biu

1. REPRESENTATION THEORY

2. The Male Gaze – Laura Mulvey
• Throughout the years, women have been
presented to us as submissive and
unequal to empowering and dominant.
• Today, women can still be perceived as
submissive and objectified through media
texts, especially music videos. However,
this ultimately depends on the genre.

3. The Male Gaze – Laura Mulvey
• The male gaze refers to how the audience
view women when presented in the media.
She states that women are there be seen
and cinematography and editing are used
to represent them in a sexual way.

4. The Male Gaze – Laura Mulvey
• Mulvey’s focus is on:
- How men look at women from these
images
- How women look at themselves
- How women look at other women, are they
meant to conform to these ideologies as
sexual objects?

5. The Male Gaze – Laura Mulvey
• The Male Gaze focuses on emphasizing
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
• Women as often sexualized and seen as
objects and viewed based on sexual desire
and they way they look.

6. The Male Gaze – Laura Mulvey
• The Male Gaze describes how the audiences
or viewer are put into the perspective of a
heterosexual male i.e the camera lingers over
the curves of a woman’s body
• Mulvey states that in film women are typically
the objects rather than the possessors, this is
displayed by the control of the camera
• Man emerges as the dominants power within
the created film fantasy. The woman is
passive to the active gaze from the man.

7. The Male Gaze – Laura Mulvey
CRITISMS –
• Does not take into account women viewing
men as sexual objects – female gaze.
• The women in these music videos may want
to be sexualized as it could them feel
empowered such as Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj
and Lady GaGa
• The media has influenced how women
should look – hard to change that perception.

8. Star Theory – Richard Dyer
“Stars are commodities that are produced by
institutions”
“A star is a constructed image represented
across a range of media and mediums”
“Stars represent and embody certain
ideologies”
• Star theory is the idea that icons and
celebrities are constructed by institutions for
financial reasons and built to target a specific
audience or group of people.

9. Star Theory – Richard Dyer
Audience & Institutions –
• Stars are made to make money for that
purpose alone
• Audiences want to consume what they think
is the ideal
• The institution then modifies the stars image
around the target audience
• They make a star based on what they think
the audience want
- e.g the X Factor looking for the ‘full
package’

10. Star Theory – Richard Dyer
Constructions-
• Stars are built for the audience
- a persona is created for the audience to
identify with, so stars can differentiate
between other stars
• Stars have a signature style to them so
that they are remembered
• Institutions exaggerate parts of their
personality.

11. Star Theory – Richard Dyer
Hegemony –
• We relate to the star because they have a
feature that we admire or share
• Develops from an admiration into
idolization
• Replicate what they like about a star
• These stars can be bad role models as the
pressure of the media takes a toll and they
engage in behavior which may be negative

12. Stereotypes – Tessa Perkins
• Stereotyping is not a simple process and
contains a number of assumptions that can
be challenged
1. Stereotypes are not always negative
2. They are not always about minority groups
or the less powerful
3. They can be held about one’s own group
4. They are not rigid or unchanging
5. They are not always false

13. Stereotypes – Tessa Perkins
• People assume that stereotypes are aimed at
and targeted towards the less powerful but
this is not always the case, we can make
assumptions and stereotypes about the
upper class but we don’t know them.
• Once a stereotype has been created it is very
hard to change however Perkins states thar
over a period of time, this stereotype can
change and develop
• It is hard to get rid of a stereotype once you
have been given it.

14. Stereotypes – Tessa Perkins
• Stereotypes are not always false –
stereotypes have to have some truth in
them or where else would the
representation come from?
• We may witness it first hand, however
there must be some truth in a stereotype
or the ideology wouldn’t fit

15. Stereotypes – Tessa Perkins
Implications-
• Always erroneous in content
• They are negative concepts
• About groups whom we have little/ or no social contact
– a stereotype of a stereotype
• They are about minority or repressed groups creating
negative representation of the lower class possibly by
giving the upper class more power
• People either hold stereotypes of a group or do not
• Without stereotypes we wouldn’t be able to
understand the world, our society and how we fit in.