Representation Exemplar what grade?

1B Essay- Representation

I am going to talk about theories of representation and how they can be applied to my production work which is a music video that we made for a pop rock band from London called FranKo. I am going to discuss the ways in which representation is used and challenged in our production and also apply some theory to it.    

I would like to start off discussing how my production can be applied to Walter Lippman’s theories about stereotypes. I would say that our production challenges the stereotypes of females in music videos as they seen to be slutty but in our production the only female character is dangerous and blood thirsty. This stereotypes of females are mainly found in R’n’B videos and they depict women as being objects for male gain. But this convention stereotype of women is being altered due to such bands as Paramore and you can this in there video ‘Decode‘ where Haley is being portrayed as strong and independent and we really wanted to follow onto this representation. I feel that we have done this as our female character kills the men with ease. The band are very stereotypically dressed for the genre they are playing as they are all dressed fashionable and have all been made up to create this image of the perfect pop rock band.  

Women have been represented in so many various ways from being objects to being there own independent ball busting femme fetals. Laura Mulvey professes that “all film is shot from the male gaze” I believe that my production challenges this concept as the female  character is in fact watching the band throughout the video and therefore it is shot from the female’s perspective. We where influenced by such media texts as Skrooms where the monstrous character is watching over her pray and therefore also shot from a feminine angel. John Berger said “men act women appear” I believe that these feminine representation are truly challenged in our production as our female character drives the narrative as without her it would just be a band walking through the woods and she adds an element of danger. I think that these theories of how women are represented in media are challenged so much in the current day that they have become out of date. This proven in our production. 

The femme fetal character type is one that can be found in our production in the form of our evil female character. Ann Kaplin is a feminist theorist who talks about the femme fetal role. The female character in our production uses her femininity to her advantage as she is seen to be a strong and powerful character through her violent actions this makes her a femme fetal. We took inspiration from other femme fetal characters such as Glenn Closes character in fatal attraction and Halle Berry in Catwoman. Who both use their femininity to conquer the other sex and though our character may not use her sexuality directly she does tackle them in a physical way. I think that this representation is becoming more common as women are becoming more powerful in society. 

Post modernism is represented in most media texts these days and you can certainly see this in our production as the locations skip from one area to the next which makes it disjointed as you can see this in other music videos such as Lady Gaga’s ‘Poker Face‘. The style of video also jumps around as one moment the band are playing in colour and the next they are in an old black and white film this is a hyper real occurrence and represents them jumping from one world to the next. This is to help the audience represent the music video as a horror video. 

To conclude I think that our production does only follow the conventions of representation but it also twists and bends them. I believe that we have challenged the representations of women and how they are perceived in the media but we are not the first to do this and this is now becoming the norm. But I do think that our production uses representation successfully.     

Where can it be improved?

AEE (10)

EX (10)

T (5)