Representation Notes

 Representation - the description or portrayal of someone or something in a particular way. Media is known as Media because it mediates our view of reality, so representation refers to the construction of reality we see through different forms of media. 

O'Shaughnessy & Stadler - Representation is the ability to draw upon features of the world and present them to an audience, not simply as a reflection but as constructions. Hence, the images do not portray reality in 100% accuracy and without bias, but rather present 'versions of reality' influenced by cultural, political, and personal beliefs. 

By giving audiences information, media texts extend experience of reality; every time you see a media text, you extend your experience of life vicariously. However, our experience is restricted as the producers have selected and constructed the information we receive.
Everything you see in the media has been constructed. It's all a representation of something e.g. people, events, or beliefs. This is why it's important to remember that, no matter how realistic something may appear to you, it's a construction, not reality.
Our sense of reality is becoming increasingly reliant on what we see in the media, as the amount of media we are exposed to daily grows and grows.

Representations can take many forms, such as newspapers, movies, photographs, and radio segments. They're created through three stages;

Selection - What's in it
Omission - What's not
Construction - How you want to viewer to feel about what they're seeing (The use of Codes)

When people say representation, they're often thinking of how certain social groups are portrayed in mainstream media such as; Age, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race, disability, class, or nationality.  


An ideology is a belief system that is constructed and presented by a text. Media texts represent the world in order to support a dominant ideology, that a certain group of people are almost always in the right, whereas other groups are destined for lives full of tragedy and loss e.g. the Bury Your Gays Trope. 
Many dominant ideologies are culturally specific, such as Christian fundamentalism in the USA or Shariah law in some Muslim countries. 
They're central to people's belief systems, it's often difficult or impossible to challenge them effectively. Some examples are;

1. Capitalism - The production of capital and consumption of surplus value as a life goal. Survival of the richest.
2. Patriotism - To love, support, and protect one's country against those who seek to harm it. To support those in power.
3. Male Superiority - Men are more suited to positions of power and decision making. Tend to be less emotional.
4. Traditional Family Values - The right way to live is to marry someone of the opposite sex and have children. 

Hegemony is the way in which those in power maintain their control. Dominant ideologies are considered hegemonic; power in society is maintained by constructing ideologies which are usually promoted by the mass media. Consider the movie American Sniper. True hero or hate filled propaganda? 

Example of hegemonic values;

1. The police are always right
2. It's important to be skinny
3. Mass immigration is undesirable
4. The poor are lazy and deserve hardship 
5. Men are better leaders than women 

Antonio Gramsci - Renowned for his concept of cultural hegemony as a means of maintaining the state in a capitalist society. 

His theory states that a diverse culture can be ruled or dominated by one group or glass, that everyday practises and shared beliefs provide the foundation for complex systems of domination.

In 'advanced' industrial societies hegemonic cultural innovations such as compulsory schooling, mass media, and popular culture have indoctrinated workers to a false consciousness. 

Stereotypes - characters in a media text who are 'types' that define than as a whole rather than complex people. Children's media texts are often more quick to use blatant stereotypes than adults so it's easier for identify various characters.

Stereotypes are usually negative and considered to be too reductive or offensive. 

Representation involves not only how the creators construct the identities represented but also how they are processed by the audience - the audience can be influenced, but ultimately come to their own conclusions. 

The Gaze refers to how an audience views the way people are represented in media. There are different form of gaze, such as the Spectator's gaze, which is the audience, or the Intra-Diegetic gaze where someone in the text is viewing someone else, also within the text. 

There is also the Extra-Diegetic gaze, often classified as 'forth wall breaking', or the Camera's gaze, which can be equated to the director's gaze. The Intra-Intra-Diegetic gaze would be characters watching a show, within a show, being watched by the audience. 

Codes - a system of signs used to communicate meaning.
Denotative meaning - literal
Connotative meaning - cultural or personal associations of a certain thing.


Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze Theory - Written in 1975, an essay entitled 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' first introduced the idea of the 'male gaze' as an industry wide issue. 
This theory suggests that when watching a film, because the majority of the industry is run by heterosexual men, this is the view we see the female characters through. It also implies that women are being robbed of their identities on screen, and exist only to fulfil male fantasies. It can be obvious, such as lecherous shots of Megan Fox in the Transformers movie, or subtle, such as the character of Padmé existing only to allow Anakin to grow, and then suffer in The Star Wars Prequels. She has few character traits of her own, and her only purpose in the movie is to give her male love interest a boon, and then a reason to cry. 

Mulvey suggests three distinct modes of the male gaze

1. Voyeuristic (women as whores)
2. Fetishistic (women as unreachable madonnas)
3. Narcissistic (women seeing themselves on screen)

The Male Gaze Theory only allows women to view themselves on screen through a secondary perspective, and through a male perspective first. Typically, the female character only exists in relation to her male counterpart, she only matters when she makes him feel or act, and has no real personal value or importance.
Consider any major Marvel or DC movie; every hero has a sexy, 'capable' female helper who teaches him to grow and change, but rarely undergoes her own character development. She's glorified eye candy disguised as a progressive female role through the occasional moment of spine. 

The Male Gaze leads to the hegemonic ideologies within our society. Mulvey argues that for women, the result of media being presented from the perspective of men and through the male gaze, women find themselves, at times, taking on the male gaze themselves. Women then end up gazing at other women the way they see men do and end up objectifying other women. 

These hegemonic ideologies lead to gender roles in films, where the more active characters are typically male whilst the passive side characters are female. They are under control of the male gaze and only exist for visual pleasure. Women often slow the narrative down, they act as inspiration for men to act rather than acting themselves. On the other hand, men push the narrative forwards by making things happen. 

The role of a female character in a narrative has two functions;

1. As an erotic object for the characters within the narrative
2. As an erotic object for the spectators watching the narrative 

Socophillia - 'Love of watching' i.e. we sit in a darkened movie theatre and watch people who are unaware we're there. It's a branch of voyeurism, as women on the screen sit or stand in poses no one would unless they were trying to look sexy. Objectification is related to the male gaze; this involves devaluing characters to sexual objects by removing their humanity and focusing on their visual appeal. 

Mulvey argued that we live in a patriarchal society where men dictate the rules and construct the ideal visions, one of these being male dominance over women. The worry is that a passive audience will be influenced this version of reality and simply accept it. 

The theory of Post Modernism - Traditional media representation of reality. 

Mass media was once thought of as holding up a mirror to, and thereby reflecting, a wider social reality to what you, the individual, would see in you local environment. However in the past it was thought TV reflected reality, now, reality is only definable in terms of the reflections of that mirror.

It is not a question of distortion since that implies that there is still reality, outside the influence of the media, which can be distorted. Instead, now we are copying copies of reality and representing hyper reality as reality and this being influenced by a fake constructed representation of reality.

The actual reality seems to have been lost, so what actually is reality now? 

What we see on television, we see as real and thus copy it within our lives, so the real is being lost unconsciously. This influenced the film, 'The Matrix.'

So, are we being influenced by a hyper reality? Does the Male Gaze influence and oppress actual living women? Is there enough evidence of female objectification?  


Gloria Jean Watkins - First major work “Ain’t I a woman? Lack, women and femininity” 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.

Lacan's Mirror Theory - An idea around the idea of identity. It considers the point at which a person develops a sense of self and conscious identity, starting at the point at which a child recognises their own reflection and beans to consider how other perceive them. 
They begin to modify their appearance to satisfy their perceptions of how others see them. Mulvey extends this idea with the 'Silver Screen' operating of a metaphorical mirror, reflecting back to the female viewer representations of the female identity that aren't genuine as they've been created by men, for men. 


Judith Butler - Emerging out of Gender Studies, the Queer theory came to exist. This challenges the idea that gender is fixed, immovable, and means the same thing to everyone. It instead suggests that our gender, and the inevitable roles that come with, shouldn't define us as people or how we perceive other people. 
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 and that a persons’ identity should not be limited to their sexuality.


Dick Hebdidge - In his book, Subculture and The Meaning of Style, Hebdidge defined a subculture as 'A group of 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 associations 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.

Anthony Giddens - Media representations are either traditional or post traditional. A traditional society is one in which individual choice was limited by customs and unwritten laws.  In contrast, Post Traditional societies are one where the ideas set by previous generations are less important that those of the individuals.