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Representation InvestigationKat Scott

2Representation

Representation is the way people, ideas and events are presented to us. Media represents people, places and situations using codes and conventions that the audience of the media text will be able to understand and know what it represents. Media constructs meanings about the world, they change and mediate what is really there.

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Representation Theorists

Richard Dyer Richard Dyer posted questions when analysing media representations such as:•What sense of the world is it making?•What does it imply? Is it typical of the world or deviant•Who is it speaking to? For whom? To whom?•What does it represent to us and why?•How do we respond to the representation?

Laura MulveyLaura Mulvey’s ‘The Male Gaze’ is the representation of women, the good wife and sexual fantasy from the males point of view. Mulvey is a feminist theorist she explores the idea of the gaze which involves looking at other peoples bodies, especially erotic objects. The viewer is said to be the voyeuristic process of objectification of female characters. The pleasure of looking has been split up into active/male and passive/female. Males are traditionally known to treat women as passive objects of desire where as females are there to be looked at.