David Gauntlett's theories explore the relationship between media and audience power in shaping identity and gender roles. He argues that audiences are active and use media messages as resources to think through their own identities rather than being directly influenced. While media disseminates messages about acceptable identities, audiences have their own diverse views. Neither media nor audiences are solely powerful, but both play a role. The theories are applied to films like Fish Tank, WASP, and Tamara Drewe to analyze depictions of topics like girl power, masculinity in crisis, and the decline of tradition.

1. What’s the message?

2. How does the media influence
you?
LO: To explore David Gauntlett’s
theory of audience vs media power
and apply to Andrea Arnold’s films

3. David Gauntlett’s theories of
media power vs audience power
Gender & Identity theory
Who do you think has more power in the construction of someone’s identity
– the audience or the media?

4. Audiences are active
• Popular media has a significant relationship with people's
sense of gender and identity. Media messages are diverse
and contradictory. Rather than being zapped straight into
people's brains, ideas about lifestyle and identity that
appear in the media are resources which individuals use to
think through their sense of self and modes of expression.
Different aspects of popular media can aid or disturb these
processes of contemporary reorientation. Some critics say
that the media should offer traditional role models and
reassuring certainties, but this view is unlikely to survive.
Radical uncertainties and exciting contradictions are what
contemporary media, like modern life, is all about.
Do you agree with this?

5. Media power vs Audience power
• The power relationship between media and the
audience involves 'a bit of both', or to be more
precise, a lot of both. The media disseminates a huge
number of messages about identity and acceptable
forms of self-expression, gender, sexuality, and
lifestyle. At the same time, the public have their own
even more robust set of diverse feelings on these
issues. The media's suggestions may be seductive, but
can never simply overpower contrary feelings in the
audience. Neither the media nor the audience are
powerful in themselves, but both have powerful
arguments.
What constructions/messages in WASP could affect the audience’s identity?
What do the characters do that might make us think about our own
behaviour, appearance, lifestyle?

6. Fluidity of identity and the decline of
tradition
• Today the mass media is a force for change. The traditional view of
a woman as a housewife or low-status worker has been kick-boxed
out of the picture by the feisty, successful 'girl power' icons.
Meanwhile the masculine ideals of absolute toughness, stubborn
self-reliance and emotional silence have been shaken by a new
emphasis on men's emotions, need for advice, and the problems of
masculinity. Although gender categories have not been
shattered, these alternative ideas and images have at least created
space for a greater diversity of identities.
• Modern media has little time or respect for tradition. The whole
idea of traditions comes to seem quite strange. Why would we
want to do the same as previous generations? What's so great
about the past? Popular media fosters the desire to create new
modes of life.
Can you apply this to any
of the films we’ve
studied?

7. Can you apply this to any
of the films we’ve
studied? Girl Power
• One of the most obvious developments in recent pop culture has been the
emergence of the icons and rhetoric of 'girl power', a phrase slapped into
mainstream culture by the Spice Girls and subsequently incorporated into
the language of government bodies as well as
journalists, educationalists, culture critics, and pop fans themselves.
Magazines for young women are emphatic in their determination that
women must do their own thing, be themselves, and/or be as
outrageously sassy and sexy as possible. Several recent movies have
featured self-confident, tough, intelligent female lead characters . Female
pop stars sing about financial and emotional independence, inner
strength, and how they don't need a man; and the popular mantra of self-
help books is that women can become just as powerful as these icons, if
they cultivate their confidence and self-belief, and draw up a plan of self-
development. This set of reasonably coherent messages from a range of
sources - their clarity only disturbed by the idea that women can be
extremely tough and independent whilst also maintaining perfect make-
up and wearing impossible shoes - seems to have had some impact on the
identities of young women , as well as being very successful within pop
culture as an image/lifestyle idea.

8. Can you apply this
to any of the films
we’ve studied? Masculinity in crisis
• Contemporary masculinity is often said to be 'in crisis';
as women become increasingly assertive and
successful, apparently triumphing in all roles, men are
said to be anxious and confused about what their role
is today. Signs that men’s magazines were about men
finding a place for themselves in the modern world.
These lifestyle publications were perpetually
concerned with how to treat women, have a good
relationship, and live an enjoyable life. Rather than
being a return to essentialism - i.e. the idea of a
traditional 'real' man, as biology and destiny 'intended‘
men's magazines have an almost obsessive relationship
with the socially constructed nature of manhood.

9. Gauntlett’s theory
Theory FOR AGAINST
Decline in Tradition Independent teenager – fends Fish Tank – lower class, on
for herself benefits, stay at home single
Tamara Drewe – rises above the Mum
bullies to be a success WASP – relies on Dave to feed
them
Tamara Drewe – Beth –
stereotypical housewife
Girl Power FT – dresses like she wants WASP – provocative,
Tomboy –strength conforming – attention
TD – strong and independent seeking
financially TD – nose job!!!!!!!
WASP – not coping – man
rescues her
Masculinity in Crisis WASP – two women fighting – WASP – Dave looks after them
man stands And watches TD – having the affair
TD – affair made known – man is FT – abusing his role and
left lost sexuality

10. HMK
• On your blogs post a reflective paragraph on
how Gauntlett’s 3 gender theories applied to
the clip on ‘My Name is Joe’ and the
representation of Britishness.
• &
• Watch RED ROAD