G325 - Representation

Today we are:
Recapping what representation is
Exploring the different theories on
representation and applying them to
our films
 Representation
• What does this man represent?

Formality?
Business?
Professional?
Smart?

Why? Because he is wearing a suit and tie - how can a piece of material make a
man more able to do his job or attend an event or function?

The tie and suit is a sign or symbol. In itself it makes no difference but it
carries cultural meaning - connotations.
 Representation
• Representation should be seen as the way the media re-
presents items to the audience

• However realistic media images seem, they never simply

present the world direct. They are always a construction, a
representation, rather than a transparent window into the
real world.

• It signals the way some media re-present certain images

over and over again making them seem ’natural’ and familiar.
 Representation
• The media gives us ways of imagining
particular groups, identities and situations.

• “The media do not just offer us a

transparent ‘window on the world’ but a
mediated version of the world. They don’t
just present reality, they re-present it.
(Buckingham 2003:58)
 Representation
All media messages are ‘constructed.’ We should not think of media texts (newspaper articles, TV shows,
comic books to name just a few) as “natural” things. Media texts are built just as surely as buildings and
roads are built. The building materials involved vary from one kind of text to another. In a magazine, for
example, there are words in different sizes and typefonts, photographs, colors, layout and page location.

• TV and movies have hundreds of building blocks - from camera angles and lighting to music and sound
effects. What this means is that whether we are watching the nightly news or passing a poster on the
street, the media message we experience was written by someone (or probably several people), pictures
were taken and a creative designer put it all together. But this is more than a physical process. What
happens is that whatever is “constructed” by just a few people then becomes “normalised” for the rest
of us; like the air we breathe, it gets taken for granted and usually goes unquestioned. But as the
audience, we don't get to see or hear the words, pictures or arrangements that were rejected. We only
see, hear or read what was accepted!

• The success of media texts depends upon their apparent naturalness; we turn off a production that
looks “fake.” But the truth is, it’s all fake – even the news! That doesn’t mean we can’t still enjoy a movie,
watch TV or listen to music. The goal of this question is not to make us cynical but simply to expose the
complexities of media’s “constructedness” and thus create the critical distance we need to be able to
ask other important questions.
• 2003 Center for Media Literacy / www.medialit.org Literacy for the 21st Century / Orientation &
Overview
 Verisimilitude
• When the Media create a world that is similar to ours, so similar that we
believe it exists!

• In order for a character to be believable he/she must wear clothes that you
would expect them to wear.

• When we look at how a media text represents the world we are concerned with
the representation of gender, age and ethnicity, social groups, places, time
periods and themes - All of this is the construction in a text of a plausible
believable world.

• This world can have its own logic and be similar to ours
like Doctor Who (where audiences can see time travel as possible)

• Or it can share its logic with our world and attempt to represent our reality
(like Coronation Street/Soaps)
Describe these groups to me - explain the
first ideas that come into your heads....
 Stereotypes
• The Representation of People....
• The media give the audience ways of imagining particular groups - when
they relate to people they are sometimes called stereotypes.
• They are widely circulated ideas or assumptions about particular
groups.
• They have the following characteristics:
• They have a categorising and an evalution of the group being
stereotyped
• They empahsise some easily grapsed feature of the group and suggest
that these are the cause of the groups position
• The evaluation of the group is often a negative one
• It is a process of categorisation. This necessary to make sense of the
world to allow us to get through any situation.
• They insist on absolute boundaries - whereas in reality different
spectrums of differences do exist
 ‘Scripts’
This is the Representation of events and situations.

This is when audiences think of the media as circulating dominant scripts.

These expectations get performed by the actors. When the media shows
different images of how life may be lived; how to behave with others in
particular situations etc.

The way love is often portrayed in films may make you feel like you will know
when “true love” hits you because you’ve seen its stages scripted so many
times.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoHmSkCohkQ

The Power of a repeated script in media:

In New York, 11th September 2001, a witness standing near the World Trade
Centre Twin Towers (who escaped from the first tower said) “I just felt
safe. It was a movie set and I was an extra so nothing could hurt me.”
 Representation of Gender
• How each gender is portrayed by the media.

• Many Media theorists (primarily John Berger 1972:45, 47) have suggested
that “men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch
themselves being looked at.” This has occurred across media forms, especially
in Hollywood cinema.

• The Male Gaze Theory

• “In a world split by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split
between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects
its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly. (Laura Mulvey
in Humm 1992:348)

• This is a simple idea - men look at women and the media reinforce this by
filming or photographing women from a male point of view - so the norm for
media representation is that the camera is male.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0argWNYZJdM - (Bond)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CWMCt35oFY
 How have you represented
Gender in your work?
• Have your projects been filmed from a certain
perspective?

• How is the issue of gender portrayed in your

films?

• Complete the sheet discussing how gender is

represented within your work.