Are you an A-level beauty? Exploring the cultivation of hegemonic beauty standards and analysisng audience response in Woman magazine

 For this activity, you will be analyzing the encoding of representation in a double page spread. You will also be considering how this double page spread appeals to it's audiences. 

Article

Questions

1. From this article's perspective, what is the purpose of wearing makeup?
2. What is the preferred reading of this article? How are audience expected to respond to it?
3. What is a negotiated reading of this article? What is an oppositional reading? How might audiences react negatively to this article?
4. To what extent does this article represent the views and ideologies of the time in which it was made?
5. How can audiences use this article to demonstrate their own identity? 
6. What symbolic connotations does the lexis of the term 'tactics' raise for the target audience?
7. In what ways does this article reinforce patriarchal hegemonic standards, and for what purpose?
8. What are the connotations of the term 'A-level'? Who typically takes A-levels? What is the target demographic of this magazine?
9. What ideologies are cultivated by this article? What ideologies does it reinforce?
10. How does this article ensure the financial success of the magazine? This is a front page story: why would someone want to pay money to read this??

Below is an example of how you could present your answers, from students who did a similar task last year:

Mix and match - A-level media studies work for 10-12th February

 From 10-12th February  2021, your teachers will be interviewing current year 11 students. Here's some stuff you could be getting up to during this time!

1 - Careers focused research and planning

Depending on whether you are in first year or second year, now might be a good time to consider potential career paths. You can use this time to research:

• Job opportunities
• Apprenticeships
• University courses
• FE courses

2 - Completing past paper questions

You can find almost every past paper question ever set by clicking here.

You can also make your own questions by finding the revision guide, and picking out an entry from the revision checklist at random

Remember to send me any answers you complete, so I can give you a bit of feedback!

3 - Immersing yourself in media

P block were tasked with recommending you guys easily available media to check out. Remember, the more media you read/watch/play, the better you get at media studies, so this is serious stuff!

Film

• Inception
• Hitch
• Babyteeth,
• la haine
• zodiac
• Gladiator
• shutter island
• seven
• Just Go With It
• the kings of summer
• Kinky Boots
• just like heaven
• Booksmart
• the babysitter
• Pretty Woman and A Star is Born
• Pulp fiction
• mean girls
• central intelligence

Music

• rex orange county
• lemon demon
• Noel Gallagher
• Red Hot Chilli Peppers
• Kaiser Chiefs
• The Wombats
• UMI
• Celeste
• Lolo zouai 
• Mahalia
• gorillaz
• Tyler the creator
• mother mother
• sza
• doja cat
• two door cinema club
• Kanye west
• Khalid
• Mac miller, Kendrick Lamar and joji
• Weezer
• Nao
• Linkin park
• blink 182
• the offspring
• box car racer
• greenday
• good Charlotte
• nirvana
• foo fighters
• smashing pumpkins
• Radiohead
• the killers
• the network
• rage against the machine
• nofx
• bad religion
• pixies
• stray kids
• mint royale
• Halestorm

Podcasts

• JAKE BUGG
• DAVID DOBRIK
• "The Girls Bathroom" 
• "Growing Up and Sometimes Down"
• sawbones
• 'get real' - dive studios
• The gurls talk podcast
• I weigh with jameela jamil,
• Private parts - Jamie Laing and Francis Boulle
• joe rogan
• Stephen tried

TV

• Peaky blinders
• wandavision
• Can't Get Get You Out Of My Head (BBC)
• on my block
• The Mandalorian
• Criminal Minds
• Musicals: The Greatest Show
• The Office (obviously the American one)
• Killing Eve
• Narcos
• The Queens Gambit
• Breaking Bad
• High School Musical
• Timless
• Peaky Blinders
• I am a Killer
• Hamilton
• When They See Us
• The OA
• Hannibal
• Stranger Things
• Skins
• Modern Family 
• Euphoria
• Game Of Thrones
• One Tree Hill
• Ackley Bridge
• American Murder
• The Inbetweeners
• How To Get Away With Murder
  
  

4 - Find your next favorite podcast

Podcasts are digitally produced, digitally achieved audio recordings, similar to broadcast radio, but often with much lower production values. Podcasts are free from the financial constraints that affect many media products, and can often cover a wide and challenging range of conventions and genres. 

Think of something you are genuinely interested in, and Google this interest followed by the word podcast. There are podcasts on absolutely everything, from true crime to retro videogames, from learning languages to music production. It's totally up to you what you check out, and you may find your next favorite podcast!

5 - Go for a really long walk

This might sound stupid, but one of the only things you can do now is go for a long walk. As long as you start and end in the same location, and as long as you don't go near anyone. It's fascinating to spend this time really getting to know where you live. You can combine this with 4 (listening to a podcast) and 6 (taking pictures)

6 - Start a photography blog

Photography is the basis of many media products, and a confident understanding of it can help you expand and develop your design skills. So why not start taking it seriously? Starting a blog means that people will judge your photography, and you need to make sure that you present it to the highest possible standard, and it will allow you to form a scrapbook of what works (and what doesn't work). Here's my photography blog if you want some inspiration!

A highly selective selection of sexist American print adverts from around the 1960's

While all of these adverts definitely existed, there are a number of things that every good media student must consider. For a start, representations are a reconstruction of reality, and by Googling 'sexist 1960's adverts" and selecting a bunch of conversation starters myself, I have reconstructed reality, and am quite frankly trying to provoke a response from my intended audience (you lot). Secondly, as we have learned, audiences are not huge, stupid masses, and we have learned that many contemporary (i.e 60's) audiences would have rejected the dominant ideological message encoded in these adverts. Thirdly, while these messages were not acceptable then and are not acceptable now, there is also a strong possibility that these adverts were meant to be read polysemically, rather than at face value, perhaps as dark humor, and were almost certainly meant to be deliberately controversial, rather than just a simple demonstration of fact. Still not acceptable, but perhaps 

With this in mind, take a look at this highly selective selection of sexist American print adverts from around the 1960's and comment on the following:

What stereotypes about women are encoded in these adverts?

Stuart Hall suggested that stereotypes serve many functions. What functions do stereotypes serve here?

Special lesson: analyzing the Crème Puff by Max Factor advertisement

Main task: detailed analysis -  Crème Puff by Max Factor

Creme Puff by Max Factor is a brand of concealer that was popular in the 1960's and is still sold today. I'm certainly not an expert in makeup, but concealer covers up spots, pores and flaws, and is commonly worn by women.

Advertising is essential to the production of magazines, and a significant proportion of a magazine's revenue comes from selling advertising space. Magazines with specific, large audiences like Woman can charge significantly more for advertising space, as the producers can guarantee the ad will be seen by the kind of person who may buy the product! A full page advert in a weekly woman's magazine is therefore very expensive indeed, and will be pulling out all the stops to target, address and involve the female target audience.

Each of these mini questions corresponds to a media concept or theory, so this is a great way to revise theory and media concepts. Just read the explainer, then answer the question. At least two sentences per question. Yeah!

Task: read the following revision prompts, and then answer the following questions in no less than two sentences each

Audience positioning is where the audience are placed in a media product, using techniques such as mise-en-scene and shot types. Are we near or are we far? Who are we positioned with? And what does this mean?

Q1 - How are the target audience positioned in this scene? Make reference to media language

Modes of address refers to how a media product 'speaks' to it's audience. But this 'speaking' doesn't have to be verbal or through text! For example, a film targeting a mass market male audience may use stereotypical elements of mise-en-scene such guns, knives, explosions and Tom Hardy looking grumpy to speak to men...

Q2 - In what ways does this advert use mise-en-scene to address it's target audience?

Van Zoonen argues that media language is used to construct male and female representations in different ways in media products

Q3 - Check out the textual analysis toolkit (this should always be open anyway!) nd note at least three ways that men and women are represented differently in this advert. It's like Spot The Difference but you're 17...

Van-Zoonen also argues women’s bodies are used in media products as a spectacle for heterosexual male audiences, which reinforces patriarchal hegemony. Patriarchal hegemony, simply put, is the hegemonic expectations of women in society as reinforced by men who occupy power

Q4 - In what ways can it be argued that this advert encodes ideologies of patriarchal hegemony? How do you know? And why is this important?

The intradiegetic gaze refers to how a diegetic character looks at another diegetic character. (Diegetic literally means 'in the world of the narrative, so it's any element which exists 'in the story'). So that guy, looking at that woman? That's intradiegetic gaze. Easy!*

Q5 - How does the use of intradiegetic gaze reinforce certain representations of women?

Lexis refers to the choice of written or spoken language

Q6 - "Frantically rushing to meet that exciting someone? Dashing out on an important date?" Explore how the lexis of these two sentences reinforces certain stereotypes about women

*You, the audience looking at the woman could be referred to as extradiegetic gaze, the male gaze (if you identify as male) or even just the gaze!

 Extension: "They're like snow-capped volcanoes"

Liesbet Van-Zoonen argues that  gender and our expectations of gender is constructed through codes and conventions of media products. This could be through the selection of image, the shot type, costume, camera angle, anchorage of mise-en-scene, or any other contributing factor. Crucially, she also argues the idea of what is male and what is female changes over time. This interview with the then famous, now legendary film director Alfred Hitchcock is an excellent demonstration of the ideological representation of women, and allows us to explore the sociohistorical context that Woman was published in.

Task: Refamiliarize yourself with the Alfred Hitchcock interview, and answer the following questions in as much detail as possible

If you already have notes answering a particular question, i.e if you've already discussed it in class, you can safely skip it!

1. Read the Alfred Hitchcock article and make notes on content, ideology and lexis. Make sure to pick out several (at least three) example sentences that you can ultimately quote in the exam!
2. Analyze two of the images included in this article. Consider shot type, costume, and especially the anchorage provided by the lexis of the captions. What ideological perspectives are being constructed?
3. How does this interview reflect the representation of women in 1964? How does it differ from how women are represented in 2018?
4. In what ways does this article confirm patriarchal hegemonic ideologies relating to women?
5. Research Alfred Hitchcock, particularly accusations made about him by the actor Tippi Hedren. Discuss your findings.

Special lesson: how does the BBC fulfil it's remit as a PBS broadcaster?

1 - Analyzing LNWH - Power and profit

Curran and Seaton argue that all media products are motivated by profit and power. So far from what we have heard of LNWH, this doesn't seem right. The programme targets a very niche audience, and so far we have listened to episodes which discuss putting on makeup on the bus, vaginas and the merits of pockets. It is clear that LNWH will never appeal to a mass audience, but perhaps that's the point. The BBC is a PBS, and has no need to 'make money' in the same ways as other industries, but it does need to be accessible!

Task 1: Analyze the Late Night Woman's Hour homepage, listen to a clip, and answer the questions below.

• In what ways does this page appeal to it's audience?
• In what ways could this page attract new audiences?
• Pick and listen to a clip from LNWH. They're organized in to around ten minute clips, rather than full archived episodes. Why?

2 - How do the BBC meet the needs of a diverse audience

The BBC is different from many other media organizations, as it is a public broadcasting service or PBS. The BBC is funded directly by the British public in the form of a license fee. In return, the BBC has many obligations that it's competitors do not have. For example, the BBC must

• Produce and broadcast a certain amount of high quality news on each of it's channels every day
• Cannot rely on spot adverts/commercial breaks for revenue streams
• Has a remit to 'inform, educate and entertain' (check out this documentary for more details on the history of the BBC and its remit!)
• Create and broadcast original programming which appeals to a diverse range of British audiences

The homepage for BBC radio services, here rebranded as 'BBC Sounds' meets the needs of it's
audiences through it's well designed and logically laid out structure. Each station has
a completely different brand identity, and broadly targets a different audience demographic.
Additionally there are many opportunities for audiences to pick and mix their identity,
for example from choosing between the mainstream BBC Radio One
and the more niche and middle-class BBC Radio Four

Task 2: pick one show from the many, many different offerings on BBC Sounds, listen to it, and answer the following questions.

 Don't pick one instantly, take your time, and genuinely ick something that really interests you. You may be surprised at what stuff you can find! You may chose from a live show, a podcast, an excerpt or anything else. It's all valid, and is an excellent example of the variety available to the BBC's fragmented and diverse audiences. Just don't pick Woman's Hour...

Analyze your show under the following prompts. Yes, ALL OF THEM. This will take some time!

Audience prompts

• How are audience grouped and categorised for this show? Think age, gender, class, lifestyle, cultural capital…
• How does this show attract/target it’s audiences? 
• How can audiences interpret this show in different ways?
• How does this show use technology to target a specialised/niche/cult audience?
• In what ways can audiences use this show, and how does this reflect their identity and cultural capital?
• Reception, fandom and the end of audience: theoretical approaches

Industry prompts

• How is this show produced, distributed and circulated, and by who?
• In what ways does radio use specialised forms of production, distribution and circulation?
• How have recent technological changes in radio changed production, distribution and circulation?
• What economic factors may have affected this show? How financially successful do you think it was? Was it made commercially or not for profit?
• How have new digital technologies affected how this show is regulated?
• Power and regulation: theoretical approaches

 Extension - The end of audience

If you found yourself completing the above quickly, then find a podcast (any podcast!) by googling something you are interested followed by the word 'podcast'. Have a listen. That's it! We'll be thinking about podcasts next week!

Wider reading: the history of the BBC and the birth of television

In order to supplement your wider reading and your knowledge and understanding of both the television industry in general and the BB in particular, check out this excellent documentary. Perfect for contextual information on the BBC for the radio question!

Alexandra Palace was pivotal in the earliest BBC broadcasts

Late Night Women's Hour: initial analysis

Before we start...

Who are these guys, and why should we care?*

Stuart Hall – reception theory 

Henry Jenkins - Fandom

Clay Shirky – the end of audience

 Initial analysis 

In order to listen to radio on BBC sounds, you will need to make an account (if you haven't done so already!)

Late Night Women's Hour is broadcast on BBC Radio 4, with previous episodes and edited highlights also available to download or stream from the BBC Sounds website. In what ways does this distribution model allow the show to target multiple audiences?

Late Night Woman's Hour is an occasional and irregular spin-off of the long-running magazine show Woman's Hour. Broadcast late at night, it's content can, at times be considered more niche, edgy or more potentially controversial than the main broadcast.

Each episode focusses on a particular theme relevant to it's female target audience.

For our study, there is no 'set episode', though we will be listening to a variety of clips from the show.

Click here to listen to a 13 minute excerpt of the show. You can either stream or download this content, but remember youwill need to sign up to BBC Sounds first!

Questions for discussion

• Being as specific as possible, who is the target audience for this show?
• How does this episode use lexis to appeal to its target audience?
• Analyse this episode's modes of address
• Stuart Hall suggests that audiences can negotiate the ideological perspective of any media product. What might the preferred and oppositional readings of this show be?
• Would you listen to this show? Explain your answer

*Because you should be referring to them in your written responses, obviously. But why else? How can these theorists help us to make sense of the world around us?

Using Gauntlet to analyse the 'Present For Your Kitchen' spread

Define the following terms in the most simple and straightforward way possible

IDEOLOGY

HEGEMONY

ANCHORAGE

Audiences are not passive, and media products  allow the audience to construct their own identities

By way of example, what subcultures exist around

• Genres of music
• Certain genres of TV show (eg sci-fi)
• Certain genres of videogame (eg MMORPGs?)

One theory that can be attributed to Gauntlet is often referred to as the ‘pick and mix’ theory. Simply put, audiences can pick and mix which ideologies suit them, and completely ignore the elements of the product which they do not agree with. This assumes audiences and their interactions with media products are far more complicated and nuanced than previously thought

Click here to access the analysis task