having very
queer or gay attributes. The theory developed as a way of combating
negative representations of gay sexuality in the Media. It combats the idea that
people should be divided and categorised, indeed marginalised, due to their
sexual orientation or practice and that a persons identity should not be limited to
their sexual preference. It asks us to consider how the media constructs gay
representation. (Apply to representation of gay sexuality in Knocked upany
others? What about Graham Norton? Alan Carr? Does Post Modern Irony
regarding representation of gay characters relieve the audience of burden of
moral responsibility regarding evolving attitudes a more flexible idea of gender?)

Subculture Representation of Groups Dick Hebdidge

In his book, Subculture and The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdidge said that a
subculture is a group pf like minded individuals who feel neglected by societal
standards and who develop a sense of identity which differs to the dominant on
to which they belong. Ken Gelder lists 6 ways in which a subculture can be
recognised: 1) Often have negative relationship to work 2) Negative or
ambivalent relationship to class 3) Through their associuations with territory
( The street, the hood, the club) rather than property 4) Through their stylistic
ties to excess 5) Through their movement out of home into non-domestic forms
of belonging (social groups as opposed to family) 6) Through their refusal to
engage with they might see as the banalities of life.
Other ways of recognising a subculture might be symbolism attached to clothes,
music, visual affectations like tattoos etc. (Examples Ben and his friends in
Knocked up representing a subculture some of the values of which Alison and as
such the America she initially represents might benefit from). Subcultural
values often associated with being cool.
Anthony Giddens Traditionalist vs Post Traditionalist views of society
Media representations of society can be seen as traditional or post traditionalist.
Traditional societies are ones in which individual choice was limited by its
dominant customs and traditions. Whereas post traditionalist societies are one
where the ideas set by previous generations are less important that those of
individuals. Post traditional societies are no longer feel so depenwere limited to
time and place. Giddens says, we are living in a post traditional society where
we are much less concerned with precedents sest by previous generations and
that our options are only limited by what the law and public opinion allows. We
have replaced seen/discreet systems with remote expert systems, institutions
and corporations.
Bell Hooks: Interconnectivity of race, class and gender.
Pen name of Gloria Jean Watkins. First major work Aint I a woman? Lack,
women and feminity written in 1981. Focused on the perpetuation of systems
of oppression and domination in the media paying particular attention to the
devaluation of black womanhood. The idea of lack or otherness refers to the
way that women and ethnic minorities are usually represented as other. Their
primary purpose is simply to be other than the norm (usually a white male
hero). They are therefore known more by the context of lack than by a realised
or complex identity. This theory can be linked to ideas of the monstrous
feminine found in feminist analysis of literature and art.
___________________________________________________________________________
Representation of youth and teenagers
Considering Quadrophenia.
This film is great for thinking about subculture. The film looks and mods and
their interaction with the rockers. Think about how fashion, music, language,
drugs and sex are used symbolically to make meaning and represent values like
rebellion , anger and disillusion. Dick Hebdige said that subcultures use style to

represent their resistance to the dominant ideologies of a corrupt society. They

take symbols like the smart clothes or mopeds and modify or customise them to
show their alternative values. Watch the film again and see if you can identify
these symbols and what they represent.
Can this theory be applied to more recent films depicting youth? Watch 8Mile and
think about the urban music / hip hop rap subculture. Can the symbols of this
subculture be analysed in a similar way to Quadrophenia?