Media Representation

Question 1

Stuart Hall

Theories of representation

Answer 1

• Representation is the production of meaning through the signs in a text
• Representation is the way in which meaning is given to the things which are depicted
• Stereotyping, as a form of representation, reduces people to a few simple characteristics or traits
• Stereotyping tends to occur where there are inequalities of power, as subordinate or excluded groups are constructed as different or ‘other’

Question 2

Gauntlett

Theories of identity

Answer 2

• The media provide us with ‘tools’ or resources that we use to construct our identities
• In the past the media tended to convey singular, straightforward messages about ideal types of males & female identities
• The media today offer audiences a more diverse range of stars, icons and characters from whom we may pick and mix different ideas

Question 3

Van Zoonen

Feminist theory

Answer 3

• Gender is constructed through discourse (spoken or written communication), and that its meaning varies according to cultural and historical context
• The display of women’s bodies as objects to be looked at is a core element of western patriarchal culture
• In mainstream culture the visual and narrative codes that are used to construct the male body as spectacle differ from those used to objectify the female body
• Men frequently portrayed as active & strong
• Women frequently portrayed as passive & submissive, focus on sexiness, more focus on an ‘ideal’ shape, visual codes place women as focus of the male gaze

Question 4

bell hooks

Feminist theory

Answer 4

• The colour codes - the Lighter skinned women are considered more desirable and fit better into the western ideology of beauty
• Black women are objectified and sexualised in hip-hop reflecting the colonialist view of black women being sexually disposable
• Commodified blackness, a mediated view of black women culture is considered the norm

Question 5

Judith Butler

Theories of gender performality

Answer 5

Judith Butler (1956-) is Professor of Comparative Literature and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, and is well known as a theorist of power, gender, sexuality and identity - specifically related to Media.

• The idea that identity is performatively constructed by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results (it is manufactured through a set of acts).
• The idea that there is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender.
• The idea that performativity is not a singular act, but a repetition and a ritual.

Question 6

Gilroy

Theories of ethnicity and post-colonialism

Answer 6

• Colonialism discourses continue to inform
  contemporary attitudes to race and ethnicity in the postcolonial era
• Civilisation constructs racial hierarchies and sets up binary oppositions based on notions of otherness