This document provides an overview of key concepts related to representation in media, including: - Representation refers to how media shows aspects of society through mediation and shared recognition. All representations have underlying ideologies. - Groups are commonly represented through lenses of Marxism (reinforcing dominant ideologies), feminism (challenging patriarchal power structures), postmodernism, and through stereotypes. - Stereotypes are simplifications that define our understanding but can enhance perceived realism; they are not always negative, untrue, or rigidly defined. - Students should consider how their own media products use or challenge simplistic representations and reinforce or question dominant ideologies.

1. G235: Critical
Perspectives in Media
Theoretical Evaluation
of Production
Question 1(b)
Representation

2. Aims/Objectives
• You will be able to describe what
representation is.
• Be able to identify the types of groups
that are represented?
• You will be able to discuss
representation in your products

3. Big question
• The media does not construct reality,
but instead represents it?

4. • Richard Dyer (1983) posed a few questions
when analysing media representations in
general.
• 1. What sense of the world is it making?
• 2. What does it imply? Is it typical of the
world or deviant?
• 3. Who is it speaking to? For whom? To
whom?
• 4. What does it represent to us and why?
How do we respond to the representation?

5. Representation - Definition
• How the media shows us things about
society – but this is through careful
mediation. Hence re-presentation.
• For representation to be meaningful to
audiences there needs to be a shared
recognition of people, situations, ideas etc.
• All representations therefore have
ideologies behind them. A preferred
representation (Levi – Strauss, 1958).

6. • In terms of your coursework you will be
looking at representation in terms of :
1. MARXISM
2. FEMINISM
3. POSTMODERNISM
4. STEREOTYPES

8. Ideology – refers to a set of ideas which
produces a partial and selective view of reality.
Notion of ideology entails widely held ideas or
beliefs which are seen as ‘common’ sense and
become naturalised.
What is important is that, in Marxist terms, the
media’s role may be seen as :
Circulating and reinforcing dominant
ideologies (less frequently) undermining and
challenging such ideologies.

9. • Rosalind Brunt (1992) details that
ideologies are never simply ideas in
peoples’ heads but are indeed myths that
we live by and which contribute to our self
worth.
• David Gauntlett (2002) argues that
“identities are not ‘given’ but are
constructed and negotiated.”

10. Bell hooks
 The colour codes: Lighter skinned women
are considered more desirable and fit better
into the western ideology of beauty.
 Black women are objectified and sexualised
in hip-hop reflecting the colonialist view of
black women (sexually disposable).
 a mediated view of black culture that is
considered the norm.

11. Tricia Rose
 Hip Hop gives black female rappers a voice
introducing female empowerment.
 Hip hop gave audiences an insight into the
lives of young black urban Americans and
gave them a voice.

12. Jacques Lacan
 The Mirror Stage: Where infants see their
reflections in the mirror and see it as a superior
reflection of themselves that they must aspire
to.
 Seeing iconic rappers who are successful
‘young black males’ may see them as a
superior reflection of themselves they could
aspire to. Particularly those iconic figures
whom have struggled through a deprived
childhood e.g. 50 Cent and Biggie Smalls
(Notorious BIG).

13. Why does hip-hop display the
representations it does?
Hip Hop Beyond Beats and Rhymes

14. • Michel Maffesoli (1985) identified the idea
of the “urban tribe” – members of these
small groups tend to have similar
worldwide views, dress styles and common
behaviours – leads to the decline of
individualism.
• Collective Identity
• David Gauntlett (2007) argues that
“Identity is complicated. Everybody thinks
they’ve got one. Artists play with the idea
of identity in modern society.”

15. 2. Gender and Ideology (FEMINISM)
• Masculinity and femininity are socially
constructed.
• Feminism is a label that refers to a broad
range of views containing one shared
assumption – gender inequalities in society,
historically masculine power (patriarchy)
exercised at right of women’s interests and
rights.

16. John Berger ‘Ways Of Seeing’ (1972)
“Men act and women appear”. “Men
look at women. Women watch
themselves being looked at”.
“Women are aware of being seen by a
male spectator”

17. • Jib Fowles (1996) “in advertising, males
gaze and females are gazed at”.
• Paul Messaris (1997) “female models
addressed to women....appear to imply a
male point of view”.

18. • Music videos today still support that an
attractive appearance and a sexy body rank
high among the most important goals young
people can achieve, especially women
(Aubrey & Frisby, 2011).

19. Indie
• White men are most recurrently the focus of
such videos and are commonly portrayed as
powerful, aggressive, and hostile (Brown &
Campbell, 1986;

20. Mental Disability
• Philo (1994) looked at the impact the media
have on the public view of mental illness,
with two-fifths of those questioned
believing violence and mental illness were
connected.
• Ward (1997) discovered that stories
involving mental illness, criminality and
violence were given more exposure than
positive stories involving mental health
issues. Seen as solely a female issue

21. • We often judge a text’s realism against our
own ‘situated culture’. What is ‘real’ can
therefore become subjective.
• Stereotypes can be used to enhance
realism - a news programme,
documentary, film text etc about football
hooligans, for e.g, will all use very
conventional images that are associated
with the realism that audiences will identify
with such as shots of football grounds,
public houses etc.

22. 4. Stereotypes?
• O’Sullivan et al (1998) details that a
stereotype is a label that involves a process
of categorisation and evaluation.
• We can call stereotypes shorthand to
narratives because such simplistic
representations define our understanding
of media texts – e.g we know who is good
and who is evil.

23. • First coined by Walter Lippmann (1956) the
word stereotype wasn’t meant to be
negative and was simply meant as a
shortcut or ordering process.
• In ideological terms, stereotyping is a
means by which support is provided by one
group’s differential against another.

24. • Tessa Perkins (1979) says, however, that
stereotyping is not a simple process. She
identified that some of the many ways that
stereotypes are assumed to operate aren’t
true.
• They aren’t always negative (French good cooks)
• They aren’t always about minority groups or those less
powerful (upper class twits)
• They are not always false – supported by empirical
evidence.
• They are not always rigid and unchanging.
Perkins argues that if stereotypes were
always so simple then they would not work
culturally and over time.

25. • Dyer (1977) details that if we are to be told
that we are going to see a film about an
alcoholic then we will know that it will be a tale
either of sordid decline or of inspiring
redemption.
• This is a particularly interesting potential use of
stereotypes, in which the character is
constructed, at the level of costume,
performance, etc., as a stereotype but is
deliberately given a narrative function that is
not implicit in the stereotype, thus throwing
into question the assumptions signalled by the
stereotypical iconography.

26. “Representations in media texts are often
simplistic and reinforce dominant ideologies
so that audiences can make sense of them”.
Evaluate the ways that you have
used/challenged simplistic representations
in one of the media products you have
produced.
Think of this question as the first part of your
revision...