'How you have used representation to create meaning in the film opening that you made this year?'

'How you have used representation to create meaning in the film opening that you made this year?'

Within my film opening, I have used representation of both men and women in order to demonstrate meaning. I am going to briefly speak about both the female and male characters and how they are associated with the various theorists that we have studied during our transition period.

The main character is a women called Dorothy who is played by Thirza. This women that we see is an older woman who has lost her husband. She demonstrates characteristics that are feminine. She is seen as sentimental, emotional and sorrowful. This self representation conforms with the stereotypes of women and therefore she is demonstrating the dominant ideology that is seen as normal with today's society. This could potentially link in with the theorist Barthes who argued that representations are mythic in the sense that they have an appearance of being natural. We see the woman being emotional and therefore assume that she is conforming with the stereotype but in fact the stereotype that she is conforming with is actually just mythic. She is being emotional because she has gone through a traumatic experience of losing her husband but because she is a woman, it's seen as being natural and is stereotypical behaviour. The events that have occurred previously have made her emotional, not just because she is natural, but we assume she is being emotional because of the representation and it is seen as natural - even though it's an myth. 

Although we do not see much of the male character within my opening, we do get a sense of his personality through the reading of the letter. He is represented as someone who is quite emotional and caring - towards his wife and family. This challenges the common stereotypes of men being tough and non-emotional. This self-representation allows for the audience to see that he is showing more feminine traits than that of masculine traits towards his wife/family. This ideology isn't dominant as it is not seen as normal within society for the man to be slightly feminine. This could potentially link into the theorist Giddens in which he stated that ideology refered to the influence of ideas on people's beliefs and actions. It could potentially link to this theorist and theory due to the fact that the idea of being with his family again, influences him to become emotional and show traits that are often not seen to be dominant in the male's world.