Stereotype - media institutions use sterotypes because the audience will instantly understand them. Think of stereotypes as a 'visual shortcut'. They've 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.
Countertypes - a representation that challenges tradition stereotypical associations of groups, people or places.
Representation - is 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 represents it to us in the way 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.
Gatekeeper - a media 'gatekeeper' is any person involved in a production with the power to make decisions about something the audience are allowed to read, hear or see - and also what they don't 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, straplines and headlines, etc.
Moguls - In the example of the newspapers editor's decision, this will not be mad freely; it will have been affected by technical issues, by the kind of person who owns the newspaper, for example the media moguls such as Rupert Murdoch, and by many other things.
When you are analysing representations, you have to think about the following questions:
Who? - Who or what is being represented? Who is the preferred audience for this representation?
What? - What are they doing? Is their activity presented as typical or atypical? Are they conforming to genre expectations or other conventions?
Why? - Why are they present? What purpose do they serve? What are they communicating by their presence? What's the preferred reading?
Where? - 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?
Representation Theories
The male gaze (Laura Mulvey):
The cinema apparatus of Hollywood cinema puts the audience in a masculine subject position with the women 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 models of male gaze - "voyeuristics (women as whores) and fetishistic - women as unreachable Madonnas". Also narcissistic - women watching film see themselves reflected on the screen.
The Bechdel Test:
The Bechdel test, sometimes called the Mo Movie Measure or Bechdel Rule is a simple test which names the following three criteria -
Representation Theories
The male gaze (Laura Mulvey):
The cinema apparatus of Hollywood cinema puts the audience in a masculine subject position with the women 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 models of male gaze - "voyeuristics (women as whores) and fetishistic - women as unreachable Madonnas". Also narcissistic - women watching film see themselves reflected on the screen.
The Bechdel Test:
The Bechdel test, sometimes called the Mo Movie Measure or Bechdel Rule is a simple test which names the following three criteria -
- It has to have at least two named women in it...
- ...who have a conversation with each other...
- ...about something besides a man.
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.
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