This document provides objectives and background information for analyzing the music video "Riptide" through a feminist lens. It discusses several feminist media theorists including Van Zoonen, who believes media reinforce patriarchal gender stereotypes, and Mulvey, who introduced the concept of the "male gaze" and how women are objectified for the visual pleasure of male audiences. The document also discusses applying these theories to analyze representations of women, violence against women, and sexuality in "Riptide" as well as other related works.

1. THEWOMEN OF
RIPTIDE

2. Objectives for RipTide
■ To understand the processes through which meanings are
established through intertextuality
■ To analyse how audiences respond to this aspect of media language
■ To analyse the way meaning is created through micro elements
■ To know the codes and conventions of music video and how genre develops over time
■ To explore the significance of challenging or subverting genre conventions
MEDIA LANGUAGE:
REPRESENTATION:
■ To analyse the way media constructs versions of reality
■ To explore how and why stereotypes can be used positively and negatively
■ To analyse how media representations convey values, attitudes, and beliefs
about the world
■ How the audience are positioned by the music video
Van Zoonen: Feminist theory
Roland Barthes: Semiotics
David Gauntlett: Identity theory
Claude Levi-Strauss: Structuralism
TzvetanTodorov: Narratology
Andrew Goodwin: Genre theory
Steve Neal: Genre theory

3. LiesbetVan Zoonen
■ Believes we get our ideas about gender from the media.
■ The media represent women with stereotypical images and this behaviour reinforces concepts of what it
means to be a woman.The media does this because they believe it reflects dominant social values and
male producers are influenced by this, leading to a patriarchal society.
■ The display of women’s bodies as objects to be looked at is a core element of western patriarchal society
■ Before the advent of the women’s movement these gender stereotypes seemed natural, or “given”. Few
questioned how they developed, how they were reinforced, or how they were maintained.
■ However, media texts are polysemic and construct diverging and sometimes conflicting articulations of
femininity
■ Argues that audiences are active and have negotiated readings of texts, as well as an understanding of
the way meanings are encoded and decoded
■ The underlying frame of reference is that women belong to the family and domestic life, and men to the
social world of politics and work; that femininity is about care, nurturance and compassion, and that
masculinity is about efficiency, rationality, and individuality.

6. Laura Mulvey:The Male Gaze
■ Mulvey wrote this theory in 1975
■ The idea that women appear on camera for the visual pleasure of the male
audience
■ We constantly see these representations of women as so they become normal,
thus supporting a patriarchal society whereby women are oppressed and men
are dominant
■ Many Hollywood films objectify women with the camera offering the audience
a voyeuristic look at the female body
■ Women are gazed upon because heterosexual men are assumed to be the
audience for most film genres

9. ApplyingVan Zoonen & Mulvey
■ Women in the video are repeatedly presented as an object to be watched
■ Women are the victims of violence, and are helpless
■ Women are headless
■ However, are we really positioned to view these violent acts as pleasurable?
■ Are they always helpless?

10. David Gauntlett
■ …audiences often get a sense of their own identity from the media products they
consume
■ …in the past the media promoted simple stereotypical representations of gender e.g.
men as breadwinner, strong, women as housewives and mothers.
■ …believes that in newer media products we get a diverse complex representation that
have moved away from the binary gender representations of the past.
■ …representations today can be diverse, complex and sometimes challenging,
particularly when looking at gender.

11. Violence
■ How are violence and sexual desire
represented in Un Chien Andalou?
■ How does this inform our
understanding of RipTide?
■ How is violence towards women
represented?
■ How is sexual desire represented?

19. ApplyingVan Zoonen to Riptide
■ Do these images of women offer a sexualised representation
for the voyeuristic pleasure of the audience, or are they
presented in a way that challenges the sexualisation of
women in many music videos?
■ How is the concept of beauty represented?
■ Is there an argument that the video is being ironic or
contradictory in these representations?

21. ■ Explore how gender is represented in the Riptide music video from your set texts [15]