We covered a lot of ground from gender to semiotics and postmodern theory. Complete the following tasks on your Media 1 Exam blog to follow up our work from the study day:
1) Type up your notes from the day.
-Intersectuality samaritans by idles
-Hooks says gender roles are socially constructed, not natural
-Patriarchy+ male dominated society - patriarchy indoctrinates people from an early age
-"Gender becomes a set of connotations that have become naturalised"
-Hooks believes that traditionally masculine attitudes and behaviours are constructed by a patriarchal society
-Men were shown to be aggresive as we see them fighting each other, doing physical activities.
-Treatment of women hasn't changed as women are still being objectified
-Liberal feminist- focus on an individual and personal autonomy
-Prescriptions of sex-appropriate behaviours
-Appearance (airbrushing female models)
-Interests/skills (e.g. girls aren't adept with tech)
-Self-perception (how men and women see themselves)
-Media not only male dominated, it reinforces patriarchy
-V.Z believes that in a society female bodies are sexualised as they are seen as vulnerable and weak
-The woman is shown wearing feminine clothes and using a lot of make up and also very sexualised throughout the video through the focus on her legs.
-Gender is a performance: series of gestures, actions, behavioural and dress codes that construct an imaginary man or woman
Denotation- the direct or obvious meaning
Connotations- polysemic- meanings aren't fixed - open to interpretation
Some postmodern ideas include
-Bricolage
-Pastiche
-Intertextuality
-Hypertextuality
-No essential truth. Instead there is a multiplicity of truths, each equally valid.
-Truth is just a discourse or narrative - a belief that helps us make sense of things
-Nothing is original - patchworks of other materials
2) Write a one-sentence summary of the ideas of the theorists Matthew Daintrey-Hall covered (you can use your notes from task 1 here if relevant):
Bell hooks: Hook comments on how gender roles are socially constructed rather than being natural, she also talks about the idea of a patriarchal society, going into how patriarchy indoctrinates people from an early age.
Liesbet van Zoonen: Van Zoonen talks about how the treatment of women hasn't changed much as women are still constantly being objectified in all forms of media, Zoonen also goes into the idea of a liberal feminist.
Judith Butler: Butlers main theories about gender is that gender is a performance: series of gestures, actions, behavioural and dress codes that construct an imaginary 'man' or woman.
Saussure: The signified is the concept, the meaning, the thing indicated by the signifier.
Barthes: Barthes suggests signifiers have cut loose from the signified, i.e. symbols don't have a clear idea, in addition to this he is also suspicious of denotation as he suspects there was more ideology involved than people think.
Stuart Hall: Stuart Hall mentions how 'authors' encode their work with meaning and audiences decode it in often very different ways.
Lyotard: What Lyotard means by a meta-narrative is a totalising cultural narrative, that organises thought and experiences into a grand story that makes sense of our lives, he also explains how meta-narratives are a bit like ideology but with the feeling of an ongoing story.
Baudrillard: What Baudrillard means by the term Simulacra is an imitation that seems more real than the thing it is imitated, this term was created to explain mediated experiences and intensity and resonance that surpass reality for their audiences.
3) Choose one of the films we saw extracts from and watch the whole movie: Captain Fantastic (2016), Pulp Fiction (1994) or Inception (2010). Write a 300 word analysis of your chosen film using theories from the study day (use the exam paragraph structure we were shown on the day - theory introduction, examples from text, why this 'proves' or 'disproves' the theory).
Inception
The narrative of this film is that the main protagonist (Dom Cobb) is a skilled thief and the best in his line of work, stealing secrets from deep within the subconscious mind during being in the dream state which is when you are most vulnerable, just from finding out this info you are almost immediately hooked in because it is something unique that also sounds fun and interesting. Because of Cobbs abilities he has becoming a world known fugitive which has costed him any part of a normal life as he must take himself away from all he loves. However Dom is given a chance at gaining back what he has lost but it won't be easy at all as he is given the task to implant something inside somebodies consciousness instead of stealing something. By the end of the film Cobb with the help of fellow allies accomplishes the mission and comes back together with his children. This film uses a lot of intertextuality as considering it is a spy genre film it takes a lot of things the James Bond franchise. You can also apply Stuart Halls Reception theory to this film. The preferred reading of this film is that it is branching out the spy genre to new levels that you wouldn't usually see as going into somebodies subconscious to steal something is unique to the spy genre scene and would be very enticing to audiences. I believe the oppositional reading would be that this movie is extremely unrealistic as going into somebodies subconscious to steal information is just absurd which can be very annoying for certain audiences. You can also add the theory of equilibrium to this film as the equilibrium at the start is that Dom must go on mission to implant this information then the dis equilibrium would be all the challenges he and his team come across that they don't think they can handle. The new equilibrium would be when he accomplishes the mission and gets to be with his children at the end of the film.
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