Media Representations are complex not simple and straightforward. how far do you agree with this statement in relation to the collective group that you have studied?

Media Representations are complex not simple and straightforward. how far do you agree with this statement in relation to the collective group that you have studied?

We have looked at how men are represented in media, and we have done that by looking at three different genres of media products, that were: "The Night Manager" movie based on a book by John Le Carre published in 1993, "Men's Health Magazine" and "Deadpool" the movie based on Marvel's comic book series first published in 1991.

On one hand, media representations are complex. not simple and straightforward to a large extent  to relation of men.  This is being shown through





On the other hand the media representation of men are complex not simple and straightforward to a small extent only.
Eisend & Möller (2007) discuss how media can have an immediate effect on one's perceptions of social reality. By viewing beautiful models in advertising campaigns, women reported lower body satisfaction, a temporary rise in comparison standards toward physical attractiveness, and an enhanced belief regarding the importance of attractiveness (Eisend & Möller, 2007). The constant pressure for men to be the "beackbone", the provider, the dominant alpha male, the protector is being highlighted through different forms of media such as The Mens' Health magazine.
The Mens' Health magazine first launched and published in 1987 influencing over 200 000people as their readership, which takes up 47%, almost half of the their market.
Men's Health magazine isa great example to show that media representation is more simple than complex. This is because throughout the history and their first launch their magazine cover contains very similar features. We can always see a men on the magazine cover who is stereotypically accepted as a real men, with a great haircut, perfectly groomed, with a fit body with high muscle definition a

On the other hand media representation are more complex that we think. Hypodermic needle theory states that the audience is passive and the media injects ideas and beliefs into their mind through different platforms of media. For example in the Night Manager the stereotypical representation of men are being presented by our main hero who is intelligent, fit, and has a lot of attention from the ladies. This uses the hypodermic needle theory to create a deffinition of how a men should behave or look like. However the reception theory states that the audience could react to a particular impulse in three ways, and their opinion could be oppositional, negotiated, or dominant, due to the fact the people are more intelligent now. Therefore complex media representations through different platforms of media can be understood.
Further more the reason why representation of men are complex is because throughout different media platforms,men are represented in different ways. In the Night Manager, we have a regular person becoming an international agent, using mind and physical power to overcome difficulties.
In the movie Deadpool, our hero becomes a superhero, by getting regenerating and healing powers, however his attitude and behavior does not reflect to a stereotypical alpha male due to the fact that he jokes a lot, and does not take anything seriously.

By using the two step flow theory, media uses opinion leaders and to create views thatare passed onto the audience, that could create a contrast and complex representation of a certain group, in this case men, when raising a contrast how men are represented in the movie Deadpool, or the TV drama The Night Manager.

In your experience, detail how the post production of your media products developed your creative skills

During my AS media course I have created a hip-hop magazine cover, its content page and a doubple page spread. During the post production I had to develop creative skills that were related to image making and the use of Photoshop. Throughout my A2 media studies course I have created a digipak and a music video clip that required me to develop my creative skills even further and develop a different point of view to complete the task, that was different to last year's course because it included a video to be created too.

During my AS media course my creative skills were limited, especially at the very beginning of the course when creating the ancillary task. However during after researching methods and ways to improve my content and my creative product I have managed to develop creative skills that i have highly used during the post production, more specifically during the editing of the magazine products on Photoshop. At the very beginning I have tried to follow a specific already existing look of the magazine cover Vibe, featuring Eminem, however as my creative skills developed over time in photoshop, I have expanded my knowledge about layering and different tools, therefore I have managed to use different methods to create a professional and aesthetically pleasing look to my magazine products. I have used tool such as the liquefying tool, in able to increase the size of the muscles of the model that I had, in able to make him more athletic and appeal to my target audience to a larger extent. Further more the brush tool has been a very important feature that shows development of my creative skills. This is because at very first i used the magic wand or the quick selection tool to selectareas that i wanted to remove or adjust, however by creating a layer mask on my image I have used the brushes that allowed me to remove part within the image which was very useful. This is because by doing this I have managed to place the masthead of the magazine just behind the model which before i could have not done, therefore it was placed on the very top of the magazine. This shows that my creative skills have developed to a large extent during the post production of my media products.

During my A2 media course I have had different challenges to face due to the fact that I had to create two different media products, a digipak that included me working with images, and a music video clip that required me to work with moving images (video).
My creative skills have developed to a very large extent throughout my A2 media course, because I needed to take colour co-ordination, house theme, and mood in all my media products in able to create a unified look that appeal to my target audience in the same way.
In able to create my music video clip, I have used Sony Vegas pro 13 as an editing software. Since I was familiar with the programme, knew the basic moves and editing tools, such as cuts, fades, and how to control the phase of the footage, however the special effects and colour gradings required me to look up tutorials. I have used youtube to look up these tutorials, which allowedme to learn special effects such as reverse, black flash, white flash, glitch effect, time freeze. Further more in able to apply all these effects to my music video,  I needed to make sure that the effects are within the right place at the right time within my media product. For this i have used my own creativity, to listen to non diegetic sounds, pauses etc. This was a task that allowed me to develop my creative skills, and diversify them to consider factors such as image, motion , video and sound at the very same time.
For example within the music video there is a part when the artist says "WHat ya mean aha?" and the the writing appears on the screen  on the time when the lyric is being said. which shows that i have considered encoding and decoding and different ways to communicate with my target audience through different ways, using my creative skills in post production.
Further more i have created a black studio background look by increasing the contrast at my footages that i have recorded with a black background, which was a new effect that i have created in attempt to create professional look to my footages. This specific effect has not been done by me before especially within video, therefore it has been a successful way of me developing my skills within the post production stages.

Overall the post production of my media products have helped me to develop a set of creative skills in a large variety of media products ranging, from music, photo, video, which has been supported by youtube video tutorials and my own imagination and views.

Hutcheon's publications reflect an interest in aesthetic micro-practices such as irony. Hutcheon has also authored texts which synthesize and contextualize these practices with regard to broader debates about postmodernism. postmodern subjects have access, and analyses present capitalist cultural production in terms of a dehistoricized spatial pastiche, Hutcheon highlights the ways in which postmodern modalities actually aid in the process of critique.
Specifically, Hutcheon suggests that postmodernism works through parody to "both legitimize and subvert that which it parodies" (Politics, 101). "Through a double process of installing and ironizing, parody signals how present representations come from past ones and what ideological consequences derive from both continuity and difference"

How is identity of one or more groups of people affected by media representations?

How is identity of one or more groups of people affected by media representations ?

Throughout our course we have looked at how men are being represented.
Representation means the thinking about how a particular person or group of people are being presented to the audience. Identity could change to a large extent due to different media representations. This could be called cultural hegemony, which means, In marxist philosophy cultural hegemony is the domination of culturally diverse society by the ruling class who manipulate the culture of a specific society. This includes beliefs, explanations, perceptions and values.The so called "ruling class" has been taken over by the media and its power to influence people. The media uses cultural hegemony to create a culturally accepted norm that is universal and at the same time it is a dominant ideology. This justifies social, political and economic status and at the same time it influences the construction of identity to a very high extent.

However due to the high tempo of changes in our culture,cultural hegemony is not so applicable when we are looking at how identity of men are affected by media representations. Cultural hegemony has been taken over by the power of representation of media. Due to the large platform of it such as newspaper, TV, radio, Film, media highly influences how men are represented within our cultural circle.

We have looked at three particular case studies which I am going to use as examples and comparisons to raise arguments and present the idea of men within different areas of media. These case study includes Men's Health magazine, The Night Manager TV drama, and Deadpool the movie.Deadpool the movie is based on a MARVEL comic that came out in 1969for the first time. It is about a man who has cancer and goes through some chemical weapon program that genetically mutates him, which will allow him to heal from anything, however it ruins his skin and look, he becomes "ugly".  The movie follows the comic's conventions however it sets it around a love story between our superhero Deadpool and his lover. The movie is also based on the Cinderella theory which follows the conventions of the girl gets stolen or hurt by the evil and the man saves her. This empowers him and shows him very masculine. An example for this would be when he goes to save her and the camera is slowly pans across the location with Deadpool in the focus from a lower angle, then we see a shot double shot of him and his girlfriend before the fight with AJAX, the villain 

Further more we have looked at "The Night Manager" TV drama what is based on the book written by John Le Carre. The story is about a night manager that work in a hotel and becomes a british spy to track down a rich guy who is creating nuclear bombs for living. His identity changes throughout the TV drama, where we can see him train and behave differently by the day. An example for this would be when we can see a long shot of our main character running outside half naked, and training his body, which shows physical fitness and strength, this represent men as powerful, dominant and fit. This could be applied to the hypodermic needle theory, this is because it injects the information or the message to the audience's head that men has to be physically fit and strong and they needto train regularly.



Discuss the different ways that men have been represented in Deadpool and one other text we have studied!

Discuss the different ways that men have been represented in Deadpool and one other text we have studied!

The representation of men in Deadpool is being portrayed in unique ways, due to the fact that the story of it is based on a very unusual comic book. Deadpool is a comic book series that has been created by Marvel, and its first book has been issued in 1969. The main character is Deadpool, "Wayne" who has taken part in a genetic altering programme that gave him his special abilities to heal from every wound or attack.

The movie has been based on the comic book however, there was some changes in the story line in able to appeal to a larger target market. The movie is based around the Cinderella theory, which according to the woman gets stolen or hurt by the villain and the hero man comes along and saves her. This is a hegemonical stereotype, due to the fact that men is being represented as the powerful hero who is willing to do anything to get to his end goal. Hegemony  is the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class who manipulate the culture of that society—the beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values, and mores—so that their imposed, ruling-class worldview becomes the accepted cultural norm. Of course due to the cultural changes within our society cultural domination of the ruling class does not manipulate us to such a high extent, however it is the media that highly influential in this case, and they represent man in a way that it becomes an expectation.
Another great example for this would be Men's Health magazine, that has fit, muscular, high status men on the main cover.

In Deadpool we can see a large variety of representations of men being shown through different characters, Such as Deadpool, the joker personality that does not take anything seriously, kind of childish. This is being shown through the fact that he is swinging his legs while he is drawing a picture before he is going to kill bad guys. Further more he is breaking the fourth wall, which is a very unique way of communicating with the audience. This uses direct mode of address through talking instead of encodes, signifiers and different technical uses of media.
Further more another character called Colossus, who has a bigger amount of muscle mass, with a different dominant behaviour, which is a different representation of men. His power is also being shown through that he is tall and muscular, and the camera angles are pointing at him from a lower angle to show dominance and power.
Also Ajax the villain is represented with a cool, calm, relaxed manner with similar physical powers as our hero Deadpool, which shows a contrast in their behaviour and their representation of men. A particular example would be when they are fighting half naked within the labour place, showing off their powers and bodies. This could be related to Laura Mulvey;s theory Male gaze.

Explain the role played by the media in the construction of identity."


Media has a significant role in the construction of identity. Identity means the fact of being who or what a person or thing is. The reason why media has such a significant role of how society looks at or constructs identity could be because cultural hegemony. In marxist philosophy cultural hegemony is the domination of culturally diverse society by the ruling class who manipulate the culture of a specific society. This includes beliefs, explanations, perceptions and values. To our generation, generation Y and Z who were born after the 80's this isn't necessarily the case. The so called "ruling class" has been taken over by the media and its power to influence people. The media uses cultural hegemony to create a culturally accepted norm that is universal and at the same time it is a dominant ideology. This justifies social, political and economic status and at the same time it influences the construction of identity to a very high extent.

Throughout our course we have looked at the representation and identity of men. We have used various case studies such as Mens health magazine, Deadpool (the movie), and "The Night Manager" which is a British TV drama. This allowed me to have a widen understanding of mens' identity in different platform of media, such as paper format and film, which all have different features, tools and way to create representative values to support the construction of men's identity.

The Mens' health is an international magazine that has been first launched in 1995, and ever since then they have been expanding their business, and with the use of digital technology they have become more digital by involving synnergetic works with mobile phone apps, tablets, desktops, at the same time they create events, news letters etc. The majority of their target audience is 18-44 year old men with over 1 million subscriptions. They talk about a lot of diverse topics however their main categories are, fashion, cars, grooming, fitness, watches, supplements.
This shows an example for cultural hegamony and how media affects the construction oft he identity of men. This is because the magazine talks and creates a lot of norms and ideas how an ideal man should look like, smell like, act like, and dress like. This is also shown through the front pages and magazine covers they use, because we can see muscular models, or film stars that are all successful, and have a great physique. This almost like injects the information into the audience's brain that almost become a fact to them.
This relates to the hypodermic needle theory that states mass media is very powerful and it injects information to a passive audience and therefore changes their beliefs and opinion about a product, service or in this case about the idea of men's identity.

A different however relative theory by George Gerbner is the cultivation theory that states that the media is re-enforcing the already existing opinion of the audience. This means audiences tend to watch or read media platforms that back up their own opinion. For example the men's health magazine states that a real man should have under 10 percent body fat and they should be muscular, the readers read that particular article or section because they already agree with it and it could be a sort of entertainment or find their own identity throughout that media message. This also bring us to the uses of gratification

However there are ways that media does not influence the construction of the identy to such a large extent. This is because ofthe diversity of our generation that still includes generation X, and due to the cultural and educational differences.
The reception theory suggest that the audience is not only passive and take in the information that the mass media sends towards them, but they react to it in a certain way. The three ways to react according to the theory are; opositional that does not agree with the message media sends, negotiated, that has a nautral opinion about the message; and dominant that agrees with it.

"The Night Manager" is a TV drama based on a book by Jogn le Carre published in 1993. It is about an ordinary night manager that gets involved with the law enforcement and becomes a succesful spy. Throughout his transformation we can see how his identity and personality change in a way that it confirms the hegemoical stereotype created by media, such as aggression, physical power, appearance. It is up to the audience to decide how they want tounderstand the message and link it to his status, identity or the job he needs to do. At the same time we can also see the hegamonical stereotypes being represented as we see the contrast between man and women, how physical appearance and behavior is important throughout the TV drama. We can see use of "female Gaze" (Laura Mulvey's ) theory applied to appeal to a men target audience which could be a way media influences the construction of male identity to create an ideal women to be attracted to.

Overall media plays a significant role in the construction of male identity through different platforms of media, using hegemony to influence people's ideology about it, however at the same time as shown through the reception theory there are different non passive audiences as well due to cultural differences that do not agree with a specific way of representing or constructing identity. 

Little bit of homework

Describe the most important post production decisions you made for your different media production and explain why therese decisions were significant. Refer to large range of examples in your answer to show how your skills in post production developed over time.(25)

Throughout my foundation media portfolio I had to create a magazine cover, contents page, and a double page spread as final media products where of course I had to make important post production decisions. My chosen genre was Hip-hop, therefore the post production had to involve important features that I have studied about in my chosen genre that created significant signifiers and link, that relates to it. A successful post production involves a well prepared pre production, or preparation that included the planning of photooshots. After choosing the appropriate images for my media products my post production involved me to use Photoshop as a photo manipulating, editing and processing program.

On my final magazine cover we can see a person covered in tattoos, wearing a hat, a black T-shirt looking straight into the camera. During the post production I have used the liquefy tool on Photoshop in able to increase the shape of my models, muscles. This is because the majority of hip-hop idols have fit bodies and they like to show them of in able to represent themselves powerful, and place them in a high status. Also their body is covered in tattoos, to show authority, cover feelings, and show where they come from, or their beliefs, therefore I have created several tattoo templates in PNG format, using photoshop and applied it onto my models arms, and neck then used a light filter to make it look natural, and then again I have used the liquefy tool in able to make the tattoo follow the shape of my model’s body. At the end of the process I have decreased the opacity of these tattoo templates in able to get a surrealistic look to it.

The post production process did not only include me to manipulate the images of my models but, make important decisions about font types and about colour coordination as well, which I have researched earlier throughout my studies. It led me to understand the aspects of using less than three font types and colours that will not confuse my target audience, or will not create a chaos in balance that could mislead my signifiers that I wanted to re-create.

During the post Production process I have used “dropp shadow” on several writings on my magazine cover contents page and double page spread, this allowed me to create a almost 3D effect within the layers which gave it a more aesthetically pleasing look, while remaining modern and well presented.
A major influence that had a significant impact on my media products were the choice of the background for my double page spread, Which was smoke. I have used a smoke Png template that I have turned into a brush, giving me control over size, opacity, and place which gave the best possible outcome to the representation of my model’s role within the content. I have refined the edges of the background and its content by using a layer mask in able to create a softer background effect and bring my model’s feature and importance out more.
The fonts, the background and the model were highly in balance, and the flow of the double page spread has blended together which successfully re-created a real magazine content page.

Overall my skills have developed to a large extent throughout the post production process, this is because it included me to research about the culture of my genre, and learn about tools how to recreate certain effects by watching videos, and exploring my own creativity. I have learnt a lot about layers within Photoshop, colours, size, brushes,  and different formats and how I can combine my knowledge in able to create a true representation of my imagination, that fits into the task and can create a final media product that is realistically comparable to real ones.

Discuss the impact of global media on culture (50)

Global media allows us to connect, share relate and mobalize across geographic, political, economical, social and cultural divides by using different media platfroms, such as social media, internet, TV, radio, newspaper. This of course has a large impact on culture, which is the ideas, and behaviours for a particular group of people or society.

Global media has a significant impact on culture on the one hand, this is because of the enhanced technology and the lifestyle we live at the moment, which is ruled by people from the generation Y and generation Z which are the people born from 1970’s up until today. This is because technology has influenced our lives in every possible way, therefore media has a larger possibility to get to us. This is being shown through a large variety of available platforms to practise mass communication, that we do not have to go to shops anymore to buy newspapers, we can just check them on our phone, also the internet allows us to connect to our social media accounts where we can interact with news, information and all the mass communication out there.

These impacts could be positive and negative at the same time. It could be positive, which is shown through the gratification theory that is made by Katz and Bumler. They created a theory that states people interact with media in able to get educated, find personal identity, entertainment, social integrative needs. This of course has an influential impact on culture due to the information that the receiver, or the audience receives from the mass communication.

Also media could have a negative effect on culture as well, this is because there is the hypodermic needle theory, that states the audiences are passive, therefore they do not have a oppositional opinion to the information they receive, they just get it “injected into their mind”. This shows that the media has the power to control people which could negatively impact our culture, depending on what area of the world we live in. For example in north Korea there is a limited amount of TV channels available and they are filtered to an extent, which means the information the audience receives is highly influential, which applies to the hypodermic needle theory. Further more the cultivation theory examines the long-term effects of television. The primary proposition of cultivation theory states that the more time people spend living in the television world, the more likely they are to believe social reality portrayed on television. This also shows that mass media could have a large influence on our life and culture.

However on the other hand global media does not have such a big influence on culture, this is because globall mass communication might not be universal, and due to the cultural differences the audience might not agree with the information or the message media sends to the audience, therefore it will not influence them in any way. This is backed up by the reception theory, which states, there are three different types of audiences; negotiated, oppositional, dominant. Negotiated audience is who does not have a particular negative or positive opinion of the information that media provides of a particular content, he or she just accepts it and takes it in as information. Oppositional audience, do not agree with it, and dominant audience strongly agree with the information that mass communication provides to them.

Further more another reason why Global media does not have a great influence on our life is because the information goes past through opinion leaders. This is the two step flow theory that states media uses opinion leaders that pass through information to the rest of the audience.

Overall global media has a significant influence on our culture, this is because it forms opinions, change peoples’ habit, the way they communicate between each other, and this is being supported by the large range of media platforms, such as television, newspaper, radio, and on the largest extent, social media.  Social media allows people to have a universal platform to communicate where cultures could merge together therefore be impacted and impact global media at the same time. Media takes information from our culture and reflects it back to our culture, we as an audience need to decide how we are going to take in the message that they send us by the way we interact and the way we react to it.