Media Representations

This can seem complicated but it’s very simple once you get it and possibly the most important of all the key concepts. What we see and hear in the media is never real... It is a RE-presentation of reality. When we see young people in the media, they are being re-presented to us. How a person or organisation is represented is really important. A representation could be either positive or negative depending upon the way it is constructed. Costume, the language they use, the location are all part of how meaning is created. Another example might be with race. AS Media analysts, we need to look at the representation of characters and organisations critically to uncover whether there is an unfair dominance of negative stereotypes.




Try watching an episode of The Wire or Skins and think about the representation of young people. Is it good or bad, fair or unfair, is it stereotypical or more balanced? Try watching an episode of Britain’s Next Top Model and thinking about the representation of women, is it positive or negative and why?
As you watch TV, read magazines, go to see films or listen to the radio, or read the paper or surf the net, try thinking about the key concepts. Why not stop and think – who is the audience and how are they responding? What are the stereotypes being used here and are the representations positive or negative? Which institution made this media text and how are they funded; what is their vision?






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 – “voyeuristic (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).

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). This relates to our film as we have a female-leading character and we see a lot of the film from her perspective, we have reversed the stereotype here.