Introduction to Media Studies

SoSe 2011Mag. Klaus Heissenberger

North American Literary and Cultural Studies Universität des Saarlandes

The circuit of culture

Paul Du Gay, Stuart Hall, Linda Janes, Hugh Mackay, und Keith Negus. Doing Cultural Studies. The Story of the Sony Walkman. London: Sahe/The Open University, 1997.

Cultural Studies: Culture, representation, identity and power

culture

representation identity

power

Pretty Woman

(Gary Marshall, 1990)

Observation task: What is shown in which

order? In which ways?

HOW are the introductory scenes filmed?

... Esp. camera position

Rear Window

(1954, Alfred Hitchcock)

Looking and visual culture

gender:

Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975)Concept of the ‘male gaze’:

pleasure in mainstream cinema (e.g. Hollywood) is produced via a male/masculine viewing position:male gaze = controlling, voyeuristic and narcissistic look which identifies with the camera position

feminist project: “destruction of pleasure”-----------------------------reader: Sturken/Cartwright

Gender in/and the media: other approaches

Visual media: Looking, spectatorship, power

e.g. Michel Foucault (1926-1984)

Gender in/and the media: other approaches

Visual media: Looking, spectatorship, power

e.g. Michel Foucault (1926-1984)

power/knowledge + the bodypleasurable production of self (subject)self-regulationbody emits signs: signifies its relation to

social norms