Representation Essay

It has been said that media representations often reflect the social and political concerns of the age in which they are created. Discuss.

I agree that media representations are often reflected through social and political concerns

In the early 70’s women in society were concerned that they were not recognised to be equal to men and this sparked the feminist movement. The fact that women were not seen to be equal to men meant that during this period there were no women working in the media. The people that were working in the media were middle aged white men who reinforced the hegemonic values by oppressing groups of people in society which were known to be treating (women) to the hierarchy. The media did this through media representations so women in the 70’s there were two different types of representation of women. They were either shown to be a domestic housewife looking after her husband and family, doing the cooking cleaning and all the house work. Another representation is women were shown to be ‘femme fatale’ they were shown to be dangerous and fatal to men. Women were misrepresented by being shown to smoke and shoots of them holding a gun which reinforced they were dangerous. This created concerns which lead to a moral panic and ever women were seen to be dangerous and evil as this moral panic was reinforced by the media representation of women in the media. Women saw this as a concern and began to express there freedom of speech and expressions by burning their bra which was a symbolic icon reinforcing the control of men on women so they chose to burn them. Media representation also shows that women after the war started the suffragettes movement which illustrated there concern and was reflected through media representations all over the world as women got together and protested dominating news values as this was a significant political movement as they aimed to gain equality.

Laura Mulvey ( 1975: Visual Pleasure & Narrative Cinema) argues that the audience that consume these media representations look at women in these media text in two ways voyeuristically and fetishistically for example in a cinema men observe women in a media text voyeuristically as they are not being washed by the women being represented neither are they being watched by the following audience also consuming the media text as the cinema is dark. This gives rise to a concern depending on the way the audience interpret these media text could lead to the objectification of women in the media. This could be a concern of the age as women are powerless to defend themselves due to the whole concept of voyeurism and them just being watched through the ‘male gaze’

Historically the media has been responsible for reinforcing stereotypes surround women to reinforce the patriarchal society this is done my subordinating women and representing them as being housewives and domestic servants. This was portrayed by having them play roles were they would be inferior to the male actors and would be playing a supporting role these helped to reinforce that men were dominate in society. This also prevented the audience from challenging the status quo as the audience would have been desensitised to images of women doing domestic work which would have made this they of representation acceptable in society.

However media representation has changed over time and pro feminism representation shows that there is now the female gaze were women sexually objective men by just seeing them as decorations this is clear in some D&G and Armani fragrant adverts

Judith Butler (Gender and Performance) argues that “Gender is not fixed but constructed” this can be true as media representation of males and females constructs the way we see that gender and how they are treated in society.

 Zeitgeist refers to the spirit of the age.