Representation

What is representation?What representation theorists can you find?

What representation theories relate to the horror genre?

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.

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).

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.

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.