G325b: Theorists, Theories, Case Studies and Key Issues

Section B: Media and Collective Identity

A2 Revision Session

Key Issues

• Analysis

• Wider issues of representation

• Wider issues of identity

• Use of theory

Case studies

• Cover two media• Past and present/ contemporary (last few years)• Focus on a specific representation

– e.g. youth/ gender• Identify key themes

– How is this text about the construction of identity?– What does this text say about the construction of identity?– How does it deal with the construction of identity? What are the

key narratives and discourses? • Coming of age/ rites of passage/ youth and protest/ adolescence

versus adulthood or childhood/ blah blah– How does it represent youth/ gender?– How do audiences respond to these representations? What are

the effects of these representations?

Key questions1. How do the contemporary

media represent nations, regions and ethnic / social / collective groups of people in different ways?

2. How does contemporary representation compare to previous time periods?

3. What are the social implications of different media representations of groups of people?

4. To what extent is human identity increasingly ‘mediated’?

• How do your texts represent a specific group? What themes/ narratives/ discourses are constructed for this group?

• Compare your text to past texts in terms of question 1.

• What effect do these representations have on the audience? What effect do they have on society?

• Is media increasingly important in the way we understand our own identity and the identity of others?

Collective Identity

• How are groups of people represented?

• How are these representations constructed?

• How do these representations impact upon our sense of identity?

• How do audiences use these representations to create/ understand their identity?

There are two separate but related issues in this exam:

Identity

• Is identity something we construct or something we discover?

• Is identity something we share with others?

• How do media texts impact on our sense of identity?

• Is identity fixed or does it change?• Is identity something we are or something

we do?

Collective Identity Theorists

• Jacques Lacan– The mirror stage

• Laura Mulvey – The Male Gaze

• Michel Maffesoli– “The Time of Tribes”

• David Gauntlett– “Identities are not

‘given’ but are constructed and negotiated.”

• Mikhail Bakhtin– “the unfinalised self”

• Judith Butler– Gender is what you

do, not what you are.

Collective Identity Theories

• What impact/ effects do media texts have on audiences?– Hypodermic Needle Theory– Uses and Gratification Theory– Active vs passive audiences

• Antonio Gramsci– Hegemony/ shifting nature of dominant

ideology

Magazines and Gender Theorists• Marjorie Ferguson

– “The cult of femininity”; “consciously cultivated female bond” • Angela McRobbie

– “a kind of false sisterhood that assumes a common definition of womanhood or girlhood”

• Janice Winship – “The gaze between cover model and women readers marks the complicity

between women seeing themselves in the image masculine culture has defined.”

– “a magazine is like a club. Its first function is to provide readers with a comfortable sense of community and pride in their identity”

• Paul Messaris – “Female models addressed to women… appear to imply a male point of view.”

• Judith Butler• David Gauntlett:

– "These [male] magazines are all about the social construction of masculinity. That is, if you like, their subject-matter."

– http://www.theory.org.uk/gay-id.htm – http://theoryhead.com/gender/discuss.htm – http://theoryhead.com/gender/extract.htm

Useful things to do/ ways to revise

• Learn your texts• Read essays about your texts (GoogleBooks/

GoogleScholar/ library)• Read reviews/ analysis of your texts (Guardian/ BBC/

Daily Mail!)• Read reports about youth/ gender and identity

– e.g. Dr Linda Papadopolous ‘The Sexualisation of Young People’ Report – read articles on BBC; investigate objections to the report

• Learn a few quotes/ applicable ideas from relevant theorists/ critics

• Ensure you can apply and comment on/ evaluate/ criticise the theories/ reports

• Ensure you can answer the four key questions on an earlier slide

Mikhail Bakhtin

• Mikhail Bakhtin agreed individual people cannot be finalised, completely understood, known, or labelled. He saw identity as the ‘unfinalised self’, meaning a person is never fully revealed or known. Many icons of the postmodern age change and adapt their identity and consequently can be seen in these terms: Marilyn Manson’s manipulations of traditional binary oppositions such as male/ female, beauty/ grotesque; Lady Gaga’s manipulations of femininity; or Madonna’s consistent reinventions of herself can all be seen as examples of the ‘unfinalisable self.”– From ‘Media Magazine’ April 2010