Q1b Key Concepts

Representation

Do you agree with this view from the seventies?

Berger (1972)

“Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.”

Richard Dyer provides a useful framework to help us analyse representation….

Richard Dyer’s Typography (1985)

1. What is represented?

2. How is this representative of social groups?

3. Who is responsible for the representation?

4. What does the audience make of

it?

1. What is represented?What information, through the use of media language, does the text give you about characters, subject matter or place?

2. How is this representative of social groups?What does the text suggest is typical? Consider what it says about particular social groups (think of AS TV drama; gender, age, sexuality, ethnicity, physical ability/disability, regional identity and status).

Stereotype? Countertype? Positive? Negative? If stereotypes are used, why are they there?  Does it reinforce or challenge the dominant ideology?

3. Who is responsible for the representation?Consider the filmmakers and the institutions responsible for production.

What agenda do the producers have? Why would they want to represent things in a certain way? - think about: target audience genre commercial aspect artistic expression

When analysing your own work, don't just think you are the producers, think about who you have suggested are the producers of your text?  Independent producer/distributor or major studio? British/American? Etc.

4. What does the audience make of it?Taking all of the above into account what might the audience response be?

As we know not everyone will respond to the text in the same way so there is not one answer to this! Consider different audiences.Megan Fox in transformers clip

It is useful to look at the concept of audience in more detail here to help answer question 4…

Audience - Stuart Hall

Preferred reading

Negotiated reading

Oppositional reading

Stuart Hall Some people may take a preferred reading and

look at the representations as 'how it is' and something to emulate.  They would not question the representations.

Stuart Hall argues that this is the reading that the producers intend audiences to take.

What is the preferred reading of your Trailer?

Which audience is most likely to take a preferred reading?

Stuart Hall Some people may take a negotiated reading

and recognise that, for example, a film is made for commercial gain and offers a glamorous Hollywood version so does not accept the representations as reality but perhaps still buys into them as unattainable cultural ideals that are pleasurable to consume for entertainment.

Stuart Hall Some people may take an oppositional reading

and completely reject the representations as they do not agree with the values they see embedded in the text. For example, I got really annoyed by the representation of women in the film 'The Social Network' as in many scenes women were there as sexual objects and this really put me off the film as it was no longer a believable on screen world that I could engage with – it took a perspective that I rejected.

Megan Fox in Two and a Half Men

Apply to your productWrite a summary of how different audiences would respond to your trailer.

What is the preferred reading and who would take this reading?

Who might take a negotiated or oppostional reading and why?

Consider the purpose of a teaser trailer and how different audiences might respond to it as a result of the representations.