MEST4 COURSEWORK IDEAS

Three Critical Investigation Titles & Linked Production Ideas:

1. How adverts influence consumer lifestyles?
- Car advert, which embraces the personas lifestyle

2. How adverts influence male tastes?
- Perfume advert, which shows the personas taste in choice

3. How adverts stereotype genders
- advert on typical stereotypes by a typical product targeted at them


How adverts influence consumer lifestyles?
- Car adver, which embraces the personas lifestyle

Migrain
Media Language- Iconographies- Lots of gold jewellery,expensive cars, stereotyping rich people

Institution- Car model eg. Aston Martin

Genre- Advert

Representation- powerful, rich, strong dominant person

Audience- if its a male in the advert and its for a car then main audience would be males aged 30+

Ideologies-

Narrative- advertising a tangable object however within it you can see the males life, form its use of mise en scene eg. setting



Shep
Social -

Historical - how people in adverts change according to society

Economic - how money and the 'free market' has influenced the way a consumer can live their life

Political -


Media theories that link
Hypodermic Needle Theory - Do audiences believe everything they see?

Uses and Gratifications - Escapism, identification..


Issues and Debates
- Social influences
- media and advertising < global issue


This fits into the contempary media landscape becuase... it shows how consumers are so youst to immatating their lives to what they see on TV.


Possible links for my research

http://www.krepublishers.com/02-Journals/JSS/JSS-10-0-000-000-2005-Web/JSS-10-1-001-076-2005-Abst-PDF/JSS-10-1-009-016-2005-164-Ayanwale-A-B/JSS-10-1-009-016-2005-164-Ayanwale-A-B.pdf

http://www.globalissues.org/article/160/media-and-advertising

http://www.warc.com/ConferenceBlogs/WAAC-072008.asp

Qu.6 - Laura Mulvey

A beginners’ guide to...Laura Mulvey

Frequently quoted but often misunderstood, the work of Laura Mulvey on ‘the Gaze’ is at the heart of feminist film theory, and has been hugely influential since the mid-1970s. Lucy Scott-Galloway offers you a beginners’ guide, using a case study of Y Tu Mamá También. But be warned: this is difficult stuff.

Essentials

• Laura Mulvey is a Professor of Media and Film at Birkbeck, University of London. She is also a successful screenwriter, producer and director, and has written and edited many books and articles on the subject of contemporary film and feminist theory and practice.

• Her most famous work to date is her seminal essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, written in 1973 and first published in 1975 in the British film theory journal Screen.

• At a simple level, this work, based on her own conceptual analysis of classical Hollywood film texts, rather than empirical audience research, argued the feminist position that the typical audience member is assumed to be male.

• Furthermore, the typical audience member becomes aligned with the film’s male protagonist, by identification, admiration or aspiration.

• According to the theory, which really assesses the representation of gender and the relationship between the text and the audience from a solely feminist perspective, women in film are simply objects for ‘the gaze’ of the protagonist/male audience.

Influences

Mulvey’s essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ borrowed from popular psychoanalytical frameworks of the time, specifically Sigmund Freud’s concept of scopophilia during child development, and Jaques Lacan’s reinterpretation of this by his explanation of the child’s ‘mirror stage’. (See glossary on page 67)

What is ‘feminist film theory’?

Feminist film theory studies the way films make meaning for their audiences from the perspective of feminist politics.

Studies may include, for example, the roles and functions of female characters in the context of narratives and genres, exploring how far representations reinforce dominant patriarchal ideology.

The theory

FREUD AND SCOPOPHILIA

Put simply, scopophilia is the pleasure of watching. The concept as it is used by Mulvey is borrowed from the ‘anal stage’ of child development as suggested by Freud. Freud argued that an individual moves through the stages of oral and anal fixation before reaching the genital stage in adult maturity.

Whilst in the ‘oral stage’ the child is fixated on activities to do with the mouth: biting, sucking, feeding etc.; in the anal stage the child is toilet training, and learns how to keep itself clean, and that certain bodily functions should be kept private. Theoretically, these childhood obsessions can pass into adulthood to cause personality complexes.

Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) has been widely associated with Freud’s theories. With respect to oral and anal fixation, it is often suggested that Norman Bates’ constant sucking on sweets is illustrative of his oral fixation, and Hitchcock’s decision to include a shot of a toilet bowl for the first time in fifty years in mainstream American films challenged the culture’s collective anal fixation.

Scopophilia then, refers to the mature adult’s desire to see things that are culturally forbidden or taboo.

JAQUES LACAN AND THE MIRROR STAGE

In essence, the Mirror Stage, according to Lacan, refers to the moment in early childhood when the child perceives itself as an independent being.

In early infancy, the child has an imaginary identity with the mother, and forms their only sense of self as part of her. At some stage, generally between six and eighteen months, the child looks in the mirror and recognises itself. It feels a sense of jubilation at its own independent existence, and this feeds into its ego and a sense of narcissistic pleasure.

When children first perceive themselves as independent of their mother by way of their mirror reflection, it is at a stage of frustration in their personal development; as their physical desires are greater than their physiological ability. They then consider their mirror reflection to be more able, more perfect, and more complete than they currently feel.

Mulvey believes that this stage leads into the process of film viewing in adulthood, as the mirror is replaced by the screen. The typical audience member gains a sense of narcissistic pleasure from identifying with the film’s protagonist, and following fascination with their filmic counterpart.

LAURA MULVEY AND THE GAZE

Applying these ideas to Hollywood film viewing, Mulvey suggested that women in film are represented as ‘objects’, images with visual and erotic impact, which she termed their ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’. Classical Hollywood films positioned the audience as male, and through identification with the male protagonist (Lacan) gave him an active role in viewing the female subject and gaining pleasure from doing so (Freud). This look, from audience to actress, is termed ‘the look’ or ‘the gaze’. According to Mulvey the look could be ‘voyeuristic’ (women are viewed as virtuous and beautiful) or ‘fetishistic’ (women are viewed as excessively sexual beings).

DEVELOPMENTS OF THE GAZE

Throughout the decades following Mulvey’s essay, the concept of the gaze was developed to incorporate a number of different viewer-positions. For example:

• The spectator’s gaze: the audience looking at the subject on the screen.

• The male gaze: in keeping with Mulvey’s theory describes the male viewing the female, either voyeuristically or fetishistically.

• The female gaze: accepts that women can also gain voyeuristic pleasure from looking at a subject, and that film techniques can sometimes be used to position the female audience to do so.

• The intra-diegetic gaze: when one character in the text looks/gazes at another character in the text. Through the process of identification, this may lead to the spectator’s gaze also.

• The extra-diegetic gaze: when a character in the text looks out of the text at the audience, breaking the imaginary ‘fourth wall’.

The gaze is inextricably linked to power relationships – the bearer of the gaze has the power. In most cases, the subject of the gaze doesn’t even know they are being looked at (we assume); thus the bearer of the gaze has more knowledge than the subject, and therefore, more power. In Mulvey’s original essay, it is the male who holds this power, and the male film-maker who gives it to him. In developments of the theory, the bearer of the gaze may be female, and the subject may challenge the bearer’s power by gazing right back.

UPDATING THE GAZE

Mulvey’s essay was much discussed in the decades following its publication; she herself re-assessed it in 1981, when she pointed out that she had written the original essay as a starting point for further study and debate, rather than a reasoned academic study.

• The original essay assumes that the film audience is a heterosexual male. This denies the possibility that women can enjoy films as much as men and considerably dates her argument. We now consider that an individual makes their reading from a highly subjective personal standpoint: male, female or transgender, straight, gay or bisexual, as well as influences from class and age and region.

• It also assumes the protagonist is male, which may be the case for much of the classical Hollywood output (1910s-1960s, approx.), but is no longer always the case.

• It is also generally accepted now that the male audience can enjoy, or even identify, with a female character’s point of view, and vice versa. Richard Dyer, for example, has written about the complex relationship created by many gay males with female stars.

How it works – Y Tu Mamá También

In practice, Mulvey’s work is often misunderstood or at least grossly over-simplified. Vaguely referring to ‘the gaze’ as the way every male audience member objectifies every female character into a sexual entity fails fully to explain how this process takes place, and ignores the all-important issue of identification with the protagonist.

Mulvey originally used texts from around the 30s to the 60s to illustrate her argument. But since her theories have been updated by various theorists to include different types of gaze and different gendered audience readings, it is interesting to apply the principles to a film outside her field of investigation.

Y Tu Mamá También (Alfonso Cuarón, 2001) is a Mexican film with Spanish dialogue. Translating into English as ‘And Your Mother Too’, the title refers to the point in the comedy/coming-of-age film when a teenage boy tells his friend he has had sex with his friend’s mother. This is typical for the themes of the film, which represent the interests of teenage boys as sex, drugs, alcohol and friendships.

The plot is simple and has been likened to other well-known examples of national cinema; Godard’s Bande À Part (1964) and Truffaut’s Jules et Jim (1962). Despite being a product of Mexico whilst the Godard and Truffaut’s productions were French, Y Tu Mamá También appears to be informed by the Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave) politic of the former films. Rejecting established conventions such as classical narrative in favour of experimental camera technique, editing and storytelling, Y Tu Mamá También features a constantly fluid and shaky camera, long takes with no edits and narrative asides and digressions provided by a narrator. However, in its use of the gaze, the film remains very conventional.

THE NARRATIVE

In Y Tu Mamá También, two teenage boys, Tenoch and Julio, go on a road trip taking along an older woman, Luisa, for the ride. Both are attracted to her, and rivalry arises between the boys not only in relation to Luisa, but also incorporating most other aspects of their lives.

THE OPENING

The film is sexually explicit, and opens with a sex scene involving full nudity of both the characters, Tenoch and his girlfriend Ana. The camera work positions the audience as a voyeur, almost in a point-of-view shot, beginning with half the frame hidden by a door, and then moving fluidly with a hand-held shake onto the bed with the characters, and then moving back out again. This scene is juxtaposed with shots of Julio and his girlfriend, Cecilia, having sex, the first of a number of juxtapositions that represent the boys’ rivalry. It is an unusual opening for a film as it is particularly graphic, and the audience may receive scopophilic pleasure from viewing such a private and intimate act. The film emphasises the process of looking throughout: the audience looking at the characters, characters looking at each other, characters looking at passing scenery of Mexico in long takes of the characters’ POV from the car. The constantly fluid and hand-held camera positions the audience as voyeur. The spectator’s gaze puts the audience in a position of power; we are watching the scenes unfold by seeing but not being seen.

Whilst the film doesn’t assume that the audience is male, the opening of the film is constructed to encourage identification with one of the male protagonists. The audience may employ the male gaze or the female gaze in their reading of the scene; both characters are represented as sexual objects, both have similar amounts of nudity. However, the male voiceover is all-knowing, and makes references to what has happened in the past to these characters, and what will happen in the future. In his telling of the story, he anchors meaning that sex is the male, rather than the female, endeavour, although the female characters are sexually proactive. He refers to what the male characters ‘do to’ their girlfriends, and how the girls’ parents feel about it. Having served their narrative purpose, the girls are flown off abroad as part of the narrative.

THE POWER OF THE GAZE

The boys lack power in their lives, as most teenagers do, and this may help us identify with the male protagonists. Both have to follow instructions from their parents, live by their parents rules, and are put down by a successful relative. What the boys do have is their sexuality, and this is signified in the film by their use of the intra-diegetic gaze. Their ability, and ‘right’, to look is their power. The first time we see Luisa, the boys are at a family wedding. Whilst the audience are focused on a figure in an extra long deep focus shot, Luisa ambushes the audience’s gaze by walking through the foreground of the shot in shallow focus. She is then a recognisable visual sign when Julio first sees her. He stares at her for a full five seconds, and the camera, still fluid, moves closer to his face to emphasise his gaze, suggesting his objectification of her. As much of the story has been told from the male protagonist’s point of view, the audience then objectifies Luisa similarly. But this process is not necessarily solely male; the female audience is literate enough to be able to occupy the position of a male character. The voiceover reinforces this objectification, encouraging initially a voyeuristic gaze, rather than fetishistic, by representing her in relation to her domestic role, a wife. Her dialogue supports this, as she suggests that salt will take a stain out of her husband’s shirt.

When Tenoch approaches Luisa and makes conversation, he offers her a cigarette, which she accepts. A psychoanalytic interpretation would see this a phallic symbol of masculinity, and her acceptance of the cigarette is Tenoch’s first penetration of Luisa’s life, if not her body. The ensuing conversation takes place in a medium long 3-shot, of Tenoch and Julio closing Luisa in to the far left of the frame.

The boys’ fetishistic attraction to Luisa is however confirmed by a following scene, in which the two boys masturbate and both ejaculate at the mention of Luisa’s name. However, their attraction to Luisa gives her no real power over the boys; her role remains functional to their story. The transience of their affections is illustrated by the dialogue when Tenoch tells Julio Luisa wants to come on the trip, and Julio asks, ‘Luisa who?’ Shots of the boys from different forms of gaze are usually set up in terms of their rivalry, either by juxtaposing their sex lives, by their teasing assessments of each others’ bodies, or when they competitively swim naked. The masturbation scene is immediately followed by a shot of Luisa; her bare legs occupying at least three quarters of the frame, and thus inviting a fetishistic gaze. She discovers her husband is cheating; with her sobs, her body rises and falls slightly, in a classic sexual pose. Until now she has lacked any overt sexuality. But her husband’s infidelity serves to ‘allow’ her to express sexuality in terms of the film’s moral code, and following scenes represent Luisa as bearer of the intra-diegetic gaze, and sometimes, a willing receiver.

At a hotel on the trip, Luisa bears the intra-diegetic female gaze, as she asks Tenoch to take off his towel and he complies. Tenoch has his back to the camera and deep in the frame, Luisa moves around so that she can get a better look. The audience see her seeing, rather than seeing what she sees. But, when the boys look, the audience tend to see what they see, such as when they spy on Luisa crying in her room, encouraging the audience to identify with the male protagonists. Mulvey may argue that this assumes that the audience is male, especially as the ensuing scene of them having sex plays on the typical male fantasy of having sex with an older, experienced woman. However, the scene is about much more than sex, and when the audience sees Julio watching Tenoch and Luisa having sex, they may identify with Julia’s feelings about his friendship with Tenoch. He feels betrayed by Tenoch, rather than Luisa; these are feelings that a female audience can relate to as well as a male. Equally when Luisa tries to restore the balance between the boys by having sex with Julio, Tenoch tries to climb a tree to watch, but fails. Both boys experience the feeling of wanting to see what is culturally taboo, but then wishing they hadn’t.

Towards the end of the film, the three get drunk together, tell each other secrets, and eventually dance. The scene is shot in an extra-long take with very little technical direction. Luisa looks into the camera as she dances, almost ‘seeing’ the audience with an extra-diegetic gaze. Breaking the convention of the ‘fourth wall’, it is as if she knows she is being watched, and she regains a certain amount of power. Following this scene, she chooses to stay at the beach and not return with the boys, and the audience never see her cry again but only hear about her strengths.

Different audiences may make different readings of these scenes, based on their own gender, sexuality and experience. I don’t think the film assumes the audience is male, or even heterosexual, and a great number of readings of the film question the boys’, especially Julio’s heterosexuality, basing their arguments on Julio’s intra-diegetic gaze of Tenoch in the closing shots of the film. However, the film does make use of the gaze to make meaning throughout. The final scenes of the film include an extra long take of Luisa’s point of view, as she watches the boys clear up the beach. It becomes clear at this point that the film is not about sex, or nudity, or male objectification of women, but about friendship, and coming-of-age. Luisa’s intra-diegetic gaze, for me, anchors the meaning of the film.

Glossary

Mirror Stage

Lacan’s term used to describe the stage at which a child realises they are a person independent of their mother.

Narcissism

Excessive or erotic interest in the self.

Scopophilia

The pleasure of watching what shouldn’t be seen.

Voyeuristic gaze

A gaze which objectifies the recipient of the gaze in a non-sexual manner, rather through admiration.

Fetishistic gaze

A gaze which objectifies the recipient of the gaze in a sexual manner.

To-be-looked-at-ness

The way in which a character is constructed, using media language (through the framing of shots and position of the camera) to be objectified by another character or the audience’s gaze.

Intra-diegetic gaze

The gaze of one character of another within the narrative world of the film.

Extra-diegetic gaze

The gaze of a character out of the narrative to the audience, generally making eye contact and connoting their awareness of being watched.

Nouvelle Vague

French New Wave. A movement in French national cinema which rejected the established way of doing things by employing experimental film making techniques.

Quotable Quote

‘The paradox of phallocentrism in all of its manifestations is that it depends on the image of the castrated woman to give order and meaning to its world.’

Simplified: ‘Isn’t it funny that a culture obsessed with masculinity needs images of women, and their absence of masculine characteristics, to give it meaning?’

Worth a visit to the library...

Laura Mulvey, 1989: Visual and Other Pleasures: Collected Writings

A collection of essays collated over a period of time, exploring film from a feminist perspective.

Laura Mulvey, 1996: Fetishism and Curiosity

Investigations into Hollywood cinema of the studio system, in the contexts of work by Marx and Freud.

Lucy Scott-Galloway teaches Media Studies at Newham Sixth Form Centre.

from MediaMagazine 21, September 2008.

5. Post-Feminism Reading/Reserach

http://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/site/human/women/students/biblio/historiog/McRobbie%20-%20postfeminism.pdf



popular culture in Bridget Jones dairy

"This is a movement detectable across popular culture, a site where “power … is remade at various junctures within everyday life"

"the shrill championing of young women as a “metaphor for social change” on the pages of the right wing press in the UK, in particular the Daily Mail."

My argument is that post-feminism positively draws on and invokes feminism as that which can be taken into account, to suggest that equality is achieved..."

popular culture in car adverts




"This advert appears to suggest that yes, this is a self-consciously “sexist ad,” feminist critiques of it are deliberately evoked."

"Once again, the shadow of disapproval is introduced (the striptease as site of female exploitation), only instantly to be dismissed as belonging to the past, to a time when feminists used to object to such imagery. "

"Feminism is “taken into account,” but only to be shown to be no longer necessary. Why? Because there is no exploitation here, there is nothing remotely naıve about this striptease. She seems to be doing it out of choice, and for her own enjoyment; the advert works on the basis of its audience knowing Claudia to be one of the world’s most famous and highly paid supermodels."

Wonder Bra advert

"The Wonderbra advert showing the model Eva Herzigova looking down admiringly at her substantial cleavage enhanced by the lacy pyrotechnics of the Wonderbra, was through the mid-1990s positioned in major high street locations in the UK on full size billboards."

"The composition of the image had such a textbook “sexist ad” dimension that one could be forgiven for supposing some familiarity with both cultural studies and with feministcritiques of advertising (Judith Williamson 1987)."

"It was, in a sense, taking feminism into account by showing it to be a thing of the past, by provocatively “enacting sexism” while at the same time playing with those debates in film theory about women as the object of the gaze (Laura Mulvey 1975) and even with female desire (Rosalind Coward 1984;Teresa de Lauretis 1988)."

sex in the city trailer



"...capable of earning their own living, and the degree of suffering or shame they anticipate in the absence of finding a husband is countered by sexual self-confidence. Being without a husband does not mean they will go without men".

"Individuals must now choose the kind of life they want to live. Girls must have a lifeplan. They must become more reflexive in regard to every aspect of their lives, from making the right choice in marriage, to taking responsibility for their own working lives,and not being dependent on a job for life or on the stable and reliable operations of a large-scale bureaucracy which in the past would have allocated its employees specific,and possibly unchanging, roles".

4. understanding post feminism

Clarifying Concepts:

A more positive look at post-feminism:
In raising these questions, I am only at the beginning of figuring out what a more positive kind of post-feminist account of religion and family might look like, and so have no compelling summary to offer, let alone a call to a specific research agenda. In my own work, I do want to take some feminist insights for granted. But I explicitly reject the idea that strong feminist critiques have had their day and must now give way gracefully to approaches that favor a consensual and functional, or even communitarian, interpretation of the good society. I am feeling more combative, or at least constructively critical, about theories that neatly divide society into a “public” and a “private” realm, while systematically devaluing those feminine things (religion, family) assigned to the private (cf., Warner 1999). I am not sure where it will lead, but it feels right to begin pushing back the boundaries of post-feminism by asking a different set of questions.

Post-feminism as backlash to feminism:
What the hell is postfeminism, anyway? I would think it would refer to a time when complete gender equality has been achieved. That hasn’t happened, of course, but we (especially young women) are supposed to think it has. Postfeminism, as a term, suggests that women have made plenty of progress because of feminism, but that feminism is now irrelevant and even undesirable because it has made millions of women unhappy, unfeminine, childless, lonely, and bitter, prompting them to fill their closets with combat boots and really bad India print skirts.

i feel this is the best concept on post feminism

Post-feminism as a colloquialism:
It’s about deeply held political convictions, not to mention strategy. If there’s a wad of people out there extolling postfeminism and meaning “I think feminism is flawed and I’d like to see some goal-shifting, fresh tactics, and revisiting of contentious topics,” this isn’t just an issue of what’s going on in a speech group that doesn’t overlap with mine. It’s about defending feminism’s ground. Feminism is already doing the work that these (as I have come to think of them) non-evil postfeminists think comes with their prefix. And it’s beyond obvious that feminism suffers from its terrible reputation and from the vast misunderstandings that stunning numbers of people still have about it (no matter how many times it happens, I will never, ever get used to being asked if I hate men). I can’t help but see even the non-evil usage of “postfeminism” as a rejection of and attack on feminism, and an implication that the movement is finished. And that means I need to challenge it at every turn.

The ambiguity of the prefix “post”:
I’ve come accross the term used in the way Lurker describes, similarly, in academic circles, and for academic reasons I don’t think anyone should use it. The problem lies in the ambiguity of the prefix “post”, because post can mean since something commenced OR since something concluded. So, while technically a “post-feminist society” could mean a society since feminism began to be an influence, there will always be people who think you mean since feminism ended.

Stella Artois advert - negative representation

Gucci Guilty - positive representations

what are the different representations of women in adverts and how are they signified (Bianca)

What are the different representations of women in adverts and how are they signified?
The representation of women can be positive: challenging the roles and expectations of women or negative: reinforcing a patriarchal society. This essay questions how and why these representations are constructed in an advert for Gucci Guilty Perfume and Stella Artois beer.

Firstly the Gucci advert is in widescreen which connotes a dramatic cinematic experience to engage its audience. More attention is gained by the female character first seen in the text and her protagonist is signified through this. The protagonist has female dominance which is signified through the use of colour- everything is in black and white while her hair is gold/blonde. This colour connotes gold, power and divinity signifying her importance in the text.

The use of intertextuality in this text will appeal to a particular audience. The film references a great deal to the neo film noir Sin City, with the use of colour and the female dominant femme fatale character. Sin City appeals to a male audience due to the action genre, this trailer could also appeal to the same audience due to the intertextuality. In terms of the Uses and Gratifications theory, a female audience might realise and accept the protagonist in the text is a form of escapism and also a male gaze, by theorist Mulvey, and therefore might aspire, from Young and Rubicam's 4Cs, to be the object of male gaze too.

Though the protagonist is an object of male gaze, it could be suggested that she sexually objectifies herself to tease the audience. The protagonist puts her leg into the frame of the shot. As she puts into the frame, it signifies self objectification, allowing the audience to fetishise her body. Another shot, a high angle, of their sexual activities signifies CCTV and spying which is voyeuristic. The fact she is on top signifies her control of the situation for both the male character and the audience.

Not only does the protagonist exert her feminity through self objectification she also presents herself as an anarchic character signified by adopting male stereotypes. The advert begins with a long shot of an unknown character speeding down the motorway, which stereotypically would be expected to be a male character. However, the audience's expectations are challenged when a medium shot of the driver shows to be a female.

In contrast, women are negatively represented in the Stella Artois text. The most obvious editing technique used in the advert is the split screen: one side shows the female getting dressed and the other side is of the beer getting "prepared". This use of split screen signifies that neither the beer nor the woman know they have been placed side by side. This puts the audience in position of control as they can voyeur the woman, in a socially acceptable way. Audiences may identify this control as patriarchy, and also identify with the unknown male character whose presence is felt within the text. This text then reinforces the idea of a patriarchal society and that women are subordinated by men.

Not only does the female share the screen with the beer, but the screen is split equally between the two "objects" which connotes the woman is equally objectified to the status of beer. It is suggested the audience is male due to the female and beer subject. Though the advert is targeted at men, it also negatively stereotypes men as people who have little respect for women which however is a dominant representation.

A range of close up shots of the female are used to fetishise her body. There is a close up shot of the female's leg slowly and elegantly rising from the bath tub. On one hand this could signify femininity and her control over it which is the oppositional reading. However, the more dominant reading is that her legs are an important part of the female body and connotes a male audience who can voyeur her body.

The text near the beginning of the trailer says "the preparation" which is an enigma code as the audience question "what event is the preparation for?". It is signified through the shots that the woman and beer preparation is for the male through the use of action codes. Action codes of both the preparation of the woman and the glass of beer are the same.

Women are represented as people who prioritise their looks and appearance, and this ad reinforces this ideology. Action codes including close ups of her: brushing her hair, doing her make up and putting on heels strongly represent women as image conscious. It could be said that the advert reinforces this representation, which is always seen in the media. Funnily enough, it could also be said that the media itself is the cause of this representation as this ideal, perfect woman is always represented in the media, and women feel they have to aspire to it.

In conclusion, both texts females are the protagonists and are sexually objectified for male audiences to fetishise and vouyer their bodies. However, while Gucci’s advert’s protagonist controls her sexuality through self objectification, the Stella Artois’ protagonist is objectified by an unknown but present male character.

In the Gucci’s ad, there are many examples in the text that signify the protagonist’s female dominance, but it is arguable whether this could be seen as a positive representation. The dominant reading is that the protagonist exerts her female dominance over the male challenging the historical patriarchal society and even subordinating males as easily manipulated and easily tempted by women and sex and this would favour feminism. However the oppositional reading which would favour the ideologies of the Stella Artois advert, might be that females can control their sexuality, but it is still for the male gaze and male dominant society.

negative representation of women

This advert is a Mr muscle advert for washing up detergent, it consists of a female ‘housewife’ he is trying to clean her sink but is finding it very difficult and is in need for some help, then Mr. muscle comes along ‘to the rescue’ and gives her Mr. muscle cleaning detergent and it works, then saves the day – this is apparent as she is so thankful towards the end when she says ‘oh thank you Mr. muscle you’re a life saver’. I chose to use this advert as it is a negative representation of the female, as she is shown to be weak and helpless because she cannot simply clean on her own and is in need of help. Not just help from any person but a ‘hunky’ male almost superhero like to come and save her from her troubles. This representation foe hr makes it seem as if women cannot do nothing on their own and always need a male around to save them, it also makes males look much stronger and dominant then women this therefore places women in a subordinate group, because of things such as what is shown is this advert as she couldn’t even complete a simple task of cleaning without male attention.
other ways in which this could make her come across as a negative representation is form the situation she has been placed in and form the mise en scene, as she is in a kitchen making her seem as if she is a ‘house wife’ and this therefore encourages that role in society for women; which is not quiet the case today as women today are very successful and in some jobs seem more than men. This advert is one that may have been appropriate in 1960s as many adverts then which involved women mainly showed them as housewives however after the 1990s more dominant roles where given to this. Therefore this advert almost challenges time and make the audience question if women are still perceived in the same subordinate way as they would have been back then.

This is a poster to go with the perfume advert – it also adds to the positive representation of the female used in the advert Charlize Theron, through many ways. The use of high key lighting on her face and body in the medium shot highlights her significance and beauty as well as importance as she is almost more focused on then the perfume itself. In addition to this, her facial expression tells the audience a lot about her as it makes her look in charge, fearless and very dominant. She almost looks as if she is made out of gold; this signifies the rich beauty that the perfume brings and the value of her being high and expensive, and because the background is black and everything else is golden it connotes how she and the perfume are in control on this poster and nothing else needs to be focused on, again making her seem very important.

Representation of women

positive representation of women

This is a perfume advert for women featuring Charlize Theron who has been advertising for Dior since 2009. Whilst watching this advert I felt that her character is represented in a positive aspect, as soon as it begins. It starts off with a long shot of her, highlighting her body and posture as there is high key lighting which directs the focus on her. This makes her seem powerful and independent as she is walking on her own throughout the advert and full focus of the camera is on her. In addition to this, whilst she is walking she begins to strip whatever she is wearing – by doing this the viewer automatically can see how she is control and is being fearless because she is not afraid and has the courage to expose herself, as stereotypically men usually do in adverts, taking her out of this subordinate role. The use of her dialogue such as when she says “gold is cold, diamonds are dead” shows how material items are worthless, this makes men look weak as stereotypically they buy women material things to keep them happy.

Throughout the advert her facial expression is very strong and a lot of lighting is used to focus the viewer towards it as we her looking in control and far from weak, this is made evident of toward the end of the advert when she is walking naked as if she is walking down a catwalk and has nothing to hide and is proud of her body rather than feeling paranoid as stereotypically sometimes the media makes women out to be insecure of themselves therefore they try and buy material things etc to fit in with this ‘perfect image’, however the women in this advert is far from it as she strips herself away from these material things.

Media Guardain 100

1. What is the Guardian 100 and who are the panellists that create it?
It is the top 100 people working within the media industry, it also states the 100 most powerful people currently in todays media industry, it includes; tv, radio, pess and publishing, media business, advertising, marketing and PR, and the digital meida

2. How many women are in the top 100?
18

3. What companies do these women work for and in what roles?
The companies and roles are; advertising, cheif executive, controller - publishing and editor in publishing

4. What percentage of the 100 is women?
18%

5. How would you assess the balance of power in this list and why do you think it is this way?"
By looking at the satistics of women within the industry it is a very small percentage, therefore this indicates how the males are more dominant and in power within the 100 people working in media today. This makes women almost be subordinates in society today.

Marshall McLuhan - global village theory

http://itwofs.com/beastoftraal/2010/04/18/marshall-mcluhans-global-village-is-happening-now-finally/

" the next era was the electronic era (television/ radio). This, McLuhan calls the shared tribal identity, where we have consumers consuming content from the medium, but not necessarily alone – it’s no wonder it was called ‘mass media’. "

http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_mcluhan.htm

"Resonating interval": an object which goes beyond time; and is affected by both its own characteristics and the environment which surrounds it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan

"individualistic print culture would soon be brought to an end by what he called "electronic interdependence"

Shrek 3

View more presentations from Sonia Dhunna.