Define representation
How you portray someone or something in a particular way. Like how a certain population is made out to look like whether true or not
Define voyeurism and scopophilia
Voyeurism gaining pleasure from seeing someone when they can’t see you. Like in the Babadook the mother takes pleasure from looking at both a woman looking at a tv peacefully and people making out makes her happy.
Scopophilia taking pleasure from looking at someone
Define objectification
Objectification is when a person is seen as nothing more than their physical attributes and what the person objectifying the other thinks they act like. Like when people make a mental image of someone and don’t expect them to deviate from this and interpret every move like their sole purpose it to be a sexual object.
Define Laura Muley’s ‘Male Gaze’
It states that the media in question is built for men and so women will be objectified and makes the man in the right. It consists of how the man looks at the woman both actor and the person watching. The theory states that the way these movies are filmed objectifies women automatically and changes the way women are viewed in the movie.
Evaluating the theory
The theory is accurate when movies are filmed like this it discredits the actress and makes moviemakers more successful with a certain audience but it is not ethically right but since there aren’t any laws for ethics like this people don’t abide by how things should be the theory shows how women are reduced to their physical attributes a instance of this was Marylynn Monroe she was terrible as an actress but she was pretty so she did well even if she was hard to work with. The female is mostly the damsel in distress but when she is not she is either sexualised or over passed by a male character for instance Laura croft is sexualised as she has a different man in every film meaning she has to have a man to be successful whether he does something or not. Or princess leya she was supposed to be but she was put into slavery and that has become a more popular image.
Semiotics
Semiotics is the study of signs and symbolism. semiotics is important to society as it defies language as people from different cultures may find that symbols are the same and sometimes symbols are different.
Polysemy
the coexistence of meanings for words or symbols as in where a symbol might connotate something negative somewhere, somewhere else it may mean something peaceful.
Interactive possess interactive process is about open and closed text as some text is open and can have several meanings but closed means there is a meaning in mind and it does not have several meanings.
Denotation the literal meaning as a physical description
Connotation additional meaning what you think it could mean what the image makes you think
Anchorage the way the source keeps the meaning about it and how it is anchored to the possible meanings
In different cultures signs can mean many things through polysemy like how the swastika means peace in some Asian cultures but means fear in America and Europe.
Open text is open to interpretation and how the reader draws inspiration from it. It is not defined by the writer but your own individual opinion as such it can mean many things a example in Frankenstein the writer referred him to a modern day Prometheus which is only a anchorage but not a direct meaning.
Closed text it is defined by the writer as such it is not open to interpretation and has literal meaning like animal farm a direct refence to the rise and failings of communism in Russia
Sign the denotation what it physically is
Signifier the sound or image that makes the link
Signified the connotation what the sign means
Encoding & Decoding this is how your brain decodes messages into something you can understand like speaking in a different language a shared medium is spoken or said and then decoded into something they both understand.
Dominant reading closed text the creator has a defined meaning there is a point to them like childhood stories meant to act like a lesson
Negotiated reading anything that does not have a direct association normal stories the meaning is not blatant but you can draw several personal conclusions
Oppositional Reading the opposite conclusion to what the story says sometimes this is intentional like with noughts and crosses its not that black people are better than Wight its that they are no better as in swapped situations society would be just as bad during times of oppression.
Star Theory
Stars aren’t like their constructed persona in many cases they put on a act to become more popular E.G Miley Cyrus she had to stay pg. to keep her Disney contract but when that ended she went in a different direction as her career took a hit when her target audience changed
Stars wear trendy or designer clothes as it gives them both a good name so that they are popular enough for companies to pay them thousands in order for them to wear clothes making them seem rich and to be idolised
Less successful artists don get endorsed by companies so they make less money and as such don’t get idolised
Institutions make stars to make money for them to have tons of mascots endorsing their products in order to convince people that their product is good and trendy.
Genre
What is genre? Genre is a way of classifying movies based on their context. A genre is way of classifying movies so similar movies that employ common tropes can meet the same target audience. Most genres are loose and allow for a large variation in script and storyline just as long as they are similar in theme.
Insidious, Anabelle and the conjuring exemplify horror because they use ghosts and demons alongside dark atmospheres to create a scary tone.
How can we categorise texts? By dividing them based upon their context and what the effect is supposed to be. Texts can be divided based upon their context, target audience and by summarising the content. This means you can tell what the general mood of a text is before reading.
What are sub-genres? Genres that fit into a smaller group while still belonging to the larger one. A subgenre might have more tropes and differences to more distinctly divide up.
What are fixed genres? Genres that don’t allow other movies to be in them because of a defining piece of context. A fixed genre needs a key event to take place this means that the story follows the same track rather than the content being a defining feature.
What are non-fixed genres? Genres that allow a range of content. And story a ranged genre is lose and allows many options so there are many movies in these genres and also allows for subgenres or hybrid genres to help categorise the films.
What are hybrid genres? A movie or movies comprised of 2 or more genres these hybrids are more inclined to a specific part of one audience or the entirety of the 2 genres What is the cycle of a genre? It has 4 different parts primitives, classic, revisionist, and parody. These parts show the different ways genre
primitive, fly on the wall genre this is am more base type each genre this type is less advanced and more of a developing genre
Classic true real-life documentaries it is the peak of the genres popularity and has a larger audience
revisionist, half true scripted but the events till take place. The originality is gone but it makes way for more revised and developed works
parody not factual never happened the environment is completely false. Not serious a mock of the previous parts in the cycle
What is a non-genre or anti-genre text? The movie has many genres but doesn’t fit cleanly into them as it has many tropes like the girl with all the gifts
How do movie posters convey a film’s genre? They show how the movie looks and gives a brief impression of how/what the movie will look like
What is psychoanalysis?
investigating and explaining the mental disorders that people suffer from.
Why would media people care about or use psychoanalysis? In order to use in in depth to explain what a person acts like and replicate or compare into a media profile whist showing how that has an effect on the audience.
Who was Sigmund Freud? Sigmund Freud was a neurologist that redefined his field by explaining how he thought behaviour worked and why people act like they do.
What is the ID, ego and super-ego?
The id is the human instincts its why humans act like animals and the drive to survive like and animal. It is chaotic and unreasonable it is completely subconscious although the ego allows us to dictate our behaviour.
Ego is the mediator of the superego and the id what passes through our conscious mind and how we respond whether with the id (primitive behaviour based on survival) or the superego (less primitive more moral). The ego is for the mostly your conscious grip on your behaviour bordering on the preconscious
The superego it is all preconscious unconscious and conscious all at the same time it is developed during the psychosexual stage of development and is made based on the external sources a dominant superego can make someone neurotic.
What is the Virgin/Whore Dichotomy?
It is the theory that men don’t find good traits attractive but when a woman shows bad traits she is deemed untrustworthy but one trait had to be adopted. This is seen an media as stars adopt either of these traits to further their career like Miley Cyrus adopting one ort the other at different points in her life. Society values the pure trait and punishes the bad trait. or in Greece the mad describes a bad trait in order to get approval but in actuality it is the virgin trait that he hides.
What is the Oedipal/Oedipus Complex?
The theory that we favour one parent over the other it is mainly men who are completely dependent on their mother going to them for protection and nurturing. the infant fears the father so he wants him gone. There is an example of this in the Babadook where the boy has no father and has an unhealthy relationship with his mother this causes him to act out whenever he is met with resistance in being with her. Or the boy where a matriarchal figure enters the house and when the patriarchal figure enters he acts wildly out of control.
Peters Media Blog 