Wednesday, 7 May 2014
Tuesday, 8 April 2014
What are the values of a subculture?
Need to talk about representation from the inside and the outside (how that representation works on who and what is being represented) and equally (whats the representation like outside the intended audience.)
"What separates hoodies from the youth cults of previous moral panics… is that they don't have the pop-cultural weight of the other subcultures, whose members bonded through music, art and customised fashion." - Jane Graham
Try to identify its values and beliefs… you may want to think about how they respond to these topics:
- 'fitting in with group/being individual'
- brand names and fashion
- other subcultures/ genres/ styles
- previous versions of their style/genre
Link to values… how the subculture view:
-Conformity and rebellion.
-Attitude to capitalism and consumerism
- Tribal rivalry
- Traditional or 'neophyte'
- Teens will often move between subcultures, and older youth mix and match styles/values from a mix of subcultures.
- Or adults can appear to conform for most of the working week, but re-enter the subculture at specific times. (weekends, festivals etc.)
- "There are many streams." Mainstream is in perpetual flux, rapaciously absorbing alternative culture at such a fast rate that the notion of a mainstream becomes obsolete.
In 2014 what is mainstream?
British cinema is usually not mainstream.
The amount of views on youtube defines how mainstream a song is.
Richard Dyer's 'Star Theory'
- Stars represent shared cultural values and attitudes, and will promote a certain ideology.
- Fans who agree with that set of values will support the star.
- Fans will imitate stars in an aspirational effort to get 'closer' to the glamorous, fantasy lifestyle they appear to have - this may take the form of 'dressing up', imitating performances, adopting behaviour etc.
The music industry does not create long-lasting subcultures - it struggles to keep up with youth values and groups.
'Teens will often belong to more than one culture, that whey will move from culture to culture in time and over time, and that they will even 'mix and match' these styles from time to time. But let us also note that this is not the postmodernist's pastiche, There are basic types of teen. They remain coherent and habitable, with characteristic values, practices and styles." - Grant McCracken
Need to talk about representation from the inside and the outside (how that representation works on who and what is being represented) and equally (whats the representation like outside the intended audience.)
"What separates hoodies from the youth cults of previous moral panics… is that they don't have the pop-cultural weight of the other subcultures, whose members bonded through music, art and customised fashion." - Jane Graham
Try to identify its values and beliefs… you may want to think about how they respond to these topics:
- 'fitting in with group/being individual'
- brand names and fashion
- other subcultures/ genres/ styles
- previous versions of their style/genre
Link to values… how the subculture view:
-Conformity and rebellion.
-Attitude to capitalism and consumerism
- Tribal rivalry
- Traditional or 'neophyte'
- Teens will often move between subcultures, and older youth mix and match styles/values from a mix of subcultures.
- Or adults can appear to conform for most of the working week, but re-enter the subculture at specific times. (weekends, festivals etc.)
- "There are many streams." Mainstream is in perpetual flux, rapaciously absorbing alternative culture at such a fast rate that the notion of a mainstream becomes obsolete.
In 2014 what is mainstream?
British cinema is usually not mainstream.
The amount of views on youtube defines how mainstream a song is.
Richard Dyer's 'Star Theory'
- Stars represent shared cultural values and attitudes, and will promote a certain ideology.
- Fans who agree with that set of values will support the star.
- Fans will imitate stars in an aspirational effort to get 'closer' to the glamorous, fantasy lifestyle they appear to have - this may take the form of 'dressing up', imitating performances, adopting behaviour etc.
The music industry does not create long-lasting subcultures - it struggles to keep up with youth values and groups.
'Teens will often belong to more than one culture, that whey will move from culture to culture in time and over time, and that they will even 'mix and match' these styles from time to time. But let us also note that this is not the postmodernist's pastiche, There are basic types of teen. They remain coherent and habitable, with characteristic values, practices and styles." - Grant McCracken
Tuesday, 25 March 2014
Hunting for Cool (2001)
FRONTLINE - The Merchants of Cool
- Teens run todays economy.
- They are given a lot of guilt money.
- On average teens are shown 3,000 discreet adverts a day and 10 million by the time your 18.
- Because of advances in technology, the media are able to specifically target a group as little as 12-14 year olds girls.
- Cool Hunters find the 20% of the populations who are the 'trend-setters.'
- Cool hunting is a paradox, as it kills what it finds. By discovering cool you force cool to move onto the next thing.
- The media is no longer trying to find ways to help young people they are just studying them to find out how to pitch their products to them.
- MTV created the term 'Mook' who is an obnoxious, loud, fun and crazy males.
- Same old cliches but packaged in a new way so it is seen as empowering. They are known as 'Midriff's.'
- We are now seeing the advanced sexualisation of teenagers.
- More than ever we live in a media climate where American culture has beaten British culture into submission.
- "It's one enclosed feedback loop," Rushkoff says. "Kids' culture and media culture are now one and the same, and it becomes impossible to tell which came first -- the anger or the marketing of anger."
Thursday, 20 March 2014
Presentations on Youth Culture
There is a contrast of class and culture with the films Kidulthood and Sket. Although the representations of women are less passive they are equally as deviant.
All urban films are very similar, the creators are monopolising the genre. Shank has a sense of tribalism. Music in relation to whats on the screen can change the mood of the entire piece, comparison between opening title of Inbetweeners and Shank. These films are pushing the boundaries, using new cinematic styles. Unconventional styles of titles, more televisual. Lifts these representations out of standard cinema and makes them feel more real. Representations are given a similitude aspect to them. Outside of the U.K. Kidulhood was sold as 'The Streets of London.' In Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging has a scene where a male is seen as a sexual object rather than the conventional female. Films like Adulthood, Kidulthood are slightly voyeuristic for middle class people. Back in the 50's early 1960's, youth as deviant became a representation which the media was quite keen to pick up and represent, because it felt that somehow there was a split known as the generation gap. The youth were rejecting what the mainstream media and society had to offer them so what they did through the use of music was create there own culture. Therefore, youth became a sub-culture. What we get now is a very different context, we get representations purely created for commercial reasons. Youth Culture gets packaged as a product.
Wednesday, 12 March 2014
"Culture…. Is not artifice and manners, the reserve of the Sunday best, rainy afternoons and concert halls. It is the very material of our daily lives, the bricks and mortar of our most commonplace understanding."
David Willis
What if the bricks and mortar of our most commonplace understanding is mediated to us?
Tuesday, 4 March 2014
Representation Theorists
Richard Dyer
- Argues stereotypes are a way of reinforcing differences between people, and representing these differences as natural.
- For example, stereotypes about man and women reinforce the idea that they are very different.
- In the film, Ill Manors, the female character is represented as a "Escort". And in a scene, you see her in her underwear, showing her body in a sexual manor. But also, later on she was put against her will to perform sexual acts. And according to her this is one of her three different ways of looking in cinema, this one being the look of the audience that views the film using different camera shots. This objectifies her and limits her a sexual object.
Jean Baudrillard
Antonio Gramsci
Charles Acland
- Argues stereotypes are a way of reinforcing differences between people, and representing these differences as natural.
- For example, stereotypes about man and women reinforce the idea that they are very different.
- Applied to a youth film, in the film 'Kidulthood', the urban society represents youth as rude and mischievous. The stereotypical representation is the way they dress such as they wear hoodies, track suits, trainers and usually carry knifes. To society they are classified as 'Hoods'.
- In Kidulthod, they use all these attributes to reinforce the differences of how these youths are represented in the film and this gives the film an impact on they are represented. This makes the differences feel as it's natural. This representation in the film, according to Dyer is now presumed to be natural, meaning thats how society believes how urban youth are represented. Such as if someone on streets is wearing a hoodie or track suits, they will threatened as they could believe they could be a gang member that may be carrying a knife.
Laura Mulvey
- Developed the theory of the Male Gaze which is the idea that a film is made to be watched through the eyes of a heterosexual male viewer which objectifies women making them an object in the film.
- She argued that female characters were represented as passive objects of male sexual desire.
- In Kidulthod, they use all these attributes to reinforce the differences of how these youths are represented in the film and this gives the film an impact on they are represented. This makes the differences feel as it's natural. This representation in the film, according to Dyer is now presumed to be natural, meaning thats how society believes how urban youth are represented. Such as if someone on streets is wearing a hoodie or track suits, they will threatened as they could believe they could be a gang member that may be carrying a knife.
Laura Mulvey
- Developed the theory of the Male Gaze which is the idea that a film is made to be watched through the eyes of a heterosexual male viewer which objectifies women making them an object in the film.
- She argued that female characters were represented as passive objects of male sexual desire.
- In the film, Ill Manors, the female character is represented as a "Escort". And in a scene, you see her in her underwear, showing her body in a sexual manor. But also, later on she was put against her will to perform sexual acts. And according to her this is one of her three different ways of looking in cinema, this one being the look of the audience that views the film using different camera shots. This objectifies her and limits her a sexual object.
Jean Baudrillard
Antonio Gramsci
Charles Acland
Thursday, 6 February 2014
Theories of Mediation and Representation
¿What is Mediation?
Mediation is when you create a variety of mediums. The process in which the media alters of type of medium.
The processes by which messages and values are constructed and communicated to us.
Single piece of media is a medium. E.g. A film is a medium.
Media is a collective noun.
¿What is Representation?
Representation is the portrayal of something. The reinforcement of the messages and values through continuous repetition in the mass media.
We were asked to draw a bank manager in class in 60 seconds and almost everyone drew a man in a suit.
Macro Elements
Film Language:
Genre
Narrative
Representation
Denotations - What you see.
Connotations - What you associate with those things that you see or hear.
The two dimensions of the stereotype are physical and behavioural.
Richard Dyer
Argues that stereotypes are a way of reinforcing differences between people, and representing these differences as natural.
For example stereotypes about men and women reinforce the idea that they are very different.
WHO or WHAT is being represented?
HOW is the representation created?
WHO has created the representation?
WHY is the representation created in that way? What is the intention?
WHAT is the effect of representation?
Gatekeeping
A theorist called White (1961) spoke of the 'gatekeepers' - that is the people who are part of the decision making process in the construction of media texts.
We were asked to draw a bank manager in class in 60 seconds and almost everyone drew a man in a suit.
Macro Elements
Film Language:
Genre
Narrative
Representation
Denotations - What you see.
Connotations - What you associate with those things that you see or hear.
The two dimensions of the stereotype are physical and behavioural.
Richard Dyer
Argues that stereotypes are a way of reinforcing differences between people, and representing these differences as natural.
For example stereotypes about men and women reinforce the idea that they are very different.
WHO or WHAT is being represented?
HOW is the representation created?
WHO has created the representation?
WHY is the representation created in that way? What is the intention?
WHAT is the effect of representation?
Gatekeeping
A theorist called White (1961) spoke of the 'gatekeepers' - that is the people who are part of the decision making process in the construction of media texts.
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