Below is an excellent collection of 'all you need to know':
Media Theory Explained
And here are some Media Theory Trading Cards. You can play Top Trumps with these. Some are by David Gauntlett; some are just inspired by him!
Theory Trading Cards.doc
David Gauntlett has the most definitive site on media theory. Click here.
Julian McDougall's presentation on his media theory 'crash course':
http://www.slideshare.net/silvertwin/fast-track-media-degree
Key Theorists for 'name-dropping' in your exam:
Plato and Mill
Very different views on society.
Very different views on keeping order.
Very different views on education.
Saussure and Barthes
These are the theorists through which you need to discuss semiotics (the use of signs and symbols).
Biography of Barthes
Structuralism??
A branch of semiotics (the study of signs and symbols), a search for 'deep structures' underlying the 'surface features' of phenomena. See Barthes on 'Steak and Chips'.
Who was Saussure?
The Swiss Ferdinand Saussure (1957-1913) is known as the 'founding father of semiotics (the study of signs)'. This is where the use of the words DENOTATION and CONNOTATION come in. A red dress denotes, simply, a red dress, but in the context of a TV drama it might connote power, strength, or even the objectification of women if the woman wearing the red dress is standing beside a powerful male character. Semiotics includes the study of:
Symbols (e.g. a dove representing peace)
Myths
Micro to macro (particularly relevant in TV drama) - See theorist Anthony Giddens
Signs
Icons
Who was Giddens?
Anthony Giddens explores the question of whether it is individuals or social forces that shape our social reality. He argues that although people are not entirely free to choose their own actions, and their knowledge is limited, they nonetheless are the agency which reproduces the social structure and leads to social change. So people's everyday actions reinforce and reproduce a set of expectations - and it is this set of other people's expectations which make up the 'social forces' and 'social structures' that sociologists talk about.
Theory in Practice
You can use different theories to analyse things in a variety of ways, looking at everything from a number of viewpoints. Take football as an example:
Marxist Analysis of football
•Sporting competition can be seen as an expression of capitalism.
•Premiership football can therefore be seen to represent the ultimate expression of capitalism – transfer fees, wages, sponsorship, TV money, crass commercialism re shirts etc.
•We can compare Ferguson v Wenger in context of amount they spend on their players.
•The domination of foreign players can be seen in the context of international economics, with its impact on the rest of the football league.
Feminist Analysis of football:
•The exclusion of females alongside tokenistic or sexist representations and references (footballers' wives) can be seen to represent a patriarchy / capitalism / competition.
•Gender traits seen in football can be seen as particularly male – combat, high-octane drama.
•Additional contexts to be considered are female spectatorship and female participation, ‘reading against the grain’. Women do watch and take part in football. How are these women represented? See Theodor Adorno for quotations on capitalism.
Feminism
is a movement seen to serve the following purposes:
•Fighting gender inequality
•Fighting objectification
•Fighting a phallocentric ‘common sense’
•Creating alternative ways of seeing the world (through a ‘female gaze’)
•Feminism has been demonised and misunderstood (often by women … ‘I’m not a feminist but …’; the idea that feminists are all lesbians)
A brief discussion of Feminism…
It’s sometimes difficult to distinguish feminism from other ideas related to women, or to define feminism. Toril Moi suggests that we distinguish between ‘feminism’ as a political position, ‘femaleness’ as a matter of biology and ‘femininity’ as a set of culturally defined characteristics. Feminist criticism [or theory], then, is a specific kind of political discourse: a critical and theoretical practice committed to the struggle against patriarchy and sexism. Feminism isn’t a straightforward, unified political position, though.
•‘A Room of One’s Own’
•Votes for Women
•Abortion
Cixous
Cixous is probably best known for her deconstruction of binary oppositions, claiming that they represent women negatively in the patriarchal value system.
Cixous’s binaries:
•Activity/passivity
•Sun/moon
•Culture/nature
•Day/night
•Father/mother
•Head/heart
•Intelligible/sensitive
•Logos/pathos
Women in Film
Consider the following:
•Representation – cultivation over time
•Character types
•Roles in narratives (eg love interest)
•Complex examples – eg Lara Croft
•Sociology and Semiology – public / private, roles, images, meaning systems
Gender Trouble
Judith Butler argues that gender is not natural; it is learned and PERFORMED
Playful renegotiation of gender = gender trouble (a subversive act)
Madonna seen as icon of gender trouble (or Lady Gaga more currently?)
Also see David Gauntlett – 'Media, Gender, Identity' and his website.
Kendall and McDougall ‘Just Gaming’
Feminism can include psychoanalysis – football as ‘phallic’ (goal as ‘climax’). Also see Kaplan / Laura Mulvey – the ‘male gaze’:
Mulvey's theory is that men look at women (as objects)
The viewer is forced to identify with this gaze, so the camera is from a male POV.
Media Audiences and The Sociological Imagination
Although we might think of media habits as mundane and idiosyncratic, the fact that we all have them shows structural forces afoot (Ruddock: 77).
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Activities
Charlie Brooker, a great Internet teacher on Media, does a parody of news reporting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpVTUdfcEMg&feature=fvst
What on earth is democracy, and what does it have to do with the media? Watch policitian Tony Benn's thoughts on society, and then read his book 'Letters to my Grandchildren' (2010).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poO5BgU2PZo
Watch this clip of 'Supersize Me' up to 1.58 mins. What did you just see?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2diPZOtty0
Toscani's Benetton Advertising Campaign
This was extremely controversial at the time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGRcy-59TAU
Watch Adam Buxton's tongue-in-cheek take on Screenwriting with his 'Screenwriting Software Tutorial' at:
http://adam-buxton.co.uk/ad/category/vides-clips/
Thinking about genre, representation and postmodernism, look at the way the working-class family is represented in these two videos: Madness 'Our House' from 1982 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shVdK2cbRuA&ob=av2e followed by Kid British 'Our House is Dadless' from 2009 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltPxz4PinDA.
