Media Theory

Representation 

Laura Mulvey: Male Gaze Theory 

The Male Gaze Theory describes how the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual male. Mulvey believes that women should enjoy the attention of attractive the gaze, and put themselves in positions to be looked at. The concept of the gaze is one that deals with how an audience views the people presented. Mulvey states that in film women are typically the objects, rather than the possessors, of gaze because the control of the camera comes from factors such as the assumption of heterosexual men as the default target audience for most film genres. 
The male gaze occurs when the camera puts the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man. It may, for instance linger over the curves of a woman's body. 
The woman is usually displayed on two different levels: 

• As an erotic object for both the characters within the film 
• The spectator who is watching the film 

The man emerges as the dominant power within the created film fantasy. The woman is passive to the active gaze from the man. This adds an element of patriarchal order and it is often seen in illusionistic narrative film. 

Mulvey argues that, in mainstream cinema, the male gaze typically takes precedence over the female gaze, reflecting an underlying power asymmetry. 

Mulvey also states that the female gaze is the same as the male gaze as women look at themselves through the eyes of men. A feminist may see the male gaze as either a manifestation of unequal power between gazer and gazed, or as a conscious or subconscious attempt to develop that inequality. From this perspective, a woman who welcomes an objectifying gaze may be simply seeking to benefit men. 

The Male Gaze typically focuses on: 

• Emphasising curves of the female body 
• Referring to women as objects rather than people 
• The display of women is how men think they should be perceived 
• Female viewers, view the content through the eyes of a man 

Stuart Hall: Representation Theory 

Hall emphasises the importance of visual representation - the image seems to be the prevalent sign of late modern culture. 

Representation - to present/to depict. 

The word suggests something was there already and has been represented by the media. 

Representation as that which stands in for something else. 

Representation is the way in which meaning is given to the things which are depicted that stand in for something. 

Alvarado: Representation of Ethnicity 

His theories related to ethnicity are based on the idea that people from different cultures tend to be defined by how different they are, by their 'otherness'. These representations can focus on racial characteristics and on preconceived audience perceptions. These are often drawn from other media texts rather than from reality and therefore reinforce the stereotype. Alvarado believed that the representation of ethnic groups can be divided into four categories: 

• The Exotic: This stereotype links closely to what Stuart Hall called 'the secret fascination of 'otherness' - this is the way in which the media represents people who are different from us. This can be viewed both positively and negatively but is usually a construction by the text. The 'exotic' stereotype presents the individual in terms of how they look, what they wear, what they eat and their 'different' customs. 

• The Pitied: In certain texts ethnic minorities are stereotyped as vulnerable and as victims. This is true of many newspaper and television news reports of developing countries; this is largely because the only time certain counties appear in the news is when they are linked to disasters, for example famine and earthquakes. Similar representations are used for charity campaigns in order to shock the audience into action. 

• The Humorous: In the context of certain texts, for example situation comedies and film, the audience is encouraged to laugh at the ethnic stereotypes contained within the text. These stereotypes have often been built up over time and, as with all stereotypes, they exaggerate recognisable features and attributes. In the early days of sitcoms racist humour was seen as an acceptable way of making people laugh. This is no longer the case but texts like Citizen Khan have attracted a range of views about the programme which was written by British Muslim Adil Ray. It was one of the most complained about programmes to Ofcom with accusations that it stereotyped the Pakistani community in Britain. 

• Dangerous: Alvarado states that some texts represent ethnic minorities as a threat to society and they are often blamed for social problems. Immigrants are stereotypically represented as benefit cheats and scroungers. The ghettoisation of some social groups reinforces the idea of differences as they become marooned communities who are seen as apart from the norm. Some newspapers manipulate the readers' fear of the unknown by grouping together individuals under the common title of 'immigrants'. This lack of personalisation makes it easier to blame them for a range of social problems. 

Genre

• Daniel Chandler: Conventional definitions of genres tend to be based on the notion that they constitute particular conventions of content (such as themes or settings) and form (including structure and style) which are shared by the texts which are regarded as belonging to them. Every genre positions those who participate in a text of that kind: as interviewer or interviewee, as listener or storyteller, as a reader or a writer, as a person interested in political matters, as someone to be instructed or as someone who instructs; each of these positioning implies different possibilities for response and for action. Each written text provides a 'reading position' for readers, a position constructed by the writer for the 'ideal reader' of the text. Thus, embedded within texts are assumptions about the 'ideal reader', including their attitudes towards the subject matter and often their class, age, gender and ethnicity. 
• Steve Neale: It is easy to underplay the differences within a genre. He declares that 'genres are instances of repetition and difference'. He adds that 'difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre': mere repetition would not attract an audience. 
• John Hartley: Texts often exhibit the conventions of more than one genre. He notes that 'the same text can belong to different genres in different countries or times'. 
• David Buckingham: Traditionally, genres tended to be regarded as fixed forms, but contemporary theory emphasises that both their forms and functions are dynamic. He argues that 'genre is not simply "given" by the culture: rather, it is in a constant process of negotiation and change'. 

'Uses and gratifications' research has identified many potential pleasures of genre, including the following: 

• One pleasure may simply be the recognition of the features of a particular genre because of our familiarity with it. Recognition of what is likely to be important (and what is not) derived from our knowledge of the genre, is necessary in order to follow a plot. 
• Genres may offer various emotional pleasures such as empathy and escapism - a feature which some theoretical commentaries seem to lose sight of. Aristotle acknowledged the special emotional responses which were linked to different genres. Deborah Knight notes that 'satisfaction is guaranteed with genre; the deferral of the inevitable provides the additional pleasure of prolonged anticipation'. 
• Steve Neal argues that pleasure is derived from 'repetition and difference'; there would be no pleasure without difference. We may derive pleasure from observing how the conventions of the genre are manipulated. We may also enjoy the stretching of a genre in new directions and the consequent shifting of our expectations. 
• Other pleasures can be derived from sharing our experience of a genre with others within an 'interpretive community' which can be characterised by its familiarity with certain genres (Daniel Chandler). 

• Tom Ryall: Genre provides a framework of structuring rules, in the shape of patterns/forms/styles/structures, which act as a form of 'supervision' over the work of production of filmmakers and the work of reading by the audience.
• John Fiske: Defines genres as 'attempts to structure some order into the wide range of texts and meanings that circulate in our culture for the convenience of both producers and audiences.' 
• Steve Neale: Argues that Hollywood's generic regime performs two inter-related functions: to guarantee meanings and pleasures for audiences and to offset the considerable economic risks of industrial film production by providing cognitive collateral against innovation and difference. Much of the pleasure of popular cinema lies in the process of  "difference in repetition" - i.e. recognition of familiar elements and in the way those elements might be orchestrated in an unfamiliar fashion or in the way that unfamiliar elements might be introduced. 
• Rick Altman: Argues that genres are usually defined in terms of media language (semantic elements) and codes (in the Western, for example: guns, horses, landscape, characters or even stars, like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood) or certain ideologies and narratives (syntactic elements). 

Can genre be defined by audience? 

• Neale: Genre is constituted by "specific systems of expectations and hypothesis which spectators bring with them to the cinema and which interact with the films themselves during the course of the viewing process." 
• Jonathan Culler: Generic conventions exist to established a contract between creator and reader so as to make certain expectations operative, allowing compliance and deviation from the accepted modes of intelligibility. Acts of communication are rendered intelligible only within the context of a shared conventional framework of expression. 
• Ryall: Sees this framework provided by the generic system; therefore, genre becomes a cognitive repository of images, sounds, stories, characters and expectations. 

To the producers of films, genre is a template for what they make. 

To the distributor/promoter, genre provides assumptions about who the audience is and how to market the films for that specific audience. 

To the audience, it is a label that identifies a liked or disliked formula and provides certain rules of engagement for the spectator in terms of anticipation of pleasure e.g. the anticipation of what will happen in the attic scene in of "The Exorcist". 

When genres become classic, they can exert tremendous influence: production can become quicker and more confident because film makes are following tested formulae and have a ready shorthand to work with, and actors can be filtered into genres and can be seen to have assumed 'star quality' when their mannerisms, physical attributes, way of speaking and acting fit a certain style of genre. 

In turn, viewers become 'generic spectators' and can be said to develop generic memory which helps in the anticipation of events, even though the films themselves might play on certain styles rather than follow a closely cliched formula. E.g. the attic scene from "The Exorcist" - we expect something to jump out on the woman because of all the generic conventions are in place, but in the end, the director deflates the tension. We do not consume films as individual entities, but in an intertextual way. Film is a post modern medium in this way, because movies make sense in relation to other films, not to reality. 

It is the way genre films deviate from the cliched formulae that leads to a more interesting experience for the viewer, but for this to work properly, the audience must be familiar with generic conventions and style. 

David Bordwell: Notes, 'any theme may appear in any genre' 'One could argue that no set of necessary and sufficient conditions can mark off genres from other sorts of groupings in ways that all experts or ordinary film goers would find acceptable'. 

Audience 

The Passive Audience Idea: 

• Effects theory was developed in the 1920's and looks at how media texts influence those who consume them, particularly how negative messages, i.e. sexual and violent content, can affect the most vulnerable of audience groups. 
• It reflected the dominant views in society about the media and the audience. 
• Reflecting a middle class fear of the masses (working class). 
• Fears of the potential effect this would have on public order and status quo in society. 
• Many of these ideas come from The Frankfurt School from theorists - Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin and Herbert Marcuse. 

The 'Hypodermic Needle" Effect: 

• This theory states that the audience takes in and believes the ideologies in all media texts. 
• Where the audience is seen as passive - who play no role in interacting with the media texts concerned. 
• The theory states that these texts function in a one directional communication process - the audience does not think or disagree with the messages and values within the media text.

The Encoding - Decoding Model: Active Audience Theory: 

• Encoding - Decoding is an active audience theory developed by Stuart Hall which examines the relationship between a text and its audience. 
• Encoding is the process by which a text is constructed by its producers. 
• Decoding is the process by which the audience reads, understands and interprets a text. 
• The media encode ideologies into the media texts. The audience decode the messages - and active process - they think. 
• Hall states that texts are polysemic, meaning they may be read differently by different people, depending on their identity, cultural knowledge and opinions. 

Hall's Reception Theory: 

• Reception theory focuses on the role of the audience in the interpretation of a text, instead of on the text itself. 
• In other words, the theory suggests that audience play an active role in reading texts, that each person has the ability to interpret the same text differently, and that a text by itself - i.e. without a reader - has no specific meaning. 
• He termed these different 'readings' of the ideologies in media texts as; The preferred reading, The negotiated reading and The oppositional reading. 

The Pick n Mix Approach to Audience - David Gauntlett: 

• This is the idea that we pick and mix our media (an active choice) 
• We select how we form our identities using media texts. 
• He claims that we can not assume that people are simply influenced by media texts.