Laura Mulvay- Male Gaze
Media represents women as passive objects for male desire. Audiences are forced to view women in this way ( as a heterosexual male).
Bell Hooks- Colour Codes
Lighter skinned women are considered more beautiful in western society. Black women are seen are sexualised and objectified in rap connoting a colonist view of black women being disposable. Commodified blackness, a mediated view of black culture that is considered the norm.
Stuart Hall
Media and, therefore audiences, often blur race and class. Often associating particular races with a particular class. Audiences read/ understand through their cultural upbringing. Western ( white dominated) cultures continue to misinterpret ethnic minorities in the media due to underlying racist tendencies. Ethnic minorities are often represented as 'the other'.
Stuart Hall- Black Characterisations In Media
Hall outlines three base images of the 'grammar of race' employed in 'old movies'.
The first is the slave figure which could take the form of either the dependable, loving devoted mother with the rolling eyes, or the faithful field hand attached and devoted to his master.
The second of Hall's base image- the native. Their primitive nature means they are cheating, cunning, savage and barbarian. In movies, we expect them 'to appear at any moment out of the darkness to decapitate the beautiful heroine, kidnap the children...'
The last of Hall's variants is that of the clown or entertainer, implying an innate humour in the black man. Interestingly, the distinction is never made as to whether we are laughing with or at the clown; overt racism is rare in media rather, says Hall, it is 'inferential'.
Audience Reception Theory
A preferred reading (or dominant system of response) is a way of understanding the text that is consistent with the ideas and intentions of the producer or creator of the product. This may lead to an acceptance of the dominant values within the text.
With a negotiated reading (or subordinate response) the individual has a choice as to whether or not they accept the preferred reading as their own. Audience members may read the text through a filter of their own personal agenda. Although there may be an acceptance of the dominant values and existing social structure, the individual may be prepared to argue that a particular social group may be unfairly represented.
In an oppositional reading (or radical response) individual members of an audience may completely reject the preferred reading of the dominant code and social values that produced it.
An aberrant reading is where an entirely different meaning from that intended by the maker will be taken from the text. This could be when individual members of the audience do not share, in any way, the values of the maker of the text.
The Hypodermic Needle Theory
The theory suggests that the mass media could influence a very large group of people directly and uniformly by 'shooting' or 'injecting' them with messages designed to trigger a response.
Moral Panic
A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order.
Narrative Theories
Todorov:
1) Equilibrium
2) Disruption of equilibrium
3) Recognition of the disruption
4) An attempt to repair
5) Equilibrium is restored or a new equilibrium is established
Levi Strauss:
The meaning in narrative is based upon binary oppositions. He observed that all narratives are organised around the conflict between such binary opposites.
Good vs Evil
Human vs Nature
Black vs White
Protagonist vs Antagonist
Humanity vs Technology
Man vs Woman
Human vs Alien
Roland Barthes:
Refers to any element of the story that is not fully explained and hence becomes a mystery to the reader. The purpose of the author in this is typically to keep the audience guessing, arresting the enigma, until the final scenes when all is revealed and all loose ends are tied off and closure is achieved.
Propp:
Hero: Character(s) who's quest is to restore the equilibrium.
Villian: Character(s) who's task is to disrupt the equilibrium.
Donor: Character(s) who gives the hero(s) something, advice, information or an object.
Helper: Character(s) who aids the hero(s) with their set task
Princess/ Prince: Character(s) which need help, protecting and saving.
The King: Character which rewards the hero.
Dispatcher: Character(s) who send the hero(s)on their quest.
False Hero: Character(s) who set out to undermine the hero's quest by pretending to aid them. Often unmasked at the end of the film.
