A (B)yron (S)tory Media Studies Blog

 Woman Front cover (August 1964) Front cover - Encourages audience to purchase the magazine. Woman's Realm, Woman's Own,  Woman --> All ran by the publisher, IPC. --> Monopoly on that market.  Competitor to Vogue magazine, both sold to female target audiences but are binary opposites --> Middle class women.  What makes the cover for 'Woman' overtly conventional? The masthead ->  sans-serif font, -> large and eye-catching. Cheap cover price -> Appeals to working class target audience. Main image -> Large, takes up two thirds of the page. Brand identity -> Very particular, you know what you're getting. -> Working class, middle-aged, conventional women ->  Reinforces patriarchal hegemony.  Selling a lifestyle to the target audience Aspirational image -> You could be her, 'Are you an a-level beauty?' -> anchorage to the photo directly addresses viewer. Alfred Hitchcock -> intertextual reference to famous celebrity -> hig

 Adbusters (2016) textual analysis 'Red soles are always in season' double page spread In what ways does Adbusters construct its target audience? How does Adbusters use subversive representations to position its audiences? Counter-cultural, niche magazine.  - Atypical and unconventional to hegemonic magazines, the opposite to Woman (August 1964) Why is Woman magazine so basic?  It's purpose is to make money. It constructs simplistic, representations of its target audience. Obedient middle-class white housewives, they cook, clean, etc. Adbusters on the other hand is a polysemic, complex magazine, with complex messages. It isn't basic like Woman. That said, it /still/ constructs a target audience, of activists. A demographic of people who have a social conscience, involved in politics/change in the world, etc. This is far broader than the single preferred target audience of Woman. Adbusters breaks the rules of representations of gender, ethnicity, etc. Arguably done so t

 Woman Magazine ( August 1964) Adbusters (2016) Woman is wholly conventional to it's time of release whereas Adbusters is wholly unconventional. Media language (Barthes and Levi-Strauss) Representation (Hall, Gauntlett, Van Zoonen, hooks, Gilroy) Industry (Curran & Seaton, Livingstone & Lunt, Hesmondhalgh) Audience (Gerbner, Hall) Woman: Woman's lifestyle magazine was published by IPC  Weekly release schedule (3.5 Million copies every week.) Mass audience  Heterosexual, white, working class housewives (40+), middle-aged.  --> Sounds niche, but isnt.  Woman magazine presents a simple, straightforward and basic ideology to it's mass audience.  context: 2nd wave feminism is immensely popular. End of the baby boomer generation LSD/ Cannabis --> Hippies, sex. -->  The Pill.  Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Psychedelia Movement.  Civil Rights Movement in the US Important to recognise absolutely none of this is represented within Woman magazine's text.  Woman magaz

Postmodernism - Jean Baudrillard  Post modern media products deliberately break rules, and deliberately challenge their audience. Hyperreality - When the representation of something is 'better' than reality. Post modernism is an impossible theory to define. The character, 'Anita' in Humans is perfect,  because she doesn't exist. 'Perfect' traits like cooking, cleaning. The binary opposition of the messy MES of the Hawkins family household, imperfect, and normal; To further highlight the hyperreal fixes that Anita performs upon it once she arrives. Hawkins Family as a typical stereotypical nuclear family. Confusing mode of address at the shift from warm tones of Hawkins family setting, to the coldness of the warehouse Anita is wheeled through in a bag. Reinforced by conventional sci-fi synth music. The usage of the shopping centre as a setting is a stereotypically consumerist setting.  Sophie questions Joe, 'What if she's not pretty?' as Joe goes

 David Gauntlet argues that audiences can use tv shows to reflect their own identity . To what extent does this theory of identity apply to the TV shows you have studied? David Gauntlet - Theories of Identity Audiences can pick and choose bits and pieces of a media text to identify with, and other parts to ignore. Humans and Le Revenants offer the audience an opportunity to identify with a number of characters. KJR: Audiences can take a variety of identities and interpretations for the tv shows I have studied, to allow them to appeal to a range of target audiences. Plan: David Gauntlet - Pick and mix Stuart Hall - Reception Theory  MES:  Wide angled shot in Humans breakfast scene constructs a number of representations of stereotypical hegemonic family members.  Relatable messy costume design, familiar middle-class setting and narrative situation. Dramatic and upsetting storylines, both Humans have themes of life and death, sex. Things all viewers are forced to identify with. Close-up

  MES: Binary opposition  of the stereotypical white suburban middle-class British family, to Asian actress. In a wide shot of the entire breakfast table, this is binary opposition between Anita, and the Hawkins family is reinforced through MES of Gemma Chan's sturdy posture and straightened hair, constructing the character as polite, perfect, with the placement of her hands at her lap encoding her as concentrated. Whilst in juxtaposition to the slouched Hawkins family, and their messy bed heads.   American-British coproduction, which explains the placement of the show as in and around the city of London, as this is an expectation of a British tv-show.  Ensemble cast leads to a wider range of representations -> wider range of audiences -> Higher profit for Humans. Paul Gilroy, Postcolonial Theory --> Anita as an East-Asian, in comparison to the white Hawkins. --> Anita is constructed as a slave as opposed to a worker or a maid, based upon her costume design,  practical,