2. GENRE
Definition – a style or category of art, music or literature.
Christine Gledhill - 'differences between genres meant different audiences could be
identified and catered to...This made it easier to standardise and stabilise
production‘.
Jane Feuer - ‘A genre is ultimately an abstract conception rather than something
that exists empirically in the world,'
In relation to film, AndrewTudor argued that genre is 'what we collectively believe it
to be' (though this begs the question about who 'we' are).
3. NARRATIVE
Definition – a spoken or written account of connected events.
TzvetanTodorov – suggested there were 5 stages to a
narrative:
Equilibrium – A happy start
A disruption of this equilibrium by an event – A problem occurs
A realisation that a disruption has happened
An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption – the
problem is solved
A restoration of the equilibrium – A happy ending
Allan Rowe – ‘Narrative involves the viewer in making sense of
what is seen, asking questions of what we see and anticipating
the answers. In particular, narrative invites us to ask both what
is going to happen next and when how will it all end. Narrative
operates on the tension between our anticipation of likely
outcomes drawn from genre conventions and the capacity to
surprise of frustrate our expectations.’
4. NARRATIVE
Erving Goffman – character theory – suggested that there are 4 main types of characters in
media text or production:
Protagonist (leading character)
Deuteragonist (secondary character)
Bit player (minor character whose specific background the audience is not aware of)
Fool (character who uses humour to convey messages)
Vladimir Propp – character theory – suggested that there were 7 character types in the 100
tales he analysed:
Villain (struggles against hero)
Donor (prepares/gives the hero some magical object)
Helper (helps the hero in the quest)
False hero (perceived as a good character at the start but is actually evil)
Dispatcher (character who makes the lack known and send the hero off)
Hero (reacts to the donor, weds the princess)
Princess (person the hero marries
5. REPRESENTATION
Definition – the description or portrayal of someone/something
in a particular way.
Some key representations in media: age, gender, class, ethnicity
etc.
Representation refers to the construction of aspects of ‘reality’
such as people, places, objects, cultural identities and other
abstract concepts.
David Chandler – Representation refers to the construction in
any medium (especially the mass media) of aspects of ‘reality’
such as people, places, objects, events, cultural identities and
other abstract concepts. Such representations may be in speech
or writing as well as still or moving pictures
6. AUDIENCE
Definition – an individual or collective group of people who
read or consume any media text.
The hypodermic needle model – this theory argues that the
media is like a syringe which injects, ideas and beliefs into the
audience who have little choice but to accept it.
Two-step flow – it was first introduced by Paul Lazarsfeld,
Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet in ‘The People’s Choice’, a
1944 study focused on the process of decision-making during a
Presidential election campaign.They found that information
does not flow directly into people’s mind but is filtered through
‘opinion leaders’ who are influential in getting people to
change their attitudes and behaviours.
Uses and gratifications theory – this suggests that people use
the media to get specific gratifications e.g. information,
entertainment, personal identity, integration.
Stuart Hall – encoding/decoding model of communication – the
text is encoded by the producer and decoded by the audience.
7. MEDIA LANGUAGE
Definition – the specialised language used in media which is used to
convey the meaning of a media text to an audience.
Some examples of media language include:
Semiotics – signifier, signified, iconic, symbolic, indexical
Connotation, denotation
Camera shots, angle, movement, composition – high/low angle, close up, pan,
rule of thirds
Mise-en-scene – lighting, costume, setting
Editing – cutaway, shot reverse shot, eyeline match
Sound – digetic/non-diegtic, sound bridge, voiceover
Symbolic
