Collective identity in women

Keywords:

Mediation: Process of taking a reality, interpreting it, and re-presenting it to the audience.
Denotation: What is interrupted from the connotation. 
Connotation:  What is seen.
Objectification: Attention is put on the figure/body rather than the personality of the person.
Male gaze: Middle aged men create media for a male target audience.
Conforms/challenges:  Representations follow stereotypes/representations go against the typical stereotypes. 
Self representation: How you're represented individually.
Ideology - Are messages or values that are embedded into media.
Dominant ideology - These are the ideologies that are accepted by the majority as the norm in society. 
Hegamony - The ruling class maintains their power through the control of ideas and culture rather than force.

THEORISTS

Gerbner - 
- Started the cultivation theory. He began the 'Cultural Indicators' research project in the mid-1960s, to study whether and how watching television may influence viewers' ideas of what the everyday world is like.allows us to understand the importance of the media as a whole.
- This theory uses the term 'drip drip' which means that the process was slow and was therefore a more accumulative effect compared to an immediate effect.
- Cultivation theorists argue that TV has long-term effects which are small, gradual, indirect but cumulative and significant.
- TV reinforces values already present in society to support the dominant ideology.

Baudrillard -
- French theorist born 1927/died 2007.
- He is known for his concept of a hyper - reality.
- Signs and symbols of our culture have no basis in reality but have created a new world, one that is a simulation of reality/construct a perceived reality.
- The illusion has gone that media texts can accurately or neutrally reproduce reality or truth.

Barthes -
- Argued that representations are mythic in the sense that they have an appearance of being natural.
- Representations are stimulations of realities which do not exist. 

Dyer -
- 'How we are seen determines how we are treated, how we treat others is based on how we see them, how we see them comes from representation'.
- Only experience of the group being represented might be the media text that the representation is in.

Chandler - 
- Construction in any medium of aspects of 'reality'
- Representation always involves 'the construction of reality'

Giddens -
-  Ideology refers to the influence of ideas on people's beliefs and actions.

Jenkins - 

- Theorist that informed people how the development and advancing of technology and the web 2.0 has allowed us to be apart of the ever-changing media lifespan. 

- Prior to where we are now, the media was spectatorial - watched TV, read newspapers etc whereas now, the increase in proliferation of hardware has resulted in the media being participatory - more opportunity for people to become involved in creating, posting and sharing media.

Blurred lines:
Within Blurred Lines the women are represented as being sex objects that are purely in the music video in order to attract a male audience. There are two different videos for this particular song. The first of which is when the women are wearing minimal clothing but still appear to be there just purely for entertainment. The second video features the women who're wearing no clothes. Although this is video is shot a lot more for the male audience. Both of the videos use objectification due to the fact that the men's attention is dragged onto the women's body/figure rather than their personalities themselves. This is stereotypical behaviour because woman are commonly seen to be the attractive of the two sexes. This use of women's bodies conforms into the theory of male gaze. This is when the male audience is targeted through male producers who make the video. This means that what goes into the video is chosen by middle-aged males for the purpose of entertaining the male audience. A denotation within this video is the red lipstick that the women are seen wearing. The connotation for the red lipstick is sexy and that she is trying to be attractive. Within this music video, the theorist Richard Dyer's quote highlights the way in which the women are viewed. The women in this video are seen to be sex objects and therefore makes the audience interrupt this as a way to treat them. Due to the fact that they're half naked/naked in the two videos, the male audience treats them purely as sex objects because the way the women look determines the way they're treated. The fact that the men are looking and dancing with them also allows for the male audience to see that it's okay for them to treat women in this way because it's commonly stereotypical of them to be sex objects. They are represented as sex objects which ties in with the theory that Dyer created. 

 Sia - Chandelier:
Within this music video, an 11 year-old girl is seen to be dancing in a leotard to a song based around the topic of alcoholism. The connotation is that the girl is wearing a nude coloured leotard. The denotation that this nude coloured leotard brings to the audience is that she looks naked. At the beginning of the clip, the audience can see that the child is conforming to a young dance student. But towards the end of the clip, we see that she is imitating the life of an older person who is drinking. The scene at the curtain appears to be quite controversial for the audience as she is dancing about suicide and the affects of alcohol at a young age. Another connotation  is that she is dancing with the curtains. The denotation that the audience interrupts is that she is trying to kill herself with the curtain because of the use of alcohol (the main subject within the song's lyrics). This music video achieved over 1 million hits within the first 24 hours of being posted. This can be caused by the controversy of the lyrics and the young dancer.



Sket:
Within this film, we see the representation of women as something which challenges the common stereotypical behaviour of women. The women within the opening of the film are seen to be kicking and shouting at the victim who is laying on the floor covered in blood. This allows for the audience to see that the women are violent and taking on the dominant and aggressive roles of the males rather than being the reserved and quiet - something which the media usually represent women as due to the fact that it is stereotypical for them to do so. Within the same film, we see the stereotypical behaviour of a women. When the girl is speaking to the guy, we see that he is the dominant one in the relationship but the tone of their voices. Her tone indicates that she is trying to make the situation better because she is scared of the consequences. This allows for the audience to understand that she is showing characteristics of femininity. The connotation of the young girl is that she has bruises and cuts on her face and body. The denotation is that she has been beaten up. This allows for the audience to see that she is not a strong and violent character and can be dominated by other people. This contradiction between the group of youths attacking the victim and the young girl whose been a victim allows for the audience to see that the film both conforms and challenges the aspect of women representation.

Blurred Lines (parody):

This parody was created by three women who use men as the sex objects compared to the official music video that Robin Thicke created. This parody challenges common stereotypes of how women behave and are treated by men/treat men. This parody shows the self-representation of the three women. Stereotypically, men are the dominant of the two and the women are more obedient. However, within this music video, the women are seen to have a control over the men. This contradicts the common stereotype as it represents the dominance of the women over the men. This was created by a group of girls who didn't appreciate the level of sexism within the official video and therefore wanted to fight back and go against was is common within today's society. This parody uses self-representation in order to get their message across to the intended audience. The most influential people within the parody is the women themselves who decide to go against the stereotypical portrayal of being sex objects. They instead challenge this and make the males within the music video the sex objects to make a point about the sexual stereotype of women in the media. Within this video, Richard Dyer's quote also can come into context. Although this isn't the stereotypical behaviour of the two sexes, it still allows for the audience to treat the guys and girls based on how they are seen within this video. The women are taking control compared to the men who're being controlled. This encourages the male audience to understand that women are equal to men and encourages the female audience to take more control and not be the stereotypical woman.