Representation

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
(patterns) are encoded into texts and
others are left out in order to give a
preferred representation (the preferred
syntagm) (LeviStrauss, 1958).

Representation
(Dyer, 1985)
As being representative of in the sense of being
typical
In the sense of speaking for and on behalf of
somebody or a group
In recognising the existence of audience
responses, with different audiences respondng to
different kinds of representation
As re-presentation: re-presenting reality over
again to us. Reality is mediated through
representation available in the culture

What is ideology?
Tim O Sullivan et al (1998) Ideology
- refers to a set of ideas which
produces a selective view of reality.
Ideology beliefs which are seen as
common sense and become
naturalised (what we expect)

Marxist Theory
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 to reinforce the dominant
ideologies in society
The media circulates and reinforces dominant
ideologies

Myths & Ideologies

Judith Williamson (1978) advertisements
draw heavily on myths they use cultural
signifiers to represent qualities which can
be realised through the consumption of
the product (Maslows hierarchy of needs)
Carl Rogers, (1980). Magazine texts and
adverts are encoded specifically to
represent an aspirational lifestyle offering
audiences images of an ideal self and an
ideal partner

Maslows Hierarchy of Needs

NEED
SELF-

ACTUALIZATION

ESTEEM NEEDS

LOVE, AFFECTION, AND

BELONGINGNESS NEEDS

SAFETY NEEDS

PHYSIOLOGICAL OR SURVIVAL NEEDS

Maslows Hierarchy of Needs

NEED
FOR
SELF-

ACTUALIZATION
MASLOW EMPHASIZES NEED FOR SELF
ACTUALIZATION IS
A HEALTHY INDIVIDUALS PRIME
MOTIVATION

SELF-ACTUALIZATION MEANS
ACTUALIZING
ONES POTENTIAL BECOMING ALL
ONE IS
CAPABLE OF BECOMING

Music video
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 subcultures 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 to
raise their status and help them

Music video artist as a "modern

mythic embodiment"
Carlsson developed the following mythical
method of analysis, -"modern mythic
embodiment" .
Viewed from this perspective the music
video artist is seen as embodying one, or a
combination of "modern mythic characters
or forces" of which there are three general.
The music video artist is representing
different aspects of the free floating
disparate universe of music video.

Commercial exhibitionist
In one type of performance, the performer is not
a performer anymore, he or she is a
materialization of the commercial exhibitionist.
He or she is a monger of their own body image,
selling everything to be in the spotlight selling
voice, face, lifestyle, records, and so on.
This commercial exhibitionist wants success and
tries to evoke the charisma of stardom and
sexuality, he or she wishes to embody dreams
of celebrity, to be an icon, the centre of
procreative wishes.

Televised bard
He or she is a modern bard singing banal lyrics using
television as a medium.
The televised bard is a singing storyteller who uses actual
on-screen images instead of inner, personal images.
Sometimes the televised bard acts in the story
sometimes he or she is far away and inserted images help
him or her tell the story.
The greatest televised bards create audio-visual poetry.
They transform the banal story of the lyrics employing onscreen images to create a story about life and death. Too
often, however, the televised bards only contemplates her
or his own greatness and unfulfilled wishes.

Male gaze (1975)

"In their traditional exhibitionist role women are
simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their
appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so
that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness,

Laura Mulvey argues that Freud's

psychoanalytic theory is the key to
understanding how film creates such a
space for female sexual objectification
and exploitation through the
combination of the patriarchal order of
society, and 'looking' in itself as a
pleasurable act of voyeurism, as

"the cinema satisfies a

primordial wish for
pleasurable looking.

Mulvey identifies 3 "looks" or perspectives

that occur in film which serve to sexually
objectify women

1. The first is the perspective of

the male character on
screen and how he perceives
the female character.
2. The second is the perspective
of the spectator as they see
the female character on
screen.
3. The third "look" joins the first
two looks together: it is the
male audience member's
This third perspective allows the male audience to take the
perspective of the male
female character as his own personal sex object because he can
character
thecharacter
film.
relate himself, through looking,
to thein
male
in the film.

1979: Janet Bergstrom uses Sigmund Freuds

ideas of bisexual responses, arguing that
women are capable of identifying with
male characters and men with women
characters, either successively or
simultaneously.
1984: Miriam Hanson,
put

forth the idea that women

are also able to view male
characters as erotic
objects of desire.
1992: Carol Clover, in "Men Women and
Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror
Film" argues that young male viewers of
Horror are quite prepared to identify with
the female-in-jeopardy. Clover further
argues that the "Final Girl" in the
psychosexual sub-genre of Exploitation
Horror invariable triumphs through her
own resourcefulness, and is not by any
means a passive, or inevitable, victim.

Laura Mulvey , Afterthoughts on

Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema (1981).

In addressing the heterosexual female spectator,

she revised her stance to argue that women
can take two possible roles in relation to film:

a masochistic identification with the

female object of desire that is
ultimately self-defeating or
a transsexual identification with men
as the active viewers of the text

Post-Feminism
Angela McRobbie presents Bridget Jones, the title character in
the 2001 film Bridget Joness Diary, as a classic post-feminist
example:
Modern,
independent, and flirty, Bridget is
also incessantly self-reflexive, weightobsessed, and plagued by anxiety over
finding a husband. Along with her fictional
comrades Carrie Bradshaw and Ally McBeal,

Bridget acknowledges her feminist

predecessors, but is glad to escape the
censorious politics they promoted
and be free to revel in the trappings of
traditional girlhood. These women and

have taken
feminism into account and
implicitly or explicitly ask
the question, what now?
cultural texts

Angela McRobbie (2009)

Your Work
Is there a dominant ideology? Are
you creating representations of
people, places? What codes/signs
are you using to do this?
How can your audience recognise
and interpret these signs?