CASE STUDY

The Representation of Celebrities in magazines/newspapers/advertising
I will be investigating the representation of celebrities in magazines/newspapers and advertising,i will be comparing the representation of cheryl cole and katie price as well as peter andre and male celebrities in adverting  as well as  in different platforms such as print,e-media and broadcast.  
MY TEXTS

• The sun
• Look
• OK
• Advertising,X factor,what katie did next,Peter Andre;s next chapter
• E-Media-official peter andre website,katie and cheryl

Theories

• Hypodermic needle theory
• Cultivation theory
• users and gratifications
• moral panics
• media technology and the digital revolution
• news values
• reality tv
• representation and stereotyping

Issues and Debates

• media effects
• semiotics
• post modernism
• gender and ethnicity

Who are the major players in terms of news providers in the UK and what exactly do they own?

News corp -Rupert Murdoch
Founder of News Corp. Ltd., which owns newspapers, magazines, book publishing houses, a movie studio (20th Century Fox) and a television network (Fox Broadcasting Company).
he also owns

• News of the world
• The Sun
• News international
• The sunday times
• Sky
• British Satellite Broadcasting
• BSkyB

Post-feminism and Popular culture

http://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/site/human/women/students/biblio/historiog/McRobbie%20-%20postfeminism.pdf

bridget jones diary

Quotes :

- “well regulated liberty” can backfire (the source of comic effect), and this in turn gives rise
to demarcated pathologies (leaving it too late to have a baby, failing to find a good catch,
etc.) which carefully define the parameters of what constitutes liveable lives for young
women without the occasion of re-invented feminism.
Sex and the city

Quotes:
- Thus feminism is invoked in order that it is relegated to the past. But this is not simply a return to the past, there are, of course, quite dramatic differences between the various female characters of current popular culture from Bridget Jones to the girls in Sex and the City and to Ally McBeal, and those found in girls’ and women’s magazines from a pre-feminist era.





Claudia Schiffer - Citeron xsara Advert (Sexist advert)


Quotes
- She seems to be doing it out of choice, and for her own enjoyment;
the advert works on the basis of its audience knowing Claudia to be one of the world’s
most famous and highly paid supermodels.

lads magazines - female gaze

Quotes- we are witness to a hyper-culture of commercial sexuality, one aspect of which is the repudiation of a feminism invoked only to be summarily dismissed (see also Rosalind Gill 2003).

What is “Post-feminism”?

4 Clarifying Concepts

A more positive look at post-feminism:
Penny Edgell Becker
In raising these questions, I am only at the beginning of figuring out what a more positive kind of post-feminist account of religion and family might look like, and so have no compelling summary to offer, let alone a call to a specific research agenda. In my own work, I do want to take some feminist insights for granted. But I explicitly reject the idea that strong feminist critiques have had their day and must now give way gracefully to approaches that favor a consensual and functional, or even communitarian, interpretation of the good society. I am feeling more combative, or at least constructively critical, about theories that neatly divide society into a “public” and a “private” realm, while systematically devaluing those feminine things (religion, family) assigned to the private (cf., Warner 1999). I am not sure where it will lead, but it feels right to begin pushing back the boundaries of post-feminism by asking a different set of questions.

Post-feminism as a colloquialism:
Lisa
It’s about deeply held political convictions, not to mention strategy. If there’s a wad of people out there extolling postfeminism and meaning “I think feminism is flawed and I’d like to see some goal-shifting, fresh tactics, and revisiting of contentious topics,” this isn’t just an issue of what’s going on in a speech group that doesn’t overlap with mine. It’s about defending feminism’s ground. Feminism is already doing the work that these (as I have come to think of them) non-evil postfeminists think comes with their prefix. And it’s beyond obvious that feminism suffers from its terrible reputation and from the vast misunderstandings that stunning numbers of people still have about it (no matter how many times it happens, I will never, ever get used to being asked if I hate men). I can’t help but see even the non-evil usage of “postfeminism” as a rejection of and attack on feminism, and an implication that the movement is finished. And that means I need to challenge it at every turn.

The ambiguity of the prefix “post”:
orlando
I’ve come accross the term used in the way Lurker describes, similarly, in academic circles, and for academic reasons I don’t think anyone should use it. The problem lies in the ambiguity of the prefix “post”, because post can mean since something commenced OR since something concluded. So, while technically a “post-feminist society” could mean a society since feminism began to be an influence, there will always be people who think you mean since feminism ended.

Post-feminism as backlash to feminism:
Susan J. Douglas
What the hell is postfeminism, anyway? I would think it would refer to a time when complete gender equality has been achieved. That hasn’t happened, of course, but we (especially young women) are supposed to think it has. Postfeminism, as a term, suggests that women have made plenty of progress because of feminism, but that feminism is now irrelevant and even undesirable because it has made millions of women unhappy, unfeminine, childless, lonely, and bitter, prompting them to fill their closets with combat boots and really bad India print skirts.

Bianca's Esaay -What are the different representations of women in adverts and how are they signified?

Bianca's Esaay -What are the different representations of women in adverts and how are they signified?

The representation of women can be positive: challenging the roles and expectations of women or negative: reinforcing a patriarchal society. This essay questions how and why these representations are constructed in an advert for Gucci Guilty Perfume and Stella Artois beer.


Firstly the Gucci advert is in widescreen which connotes a dramatic cinematic experience to engage its audience. More attention is gained by the female character first seen in the text and her protagonist is signified through this. The protagonist has female dominance which is signified through the use of colour- everything is in black and white while her hair is gold/blonde. This colour connotes gold, power and divinity signifying her importance in the text.


The use of intertextuality in this text will appeal to a particular audience. The film references a great deal to the neo film noir Sin City, with the use of colour and the female dominant femme fatale character. Sin City appeals to a male audience due to the action genre, this trailer could also appeal to the same audience due to the intertextuality. In terms of the Uses and Gratifications theory, a female audience might realise and accept the protagonist in the text is a form of escapism and also a male gaze, by theorist Mulvey, and therefore might aspire, from Young and Rubicam's 4Cs, to be the object of male gaze too.


Though the protagonist is an object of male gaze, it could be suggested that she sexually objectifies herself to tease the audience. The protagonist puts her leg into the frame of the shot. As she puts into the frame, it signifies self objectification, allowing the audience to fetishise her body. Another shot, a high angle, of their sexual activities signifies CCTV and spying which is voyeuristic. The fact she is on top signifies her control of the situation for both the male character and the audience.


Not only does the protagonist exert her feminity through self objectification she also presents herself as an anarchic character signified by adopting male stereotypes. The advert begins with a long shot of an unknown character speeding down the motorway, which stereotypically would be expected to be a male character. However, the audience's expectations are challenged when a medium shot of the driver shows to be a female.


In contrast, women are negatively represented in the Stella Artois text. The most obvious editing technique used in the advert is the split screen: one side shows the female getting dressed and the other side is of the beer getting "prepared". This use of split screen signifies that neither the beer nor the woman know they have been placed side by side. This puts the audience in position of control as they can voyeur the woman, in a socially acceptable way. Audiences may identify this control as patriarchy, and also identify with the unknown male character whose presence is felt within the text. This text then reinforces the idea of a patriarchal society and that women are subordinated by men.


Not only does the female share the screen with the beer, but the screen is split equally between the two "objects" which connotes the woman is equally objectified to the status of beer. It is suggested the audience is male due to the female and beer subject. Though the advert is targeted at men, it also negatively stereotypes men as people who have little respect for women which however is a dominant representation.


A range of close up shots of the female are used to fetishise her body. There is a close up shot of the female's leg slowly and elegantly rising from the bath tub. On one hand this could signify femininity and her control over it which is the oppositional reading. However, the more dominant reading is that her legs are an important part of the female body and connotes a male audience who can voyeur her body.


The text near the beginning of the trailer says "the preparation" which is an enigma code as the audience question "what event is the preparation for?". It is signified through the shots that the woman and beer preparation is for the male through the use of action codes. Action codes of both the preparation of the woman and the glass of beer are the same.


Women are represented as people who prioritise their looks and appearance, and this ad reinforces this ideology. Action codes including close ups of her: brushing her hair, doing her make up and putting on heels strongly represent women as image conscious. It could be said that the advert reinforces this representation, which is always seen in the media. Funnily enough, it could also be said that the media itself is the cause of this representation as this ideal, perfect woman is always represented in the media, and women feel they have to aspire to it.


In conclusion, both texts females are the protagonists and are sexually objectified for male audiences to fetishise and vouyer their bodies. However, while Gucci’s advert’s protagonist controls her sexuality through self objectification, the Stella Artois’ protagonist is objectified by an unknown but present male character.


In the Gucci’s ad, there are many examples in the text that signify the protagonist’s female dominance, but it is arguable whether this could be seen as a positive representation. The dominant reading is that the protagonist exerts her female dominance over the male challenging the historical patriarchal society and even subordinating males as easily manipulated and easily tempted by women and sex and this would favour feminism. However the oppositional reading which would favour the ideologies of the Stella Artois advert, might be that females can control their sexuality, but it is still for the male gaze and male dominant society.

CASE STUDY

1. What group of people or place you will be studying the representation of, and on which platform(s)?

I will be studying Homosexuals in Tv soap operas/Tv drama and the platform,broadcasting film/tv


2.why have u chosen this topic and why do you think it will be a rich area of study ?
I have chosen this topic as it is mainstream in the mass media and i am interested in researching different theorys in the topic.


3.Identify at least 3 media texts that you will use as your primary sources

• ugly betty
• eastenders
• brokeback mountain

4.List the theorists who are relevant for your study

• judith butler
• nick lacey

5.What have your chosen theorists written about your topic area?
A significant yet sometimes overlooked part of Butler's argument concerns the role of sex in the construction of "natural" or coherent gender and sexuality. Butler explicitly challenges biological accounts of binary sex, reconceiving the sexed body as itself culturally constructed by regulative discourse.The supposed obviousness of sex as a natural biological fact attests to how deeply its production in discourse is concealed. The sexed body, once established as a “natural” and unquestioned “fact,” is the alibi for constructions of gender and sexuality, unavoidably more cultural in their appearance, which can purport to be the just-as-natural expressions or consequences of a more fundamental sex. On Butler’s account, it is on the basis of the construction of natural binary sex that binary gender and heterosexuality are likewise constructed as natural.In this way, Butler claims that without a critique of sex as produced by discourse, the sex/gender distinction as a feminist strategy for contesting constructions of binary asymmetric gender and compulsory heterosexuality will be ineffective.

this advertisement represents women postively as it shows them to be happy and confident in their bodies at their age as they dont need to feel young or sexy in glamourous underwear,they feel happy in their bodies being any sixe and shape.there is also a positive representation as they are not shown as sex objects and are shown in a more confident and dominant representation.this also shows that the media are not subordinating women in advertising as this advertisement shows proof of positve represention of women .

This advertisemnt represents women negatively as it shows the role of women from the 60's to the present day as in the past women were classed into there sterotypical roles of cooking and cleaning in the kitchen.the advertisemnt shows that as the years have go on the fariy liquid has not changed and therefore the role of women in the kitchen have not changed .the mise en scene shows the advertisment to be very feminine as in the backthere are many flowers and also the woman is represent to be a mother as her child stands beside her.this is also shows subordination of women from the past as they were classed into stereotypical roles and subordinated in society which we call a patriarchal society.The child beside the woman is shown to be her child as she also has a negative represesntation as it shows that from a young age girls are put in their stereotypical role as this is naturalized in society by the media.

Media Guardian 100

1. What is the Guardian 100 and who are the panellists that create it?

Media 100 is a list of the top 100 people working in the Media Industry; stating the top 100 powerful people currently in today’s media industry as this includes:

• Television
• Radio
• Digital media
• Press & publishing
• Media business
• Advertising Marketing & PR.
The panellists

2. How many women are in the top 100?

18 women out of 100 people

3. What companies do these women work for and in what roles?

• Cheif executive
• Controller- publishing
• Editor- publishing
• Advertising

4. What percentage of the 100 is women?
18%

5. How would you assess the balance of power in this list and why do you think it is this way?"
Men are dominant in the guardian as there is only 18% of women in the guradian 100 as this shows that women are still subordinated as we are liivng in a patriarchal society.