AKA 'Nineteen theories aren't enough lol'
You must learn nineteen essential theories for the A-level media exam, and be prepared to apply them in a variety of contexts. However, these are not the only media theories that exist. Below you will find a range of bonus theories for students who want to push their knowledge and understanding of media studies.
One thing you will note is that many of these theorists are extremely closely linked to the core theorists you have studied! Most theories are born from other theories, and media theory tends to be produced collaboratively.
Additionally, it should be noted that many of these theories are just as useful, if not more useful than the ‘core’ theorists that you have to know for the exam. This is of course open to debate, but if you are feeling confident, do feel free to sprinkle some bonus theory into your responses.
B1 - Pierre Bourdieu - Cultural capital
An individual's status in society is based not just on how much money (capital) they have, but how much cultural knowledge they have.
Examples of activities and knowledge that has high cultural capital include fine dining, high society contacts, knowledge of 'cultured' genres such as opera or arthouse cinema, eating in the right restaurants, wearing the right brands of (high end) fashion, and having a knowledge and appreciation of art.
Consider going to a particularly snooty, Michelin starred restaurant. What cutlery do you use, and when? How do you eat certain kinds of food, for example lobster? What food do you order, especially when the menu is in French?
Bourdieu suggests that cultural capital is used as a means of division and separation between the ruling and subject classes, and ensures that the rich stay rich, the poor stay poor, and both social groups remain separate. As such, this theoretical perspective comes under the banner of Marxist theory.
B2 - Dick Hebdige - Subcultures
Cultural capital may get you respect in high class circles, but it's not going to get you far at a drum & bass night. Dick Hebdige discusses the power of subcultures, or groups within society with their own closed codes and rituals.
Examples of subcultures include punks, gamers, trainspotters, metal heads, goths and emos. Each group has its own exclusive way of dressing, its own exclusive language and terms, and often what bands to listen to.
From a Marxist perspective, subcultures are a way that the proletariat can rebel against the dominant ideology of the bourgeoisie, by creating a world that is inaccessible to the ruling class. However, media producers will attempt to capitalise on subcultures to sell products to audiences. For example, the series Top Boy could be seen as a producer’s attempt to sell black underclass youth subculture to a white middle-class audience.
B3 - Richard Dyer - The utopian solution
Everyday life, 'real life', is boring, tiring, dangerous, and unsatisfying. We are generally tired, feel unattractive, and are living in a society where we are encouraged to interact less and less with other people.
Media products, for example film and TV shows and music videos, present a 'perfect world' (utopia) where these problems can be overcome, or simply do not exist in the first place. Therefore, media products offer us a 'utopian solution', or the distraction of a perfect world that lets us forget how awful our lives really are.
In many ways, this theory is a more in depth and satisfying version of escapism.
For example, in the sitcom Friends, although the main characters may argue, this only makes their friendship stronger. If they do go to work it is either implied or only briefly shown, allowing the full 22 minutes to show the fun, free lifestyle they enjoy. Each character is wealthy, or is able to pursue their dreams without experiencing poverty. All of the 'friends' live close by to one another, and can visit each other at will. They are all stereotypically physically attractive, and are able to engage in exciting sexual and romantic relationships. Even when something goes wrong, the characters experience no trauma, and will have forgotten about it by the next week/episode.
In comparison, our own lives are terrible! Arguments rarely lead to exciting situations, and we lack the wealth required to pursue our dreams. Increasingly, due to rising inner city house prices, we are pushed further and further into the suburbs, away from our families and friends. Additionally our lives are boring. We regularly sit in boring media studies lessons for ninety minutes, which is the average length of a Hollywood film! You’re probably tired all the time and you’re not really sure why. This is coupled with boring hour long commutes, dull evenings spent scrolling through Twitter and hours at a part time job that pays you a pathetic wage. However, media products such as podcasts and social media and magazines and game shows provide us with a solution for this appalling world, and in doing so, help us forget about the injustices that have been meted out on us.
B4 - Susan Sontag - Against interpretation
Sontag criticises deep textual analysis or the interpretation of art and other media products. For her, hermeneutics (i.e the study of a deeper meaning) takes away the value of art. Instead we must trust our own initial, emotional reaction, which Sontag refers to as the 'erotic' reading. The essay concludes with the now famous line "in place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art".
This essay is controversial to media studies as it undermines the entire basis of the subject; an emphasis on detailed textual analysis.
However, it raises the question: should we challenge our insistence on using theory and textual analysis rather than the intrinsic, mimetic value of the product?
Can’t a TV show just be a TV show?
B5 - Vladimir Propp - The morphology of folklore
Propp studied a range of Russian folklore, or spoken stories passed down from generation to generation. Propp identified a range of different character archetypes that occur again and again in media narratives.
These characters include the hero/protagonist, who sets out on a quest, usually to rescue the princess from the villain. Often, the hero will be sent on his way by a dispatcher, will be given a magical/special power by a donor, and will seek to please the princess's father. Additionally, the villain, or someone associated with the villain, or just someone else entirely may manifest as the false hero.
This theory is straightforward to apply, especially to fairy tales! However, it often needs to be stretched in order to work. Often characters will fill more than one role, the princess may be male or a non-human object, and some roles, like ‘the princess’s father’ might just be completely absent.
B6 - Theodor Adorno - The culture industries
Adorno was a Marxist media theorist who was part of the Frankfurt School, a group of thinkers who explored culture and media after the First World Way. Adorno was cynical about the way in which media products were created and targeted at audiences. He felt there was a clear distinction between high culture or 'serious' art, such as classical music or certain art movements, and popular culture, such as pop music.
For Adorno, pop music was a deliberate ploy by the ruling class to manipulate the working class into a position of subservience. Repetitive, simple music with no deep symbolic connotations or level of craftsmanship so to speak teach the working class to be lazy and complacent, and not to question their rulers. The audience response will always be the same; as Adorno states "Structural standardization aims at standard reactions".
Adorno draws attention to the technique of standardised differentiation to distract the audience from the banality of the product. While each media product may be functionally identical, there will be some element to differentiate it from the rest.
Adorno is highly critical of popular culture, and his writing style can best be described as 'grumpy'. Many cultural theorists have criticised this blunt model culture. For example Henry Jenkins's writing on 'textual poaching' considers how an audience's reaction to popular culture can be anything but standardized.
B7 - Barbara Creed - The monstrous feminine
In her book The Monstrous Feminine, Creed explores the nature of monsters in horror films. She concludes that the monster often takes a female form, which may be explicit or symbolic.
For Creed, horror films often explore a deep seated societal fear of women and reproductive systems. For example, much of the horror of The Exorcist comes from seeing a young girl using violent sexual language. Many theorists have written of the sexual imagery in the Alien films, which symbolise the threat of castration to its male target audience. In Humans, we can argue that Anita reflects our fear of women, a sexual threat who is unable to reproduce and have children of her own.
B8 - Donna Haraway - A cyborg manifesto
A cyborg is a combination of human and machine, somewhere between person and robot. Many sci-fi texts explore the societal impact that such a combination may entail. For Haraway, this process has already begun. Now thanks to digital convergence, we rely on technology more and more for everyday aspects of our lives, from fitness trackers to social media updates, communication apps to hearing aids and glasses. These rapid technological changes have broken down our ways of understanding society, leading to confusion, alienation and paranoia.
For Haraway, we are all cyborgs. We all make use of technology, but we go further than this. We rely on it to keep us alive when we are injured (defibrillators, ECG machines), we use it to maintain friendships (WhatsApp, Snapchat), we use it for love and sexual gratification (dating apps such as Tinder and online pornography). Even our clothes are made through advanced technological innovations.
Without our relationship with technology, what would we be left with? Would we even still be human?
What if cyborgs are more human than human?
B9 - Georges Bataille - Literature and evil
Georges Bataille was most famous for his transgressive novels such as The Story Of The Eye and My Mother, which deliberately provoked the audience by going beyond all boundaries of morality, taste and decency. Bataille argued since the reader deliberately sets out to take pleasure from the torment and misfortune of the characters in a work of fiction, then we can understand the reader themselves to be evil.
Obviously, arguing that the audience themselves are evil is a pretty confrontational statement! But when we consider exactly how many films (to take a single example) are focused around murder, death, misery, sexual assault and people screaming at each other, we must question exactly why anyone could consider this to be entertaining.
Battaille’s argument, that we are all essentially evil people who take delight in the misery and misfortune of others, raises many more questions when we combine it with other theoretical perspectives, for example George Gerbner’s cultivation theory. If we are continually exposed to such sadistic and miserable media products, is this not reinforcing our viewpoint of society? Or should we accept that humanity is simply awful and just get on with our lives?
B10 - Sigmund Freud - The Madonna and the whore
Freud's theories on sex and sexuality were extremely important in shaping the ideological values of 20th century media. Put simply, Freud put forward that we are motivated by a series of repressed desires that develop through childhood. These manifest themselves symbolically in our dreams, our actions, and most importantly for us, in media products.
Freud argued that these hidden desires could only come to the surface through a form of therapy called psychoanalysis. The patient and analyst work together to interpret the dreams and desires of the patient, to help them move past disastrous blocks in their own psyche or mind.
Psychoanalytic therapy is still practiced today. However, it is often heavily criticised for having little basis in reality. Freud examined an extremely small sample to come to his conclusions. But while Freud’s scientific validity is often looked down upon, it is impossible to deny how much his ideas have influenced our society, in particular the narratives of film, television and other arts.
The concept of the Madonna and the whore refers to Freud’s (supposed) observation that a woman ideally occupies two different roles in the male psyche. One is the ‘Madonna’, literally the virginal mother of Christ, who is able to give birth and raise children without ever having sex. The other is the ‘whore’, a sexually available woman. For Freud, men respect the Madonna and do not respect the whore, but still need her.
From this, we can see an expectation that exists in society, that women should be available sexually, yet sexless. Clearly this is impossible! We still see many examples of women being shamed for being sexually active today, while at the same time being presented as a spectacle for the heterosexual male audience (see also Van-Zooenen and Mulvey).
B11 - Richard Dyer - The functions of stereotypes
Further to Stuart Hall’s exploration of representation and its ideological construction, Richard Dyer (hi again!) explored the possible functions that stereotypes can provide both producers and audiences. These four functions allow us to work out why people, places, issues and events are re-presented in a certain way.
An ordering process - Representational stereotypes allow us to make sense of the world. For example, the stereotype of Japanese people as respectful, orderly and hardworking allows us to make sense of a country on the other side of the world that few of us will ever visit. (Note that by using the term we, I am very stereotypically assuming the readers of this textbook are British and live in the UK! This itself is a helpful effect of stereotyping allowing me to work on this textbook more efficiently.)
A short cut (for producers) – Stereotypes allow producers to save LOTS of time when producing media. If we consider a sitcom like Friends, just consider how much writing time is saved by pitching Rachel as a whiny valley girl, Ross as a neurotic nerd and Phoebe as a ditzy hippy. We watch the characters walk on stage and instantly can deduce their role in the narrative, and even can make intertextual reference to other shows. Which leads us to…
A reference point (for audiences) – If audiences have seen something like the representation before, they are far more likely to be able to understand and identify with the character. Watching a modern teen drama like Sex Education or The End Of The Fucking World we see the same kind of characters who appeared in 1980’s teen dramas like The Breakfast Club and 3 O’clock High. This is especially important from a financial perspective, as audiences who do not understand the narrative are arguably likely to disengage from the product and may not watch further episodes.
An expression of dominant societal values – This is perhaps the most important. Put simply, representation in media products reflect not only the ideology of the producer, but the broader, hegemonically constructed ideological perspectives of society. If you wish to know about a certain era, the easiest possible way of finding out is to read a book, watch a film or to listen to music published them. The representations you encounter will surely demonstrate the dominant ideological zeitgeist.
B12 - Elihu Katz and Jay G. Blumler - Uses and gratifications theory
Reception theory explored the broad ways in which audiences could negotiate or mediate the message of a media product. Yet Bumler and Katz go several steps further, arguing that audiences can essentially use or take pleasure (gratification) from media products in a vast number of ways. This includes ways that the producer may never had considered!
Broadly we can divide this theory in to four main uses and gratifications, but there are far more examples than just these:
Information – the things that audiences can learn from media products. For example Newsnight can teach us about current events and social issues. Top Boy informs us of current trends in UK rap music. And Skins shows us that getting drunk and taking drugs is really fun. Remember, it doesn’t have to be good information…
Social interaction – the ways in which audiences can use the media product to form friendships. We sometimes refer to this as the watercooler effect, where office workers may (stereotypically) gather around the watercooler to discuss the latest happenings in EastEnders. Knowing the right bands, keeping up with the most interesting films and finding the weirdest TV shows can also lead to rich and interesting friendship opportunities. What would we talk about if media didn’t exist? Let’s not think about it.
Personal identification – the ways in which audiences can relate to or identify with certain characters on screen or in print. If someone in a TV show has ever reminded you of one of your mates, you’ve experienced personal identification.
Sexual gratification – simply put, finding the characters in a media product attractive. Generally, media products will cast hegemonically attractive people to appeal to audiences. Often media products will include a range of different characters to appeal to a range of sexual preferences. However audiences may forge an oppositional response, and instead find the ‘ugly’ character attractive. There’s no accounting for taste!
B13 - Karl Marx - Marxist theory
Marist theory is possibly the most enduring and important theoretical framework in media studies. Media studies as we know it essentially evolved through Marxist and post-Marxist thinkers, who wanted to question the ways in which elite groups used mass media to manipulate the audience.
For Marx, our society is formed by the conflict between two groups, the working class proletariat, who are many in number, paid little and do the lion’s share of the work, and the upper class bourgeoisie, who use their power to enslave the working class. This is the (extremely simplified) central idea outlined by German philosopher Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto. For Marx, every system (industry, schooling, the mass media) is constructed by the ruling class to keep the rich rich and the poor poor.
Marxist theory is flexible and it is compelling. It links to many other theories, for example feminist theory and Curran and Seaton’s criticism of the media industries. Broadly, as long as we, the proletariat are distracted from the appalling quality of our lives, we will be less likely to rebel and to overthrow our cruel masters.
B14 - Antonio Gramsci – Hegemony
Hegemony refers to the rules that we follow in society through consent, and the control that is enforced over us every day.
Firstly, there are examples of control that are certainly not hegemonic. One example is control through war and through conquering another territory or country through violence. If the choice is to obey or to be killed, this is not hegemony.
Hegemonic power involves the individual or group of people agreeing with or accepting the rule. One excellent example is the standards of beauty that women in particular are held to in our society. While there is no law against it, it is a hegemonically enforced norm that women ‘should’ be of a certain weight, wear makeup, and remove body hair in order to be attractive. This norm is hegemonically reinforced through social interactions, such as being laughed at or bullied for existing outside the norm. The hegemonic standard of female beauty is further reinforced, as Gerbner suggests, through exposure to media. How many non-stereotypically attractive women do we see in Hollywood films? Exactly!
Hegemony is one of the most fundamental concepts in media studies, and understanding it is essential to understanding how audiences can be manipulated by producers, governments and corporations.
B15 - Tzvetan Todorov - Classical Hollywood narrative
Todorov explored a range of critical perspectives in addition to his observations on equilibrium. Perhaps the most important of all are his writings on genre, particularly the horror film, and his notion of classical Hollywood Narrative.
Historically and indeed now, Hollywood (literally films produced in Hollywood, Los Angeles, though broadly this term is used to refer to all mainstream US cinema) is produced in a highly standardised manner, like in a factory. The credits for each film will present the same roles and occupations again and again, and there is a very clear process of pre-production, production and post production.
This factory style standardisation extends to the narratives of Hollywood films. Films are a product, and are made to make money in the most efficient way possible. Therefore, they need to be understood by as broad an audience as possible. Ideally the audience should be able to understand a film without even having to think about it at all!
When reading the following, remember: a narrative is not a ‘story’, but rather ‘the way in which a story is told’.
The following are some examples of classical Hollywood narrative:
- Events always occur in chronological order. Where they do not (for example a flashback), this is clearly signposted
- A clear resolution at the end of the film
- All hermeneutic codes will be resolved by the end of the film
- Follows a standard three act structure, where a problem is introduced and always dealt with by the end of the film
- Transparent and easy to understand editing: for example when a character leaves the shot to the right of the screen, they will emerge on the left side of the next shot. Also: heavy use of shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule
- The film will never break the fourth wall, and characters in the film do not know that they are in a film
- Diegesis of sound and vision is clear to the audience
- All audience members will leave the cinema with a clear knowledge of what happened
B16 - Naomi Wolf - The beauty myth
What makes somebody beautiful? Watch any mainstream Hollywood film, TV show or pop music video and the answer seems very clear. Taking women as an example, a stereotypical assumption is reinforced time and time again that in order to be attractive, a character must be tall, thin, and more often than not, white. These hegemonically constructed norms are not only reinforced by mainstream media, but also presented as a goal to achieve by producers and audiences alike.
Naomi Wolfe suggests that the media presents unrealistic expectations of female beauty as a form of cultural hegemonic control. If a woman does not live up to these standards, then she is deemed unworthy and less important in a strongly regimented hierarchical society.
In films and other media, women who fit these stereotypical standards of beauty are far more likely to occupy the role of the main character. The ‘TV ugly’ women are far more likely to occupy the role of sidekick or comic relief. This once more reinforces a carefully cultivated notion that only stereotypically attractive women are of worth in a hierarchical patriarchal society.
B17 - Laura Mulvey - The male gaze
Studying a range of films, Mulvey concluded that the 'gaze' or the 'look' of the audience was consistently assumed to be male and heterosexual.
Therefore the primary function of any female character on screen was to be looked at by a heterosexual male audience.
Ultimately this means that (mainstream) cinema completely overlooks a range of potential audiences, including LGBT audiences and heterosexual women. In each case, the audience must watch the film not through their own lived experiences, but through the perceived experiences of an assumed heterosexual male.
While this may be the norm, there are media products that challenge this notion. Magic Mike (2012) presents intensely sexualised representations of men for an intended heterosexual female audience. The anime Yuri On Ice! (2016) presents an often explicitly homoerotic subversion of the male gaze for a predominantly heterosexual female audience as well as a secondary gay male audience.
B18 - Manuel Alvarado - Racial stereotypes
Alvarado suggested that when ethnic minority groups are represented in media products, they invariably fall in to one of four categories:
Exotic - the character is represented as being different and/or or sexually attractive because of their ethnic minority status. Sexualised representations of black or Latino women will often focus on breasts and buttocks while sexualised representations of East Asian women will emphasise stereotypically eroticised and desirable personality traits such as subservience, grace and being physically fragile. For example, compare the overtly sexualised representation of Nikki Minaj in the video to Anaconda to the far more subtle representation of Taylor Swift in the video to Look What You Made Me Do.
Dangerous - The character is represented as being threatening and different from non-ethnic minority characters. The character will often end up scaring white characters, and may be physically imposing. Examples of the dangerous archetype include many James Bond villains, and gangsta rap icons like 2Pac and Ice Cube.
Humorous - the character is represented as being funny and ridiculous. Humorous ethnic minority stereotypes are often but not always a sidekick or supporting character. Examples include Chris Tucker (in everything), Apu in The Simpsons and Harold Patel in Harold and Kumar Get The Munchies.
Pitied – the character is represented as being weak, feeble, and in need of assistance… and usually the assistance of a white person. The classic example of this is the representation of African people in charity adverts, often crying directly into the camera, coupled with a voiceover directly imploring the (white) audience to give them money.
It is worth mentioning in every instance, the ethnic minority has been 'othered', or made 'different' from the assumed white main characters. This process of seeing one ethnic group as being superior or more worthy of screen time is known as ethnocentrism.
B19 - John Berger - Ways of Seeing
John Berger suggested in his (highly recommended) book Ways of Seeing that men and women take on radically different roles in media products. While men are represented as active, able and important, women generally do not influence the narrative, and appear only to appeal to a heterosexual male audience.
Berger traces this tendency to the fact that art was an expensive status symbol, demonstrating the cultural capital of the individual that owned it. This individual was predominantly ruling class and male.
Berger’s notion can be best summed up by his statement: “men act, women appear”. This suggests that while male characters take an active role in media products, female characters and representations conversely take a passive(and potentially sexualised) one.
B20 - Ariel Levy - Female chauvinist pigs
It is common to see sexualised and objectified images of women in media products as diverse as music videos, billboards and internet banner adverts. For feminist critics, these images represent evidence of patriarchal hegemony, and an insidious and consistent hegemonic assumption that a woman’s value is rooted in her sexual attractiveness.
However, another common discourse is that it is possible to ‘own’ this representation. Women of course have the right to dress and do as they please, and by sexualising themselves they are taking control of this patriarchal assumption held about women.
Ariel Levy criticises and attempts to debunk this idea. A ‘male chauvinist (pig) believes that men are superior to women. For Levy, when a pop star such as Beyoncé chooses to dress in sexually revealing clothes and dances in sexually provocative ways, she is not ‘liberating’ herself, but instead becoming a tool of the patriarchy, and is buying into and actually reinforcing the very culture that she is outwardly seeking to challenge. While Beyoncé may well be ‘owning’ her sexuality, she is still reinforcing hegemonic patriarchal norms and values that lead to women and girls being suppressed and looked down on in society.
B21 - George Gerbner - Symbolic annihilation
You will have explored positive representation, and you will be able to give examples of negative representation. Sometimes you will see examples of stereotypical representations, and occasionally you may see examples of tokenism. But what if a group of people is missing entirely? Is it significant if a media product completely lacks any black people, for example?
George Gerbner (who is an essential theorist who explored the cultivation of hegemonic ideology in mass media audiences) also explored issues of representation. Many media products completely exclude certain groups of people. Gerbner referred to this as symbolic annihilation, insinuating it is almost like the missing group has been completely destroyed by the producer!
Gerber split this annihilation into three distinct categories: omission, trivialisation or condemnation.
Consider Friends, which is a sitcom set in the ethnically diverse Manhattan island, in New York City. However the six principal characters in Friends are all white, and very rarely do they encounter ethnic minorities (exceptions include Ross's girlfriend Julie in season 2, and Ross's girlfriend Charlie in season 10). This is an example of both omission (as ethnic minority characters are largely absent from the show) but also trivialisation, and ethnic minority characters in Friends always play minor roles. Julie is a plot device to make Rachel jealous of Ross. Charlie is a plot device to get Joey and Ross to fight over her.
Why is this a big deal? Because representation constructs reality. Our perceptions of different groups, issues and events are cultivated through the negotiation of media products. Through the annihilation through omission, or through the trivialisation of ethnic minority figures, they do not feature in public discourse at all. See also Manuel Alvarado's ethnic stereotypes for more examples of trivialisation.
B22 – Valerie Solanas – the SCUM Manifesto
Spend some time on the internet, and you are likely to encounter anti-feminist sentiments. A popular belief is that feminism is a sinister force for change, seeking to destroy men and completely change the fabric of society. These claims are, of course, ridiculous, and in its various forms, feminism is a way of achieving equality between the sexes. Liesbet Van Zoonen and bell hooks both suggest that in actuality, the negative ways that women are presented in the media in fact also have a significant negative impact on men in society. Put simply, men can rest in peace: feminists are not out to get anyone.
However, an exception that proves the rule is the fascinating SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas. This short pamphlet argues that men are inherently disgusting and subhuman, and should be murdered and eradicated by a violent uprising of women. It’s a fascinating, well-written and completely OTT argument that many have subsequently read as satire, and provides an interesting counterpoint to much wholly theoretical writing.
B23 - Adam Curtis - HyperNormalisation
In his mind-blowing 2016 Hypernormalisation, documentary maker Adam Curtis argues that thanks to the horrors of living in the late 20th and 21st century, people have retracted from living in the real world and instead live in a fake world, constructed by governments and multinational media conglomerates.
Curtis outlines the ways that audiences are not only manipulated by governments and multinational conglomerates, but are also pushed into a deliberate state of confusion and despair. Audiences are left too bewildered by the state of the world to fight back, and accept the new normal.
The documentary has many references to postmodern and Marxist theory, and, like all Adam Curtis documentaries, is both excellently researched, absolutely beautiful to watch and utterly, utterly depressing.
