Media Theory and Theoristsfor G325

A2 Revision Session

Section A

Section A Q1b asks you to reflect on your productions (Foundation or Advanced)

The theory areas you will need to know are:• Genre• Narrative• Representation• Audience• Media Language*

The exam will ask you about one of these.

Section B

• Media in the Online Age• Contemporary Media Regulation

You should find similar theories to apply to these areas, too.

What do you need to be able to do with theorists and theories?

• You do NOT need to:– Learn a load of quotes– Explain their theories in great depth– Know them all

• You DO need to:– Use a few– Be able to apply them to your work/ case studies– Consider how useful/ not useful they are when

discussing your work/ case studies– NB. The theory need not EXPLAIN your

production, you just need to APPLY it

How to use theorists…

• Name the theory/theorist (correctly) eg. Andrew Goodwin, 6 Key Features of a Music Video

• Quote and/or Summarise the theory• Comment (link the theory to your production) – this is

where the marks come from

• Assume your reader knows about the theory/ theorist• Don’t explain the theory; use it.• A Todorovian analysis would argue…• Mulvey’s notion of the Male Gaze provides a

useful way of understanding the video in that…• Kate Wales statement that “Genre is... an

intertextual concept” could be useful here because…

Genre• Gunther Kress Genre is “a kind of text that derives its form from the structure of a

(frequently repeated) social occasion, with its characteristic participants and their purposes.”

• Denis McQuail “The genre may be considered as a practical device for helping any mass medium to produce consistently and efficiently and to relate its production to the expectations of its customers.”

• Nicholas Abercrombie “Television producers set out to exploit genre conventions... It... makes sound economic sense. Sets, properties and costumes can be used over and over again. Teams of stars, writers, directors and technicians can be built up, giving economies of scale”

• Christine Gledhill “Differences between genres meant different audiences could be identified and catered to... This made it easier to standardise and stabilise production”

• Katie Wales “Genre is... an intertextual concept”• John Fiske “A representation of a car chase only makes sense in relation to all the

others we have seen - after all, we are unlikely to have experienced one in reality, and if we did, we would, according to this model, make sense of it by turning it into another text, which we would also understand intertextually, in terms of what we have seen so often on our screens. There is then a cultural knowledge of the concept 'car chase' that any one text is a prospectus for, and that it used by the viewer to decode it, and by the producer to encode it.”

• Andrew Goodwin• Genres change and evolve:

– Christian Metz - Stages of genres: Experimental/ Classic/ Parody/ Deconstruction– David Buckingham - “Genre is not simply given by the culture, rather, it is in a constant

process of negotiation and change.”

Semantic/Syntactic/ Pragmatic

Rick Altman in his book ‘Film/Genre’ suggested there were three ways of breaking down the features of Genre:

• Semantic• Syntactic• Pragmatic

Make notes on your sheets from each of the slides

Semantic

SEMANTIC – elements of the genre• This is concerned with the conventions of

the genre that communicate to the audience such as characters, locations, props, music, shooting style and other signifiers

e.g. ‘bling’, HumVs/fast cars, swimming pools in Rap music videos

Syntactic

SYNTACTIC – the order/sequence of elements• This is concerned with the relations between

these elements and the structure of narratives in genres

E.g. The Rapper sings about his success/wealth, we see others excluded from that wealth or enjoying it (women)

Note: the syntax of music videos is often dictated by the story of the song/lyrics

Pragmatic

PRAGMATIC – reality of the genre• This is concerned with the effect of the

real world on the genre

e.g. AG4 – the record company demands close-ups on the popular lead singer of the band, the rest of the band are excluded

Narrative• Tzetvan Todorov – Argues that narratives always have a structure

of Equilibrium/ Disequilibrium/ New equilibrium• Claude Levi-Strauss – Argues that human cultural understanding is

based upon a system of binary oppposites (good/ bad; black/ white; male/ female…). Narratologists have taken this theory and applied it to narrative, arguing that binary opposition forms a fundamental way of understanding narrative.

• Roland Barthes: Enigma code; Action code. Also, Open and Closed texts.

• Vladimir Propp – argued that narratives always have certain character types who perform certain actions. Characters are agents of action.

• Pam Cook argues that the Hollywood narrative structure includes: “linearity of cause and effect within an overall trajectory of enigma resolution” and “a high degree of narrative closure”

Todorov

His theory identifies the classic narrative pattern – he says that allstories can actually be broken down into the same 3 part structure

Equilibrium > Disruption > Restoration

In order to achieve restoration (ie a new equilibrium) the hero must develop an understanding of the disruption and make many (thwarted) attempts to resolve things. When he does achieve resolution (ie defeats the villain, removes the danger), then society can move forward to a new equilibrium – everything has changed but order is restored, and there is hope for the future.

Levi-Strauss

• He identified the notion that all narratives are based on a set of binary opposites that create conflict and therefore drive the narrative forward (eg heroes v villains, war v peace, science v humanity etc)

BarthesBarthes argued that all narratives are based on a set of codes. The main two are enigma and action codes.

Enigma: all stories have questions or puzzles built into them

Action: where the character performs something that means one set of actions will happen afterwards. For instance, a cowboy puts a holster on; this means a gunfight will follow shortly afterwards in the film

http://www.slideshare.net/sarahlambe/barthes-5-narrative-codes-12063567

Representation

‘the process by which the media present the ‘real world’ (Rayner)

Representation

• The process whereby the media constructs versions of people, places and events in images, words or sounds for transmission through a media text to an audience

• The media provides models (stereotypes?) of how audiences interpret gender, social groups…

• Representations are mediated and therefore reflect the value systems/ ideology of their producer (Moral panics against outsiders)

• No representation is real, just a version.

Three views of representation:

The Reflection View – the media REFLECT the truth back to us

The Intentional View – the media create a meaning and INTEND us to react in a certain way

The Constructionist View – a combination of:• The truth• What the media want you to believe• What you believe• What society (everyone else) believes

Q. Which one are you?

Representation

The Constructionist ApproachA useful way of thinking about representation is that the meaningsare created by the relationship between the producers, the text andthe audience:

The representation is constructed with a set of ideas and values(producer’s intent/intended meaning)

The context of the representation is part of the representation (media language choices, anchorage, media form, placement/ location, genre expectations etc.)

The audience reacts to this representation and this depends ontheir own personal interpretational context: age, gender, political/religious beliefs, nationality etc. (negotiated meaning)

Representation

• Laura Mulvey – argues that cinema positions the audience as male. The camera gazes at the female object on screen. It also frames the male character watching the female.– We watch the girl; we see the male watching the girl;

we position ourselves within the text as a male objectively gazing at the female.

– Can be applied to other media forms also.

Key Point - Selection

everything in the media is a representation – everything we see is being represented.

the selection process is:

The decision over what is chosen to be represented and what is rejected;

The choices made when organising the representation:

The options taken to focus the audience in a certain way.

Questions we would ask when analysing representations:

WHO or WHAT is being represented?

HOW is the representation created?

WHO has created the representation?

WHY is the representation created in that way? What is the intention?

WHAT is the effect of the representation?

Gatekeeping

A theorist called White (1961) spoke of the ‘gatekeepers’ - that is the people who are part of the decision making process in the

construction of media texts.

Who do you consider to be gatekeepers?

Richard Dyer - The Matter Of Images

Dyer said: ‘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.’

Denotation, connotation and ideology – Semiotics theory

Denotation – what it is, literal, ‘common sense’

Connotation – what it could mean, suggests, symbolic, interpretive

Ideology – the overall message, the dominant view

Myth – hidden values that dictate what we see e.g. Thin = beautiful

Audience

• Groups/individuals targeted by producers as the intended consumers of texts

• Some viewers/consumers/readers might not have been intended audience due to wide availability of texts

• Identification of target audience crucial for marketing and advertising – categorised according to factors such as gender, age etc.

• Considered active or passive depending on point-of-view

Audience Theory

• Passive (Effects theory tradition)– Hypodermic syringe (1930s - media injects ideas)– Two-step flow (Katz and Lazersfeld 1955 – opinion

leaders help transmit messages)– Cultivation theory (Gerbner 1960s – long term gradual

effects of television)• Active

– Reception Theory (Morley 1980 – audience actively interprets texts – dominant, negotiated and oppositional readings – relating to social and individual circumstances)

– Uses and Gratifications (Blumler and Katz 1975 - audience seeks to satisfy needs from texts)

Hypodermic Syringe Model

The Hypodermic Syringe Model

• This model suggests that the audience passively accepts the message ‘injected’ into them by the mass media.

• This model believes that there is a DIRECT correlation between the violent behaviour shown on TV, computer games etc and anti-social and criminal behaviour in real life.

Jamie Bulger- Can violent films be blamed?

Jamie Bulger, a two- year old toddler who was abducted and murdered by two 10 year old boys

The boys had apparently watched ‘Child’s Play 3’ before they murdered the toddler.

As Bulger’s death was very similar to a death in the film, newspapers such as ‘The Sun’ began to fuel the debate as to whether such violence in the media should be accepted.

Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, aged 10. Found guilty of the murder, and were sentenced to imprisonment in a young offenders institution.

• Calls for more censorship reflect the logic underlying this model.

• Psychologists (Bandura, Ross and Ross) have carried out laboratory experiments that are claimed to prove a cause and effect relationship between media images and behaviour.

Thirty years before Albert Bandura conducted research into how we ‘learn’

to behave

Imitation or Copycat Violence

He made a film of a young woman beating up a Bobo

doll. 

A Bobo doll is an inflatable, egg-shape balloon creature with a weight in the bottom that makes it bob back up

when you knock him down. 

The young woman punched the clown, kicked it, sat on it, hit with a little hammer and

so on.

She shouted various aggressive phrases

Bandura showed his film to groups of small children.

They then were let out to play!

In the play room there was a bobo doll and various toys;

including toy hammers.

Bandura watched as the kids beat the

daylights out of the bobo doll. 

They punched it and shouted kicked it, sat on it and hit it with the little hammers.

In other words, they imitated

the young lady in the film.

The children changed their behaviour in response to

what they had seen on the TV!

Bandura also showed the children a film of the young woman beating up a live clown. 

When the children went into the other room, what should they find there but -- the live clown!  They proceeded to punch him, kick him and hit

him with little hammers.

Therefore Bandura concluded that violent media content could lead to imitation or copycat violence.

Supporting Research…

• McCabe & Martin (2005) argued that imitation was a likely outcome of media violence because, often media portrays such violence as being ‘heroic’.

• Such acts are then carried out by young people as they believe it is acceptable- this is known as the ‘disinhibition effect’

Uses and Gratifications

• Personal identity– Identifying themselves as part of an audience

• Information– Finding out about the world, events etc

• Entertainment– Escape from reality, emotional release…

• Social Integration– Discussions, companionship, camaraderie

Reception

• Reception theory is an active audience theory which considers an audience as actively engaged in the decoding of a text

• There are different ways an audience can decide/receive/respond to a media text: – Dominant or preferred reading– Negotiated reading– Oppositional or aberrant decoding

• Dominant– I enjoy Big Brother because it’s interesting to

see how real people cope in an unusual situation and I vote for the most normal.

• Negotiated– I appreciate that Big Brother is not ‘reality’ but

I still enjoy watching the contestants complete the tasks.

• Oppositional– Big Brother is a fix because it is so unrealistic

and edited to make the audience love and hate the characters who guarantee ratings.

Media Language

• Any of the theorists from the previous slides

• Also, think of TV Drama tech areas:• Camera – shot size, framing, high & low angles, subjective & objective

filming, hand held, tilts, pans, zooms etc, green screen • Sound – diegetic and non-diegetic, sound effects, ambient sound, dialogue,

music, voice over • Editing – fades, cuts, wipes, dissolves, slow motion, fast motion, colour

effects like black & white, bad tv, stop motion animation, green screening and chroma key work

• Mise En Scene – costume, lighting, location, body language, acting, make up, props etc

Denotation, connotation and ideology – Semiotics theory

Denotation – what it is, literal, ‘common sense’

Connotation – what it could mean, suggests, symbolic, interpretive

Ideology – the overall message, the dominant view

Myth – hidden values that dictate what we see e.g. Thin = beautiful

What’s missing?

Examples from Newspapers and the Internet to link to these theories.

Your task is to provide the slides for this PP that show how we can apply these theories.

You will be in pairs and have one area to focus on.