This document discusses several key theorists and concepts related to representation in media. It outlines semiotics as the study of signs and how meaning is conveyed. Laura Mulvey's 1975 work introduced the concept of the male gaze, where women are represented as passive objects for the male viewer's erotic pleasure. Richard Dyer and Steve Neale built on this, discussing how representations reinforce male dominance and encourage identification with powerful masculine ideals. The document also discusses signifiers, signifieds, stereotypes, and analytical frameworks from Dyer and Neale.

1. Theories of Representation.

2. Aims and Outcomes
By the end of this session you
should be able to:
 Identify key terminology in
regards to theoretical approaches
of representation.
 Discuss key theoretical
perspectives with reference to
moving image.

3. Semiotics
 Semiotics is the study of signs and sign systems.
 Developed by Ferdinand de Saussure considered
how language denotes meaning.
 Semiotics is concerned with how meaning is
created and conveyed in texts and, in particular, in
narratives.
 Signs can be words, images, sounds, odours,
flavors, acts, gestures, words and objects.
 Semiotics foregrounds the process of
representation.

4. Signs
Semioticians believe that:
 Everything is a sign (or a symbol that represents
something else)
 Signs are composed of two parts –
1. the signifier
2. what is signified by that signifier
 SIGNIFIER + SIGNIFIED = SIGN.
 The signifier is usually an object, or icon, or symbol that we
recognize; the form which the sign takes.
 What is signified is total meaning that results from
associating the signifier with the signified- the concept it
represents.
 The relationship between the signifier and signified—
and this is crucial—is random, unmotivated and
unnatural.

5. Laura Mulvey- Male Gaze
 Mulvey is a feminist film scholar.
 Wrote ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’
(1975)- one of the most widely cited articles
in the whole of contemporary film theory.
 She analysed Hollywood Cinema and argued
that female characters are were represented
as passive objects of male desire
 Her theory ‘Male Gaze’ – male characters are
‘bearers of the look’ which is aimed at
physically sexually, submissive and desirable
females.
 Female viewers must experience the
narrative secondarily, by identification with
the male.

6. Laura Mulvey
Mulvey states that the role of a female character in a
narrative has two functions
1. As an erotic object for characters within the narrative to
view
2. As an erotic object for the spectators within the cinema
to view
 Mulvey argues the female character offer no real
importance herself, the female character exists in
relation to the male.
 Active narrative roles of making things happen and
controlling events, usually falls to the male character,
while the female character remains passively decorative.
 Relegates women to the status of objects- spectacle to
be looked at.
 Theory suggests that the male gaze denies women
human identity.

7. Laura Mulvey
 Scopophilia- means the ‘Pleasure in Looking’
 Cinema offers voyeuristic pleasures – visual
pleasures. Various features of cinema viewing
conditions facilitate for the viewer both the
voyeuristic process of objectification of female
characters and also the narcissistic process of
identification with an ‘ideal ego’ seen on the
screen.
 Male scopophilic desires satisfied.
 Women connote ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’.
 Men look, women are looked at.

8. Analysing Male Gaze
◦ What are the characters (the bearers of the look)
shown to be looking at?
◦ What is the camera looking?
◦ What is the audience expected to be looking at?
◦ What are the purposes of the shots of the male and
female characters?
◦ Who is the presumed spectator?
◦ Which characters are dominant and which are
submissive?
James Bond Rear Window

9. Richard Dyer
 Dyer draws on Mulvey’s work to argue
that ways of looking reassert male
dominance.
 He suggests that images of men aimed
at women undermine those codes.
 When men are objectified they will
attempt to resist the gaze of the camera
– they may look away, close their eyes,
wear sunglasses, look aggressive. They
tend to be doing something, i.e. being
active not just posing.

10. Dyer’s Typography (1985)
 Dyer identifies four questions to ask of a
representation:
1. What is represented?
2. How is this representative of social
groups?
3. Who is responsible for the
representation?
4. What does the audience make of it?

11. Stereotypes.
 Media representations often use stereotypes as a
cultural shorthand.
 Dyer argues stereotypes are a way of reinforcing
differences between people, and representing these
differences as natural.
 Stereotypes reinforce the idea that there are big
differences between different types of people.
 Stereotypes legitimise inequality

13. Steve Neale.
 Wrote “Masculinity as spectacle: Reflections on
men and mainstream cinema” (1993)
 Illustrates how identification is not a simple matter
of ‘men identifying with male figures on the screen
and women identifying with female figures’ but it
has much more substance to it.
 His theory- Narcissistic identification- the act of
identifying and aspiring to replace oneself with the
representation of the powerful, omnipotent figure of
masculinity.
 Male’s are encouraged to identify with this ‘ideal
male alter ego’- power, mastery and control.

14. Steve Neale
 Suggests this is presented through current
ideologies such as aggression, power and
control.
 May provoke feelings of anxiety and
insecurities.
 Male body can actively be the spectacle but
is disqualified as an erotic object in
Hollywood cinema.
 Fetishism lets male bodies to become objects
on the screen as well, but in a different, non-
erotic way.
 Fetishist gaze- ‘it is heavily meditated by the
looks of the character involved. And these
looks are marked not by desire, but rather by
fear, or hatred, or agression.’ (Neale, 1993,

15.  Ferdinand de Saussure
 Semiotics
 signifier
 form
 signified
 represents
 Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema
 1975
 patriarchal society
 active
 passive
 ‘as image’
 bearer of the look’
 male gaze
 Scopophilia
 Objectified
• what is represented?
• how is this
representative?
• who is responsible?
• what does the
audience make of it?
• stereotypes
• reinforces
• inequality
•1993
• narcissistic
identification
• male
• “ideal ego”
• fetishist gaze