Representations
Definitions:
Stereotypes – Media institutions use stereotypes
because the audience will instantly understand them. Think of stereotypes as a
‘visual shortcut’. They’re repeated so often that we assume they are normal or
‘true’.
Archetypes - This
is the ‘ultimate’ stereotype. For example, the white stiletto wearing, big
busted, brainless blonde bimbo.
Countertype -A
representation that challenges traditional stereotypical associations of
groups, people or places.
Representation –
the way in which people, events and ideas are presented to the audience. To
break it down, the media takes something that is already there and re-presents
it to us in the way that they choose.
These representations are created by the producers (anyone
who makes a media text) of media texts. What they choose to present to us is
controlled by Gatekeepers…
Gatekeepers
A media ‘gatekeeper’ is a person involved in a media
production with the power to make a decision about something the audience are
allowed to read, hear or see – and, of course, not get to see; for instance, a
newspaper editor has the final say on what goes into his or her newspaper,
where it goes within the pages, next to what other piece, with which pictures,
strap-lines and headlines, etc.
E.g. in a newspaper the reporter would be the producer and
the editor would be the gatekeeper. However the owner of the company would have
the final say.
Moguls:
But in the example of the newspaper editor’s decision, this
will not be made freely: it will have been affected by technical issues, by the
kind of person who owns the newspaper, for example (i.e. the so-called media
moguls, such as Rupert Mudorch), and by many other things.
Who, What, Why, Where?
When you’re analysing representation, think about the
following questions:
-
WHO or
what is being representing? Who is the preferred audience for this
representation?
-
WHAT
are they doing? Is their activity presented as typical or atypical? Are they
conforming to genre expectations or other conventions?
-
WHY
are they present? What purpose do they serve? What are they communicating by
their presence? What’s preferred reading?
-
WHERE
are they? How are they framed? Are they represented as natural or artificial?
What surrounds them? What is in the foreground and what is in the background?
The media can chose ways to represent information, such as
the man who started the London riots could be portrayed as a family man or as
someone who deserved it, depending on the types of pictures used. For example, there is one picture that shows him holding a baby and smiling and another where he appears to be making a gun gesture and looking more serious.
REPRESENTATION
THEORY
The Male Gaze (Laura Mulvey)
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 Madonna’s”. (Also narcissistic – women watching the film see
themselves reflected on the screen).
How we treat people (Richard Dyer)
Dyer argues that how we are seen determines how we are
treated and how we treat other people is based on how we see them. This comes
from our understanding of representation.
He believes that stereotypes come down to power. Those who
have power stereotype those who don’t.