representation

1. Representation
What is representation?
What representation theorists can you find?
What representation theories relate to the horror genre?

2. Representation refers to the construction in any
medium (especially the mass media) of aspects
of 'reality' such as people, places, objects,
events, cultural identities and other abstract
concepts. Such representations may be in
speech or writing as well as still or moving
pictures.

3. The Male Gaze – Laura Mulvey – Feminist Theory – Visual
Pleasure and Narrative Cinema – Written in 1975
The cinema apparatus of Hollywood cinema puts the audience in a
masculine subject position with the woman on the screen seen as
an object of desire. Film and cinematography are structures upon
ideas. Protagonists tended to be men. Mulvey suggests two distinct
modes of male gaze – “voueuristic (women as whores) and
fetishistic – women as unreachable madonnas”. (Also narcissistic
– women watching film see themselves reflected on the screen).

4. Karl Marx and Antonio Gramsci – Marxist perspectives
Karl Marx was interested in power. He did a lot of work thinking about how
societies are structured and how they are unfair. His main idea was that the
masses (proletariat) were controlled or dominated by the elite (the
bourgeoisie). The powerful elite (bourgeoisie) own the means of production
and therefore they have power over the workers (proletariat). This unfair
social dominance serves the elite but it is exploitative of the workers and
society is kept like this because it suits those at the top. The main way this is
done is through the superstructure of society (the way people are influenced)
namely religion, education, law, politics. He called all this stuff the ‘ideological
state apparatus’. If this didn’t work, then the bourgeoisie would crush their
working classes using the military state apparatus like the army and the police.

5. Although print and cinema were around when Marx was writing, the media
was less prolific than it is now and lifestyle advertising was not in full swing
considers propaganda. Marxist media theorists applied some of Marx’s key
ideas to the mass media – especially ideas about ideological influence
(HEGEMONY).
This idea of Hegemony is very important to representation theory because
the way people and groups are represented and the messages and
ideology we receive as the mass audience could influence public
opinion. For example, in some right wing news media (such as the daily
mail) we often see pretty negative representations of immigrants… Shows
like ’24′ produced by Fox (part of News Corp International) often depict
asian and muslim people as potential terrorists. It is important to
interrogate how such ideologies serve the elite and influence the masses.