8/12/2019 A2 Media 1B: Representation and Identity (Revision Sheet Example)

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MEDIA QUESTION 1B: REPRESENTATION AND IDENTITY

INTRODUCTION:For A2 Media I was part of a group who createda surreal, arthouse-thriller film entitled Reflection which represented

the negative effect the media have on women, particularly young

girls.

LAURA MULVEY: MALE GAZE THEORY

Laura Mulvey states that we view films from a

males perspective (whether we are male or not)

leading to the female character becoming an

object of visual pleasure rather that an

important subject within the film. Within

Reflection we both challenge and abide by this

theory: Our film is viewed from a female

perspective which challenges the typical

alignment of Hollywood films as our film breaks

the fourth wall allowing the audience to place

themselves in a similar way to the doll/young

girl views herself. However, the young girl

judges herself from the perspective of a male

looking at her (through male gaze) sticking to

the concept of the theory and therefore

ortra in her as more of an ob ect.

JEAN KILBOURNE: BODY IMAGE IN THE MEDIAWhen planning how we intended to represent females in our film we

read an article by Jean Kilbourne about body image in the media and

found how in one of her surveys nearly half of 9-12 year old girls said

they wanted to be thinner and had either been on a diet or were

aware of them. We included this shocking finding in our film by

including the line How to lose weight, dont eat! to represent how

effected young girls have become due to the pressure from the media

to look a certain way and to portray a common insecurity for most

females, whatever age. Although representing females as insecure

could be seen as negative, we use the shock factor (and the deeper

messages out arthouse audience will look for) to align the audience

with our female characters through sympathy, therefore allowing

negativity to be directed towards the media industry.

FEMALES IN THE FILM INDUSTRY:

From research, I found that female characters only accounted for 15%

of protagonists in the 100 highest grossing films of 2013 and as our

film aims to challenge the typical representations (particularly of

women) in media/film, we made our characters, including our main

character, female. Our protagonist could be seen as the voice of thelittle girl who taunts the doll: creating her negative emotions and

overall controlling how she responds. However, our characters goals

are based on beauty and are therefore less major leading to her

weaker personality, stopping her from becoming a leader figure which

could stop her from being a protagonist and becoming more of an

antagonist. As we play on the typical way which media represents

women and with the knowledge of media our active arthouse

audience will already have, this similarity to a more Hollywood

representation of women could be seen as ironic and metaphorical for

the more empowering roles of women needed within the industry.

CULTIVATATION THEORY:

Cultivation theory argues that images which

portray women who match the socio-cultural

idea of beauty are more prevalent in the media

and that repetitive exposure to such images

influences womens ability to understand that

such standards are unrealistic. To represent this

perfect image which females have become

accustomed to we included the character of thedoll as an arthouse audience will be able to

decode meanings from this: a fake, plastic body

which if often described as perfect despite

how completely impossible it is for a woman to

match up. The doll itself represents women as

popular media doesthey are skinny, pretty and

have no identifiable goals. The doll in our film

does not even have her own mind as she is

controlled by the voices in her head telling her

who she should be (as women in reality arecontrolled by the media). We represent the

repetitive messages (a part of the cultivation

theory) through the TV screen displaying words

such as skinny, pretty and the more

aggressive be pretty, be pretty, be pretty!.

THE USE OF MIRRORS/TV SET:

Through the use of mirrors we play with Barthes cultural codes to

represent women as vanity objects and create a connection between

females and an obsessive desire to be pretty. Mirrors can be decoded

by an arthouse audience to represent an object designed to show

beauty with no other purpose, metaphorically and negatively

representing women. We also included TV sets to bring attention to

how the media impacts and causes this desire among women to

directly maintain an alignment against the media industry and

therefore with the young girl. We drew on the TV with lipstick to

include connotations of how edited and photo shopped the images

which normally represent how a woman should be and the images

they often judge themselves on.

CONCLUSION:

Overall, our film aims to ironically represent

women in a similar way to popular media as well

as challenge it, leading to them being portrayedin both negative and positive ways.