Media Theory and Theoristsfor G325

Section A: Examining your own productions

A2 Revision Session

G325a – Skills and Processes (Hands)

• Theory not needed explicitly, only if it crops up. Creativity and the DIKY triangle will help

G325b – Concepts (Head)

• Must use media theory/ theorists

• I have split them by area of relevance: Genre/ Narrative/ Representation/ Audience/ Media Language

What do you need to be able to do with theorists and theories?

• You do NOT need to:– Learn a load of quotes– Explain their theories in great depth– Know them all

• You DO need to:– Use a few– Be able to apply them to your work/ case studies– Consider how useful/ not useful they are when

discussing your work/ case studies

How to use theorists…

• Quote • Summarise• Comment

• Assume your reader knows about the theory/ theorist.• Don’t explain the theory; use it.• A Todorovian analysis would argue…• Mulvey’s notion of the Male Gaze provides a useful way

of understanding the video in that…• Steve Neale’s statement that Genre is “made up of

repetition and change” could be useful here because…

Some theorists you MIGHT be able to use

GenreSteve Neale

'genres are instances of repetition and difference' (Neale 1980)'difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre' (Neale1980): mere repetition would not attract an audience.

David Buckingham

'genre is not... simply "given" by the culture: rather, it is in a constant process of negotiation and change' (Buckingham 1993)

Nicholas Abercrombie

'the boundaries between genres are shifting and becoming more permeable' (Abercrombie 1996)

Andrew Tudor

'a genre... defines a moral and social world' (Tudor 1974)

Narrative• Tzetvan Todorov – Argues that narratives always have a structure

of Equilibrium/ Disequilibrium/ New equilibrium• Story versus plot• Claude Levi-Strauss – Argues that human cultural understanding

is based upon a system of binary oppposites (good/ bad; black/ white; male/ female…). Narratologists have taken this theory and applied it to narrative, arguing that binary opposition forms a fundamental way of understanding narrative.

• Roland Barthes: Enigma code; Action code. Also, Open and Closed texts.

• Vladimir Propp – argued that narratives always have certain character types who perform certain actions. Characters are agents of action.

Representation

• Laura Mulvey – argues that cinema positions the audience as male. The camera gazes at the female object on screen. It also frames the male character watching the female.– We watch the girl; we see the male watching the girl;

we position ourselves within the text as a male objectively gazing at the female.

– Can be applied to other media forms also.

• Hegemony (dominant ideology)• Anyone from the Collective Identity powerpoint

Audience

• Stuart Hall: Encoding and Decoding; Preferred/ negotiated/ oppositional readings

• Denis McQuail – Uses and Gratification theory (audiences consume media texts for Surveillance; Personal Identity; Peresnal Relationships; Escapism/ Diversion.

Media Language

• Any of the theorists from the previous slides