Rethinking

Representa.on
OCR A Level Media Conference
Jason Mazzocchi

Representa.on
the descrip.on or portrayal of someone or something in a par.cular
way.

Tradi.onal and expected representa.ons

Workshop aims:

Consider representa.on what does it

mean?

Asking you to understand and analyse
representa.ons.

Representa.on using eec.ve
toolkits

Interpre.ng stereotypes making &

The concept of REPRESENTATION is concerned

with the way in which reality is re-presented

What does the ar.st represent in this pain.ng?

This re-presenta.on involves a

process known as MEDIATION

MEDIATION is the way in which reality
is selected, shaped and presented by
an agency (the media ins.tu.on and
text) to an outsider (the audience)

Re-crea.ng iconic pieces of

Fine Art using Photography
to create a contemporary
album cover

Lyndsey Mercer Art teacher at Hurtwood House School

Sam Taylor Wood

Re-crea.on of Michelangelos Piet, 1498

How do think media.on is used here? How do you read the image?
Are any ideologies evoked for you? If so, how?

Peter Lindberghs re-crea.ons

of famous pain.ngs for
Harpers Bazaar magazine

Man Crazy Nurse #3 by Richard Prince in 2003

Seated Woman With Bent Knee from 1917 by Egon Schiele

Does culture repeat historical

media.ons? Or does it dene the
form?

Adele Bloch-Bauer I, 1907 by Gustav Klimt

Mike S.mpson

Re-crea.on of Lewis Hines photograph of the men

construc.ng the Rockefeller Center in New York.
Synecdoche is ojen used as a type of personica.on by akaching a human
aspect to a non-human thing. How is this mediated through this use of
photography and a the popular LEGO?

Joe Rotondi

Re-crea.on of The Last Supper by Leonardo DaVinci 1499

How is media.on created here using intertextuality?

Is there associa.on used by Photography as the media form. Does this create
parody? Again, explain how/.

Album covers inspired by Fine Art

Rene Magrike

Funeral for a Friend Album cover by Barney Bewick

Examples of intertextuality are an authors borrowing and transforma.on of a prior
text, and a readers referencing of one text in reading another. It is by associa.on
and dierence that you may be able to see the reference. How does this work here?

Mr Brainwash inspired by Andy Warhol to create Celebra.on for Madonna

How do the following func.on in rela.on to the two contras.ng images?

Associa/on
Intertextuality
Anchorage
Hyperbole

Representa.on is the way in which

ideas, objects, people, groups and life-
forms are depicted by the mass
media[and] is the method used by
the mass media to create meanings.

(Price, p.33)

Music Video

REPRESENTATIONAL FORM

Tagged
Student produc.on
No exis.ng MV
Applied for copyright
On School You Tube Channel only 1500
views
Tagged privately
Open declara.on that this was student
work
In last three years had lots of dierent
responses over 3 million views

Who are KNIFE PARTY?

Why?

You Tube Stats reveal one of the biggest audiences is with males in Mexico The main
student in the lm looks Mexican and the storyline appealed to this demographic and
possible Knife Party fans. It was the representa.on of lead character that emerging and
challenging discourses began to circulate.

Ajer sta.s.cal and demographic analysis of our video produc.on we realized that the
representa.on of our protagonist was extremely popular with Mexicans aged between
13-17, making up for half of our online views with 40,000 hits. The binary opposi.on
created through the conict between the nerd and bullies was successful in making
audiences root for the underdog, with comments like beat up those bullies you legend
sugges.ng the idoliza.on of the protagonist for succeeding in his return and resolu.on of
conict.

Stuart Halls recep.on theory argues that this was an preferred reading of our video
which as a producer of text I was amazed to see, the use of representa.on within my
advanced produc.on was evidently a success as I played upon the commonly held
astudes and social values of the Mexican community in rela/on to revenge and
vendeVa which are popular within their culture e.g. vigilante Zorro.

Representa/on played a vital role in the success of my A2 video as

thousands of audience members achieved a preferred reading in rela.on to the

representa.on of our protagonist, who goes from vic/m to hero. This was a success as
the way in which it was constructed through binary opposi.on created a coherent and
understandable structure for the audience as the underdog triumphs over the binary
opposites in the video who are the dark hooded bullies.
George D's Blog

Analysing TV drama Extracts

REPRESENTATION TOOLKIT

TV DRAMA
Here is an extract from a TV drama, that oers some interes.ng representa.ons

I would like to suggest that rather than being prescrip.ve (of theory) with the
analysis of representa.on when in the class use your students discourse to
raise issues with the concept

Let them use a representa/on tool kit in decoding the text. This art of reading of
course will depend on the context in which the text is received.

On the next slide I suggest a series of ques.ons that can be used in address of the
ques.on set on representa.on.

 Ques.ons to ask of any text:

Who or what is being represented?
Where does the representa.on take place?
By whom?
To whom?
In what way?
For what purpose?
In what context?

Using the micro aspects what

contrasts are constructed between

Using edi.ng as a means of

understanding hierarchies
Which features of edi/ng helps construct a hierarchy of
signica.on in the extract?

What is foregrounded and what is backgrounded? Are
there any notable absences?

Whose representa.on is it?

Whose interests does it reect? How do you know?

At whom is this representa.on targeted

What does the representa.on mean to you? What does
the representa.on mean to others? How do you account
for the dierences?

What stereotypes are reinforced, nego/ated and
challenged?

The use of a technical code can therefore play a signicant

part in understanding contrasts between characters. The
understanding of these contrasts generally leads to value
judgements ojen in the form of stereotypes.

Stereotyping can be dened as

A stereotype is a label which involves a process of
categorisa/on and evalua/on an easily grasped
characteris/c (usually nega/ve) is presumed to belong to a
whole group

(OSullivan, DuVon & Rayner, p.126)


But the key ques.on to ask is this inevitable?

STEREOTYPES

But Tessa Perkins (1979) argues that:

some stereotypes are posi.ve
they are not always minority groups or the less powerful
they can be held about ones own group
they are not rigid or unchanging
they are not always false

Indeed, she argues that stereotypes would not work if they
were so simple and erroneous.

Perkins summarises that stereotypes are inevitable

The term stereotype was rst used in a cultural

context by US philosopher Walter Lipmann in his
book Public Opinion (1922)

 Stereotypes are not one-dimensional distor.ons of reality. In

order to gain credibility and widespread cultural currency, they
usually contain an element of truth... The most powerful
stereotypes tend to be rooted in a degree of reality which is then
naturalised rather than ques.oned in order to pass judgement
about the inevitability of such a situa.on or behaviour... The
danger is likle aken.on is paid to the func.on of the stereotype
within the narra.ve. Is the audience invited to denigrate, laugh at
the character?


Brian DuVon

Richard Dyer
Dyer iden.es four func/ons of the
stereotype:
an ordering process
a shortcut
a way of referring to the world
an expression of our values and beliefs
How does the Caf Noire advert func/on according to these points above?

An ordering process
...stereotypes serve to order our reality in an easy-to-
understand form, and are an essen.al part of making
sense of the world and society.
The fact that stereotypes oer an incomplete view of
the world does not necessarily make them false; there
is anyway no such thing as a complete view of the
world.

Having stereotypical knowledge may be beker than
having no knowledge at all.

A shortcut
Because they are simplica.ons stereotypes
act as 'short cuts' to meaning.
These short cuts are a pathway to a more
complex set of assump.ons that reect
society's values.

A way of referring to the world

They are social constructs and as such are a type of re-
presenta.on.

Stereotypes are most ojen used by individuals about people, or
peoples, they do not know. It follows, then that they must have
received this informa.on from others, especially the media.

Stereotypes are not true or false but reect a par.cular set of
ideological values.

An expression of our values and

beliefs
Much of the power of stereotypes exists
because they appear to have the status of
consensus.
What stereotypes represent, however, are not
the beliefs based upon reality but ideas which
reect the distribu.on of power in society -
stereotypes are not an expression of value but
of ideology.

Ideology

Ideology has been the subject of millions of books and ar/cle in the

social sciences aVes/ng to the vagueness and confusion of the

concept

Van Diji, 1998

If media representa.ons are media.ons then ideology is manufactured.

Of course we have to be careful about the construc.on of ideological
posi.ons representa.on is a concept which is used to explore such
posi.ons but not determinis.c of them?

Main debates centre on the eects of the media their representa.on of the
world, the factors shaping the produc.on of media message and the nature
of the audience consuming these messages

Transforma.on
Globalisa.on
Internet
Web 2.0
Par.cipa.on
Simulated reali.es
Technology
Audience(s)
Post-representa.on -?

Kony 2012

Life In a Day
Over 10 Million
Views

Method
The applica.on of ideological theories is best lej to
another day ..we dont not have .me here.

But we do need to consider the method by which we as
teachers and audiences help interpret media
representa.on

By using an analy.cal toolkit can we arm our students
into becoming not only beker readers of media texts,
but also producers of such texts?

This method is located in analysis of the text at the point
where structure (ins.tu.on) and agency (audience)
meet in terms of what is being mediated

Stuart Hall
the media through the ac.ve work of selec.ng and
presen.ng, of structuring and shaping are making
things mean. This is the essence of representa.on. It
is the prac.ce and produc.on of meaning, which is
commonly described as signifying prac.ce. Ideology is
not imposed on the media but is something that media
play a role in crea.ng and construc.ng.

Conclusions
Method how to research?
Interpreta.on
Representa.on as a key
concept
Inves.ga.on using a toolkit
Understanding contexts &
process

Bibliography