Why is it so important to look at how women are represented in the media?

The media creates expectations of women and how they should act, but more importantly how they should look.This has created a dominate ideology of women, many people believe women are valued on how they look regarding what clothes they wear, how they do their make up and what dress size they are. This objectifies women, and therefore they get the wrong ideas of what they should aspire for in later life.

 

Media texts such as, mens magazines Playboy and the music video Blurred Lines supports Laura Mulvey theory of the Male Gaze (1975) that the media is made by the men for men. This causes problems with women, not only how they look at other women but how they look at themselves, which has the knock on effect of body image and eating disorders. Men are also affected as they build a perception of women which leads to how they treat them, Dyer ( ) said how we are seen is how we are represented and from this, is how we are treated, for example if a young teenager only reads Playboy magazines then he will have his own idea of what women should look like and how they should act. 

Representation of women in a Brief Encounter

The representation of women conforms to a lot of stereotypes through the character of Lauren. For starters, she has a family, two children and a husband, and is shown to be very caring and motherly.


She has the stereotypical characteristics of a house wife, she looks after the children and is very worried about their welfare as seen when she comes home and her husband tells her that their son has been involved in an accident. Also, when the husband tells Lauren to stop 'beautifying' and cook dinner because he's hungry fits with dyers theory of that how we see women being treated is how we will treat them. In this sentence the husband says lovingly to his wife the audience pick up two things, one that women should care about their appearence and two they are there to look after men and meet their needs.





Lauren's reaction to what her husband says represents women as very passive and shows that women accept this responsibility, this tells other women in the audience how they should be.

Lauren's character compared to the two men is interesting as, the men are both employed and working, this is very stereotypical of the man to be in employment instead of a women.  

Stereotypes of Women

Stereotypes of women from amberbush

Theorist

Laura Mulvey - The Male Gaze 1975

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

The Gaze is a concept of how the audience views the people presented to them, when its women presented it can be looked at in three ways:

• how men look at women
• how women look at themseleves
• how women look at other women

Laura Mulvey's theory of the Male Gaze is that the audience is forced to view the people presented to them from a males point of view andthat the media is made by men for men. Women are objectified for men's pleasure.

Richard Dyer

Richard Dyer specialises in cinema; Queer Theory and the relationship between entertainment and representation in race, sexuality and gender.

‘How we are seen determines how we are treated, how we treat others is based on how we see them. How we see them comes from representation’

For example if a man has only seen how women are treated on television he would perhaps think that women are not equal and that men are of more importance.
The Queer Theory is the idea that all identities are very different and they vary in many ways, this therefore means you can not refer to a group of people colectively, such as 'women' as not all women have a fixed identity so it doesn't determine who they are.

George Gerbner - Cultivation Theory (1960's)

The Cultivation Theory is that the TV has long term effects but does this gradually over time, this reinforces dominate ideologies. This is also known as the 'drip drip' theory. This leaves the audience with a misperception of the world and the people who have been represented to them.


Henry Jenkins 
This is the theory that the audience participate in representation of themselves and is an extension of self representation. The audience will see a media text and recreate this, using all different types of media.


Daniel Chandler - Media Semiotics 
This is the theory that all representations are a construction of reality.

'Rather than reproducing the "world" spontaneously and automatically, as the ideology of realism would have the spectator believe, the cinematic apparatus always operates selectively, limiting, filtering and transforming the images that are its raw material' (Rodowick 1994, 77).

The signifier is the object itself, this could be an image, a tatoo, the way someone is dressed or an advert on TV.
The signified is the message conveyed by the signifier, this is the meaning we give to it and understand.

For example in this picture the signifier is what we see, a group of boys making similar gestures with their hands, with they're hoods up covering most of their face's and wearing dark clothing.

the signified is a gang as this is the meaning we give when we see this.


Roland Barthes - Mythologies 
This is the theory that all representation in a mythical way or a fairy-tale portrayal of the person or place. However this looks like what it is representing but it isn't.

Anthony Giddens 


 Michel faucoult 
This is the theory that our identity isn't fixed on factors such as gender, age, race or sexuality. This does not define who we are, and there is no fixed boundaries to categories such as with the idea of collective identity, which he disagreed with. He also says that identity is used to exercise power over people in order to prevent them from going outside the fixed boundaries.

John Berger (1972)

John Berger focuses on the 'Ways Of Seeing' men look at women, and women see themselves being looked at by men and they are aware that they are being seen from a males point of view.


Jean Baudrillard

Introduction to Media and Women

key Terms 

• Mediation 
• Denotation 
• Connotation 
• Objectification - when a woman is looked at purely on her looks disregarding her personality, to treat a person like an object. 
• Challenges 
• Conforms 
• Self Representation - when the people take a media product and interpret it and then recreate this and represent themselves from it. 

Sket 
This challenges the stereotypes of women. Women are usually seen as attractive, reserved, caring, passive and polite, but this is challenged in Sket as we see women ganging up and beating someone up on the floor. The women are shown spiting and swearing which clearly shows a different representation of women.

Again we see the relationships between men and women throughout the start of the film, the men are dominate over the woman which conforms to the stereotypes of men and women.




Blurred Lines 
In this music video we see women being objectified and seems to fit with the theory of the male gaze, of media products being made by men for men. This conforms to the stereotypes of women in the media as they are being represented as attractive and they are sexualised. The red lipstick worn by the women represents love and the women as 'sexy". The whole media product is based on the women's looks. With Richard Dyers theory, who says that we treat others on how they are represented, therefore from this mediation we would treat women with less respect and treat them in regard to their looks.
The parody of Blurred Lines has been made by women who are self representing themselves using intentional representation. In the music videos the roles have been swapped and the men have been objectified and the women are wearing smart clothing and look professional.

Chandelier 

This music video received one million hits on YouTube in the first 24 hours of its release. This is due to its controversy of a young girl ballet dancing, on noticeable factor is that she is wearing a nude leotard which gives the impression is naked. This again is exposing women and young girls physically, the girl is very talented and only of the age of 11, representing women as skilful. The fact she is wearing a wig represents her as trying to be older than she is.