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Genre
This term defines a category, style or type of media product.
All media products can be categorised as belonging to genres.
l Genres are identified by the repetition of distinctive features.
l Genres can be divided into sub-genres, for example vampire horror is a sub-genre of
horror.
l Genres can determine the narrative conventions of a text.
l Genres generate expectations in audiences.
l Genres are used by producers to structure media products.
Identifying genre-
l character types
l iconography
l plots
l props
l locations
l music and soundtracks
l narratives or storylines
Plot is different to narrative. Plot is how the narrative is unfolded to the audience.
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Representation
Representation is the basis of all media products.
l Representations provide models of how we see gender, social groups and places —
aspects of the world we all inhabit.
l They are ideological in that they are constructed within a framework of values and
beliefs.
l They are mediated by individuals and media organisations and reflect the value
systems of their sources.
l No representations are real; they are only versions of the real.
Audience
Audience affects the contents of the media text.
Audience positioning- The responses of the audience.
A professional workers: lawyers, doctors, managers of large organisations
B shopkeepers, farmers, teachers, white-collar workers
C1 skilled manual high grade: builders, carpenters, shop assistants, nurses
C2 skilled manual low grade: electricians, plumbers
D semi-skilled manual: bus drivers, lorry drivers, fitters
E unskilled manual: general labourers, bartenders, porters
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Values and ideology
Ideology- a set of attitudes, beliefs and values held in common by a group of people and culturally produced within a community to sustain a particular way of life.
l Religions such as Islam and Christianity and meta discourses such as Marxism are
ideologies.
l All media products have an ideological dimension to them and are constructed within
the context of a dominant ideology or a series of common sense values that are
generally shared and understood by all members of a community.
l Marxists see these values as representing the interests of the dominant or ruling class
and their maintenance of power.
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Determine and constrain the ideology, structure, content and distribution of media texts and are involved in the regulation.
Public service context such as the BBC, financial returns are important but emphasis is also placed on customer satisfaction and ratings to justify taxpayer support through the licence fee.
Control and standardisation of media products by dominant worldwide media organisations, using Western or American value systems, leads to claims of cultural imperialism.
l News Corporation
l BBC
l AOL Time-Warner
l MTV
l Disney Corporation
l Vivendi Universal
l Emap
l Sony
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Media ownership
The term synergy is often used to describe the strengthening outcome of this merging.
Convergence may mean the development of multimedia newsrooms where print, television, radio and online news are combined through a central news hub, with reporters involved in the generation of news for all media.
Cross media ownership
Cross-media ownership is a natural commercial consequence of the coming together of the mass media industries.
This involves a media corporation having interest in a range of different media.
Language
Code through which meaning can be expressed.
Describes the sign systems, structures and codes used by a particular medium.
l In media studies, language is the code used within a particular medium to convey
messages to the audience. Unless the audience can decode messages and share the
meanings intended, communication cannot take place.
l These codes are culturally determined and can be culturally specific. This means that
they may be understood by some audiences and not by others.
EXAMINER’S TIP
l Media language can be written, verbal, non-verbal and visual.
l The language of film refers to all the elements that make up the construction of a film: sets, lighting, mise-en-scène and editing. In order to read a film, audiences must be familiar with all these elements.
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Genre
l What is the genre, sub-genre or type of media product? For example, is it a magazine advertisement, a television commercial, a television sitcom or a slasher horror movie?
l What are the key iconographic elements that identify the genre? In the vampire horror genre these would include vampire teeth, Gothic settings, graveyards, bats, crucifixes, garlic, wooden stakes and coffins.
l What are the narrative conventions of the genre? Examples include: ‘they all lived happily ever after’ in a fairytale; the girl unmasking the killer in a teen slasher horror movie; the storyline being resolved so that everything is back in place for the next episode in a sitcom; and the identification of the product with a positive and desirable lifestyle in an advertisement.
l How does the genre meet or challenge the expectations of an audience? Is the outcome predictable or does it have a twist? Can the audience guess the ending or are they surprised?
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Representation
L Consider who or what is being represented. If it is people, are they men, women or children? What are their race, origin, social class, status, nationality, age and state of health?
l Who (organisations or individuals) is responsible for constructing the representations?
Examples are a BBC news team, a charity such as the NSPCC or a pressure group like War on Want.
l What places are represented?
l Are the representations positive or negative?
l Do the representations involve idealised versions of people and places? Such idealised images include cover girls on teenage magazines such as Bliss and Sugar, or photographs of Greek islands in a holiday brochure.
l What attitudes, beliefs and values are represented?
l Do the representations confirm or challenge existing stereotypes? For example, in light of the history of slavery, is it possible to represent black people as servants or low-paid agricultural workers without the associated negative connotations?
Audience
l What is the intended audience for the media product? For example, is it aimed at pre-school children, school children, pre-teens, teenagers, young singles aged 18–30, married couples with or without children, separated singles, middle-aged couples with adult children, retired couples or pensioners? It could be combinations of these.
l How is the audience defined and targeted by the product? Is it a mass audience or a niche audience?
l What is its gender, ethnicity and social class?
l What are the expected preferred readings for the product?
l How does the product reach the audience, and through what media?
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Values and ideology
l How does the text represent relations between men and women?
l Is heterosexuality seen as the norm?
l Does the text show violent solutions to disagreements as the norm?
l Does the text assume that people live in nuclear families (a man, a woman and
their children)?
l How are older people represented? Are they treated with respect or ridicule?
l Are acquiring and spending money represented as the principal goals of life
l Which cultures and ethnicities are represented?
l Who and what are not represented?
l Are the values mainstream or alternative?
Institutions
l Which business or corporate structures are involved in the production of the media product?
l Under what circumstances is it produced?
l Is it produced by mainstream industry or independently?
l How is the product financed?
l Who profits financially from its creation?
l How is it distributed?
l Under what circumstances is it accessed by the audience? Examples include cinema, home video, computer game, magazine, terrestrial television and satellite television.
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Language
l What media languages are involved in the product? Are they written, verbal, nonverbal, aural, visual or a combination of these?
l If the text is a film, how is the language of film used? If verbal or written language is involved, what kind of language is it — formal, colloquial or slang? What is the language register? Is there a regional accent? Are other techniques used, such as rhyme or alliteration? Are there any examples of intertextuality?
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Wider contexts and the analysis of media texts
Chronology
Early twentieth century
The creation of media texts involves the prevailing attitudes, beliefs and values at the time a text is produced- Zeitgeist.
1918, Germany, as the defeated nation, was in social turmoil, with a fear of communist revolution.
Germany, particularly fears of foreign influence reflected in the growth of anti-Semitism.
1930s
Years of the great economic Depression and growing uncertainty about political developments in Europe.
1920 the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution had prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic drink.
Prohibition was abolished in 1933.
1940s and the war years
Britain, films reflected the need to raise national morale in the face of the threat of invasion; they emphasised self-sacrifice and the need for personal courage in facing the demanding and difficult tasks ahead.
America- Growing patriotism but also the dark, uncertain and amoral world of wartime.
Film noir
1950s and the post-war years
Science fiction films in the 1950s reflected the growing fear of science gone wrong. Fears of mutation with the development of the atom bomb.
Post-war triumphalism led to a whole range of films celebrating wartime achievements.
Hammer Horror films provided escapist entertainment in the form of highly sexualised vampires.
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1960s to the present day
1960s, changes in attitudes towards sex, marriage and family life were reflected in the increasingly relaxed censorship of films and written texts, and the increase in violent crime was reflected in more graphic representations of violence in films.
Continuing Cold War gave rise to a generation of spy thrillers.
Horror and suspense films during this period began to reflect the growing interest in psychology, schizophrenia and the killer as a boy next door.
Vietnam War (1964–1975) provided material for exploration of the horrors of war and its dehumanising effects.
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Key media texts
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock 1960). This film, regarded as the first ‘slasher horror’ where the killer is ‘the boy next door’.
A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick 1971). This film was withdrawn from circulation in the UK by the director following many complaints that its portrayal of graphic violence and rape encouraged ‘copycat behaviour’.
Halloween (John Carpenter 1978). This classic suspense slasher horror movie has been imitated and parodied by many since, but perhaps not equalled. It firmly established the generic and narrative conventions of the genre, in particular that sexual promiscuity leads to a violent end and that the ‘final girl’ (Jamie Lee Curtis as Lauri Strode), who fights back against the killer, is saved. Both these elements had in fact been present in Psycho, 18 years earlier.
Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven 1984). A teen slasher horror classic.
Queer as Folk (Charles McDougall and Sarah Harding 1999). This Channel 4 production deals explicitly with promiscuous gay relationships involving young people. The series portrays frankly and non-judgementally the sexual behaviour of gay men in a way not seen before on British television.
Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee 2005). This film is a sympathetic and positive representation of homosexual cowboys in a western genre setting.
Historical contexts
1901–14
l Growth of the suffragette movement, which demanded votes for women
l Titanic disaster (1912)
l Beginning of modernist movement in architecture and the arts
l Early development of radio
l First moving pictures shown in cinemas
