Gender Stereotypes

After much discussion, we established gender stereotypes are very much embedded in our Lip Dub. Throughout the process of pre-production and producing the narrative, no-one suggested or questioned the protagonist’s gender; we all assumed it would be male. As the video begins, the main character is being given bad news from his girlfriend by text, furthering the aged (but still prominent) concept of women not being seen or heard, as well as perpetuating the idea of women being either evil, killed or sexualised within The Media. Similarly, we all presumed the relationship to be heterosexual without giving a second thought, which just helps emphasise the conceptualised reality of culture us and the rest of society have been subjected to. Representations such as these are realistic in our conceptualised society, but none of what is portrayed is a fair representation.

As an objective audience to this Media Product, the genre would probably be seen as ambiguous, especially if no prior knowledge was had of the Lib Dub concept. However, for audiences who have previous awareness of Lib Dubs, they may not understand the lack of lip syncing in our product. We were told we didn’t have to include it, but looking at all the examples online (including the original) they all consist of lip syncing somewhere. This as well created issues for us as a production team, as it was difficult to portray and present meaning through music with no lyrics. We feel it limited our use of expression and therefore the audience’s ability to grasp and comprehend the Narrative was at a disadvantage, particularly in comparison to the other Lip Dubs.

Within the narrative, elements such as the initial text the protagonist receives not being shown may lead to the audience not acquiring the intended meaning of the storyline. The other characters, such as The Mimes or the reindeer may also cause confusion, as it is not clear what their purpose or meaning is within this production. We feel with hindsight, we would improve our Lip Dub by putting more emphasis on the pre-production more than we did. As well as this, we felt that we needed to spend more time establishing the Narrative and the Representation, because looking at the finished Lip Dub objectively; it lacks these key concepts in particular.

(Please view individual blogs for Gender Binary Tables)

105 MC – GENRE TASK

105 MC – GENRE

The task was to choose a genre on two of the following:

. TV shows
. Films
. Advertisements
. Electronic games
. Magazine articles
. Social networking
and to list defining characteristics of the genre. Come up with a brief outline proposal of a new object within the genre, thinking of a way to change it and subverting the genre conventions and outlining effects on the audience. Finally outlining what we would have learnt from this exercise, naming some genre objects we consume and how we think differently of them now.

The genres we chose for TV shows and Films are Talent shows (X-Factor, BGT, Strictly Come Dancing,) and Action / Spy Thrillers (James Bond, Mission Impossible, Die Hard e.t.c)

The defining characteristics of the genre for Talent Shows are:

. contestants audition for the shows
. judges
. live audiences / live performances
. special guests
. weekly eliminations from the shows
. prizes at the end of the shows

The defining characteristics of the genre for Action/Spy Thriller Films are:

. antagonists and protagonists
. a conspiracy / crime / murder
. investigations
. shootings, fighting, destruction of property
. dare devil stunts, fast cars
. protagonist always come out victorious

The X-Factor as for an example could be developed into a global competition (X-Factor World) and instant fame guaranteed for the winning contestant. BGT has been adopted in America (AGT), a good example of a new object within a genre. Contestants could be encouraged to perform / sing in their native languages judged performing acts based on their cultural background. Whereas for for Films, there could be more use of modern technology -3D, graphics, robots replacing human actors.

In changing genre conventions, Talent shows like X-Factor , the male presenter could be replaced by a female presenter, all contestants to be encouraged to compose their own music/songs to be performed if they qualify to be in the final 4, so that they can be judged on creativity. The selection of contestants during live auditions should be decided by the audience and the judges house / boot camp should be done way with as it appears to serve no purpose. These changes will attract a large audience as female presenters tend to attract a wide spectrum of viewers. These changes will also reduce controversy as being witnessed in the current series.

From this exercise we have learnt how genres affect TV shows and Film productions in terms of content. We have also seen evidence of how genre can be developed and genre conventions changed. The exercise has reconfirmed our theory of talent shows being predictable, repetitive and that there is not enough variety in the overall production.

All members in the group currently consume all the genre objects. TV shows (talent shows, soaps, news and current affairs) Films , Advertisements (print , paper, electronic, TV &Radio) Margazine articles, Social Networking (Twitter, Face Book) , Electronic games.

After this exercise we still don’t think differently about any of the genre objects we have looked at.

Media Audiences: the active audience (1) two steps to gratification

Jocelyn – More! Magazine
• Positive effect – fashion can boost individuals confidence such as females
• Negative effect – females feel pressured to look a certain way, airbrushing / photo shopped images create an unrealistic image of what women should look like, celebrity culture is encapsulating young females in particular of how they should look/dress/act, sexual objectification of women as they are seen merely as an object in the media industry

Rhys – Pulp Fiction
• Positive effects – it is one of the best, if not the best Quentin Tarantino films and is an exceptionally funny film.
• Negative effects – young audiences could idolise the wrong characters and therefore become involved in crime, the film ‘glamorises’ the crime / drug industry which makes the audience want to be a part of it. Also some young audience members might not have the level of intellect to understand the concept of fiction.

Chynna – iphone 4
• Positive effect – appeals to a mass market rather than a niche, therefore many people will have an iphone which is a talking point as they will have things in common.
• Negative effect – there is less physical socialising nowadays as rather than talking face to face many communicate through phone calls/text messages/face book/twitter etc. The new technological mobile phones are also eliminating the newspaper industry as the latest news can be seen through the internet which many mobile phones have. The iphone 4 also has ‘apps’ which means audiences can access the latest news with the touch of a few buttons. Many do believe it will have a long term effect on individual’s social skills, especially those who have been/are being brought up during this technological uprising.

Andrew – Television
• Positive effects – vulnerable audience may emulate their television idols which could be motivating them for educational purposes and creativeness depending on the programme
• Negative effects – if a vulnerable audience such as children or young adults watch television shows that display crime, drugs or weapons it can lead to many problems, worst of all them becoming involved in those types of environments. Also if audiences watch too much television it can become unhealthy and lead to the term ‘couch potato’, which isn’t good.

Lauren – Fashion
• Positive effect – influences people to become healthier, audiences become accepting to individuals taste in fashion
• Negative effect – many vulnerable audiences such as young females become obsessed with the celebrity culture, eating disorders have become a more apparent problem within females, photo shopping celebrities in magazines creates an unrealistic image of what a female should look like and this causes young females to feel pressurised into looking a certain way which can knock their confidence.

From the one item we chose from our ‘cabinet of curiosities’ I think, as a group, we have all identified the younger audiences to be the most vulnerable. We think this is due to the fact that they have less life experience and can be therefore more likely to become involved in things that older, wiser audiences wouldn’t be inclined to do, due to ignorance.
With the technology items chosen such as the iphone 4 and television I think the younger audiences are influenced more to become isolated from the surrounding world as they are being brought up around it and therefore know no other. The fashion and magazine debate I think is targeted more towards young women as there is a lot of pressure nowadays to look a certain way and weigh a certain amount. ‘Pulp Fiction’ is an excellent film but, if seen by the wrong audience it could be a dangerous influence on young audience members which is why it has an eighteen certificate.

Feedback on Audience Research – Workshop

As usual the 5 group tasks were reviewed individually. In general all groups research questions were based on the same statement “I hate …… do you?”

Group A1

Research was based on the question “I hate pointless Tabloid stories … do you? They created a Face book group , looked at papers like The SUN Mirror & similar tabloids.

They also asked the extra questions like:

–  Why do you like papers

–  which news paper

–  do you buy tabloids  etc

They targeted their questions to people in their group, ordinary people in the street & students in the Ellen Terry building.

Results were shown in graphs, ( see A1 group blog)

It came out during discussions that the responses they received were passive due to the type of questions which attracted negative feedback during the survey.

Group A2

Again the research statement was “I hate In betweeners’ .. do you?  They also created a Face book group and interviewed friends, they based their research on ethnicity and the interviewed audience classified themselves as middle class.

After a lengthy debate it was established that class is based on and influenced by  money, taste, geography, ethnicity, accent/voice, education skin color among other parameters.

Group A3

We asked the question “I hate soaps… do you?”

judging by the feed back we received I realised we should have specified a particular soap the we hated. Reservations  were  made as to why we split the research on gender basis, but the results  helped to prove the notion that more females watch soaps than men while men enjoyed watching action movies, sport, programs like top gear , etc.

Gendering of audience is proved by the type of adverts flighted during a football match for example  were male oriented products are advertised, and during a soap like East Enders female products will be advertised.

Group A4

Research statement was “I hate photo shopped images in women magazines .. do you?

The group’s detailed findings is on their blog. Most people interviewed  agreed with the research statement.

Group A5

“I hate East Enders .. do you?” was the general research question, which was further broken down to:

– do you hate East Enders?

– do you watch East Enders?

– if yes why?

– would you change the time slot? …..

The further questions helped the group analyze their results in more detail. Their results were well tabulated / presented in the form of pye charts ( see A5 blog for more details)

Key concepts that  stood out during the workshop were

Individualism

Gendering Audience

 

Audience Research

For our task this week, we were asked to create a provocative and thought-provoking statement and gauge the audience’s reactions. We opted to create a Facebook Group and to get enough people involved we planned to invite our Facebook friend’s to comment with their option. After discussion and creating a mind-map (see the image slideshow at the end of this post), we chose to use the statement ‘I hate Soaps… Do you?’.

We soon realised the disadvantages of using a Facebook Group, as our audience was limited to the extent that we only received people’s student Facebook friends. This didn’t make any room for comparison between Occupation Groups, which limited us further in our analysis. After looking through the comments as well as asking people outside of the group, we sifted through all of the answers we had. From this, we thought it would be good to have an even number of Male and Female results, as this would give us another criteria to analyse. Unfortunately, we only ended up having 10 Male and 10 Female which we found disappointing. However we didn’t have much time and we knew it would be difficult to encourage people to take part, so we decided to make the most of the results we had. With the answers, we found it was difficult to simply have Yes and No, as a reasonable proportion of people said they watched one Soap and not others as well as people saying they didn’t ‘hate’ them but just disliked them. We chose to show our results in two separate pie charts with four groups (Yes, No, Some, and Dislike), as this would be clearer to view than any other chart or graph (see slideshow below). In our own blogs (see Blogroll), we have analysed the data individually.

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Media Institutions

 

Media Institutions – BSkyB / News Corporation

Ø
British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) better known as Sky is produced by News Corporation.

Ø
Sky is a part of a major company – News Corporation.

Ø
BSkyB is owned by News Corporation.

Ø
News Corporation is a major company. It is a major company as it owns other
companies alongside BSkyB.

Ø
News Corporation Ltd is owned by a single entrepreneur; Rupert Murdoch.

Ø
News Corporation also owns; Fox Network of channels, IGN Entertainment,
News Of The World, National Geographic Channel, 20^th Century Fox, New
York Post, Sky Italia, Sky Deutschland, FX, HarperCollins Publishers, Fiji
Times, The Times, The Sun.

Ø
News Corporation Ltd turnover – £9 billion – (reported on October 11 2010 by The
Guardian news website – http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/oct/11/sky-murdoch-takeover-bid-analysis.)

Ø
News Corporation makes their money from advertising, sales of their printed content;
newspapers and books, merchandise.

Ø
The money affects News Corporation. They use the money to fund new media features
such as high-definition (HD) graphics for Sky television. They also use the
money to expand and improve their worldwide coverage; to increase and attract a
wider audience.

Ø
News Corporation operations are overseen by the Board of Directors. The Board is led
owner of News Corporation; Rupert Murdoch is Chairman and Chief Executive
Officer of News Corporation.

Ø
The control of News Corporation by the Board of Directors is very effective. The
success of the media-related decisions for the business of News Corporation has
led to a worldwide audience and £9bn profits. Elements such as high-definition
Sky Sports/Sky News/Sky Movies HD and now 3D television along with successful
newspapers; The Times and The Sun have provided the financial and growing
reputation success of News Corporation Ltd.

 

Street Art Analysis and Manifesto

There are a number of emerging themes and issues regarding street art. Things such as rebellions and rejecting societies norms and values. Street art debates over two main themes political and cultural, for example in one piece called “Napalm” by Banksy, American globalisation is tackled, with a stencil the iconographic naked girl crying from the Vietnamese war holding hands with Ronald McDonald and Mickey Mouse.

The gallery romanticises street art which leads to one of the main debates held over street art, Is it a true art form? Or is it just graffiti? As technically it is still illegal how can it be shown in Art galleries? And is it wrong to take “Street Art” take it out of its home environment and place it in the streets?

The piece we chose to analyse was Feels so good by D* Face, it’s a brilliant piece which is hybrid of art it takes a character from comic book art uses pop art for the background and is street art all at the same time, it also has no real purpose, it doesn’t promote any anti-war messages, or any anti-capitalist messages it simply brings together a fusion of art forms and proposes a different mindset for a character we are all supposed to know, in Superman.

Street art, has some similarities with Futurism, as i think both have a negative out look on the past, while both see the future as a beacon of hope where we can achieve new and exciting things. There is also a similarity in the way it is art for the people by the people, so we did our own ten point manifesto just like futurism did

 

10 Point manifesto for Street Art

• Art reflects artist’s vision and values
• Conveys the reason, essence of the artists existence
• Art explores how future and current technologies affect the artists mind and lives
• Art should be used to explore universe, life, to enhance creativity and possibly intelligence
• Art should encourage communication, dreams, life, provoke emotions, bring dreams to life, bring together passions
• Art is the voice of rhythm and explores imagination
• Art must influence cultural and social change
• Art shows a sense of self, brings out who we are and what and how we see the world. How we feel about the world
• As steet artists we should connect with nature, culture and be open to other ideas
• Lets look into the future = we should encompass the new technologies, fuse our artistic talents with the present and future technology as we evolve into the new digital world

Futurism Seminar

In an earlier lecture we were told about Futurism which is an artistic movement that happened in 1909 which involved a group of artists who looked to the future had a hate for things in the past. We continued this discussion in our seminar at first we were unsure of the reasons for talking about an art group but we realised we were looking at them as an example to help us understand how to read into the media just from looking at a painting. We also discussed how Futurism effects our daily lives in different ways such as with modern day art groups like Graffiti or ”Street Art” by allowing people to give there opinions through an alternate media.

We were shown a Futurism painting before we knew what Futurism was when we first saw it we were told to answer questions based of four categories:

1. Who
2. Says what
3. To who
4. With what effect

Because we had no understanding of the background of the painting we made random assumptions based on nothing, however after we learned about the details of Futurism we were able to make more a accurate analysis as to what the painting connotes which was mainly speed as the arrow shapes signified.

In our seminar we looked more at this method of analysing media in more modern terms by looking at a hoodie and going over the four points: Who in this case was Tommy Hilfiger an American designer top. What is says is this person has money, is fashionable and the letters “NYC” on the hoodie connote New York a trendy fashionable city. The audience of the hoodie is young people and the effect of it is to make them feel fashionable and stylish. Doing this analysis helped us understand the way in which media even in clothing or art effects our everyday life on a subconscious level. After we analysed the hoodie on face value we looked closer and saw that it was made in Sri Lanka which makes most of the earlier points in essence a lie and would allow for a deeper look into the meaning of it.

Cabinet of Curiosities

.

Our first task drew heavily on the ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ Summer Project we were all set preceding our time at Coventry University. Initially what seemed like a group bonding task actually came to be interesting as we could learn other people’s particular interests and points of view within the Media Landscape.

After presenting our own Cabinets to each other, we considered the similarities (if any) that occured between them. Despite each of us demonstrating our different interpretations of the task, we noticed that they all contained some sort of Celebrity or Celebrity-related images/stories. For example, in Chynna’s online Cabinet she had a YouTube video showing a popular show in China called Ai Feng Tou (aka ‘Hi My Sweetheart’ in English), while Andrew based his around Newspaper stories that interested him (arguably Celebrities). Whereas Rhys explained his favourite iconic film director being  Quentin Tarantino and Jocelyn illustrated her interest in Celebrity fashion icons such as Fearne Cotton and Cheryl Cole. We concluded that since we live in a society that seems to harbour an increasing obsession with Celebrity Culture, the Media have responded accordingly and used technical advances such as Web 2.0 and phone apps to their advantage. As well as magazines (which Jocelyn and Lauren focused their projects on) and newspaper clippings, it’s impossible to escape the seemingly constant bombardment about Celebrities we see everyday. Similarly, practically all of us included at least one news story we were particularly interested in. This, we agreed, is because with all the Media forms we use everyday that inform us of news stories, it makes the news extremely accessible for everyone. In addition, where news can be readily accessed on Newspaper’s online websites now, there are options of searching through news stories of a particular topic, therfore catering for all Media Consumers (such as Andrew and Chynna) to select a subject they know will interest them.

Throughout the process of presenting our work to each other, questions were asked as we were not all aware of what other people’s interests actually were. Rhys had included a man called Indy Mogul in his Cabinet which no-one else had heard of. When asked, he explained that he creates online tutorials to do with Special FX. Similarly, the programme clip (Hi My Sweetheart) Chynna showed us was unknown to everyone else in the group, but she told us the storyline and how it is a very popular online drama in China with the option of English subtitles. From this we deduced that despite them sounding interesting, they were in fact not necessarily mainstream and more targeted at more niche groups. Another possibility for us not having heard of them is because they’re online. The main advantage to society having the internet is the fact that it supports the fragmentation of audiences and that it’s a Media platform everyone and anyone can use and anyone can search for and view. However, it means there’s websites with potentially useful and entertaining Media such as tutorials or dramas that sadly we don’t and may never know about.

But if these niche websites were to try and become more mainstream, would it still appeal as much to the current fan-base (e.g. Chynna and Rhys)? And if it was to become more mainstream, would it  therefore become, invariably, a mainstream profit-lead business and lose the originality and the initial niche it began with?