The document summarizes several media theories: - Auteur Theory asserts that the director is the "author" of a film and their creative vision shapes the film. It looks at three components: technical competence, personality, and interior meaning. - Reception Theory holds that media messages can be decoded differently by audiences - as the dominant, negotiated, or oppositional reader. - The Hypodermic Needle Model views media as having the power to influence and control audiences like a hypodermic needle. However, this ignores that audiences do not always passively receive messages. - The Male Gaze portrays and looks at women in a way that empowers men while sexualizing and diminishing women.

1. Personal Study Essay
The theories

2. Auteur Theory • Auteur Theory is a way of looking at films that state that the
director is the “author” of a film
• Auteur theory is looking into films with the idea that the films
director is the author of the film instead of the director. This theory
should show off the directors creative and artistic ideas and
thoughts.
• The term of the theory is sometimes credited to the critics of the
French Film Journal Cahiers Du Cinema, multiple would go on to
become directions of the French New Wave.
• According to New York University professor Julian Cornell this
concept that existed for a while before the French were given it.
• There are 3 components of the theory
• Technical Competence
• Distinguishable Personality
• Interior meaning

3. Reception Theory
• Reception theory as developed by Stuart
Hall asserts that media texts are encoded and
decoded. The producer encodes messages and
values into their media which are then
decoded by the audience. However, different
audience members will decode the media in
different ways and possibly not in the way the
producer originally intended.
• 3 main categories
Dominant Reader
Negotiated Reader
Oppositional Reader

4. The Hypodermic Needle Model
The view that the media has the ability to
mesmerise, influence and even control
its audiences has its roots firmly in the
early 20th century. Then new
communication technology in the form of
moving pictures, the gramophone and
radio expanded the mass media
previously occupied by newspapers.
The Hypodermic theory comes from a
fear of the mass media, and gives the
media much more power than it can ever
have in a democracy. The concept
ignores the idea that not everyone in an
audience behaves in the same way. How
can an audience be passive –there will be
many times when you have disagreed
with something you have seen on
television or failed to laugh at a comedy
show or just thought a TV programme
was terrible.
An example is Germany in the 1930’s under the Nazi
rule and the injected propaganda used to recruit
people into joining the Nazi army. This was used in
an attempt to get the German people to see the
cause the Nazi wanted and if they would help fight to
ensure this would become reality.
People also believe that the media is just fearing
people fear in the attempt to secure a settled party
as time progresses.

5. The Male Gaze
The male gaze describes a way of portraying and looking at
women that empowers men while sexualizing and diminishing
women. While biologically, from early adolescence on, we are
driven to look at and evaluate each other as potential mates, the
male gaze twists this natural urge, turning the women into passive
items to possess and use as props