Post 4: Representation

My AB, culturally sophisticated audience are used to seeing diverse, accurate and intelligent media portrayals and so I need to reflect that in my coursework.

Charlie XCX - BOYS

Charlie XCX's self directed music video for her song "boys" garnered a lot of media attention
“They’re basically doing all the sexy things that girls usually do in videos,” she said. “I started thinking about all the guys that I’ve worked with or met [throughout all] my years in the industry... I just want to flip the male gaze on its head and have you guys do the sexy stuff.”

Sexuality

This Years & Years video features a Bisexual romance in the storyline, reflecting the identity of its frontman Olly Alexander. He also plays with gender stereotypes visually through feminine costumes, wearing makeup and attention to the male form. This kind of normalisation of LGBT people is so important in spreading awareness and acceptance. As many media theorists agree, more widespread representations have positive effects on tolerance.

Marina and the diamonds - How to be a Heartbreaker

• Reclaiming female sexuality - images of scantily clad men
• Role reversal of women as active pursuer of men and men as passive objects
• Could be considered fairly hypocritical as the males are overly sexualised & video takes pleasure in women as deviants

Post modern femininity

Post modernist representations aim to reflect and distort the mirror the media holds up to our society. We favour irony, surrealism and hyperrealism to create more diverse and unusual representations that challenge traditional ones. A modern day youth audience expect to see this is the media they consume.

Annie Mac is a new and exciting female representation we are seeing in the media. Not only is she a female DJ and radio presenter, she is presented as cool and femenine and yet her talent allows her to be respected in a desexualised format.

 Annie Lenox - "I'm all for freedom of expression, but this is clearly one step beyond, and it's clearly into the realm of porn. How do you stop your kids being exposed to it?"

The Male Gaze - Laura Mulvey
Mulvey's theory is based around the perception of women in the media from a straight male point of view, this has arisen largely from lack of diversity in directors and the media industry, where little oppurtunity for female input has allowed a narrow and often unfair viewpoint. The male gaze often denies female identity, focusing on physical attributes solely and portraying women as disposable and sexual objects. She also explores the negative effects this has on young women watching these videos, which can lead them themselves to view women in this way, thus creating a dominant reading in our society which has only begun to be questioned in a post feminist era.

Her game changing essay from the 1970's 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' has been hugely influential. The Freudian idea of Scopophilia, when we get sexual pleasure from the art of looking brings feelings of narcissism and guilt, however Mulvey explains the guilt is removed when a subject is unknowingly watched or when we are in the anonymity of a dark cinema. This results in active males and passive females.

Lacan's ideas also influenced Mulvey who explains that the mirror stage in the media is about seeing your identity visually reflected in the film you're watching.

Van Zoonen

This theorist explores dominant ideas about gender roles. Gender is constructed or performative adn meaning varies according to cultural or histroical contexts. In teh mainstream media these codes are used both visual and in narratives to construct an objectified female body rather than the typical male body as spectacle. This assumes a heterosexual gaze occuring and doesnt fit with LGBT views on objectification which make for much more complex representations.

'The recurring images of women in popular media have some influence on how people think of women in real life' Railton/Watson

For example - 'Teenage Dirtbag' by Wheatus & the male gaze
The camera here plays the role of the voyeur, the unnoticed watcher. However, at one point in the video the gaze is returned by the female object giving the women some agency and empowerment (though still very little)




Manic Pixie Dream Girls


 
The term was coined by a journalist though this version of femininity has been around for centuries. The idea is explained well in this video about how the film '500 days of Summer' explores this trope and eventually punishes the male character, leaving him alone because he has spent his entire relationship constructing an optimistic and unrealistic feminine identity.