LO3 & 6 genre theory revision

Genre

Barry Keith Grant (1995) : All genres have sub-genres, and are devisable by generic elements.

Patrick Phillips (1996) : Genre offers audiences 'Comfortable reassurance' and genres fulfil audiences pleasures

Branston and Stafford (1999) : genres help to minimise risk and predict expenditures

Rick Altman (1999) : Emotional pleasures , visceral pleasure and intellectual puzzles 

David Bordwell (1989) : any theme may appear in any genre,



Narrative

Pam Cook (1985) : The standard Hollywood narrative structure should have :
enigma resolution - solve a problem
narrative closure - the audience has a definite ending usually happy 

Tzvetan Todorov (1977) :
- A point of stable of equilibrium
- the stability is disrupted, creates disequilibrium
- action against the disruption
- new equilibrium

Claude Levi - Straus (1958) : Binary opposition 

Representation

Laura Mulvey (1975): The representation of women

Stuart Hall (1995) : western and white cultures continue to represent different ethnicities in a negative way

Earp & Katz : Men are often represented as violent and controlling


Effects by the media 

George Gerbner and Larry Gross (1979) Cultivation theory, the longer you watch television the more you think that television is reality,
E.g people think that if you don't have big boobs your not gonna be happy and find love

Stanley Cohen (1972) moral panics and folk devils is when the mass media demonise a group of people or product
e.g the media has created the idea of cosmetic surgery being a folk devil


Representation in the media 

Stuart Hall (1980) all representations are mediated and encoded

Perkins (1979) not all stereotypes are negative

Alvadadro (1987)/ Hall (1995)  ethnicity is seen as exotic, dangerous, humours, pitied

Turton (2014) Hooligans cause trouble this is especially targeted at black and asian boys

Lloyd (1995) girls are 'double deviant' this meaning that if they commit crimes they are seen as double bad as men

Discuss the extent to which you agree with the regulatory guidelines

MYA cosmetics released an advert in the summer of 2018 demonstrating the effects of their cosmetic surgery, the advert targeted young impressionable girls due to the timing and placement of the advert.

Due to the advert being placed before the popular TV program love island which is known to have a 16-25 female target audience the placement of the advert catches all the viewers of the popular show.

The advert demonstrated models who had their breast enlarged and showed them on a yacht laughing and having happy emotions, the fact that the advert implies that the models are now happier and more successful due to their surroundings and emotions creates a negative mind effect on the impressionable young audiences viewing the advert.

The fact that we as an audience don't find the advert shocking even though the models clearly show off their breasts and a lot of skin due to the models wearing small and revealing bikinis demonstrates the desensitisation brought by social media and games such as GTA which show women only for the purpose of sex appeal and all the women being prostitutes. The desensitistaion is damaging as younger girls now think that taking pictures of themselves in bikinis is normal and this creating extra pressures to have the 'perfect body'.

The majority audience who viewed the advert were oppositional viewer, this being demonstrated by the ASA received hundreds of complaints about the cosmetic advert, this demonstrates that the audience weren't preferred viewing and just agreed with the information given but had their own opinion and disagreed with the ethics of the advert.
The advert shows the models and their enhanced features, this topic of cosmetic surgery has recently become a moral panics with many newspapers and tabloids reporting about the decision to go under the knife younger generations are taking, the people who do get enhanced features are therefore seen as folk devils to many people as they see cosmetic surgery being vain and not having correct morals.

The advert was created with the uses and gratifications in mind (Dennis Mcquail, 1972) as included in the advert is the idea of personal identity, the advert would be attractive to a certain group of the target audience who would see the surgery be an improvement on their personal identity and see the models as being an ideal self, another uses and gratification being included being an element of escapism due to the advert featuring various locations including a yacht, beach and pool and as well as this the advert is accompanied by upbeat pop/club music, the adverts tries to recreate a girls  holiday scenario this leading the audience to escapism as they can be immersed in the adverts and this leading to them being a passive audience due to the advert immersing them by the clips and music shown.

Overall the ASA deemed the advert too mental damaging to the young impressionable teenagers who were the aimed target audience, after receiving many complaints and many mental health charities expressing their fears of damage caused by the advert, personally i do agree with the ASA's decision and think that the advert should have not being broadcasted in the first place due to the questionable morals implied behind the advert about the ideas of a perfect body and an unrealistic ideal self being shown.

Defintions of key term.

Conglomerate - a large company that owns subsidiaries

Subsidiary - a company owned by a conglomerate

independent - a company that funds its own media and isn't owned by a conglomerate

joint venture - a production made by two independent companies

vertical integration - when a company produces, markets and distributes their own media

PamCo - a company that oversees all published media

Horizontal Integration - when subsidiaries advertise a conglomerates media

Synergy- when same colours and other graphic techniques are used throughout different campaigns to shows correlation between.

Public Service Company - funded by the publics money e.g BBC

Production Process - the process when producing a media product

RAJAR - Radio audience research board

BARB - Broadcasters audience research board

Below the line advertising - when a product is advertised to a small group or individual by both digital and print.

Above the line advertising - when a product is marketed towards a mass audience by conventional methods e.g AV, billboards

Viral marketing - producing marketing that will be spread on social media by the audience e.g sharing on Facebook

Web 2.0 - where web pages are interactive, this is part of TIM O'REILY and DALE DOUGHERTY theory and its known as the second phase of the internet

Demographic profile - when the audience has a demographic profile that describes the income, age, geographic location of the audience

Technological convergence - the convergence of many different media products into one singular 'black box' e.g an iPhone

Genre - dividing categories based on common elements these being called conventions and stereotypes

Representation- How the media shows different groups.

Narrative - The techniques used to tell the story and structure e.g Costumes, camera angles.

Connotation - what deeper meanings are retrieved from aspects encoded

Mass Audience - an audience that contains a large number of people e.g people from the age of 25-40

Niche audience - an audience that has a mall number of people and the media aimed at them is normally very targeted to the group e.g a fishing magazine

BBFC ratings

Identify the potentional impact of Dunkirk

Point Data Question 


Dunkirk is an historical drama film brought out in 2017, The target audience for this film is a mass audience of 16-80 years old, The film would attract all ages and would be attracting an older generation 60-80 due to the relatability they can have to the film due to their experience in time periods close to the movie settings, The younger audiences, 16-25 would've been aimed at during the casting off the film as the popular artist Harry Styles who is seen as an ideal self/partner is a main protagonist due to his debut acting this would create a large mass audience for the film. In this essay I will be demonstrating the debate over the positive and negative aspects of the film. 

(Earp & Katz 1999) created an idea about over controlling men and men having violent tendencies,
in the 2017 box hit we do see negative stereotypes and ideologies encoded into the period drama, one of the clearest and most obvious negative ideology the audience are shown is the negative portrayal of men, in the film we solely see male soldiers which demonstrates the idea that women are inferior and men are the only sex capable of fighting, this reinforcing men being thought as overly violent. In a segment of the film we see the British soldiers discover that a French soldier is trying to board a British boat to get safe passage, on discovering this the British soldiers start to open fire trying to kill the French soldier. In this scene we see men showing unnecessary violence and demonstrate their obsession for control, we see similar occurrences throughout the film as see unnecessary violence used to deal with situations that would never require violence and the repetition of this act demonstrate to the audience the idea that men are dangerous and power-hungry, this being a negative stereotype for the audience to see repeated. 

(Laura Mulvey 1975) created an ideology about how women are shown purely for either sex appeal or shown as less equal to men. In the film we see only see a woman acting as a nurse and their purpose to serve the men, this ideology is dangerous as viewers can become passive viewers of the film and could agree with the way women are treated due to the scenes they see in media products such as Dunkirk, (Adorno and Horkheimer). Another very negative aspect shown in the film is the racism, throughout the film we constantly see the French soldiers being treated as if they were second class citizens e.g not being able to share British boats and get safe passage, being hated by the British soldiers and seen as an annoyance however the French soldiers fought beside the British therefore this logic is strongly racist. In one scene the British uncover a French soldier trying to board a British boat this leads to the British soldiers opening fire on him, this immediate violent reaction demonstrates racist views against the French even after they fought the opposition as equals, this once again is dangerous due to the audience becoming passive and thinking this is acceptable behaviour.

Whilst looking at Dunkirk I have also looked at another media product, Jeremy Kyle is a programme that has been aired since 2005, the TV programme is hosted by a presenter called Jeremy Kyle, Jeremy hosts guests who are white E social class, in the show Jeremy solves scandals that the guests are facing these scenarios are usually adultery, theft or lying.
The target audience of the programme is working class upwards and this demonstrating that the idea of the show is for higher classed audience members to make fun and marvel at the E social class category.
In this example we see the media make the white E class appear folk devils as normally in the programme we see the guests talk about benefits, drug use and adultery, all of these themes are seen as very negative and makes the guests appear draining on British society, the programme exploits the guests to create moral panics for the viewers as the show makes the guests appear threatening to British values and society.
However the show Jeremy Kyle is known to be very media bias and show the guests only in one negative perspective when they could demonstrate the hardships that the guest have gone through as many of them have overcome drug addictions and have grown up in distressing circumstances. 
The programme uses sensationalism in the show often to exaggerate circumstances that the guests are in to attract audience members to watch the programme. 

(Dennis Mcquail, 1972) speaks about escapism and surveillance being a type of pleasure aimed from media products this is shown in the film. 

For example even though the film does have many negative ideas it also supports many positive themes also, in the film we see a very historically accurate account of the event and the informative aspect is very strong, this is a positive attribute that the film has as it means that as well as offering escapism to the audience due to the thriller/drama aspect they can also gain surveillance on historic events that have being detrimental to WWII

Another positive aspect that the film has is that it demonstrates many positive role models who the audience could base ideal selfs off, one of the main plot lines is a father and son who sail a boat to France to pick up soldiers, the selfless actions of this father and son demonstrate a very positive role model that the audience can look up to and take qualities from.§§

Overall I think that film does have negative aspects to the film however many of the negative representations and stereotypes are down to historical accuracy and are used to show the circumstances that happened this making the negative aspects more excusable however they would still impact a passive audience so its still dangerous to have them included in the film. 
Looking at the TV programme Jeremy Kyle I do think its harmful for the representation of lower classes as they appear very negative on the famous show and this can create tension in everyday life.
  

Lo6 : active audiences

Active audience theory

• we are able to filter and adapt to content in media (Gauntlett,1955)
• We have uses and gratifications (McQuail, 1972)

the four aspects that McQuail speaks about are 

- escapism 

- surveillance

- personal relationships 

- personal identity 

• encoding/decoding model Hall (1980) 

- Preferred reading, the audience accept the most 'transparent' meaning following the dominant viewpoint/ideology/story 

e.g sees and advert and immediately buys the jeans 

- Negotiated reading, partially agrees with meaning, making their own opinions

e.g not buying jeans because they are too expensive however you like the style 

- Oppositional reading, meaning understood but don't agree and think opposite 

e.g don't think the jeans advert is appropriate and don't agree with societies stance 

encode - to put in 

decode - to take out and understand 

In this advert we can see the encoded rise en scene and we can figure out the targeted audience, our first encoded message we perceive is the female model, she is the main focal point and is holding the advertising bag. We see the actress Marion Cotillard, audience members will see this famous, well known person and relate the handbag to her success and fame this will help the advert to sell the bag to people who seek recognition and fame. After her success we see the model in a very formal costume, her dress is very low cut and reveals a lot of cleavage and this relates to Laura Mulvey (1975)'s theory where she discuss' women being shown only for sex appeal, the dresses colour is black and once again this colour denotes wealth and affluence. Even little details of the model demonstrate the target audience of 25-50 year old females ABC1 for example, very manicured nails, her desirable curled hair and position where she seems wanted by male attention.

Another aspect that also attracts the target audience due to the encoded message is the location, the image was taken in Shanghai and we see it  from a sky high view, the fact that the models are on a building rooftop create the impression of a upperclass occasion that they were attending, the location allows the target audience to create an ideal self and the bag will allow you to attend similar occasions such as this if bought.

positive impact of DUNKRIK

The positive aspect of the media product Dunkirk is the historical accuracy and the informative aspect that is shown to the audience, it creates awareness on the historical events that won't have been thoroughly thought through for a lot of the audience, it gives us a realistic account of what happened at that time and place.

We see a big mix of both positive protagonist and antagonists, the positive characters give the audience an inspirational figure to look up to or to base an ideal slef/partner on

Negative aspects of Dunkirk would be that it portrays men in a very violent and controlling manner Representation of men (Earp & Katz, 1999), It demonstrates women only being there to aid men and not being equal, Representation of women (Mulvey, 1975), It also has ideologies shown on racism as only English soldiers are evacuated from the life threatening situation leaving behind french soldiers who fought on the same side so therfore should be seen as equals.

Dunkirk LO6

DUNKIRK with LO6 theory

• Representation of men
• French soldiers being seen as less than equal 
• desensitisation