• religion prevents acceptance of sexuality
• representation – females
• lens of feminist critical thinking
• happens in s structural level (companies, organisations ect)
• also happens at a textual level (individual images, film ect.)
• radical and reactionary, draw on different ideas
  • toril moi said:
  • Feminist = a political position
  • Female = a matter of biology
  • Feminine = a set of culturally defined characteristics
  • power of image
• laura maulvey – visual pleasure & narrative cinema
• movement can re enforce gender stereotypes
• signs communicate objectification of women
• the male gaze, the signs of visual pleasure
• ‘woman as image, man as bearer of the look,’ 
• imbalanced power, we can see through narrative cinema
• “pleasure in looking has been split between active/male passive/female.”
• constructs a male fantasy – no truth in female representation, they are coded for strong visual & erotic impact
• scopophilia – pleasure in looking
• frioden psychology: looking is voyeurism – the sexual pleasure gained in looking
• fetishism – cutting out certain parts to draw focus to something
• She draws from Jacques Lacan: child development – when a child understands they are a person, a moment of consciousness
• when a person looks in a mirror & sees themselves & understand it is them (mirror stage)
• this connects to the media in which we see ourselves in characters
• what we see is only a reflection, a mirror image
• ‘a complex process of likeness and difference‘
  • Sut Jhally – music videos has unlimited sexualisation, convents of pornography
  • masculinity and femininity are constructions
  • women representation is related to domestic abuse
  • accepting normative values is problematic
  • deconstruction of music video can reveal sexism, racism ect.
  • over exploitive representation of female
• first wave of feminism – suffragettes
• second wave of feminism – 60s & 70s, society is made around male desire
• third wave of feminism – women who are younger who believes in plurality, more alert, and can use power for good
• fourth wave of feminism – defined by technology
• raunch culture – ariel levy
• see sexuality as a movement of power
• performers believe they are powerful owners of their sexuality
• they can use their body in a way of liberation – empowering themselves, their gender etc
  • intersectionality: queer theory
  • not essentialist or reductionist, a pluralistic approach
  • judith butler – perform – acting, performative- produces a seis of effects
  • gender is socially constructed
  • prioritise your individual agency
  • bell hooks – politics of difference

Representation in terms of female

Happens at a structural level in term of industry, company, and organizations

Individual images and films how they represent female

Radical and Reactionary

Toril Moi’s (1987) crucial set of distinctions between ‘feminist’, ‘female’ and ‘feminine’

Laura Mulvey wrote an essay called Visual pleasure and narrative cinema = Visual pleasure, signs of visual pleasure, ‘women as image, man as bearer of the look’, male gaze. ‘ pleasure in looking is split between the active male and passive women’ creates a male fantasy of female. Constructed around male ideology. SCOPOPHILIA- nature pleasure in looking. vouyerism – sexual pleasure gained in looking. Fetishising.

Jacques Lacan ‘this mirror moment’, highlight the parallel between the mirror stage of child development. A complex process of likeness and difference.

MUSIC VIDEO= women sexualized, the late 60s is the second wave of feminism.

RANCH CULTURE

Performers believe they are powerful owners of their own sexuality – Hendry & Stephenson

INTERSECTIONALITY; QUEER THEORY – a pluralistic approach, 3rd and 4th wave feminism.

JUDITH BUTLER

BELL HOOKS – cultural criticism

JEAN KILBOURNE –  internationally recognized for her work on the image of women in advertising

• 2ND WAVE OF FEMINISM
• Work on how women are sexualised in advertising and photo shopped to create unrealistic representations. Effecting the ideas of young girls and women. Also men and sexualized now but less during the second wave of feminism.
• Young girls view on themselves are changed and can cause mental health issues and disorders due to the advertising published.
• The advertising in the media subconsciously effects everyone.
• ‘Turning a human being into a thing, an object, is almost always the first step towards justifying violence against that person. It is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to be violent to someone we think of as an equal, someone we have empathy with, but it is very easy to abuse a thing’ Jean Kilbourne

-Happens at a structural and textual level

Toril Moi’s set of definitions:

Feminist- a political position

Feminine- culturally defined characteristics

Female- a matter of biology

Laura Mulvey

She wrote an essay called ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’

She talks about the male gaze, a theoretical approach that suggests the role of ‘woman as image, man as bearer of the look,’ in contemporary visual media.

‘pleasure in looking has been split between active/male passive/female‘

Female representations are constructed around male ideology

Scopophilia (‘taking people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling and subjective gaze‘ )- Natural pleasure in looking

fetishism (‘the quality of a cut-out . . . stylised and fragmented‘)

Jacques Lacan

This mirror moment- highlighting the parallel between the ‘mirror stage’ of child development and the mirroring process that occurs between audience and screen (the first time you see yourself in a mirror and recognise the reflection as yourself)

Laura Mulvey uses this theory to suggest that when we watch other people in the media and recognise them as something like our self ‘a complex process of likeness and difference

Raunch culture

Raunch culture is ‘a product of the unresolved feminist sex wars – the conflict between the women’s movement and the sexual revolution‘

exploitation vs empowerment 

Intersectionality: Queer theory

Butler suggests that gender is fluid, changeable, plural a set of categories to be played out and performed by individual subjects in individual moments in time and space

Van Zoonen and Hook

Lisbet Van Zoonen highlights the idea that the concept of ‘woman’ is not a homogenous, collective noun. That students need to be aware of the differences between women, that ‘gender is not the defining quality alone for women, and intersects with race, sexuality and class.’ 

Bell hook advocates media literacy, the need to engage with popular culture to understand class struggle, domination, renegotiation and revolution

THERE IS a difference between

• masculine: a representation of cultural traits attached to the idea of “men”, e.g. masculinity
• male: a matter of literal representation of men

and

• feminine: a representation of cultural traits attached to the idea of “women”, e.g. femininity
• female: a matter of literal representation of women

Toril Moi (1987)

Toril divided these into categories:

• feminist: a political opinion
• female: a matter of biology
• feminine: a set of culturally defined characteristics

Laura Mulvey: Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

• visual pleasure, the signs of visual pleasure

• the male gaze

• women is seen as “image” and the man as “the bearer of the look”
• therefore, “looking” is a male priority, with their priority being the sexualisation of the female form
• there is a world of imbalanced power
• the pleasure in looking is split between the active male and the passive female
• there is no true female representation because female characters are designed around the male gaze
• mulvey draws on freudian psychology, the concept of scopophilia (a pleasure of looking).
• fetishism (freudian), to cut up parts and only use certain parts
• the fetishism of women is using only parts that are sexualised
• systemic sexism

*Jacques L’ecain

• there is a moment in child development where you finally understand that you are a person
• there is a moment where we see ourselves in the mirror and recognise that it is us
• L’ecain recognises that we never see ourself, only a mirror image of ourselves.

Mulvey combines L’ecain’s theory of self recognition with the media to create a theory of representation in the media. The idea of cinema for Mulvey is that you see someone on a screen and that helps you to form an idea of identity. This concretes ideas in our mind

Gender Representation

• breaking down the idea of gender

• gender roles

gender roles are the stereotypical actions assigned to gender. For example, women are “carers” and men “earn a living”

Ariel Levy: Raunch Culture

engaging with the male gaze for your own benefit for the need of your own power (reclaiming the male gaze)

• performers believe they are powerful owners of their own sexuality
• This could be done for profit (to make a living), for example, sex workers

Third and 4th wave feminism

• 1st “we want the female vote”
• 2nd all images of female bad
• 3rd and 4th intertextuality – intersection of experience that women need to account for

Judith Butler

• gender is performed (acting that is crucial to the gender we are)
• gender is a social construct:

If male equals “having masculine traits” and female equals “having feminine traits”, what are gendered traits? if you possess feminine traits but are seen in society as male, the idea of gender breaks down. Therefore it is evident that gender is merely a social construct.

Bell Hooks: Cultural Criticism and

• popular culture has power as it serves as a popular medium for those who want to understand politics

institutional sexism

• Bombshell (accounts of women at Fox News, US News corporation owned by Rupert Murdoch, exposing Roger Ailes as a sexual harasser)

jean killbourne (TED talk)

• 1960s systematic sexism through advertising which still occurs today
• 2nd wave feminism: equality for women (in jobs for example)
• “the influence of advertising is quick, effective and subconscious”
• postcolonialism: whitewashing in women (intersectionality)
• men and women “inhabit two different worlds”: when women are objectified they are always living in a “world of danger”
• objectification of women has an add-on effect on young girls where young children are taught to sexualise at a young age
• “sex sells”, and has become more graphic today which puts more women at risk due to harmful stereotypes
• women and girls are taught to be “sexually available”, and to see themselves as “sexual objects”
• objectification leads to violence due to normalisation of dangerous attitudes
• “we must think as ourselves as consumers rather than citizens”

How useful are ideas about narrative in analysing music videos? Refer to CSP “Ghost Town” and “Letter to the Free” in your answer.

Narrative in a music video is important because it brings structure and meaning and a story to the video. Todorov said how each narrative should follow a structure of equilibrium, disruption and then new equilibrium. This just gives the narrative story excitement and meaning. Vladimir Propp talks about how each story has 7 different character types which correspond to the story. Lastly Lev Strauss binary opposites and how in narrative there are binary opposites within the characters.

Looking at the music video ghost town, it has an equilibrium, disruption and a new equilibrium. It starts with the band driving along the road, set in east London, giving off a ghostly atmosphere. The middle shows the band suddenly drive out of control, representing the employment state, and how it has become a large problem, as unemployment rates in the UK were rising significantly. For the end of the music video, it shows the band throwing rocks along the water on the beach, representing the calmness that has been resonated, and how everything has returned back to normal, suggesting the economic state has retuned back to normal.

For letter to the free, the equilibrium would be the man playing the drums on his own at the beginning, the disruption would then be everyone else joining in, and then the new equilibrium would be the man singing and playing the piano on his own.

Linking back to the question, narrative is useful when analyzing music videos, as it allows the audience to capture the perceptions and messages. As using just a speaker to convey a message can be difficult, so applying narrative to music videos is important.

narrative in moving imagery products are hooked around Time

Moving image uses linear and is chronological.

they normally have a theme with mine being random clips representing isolating showing the change in a person not sequential.

Structuralism -rules roles and convention.

Propp had the ides if stock characters performing stock functions – eg villain victim and hero

Claude Levi-strauss – narratives are structured around binary oppositions.

Seymour chatman- Kernels: key moments in the plot/ narrative structure satellites: embellishments, developments, aesthetics.

Narrative rules-

Todorov – tripartite narrative structure ; 3 part narrative structure; beginning middle and end

• equilibrium – represente
• disruption- conflict/ drama for interest
• new equilibrium-

Ideas: climax returning to the place where the actor ones was alone -reflecting isolation and a change some sort of fight causing this. theme of relationships and isolation. Difference between before becoming isolated and after. Happiness comes with others, revisit same places.

narrative – over all structure

story – themes and things included the narrative of a work, whether of fictional or nonfictional basis. The narrative threads experienced by each character or set of characters in a work of fiction. The storyline method of teaching.

plot- how you organise it the main events of a play, novel, film, or similar work, devised and presented by the writer as an interrelated sequence.

my narrative is – focusing on a main character showing various\ Montage of happy time in her life showing joy and then interjecting with clips on her own.

Barthes- Barthes‘ Semiotic Theory broke down the process of reading signs and focused on their interpretation by different cultures or societies. According to Barthes, signs had both a signifier, being the physical form of the sign as we perceive it through our senses and the signified, or meaning that is interpreted.

• Proairetic code- action, movement, causation
• hermeneutic code- reflection, dialogue,character, thematic development.
• Enigma code the way in which intrigue and ideas are raised- which encourage an audience to want moreinformation.

NARRATIVE

• Elision And Ellipsis- when you drop things out.
• flash forwards – flash-backwards: moments which break the line sequences.
• foreshadowing- rises the concept to he audiences giving them some information.
• dramatic irony- when the audience knows something the characters don’t.
• parallel- when to story lines interrupt.
• light and shade- varied intensity. moment of more light hearted moments.
• non-sequitars- a storyline which goes nowhere.

Time – how is it going to be organised? beginning, middle and end? linear, non-linear, sequential, circular, chronologically?

Space- how will each scene/setting fade into the next?

Theme – what is the theme of the video?

Narrative – this is the overall structure

Story – this is the overall theme

Plot – how you sequence everything

Equilibrium – wakes up , disruption – imagining doing things (parties etc), new equilibrium – wakes up again

Vladimir prop (character types and functions)- stock characters. hero, damsel in distress, princess etc. The stock characters have stock functions

Claude Levi-Strauss (binary oppositions) – one thing that connects groups connect people as they tell similar stories – about binary oppositions

Seymour Chapman (satellites and kernels) – kernels – if you remove something from a story it will not work (removing a main character or setting) – Satellites – if you remove/change something in a story it will not make a massive difference (changing the colour of a car)

• narrative is to do with time
• beginning middle end
• linear or non linear or sequential or non sequential
• can alternate space in an unnatural way
• can organise or disorganise space
• there’s a theme that links it all together
• narrative (overall structure), story (theme), plot (structure of events)

TODOROV

• bulgarian, cultural theorist
• equilibrium, disruption, new equilibrium
• tri part type narrative structure

GUSTAV FREYTAG

• you can draw the narrative of a moving image
• eg like a roller coaster, there’s a climax then it slowly levels out

VLADIMIR PROPP

• similarities in similar media products (stock characters), perform stock functions
• preparation, complication, transference, struggle, return, recognition

CALUDE LEVI-STRAUSS

• we never know what is, we only know what isn’t
• narratives play out binary opposition

SEYMOUR CHATMAN

• if you take something out, the story doesn’t work
• everything works together to create a story

• Structuralist approach.
• Narrative is to do with time and how it is used.
• Beginning, middle and end.
• Time can be linear, non linear, sequential or non sequential.
• Chronological order.
• Space can be moved around, altered and changed in order to create a story.
• Space can be organised.
• Theme that links it all together (eg. Family) .
• Narrative, story and plot.
• Narrative = the overall thing.
• Story = about a specific story.
• Plot = what happens with these characters and the main theme/narrative.
• Tztevan Todorov = Bulgarian film/cultural theorist = Tripartite narrative structure. (3 part narrative structure = beginning, middle and end).
• Narratives start as an EQUILIBRIUM then gets DISRUPTED so then there is a NEW EQUILIBRIUM.
• Freytag – dramatic structure – exposition (character, place, introducing everything), climax (big event to create a story/conflict), Denouement (resolution)
• Doesn’t have to go in that order.
• Vladimir Propp – Character Types and Functions = stock characters perform stock actions – you know what they are going to do (predictable) .
• Different stages of a story.
• Claude Levi-Strauss = looking at individuals and the way people are in different parts of the world. Found the similarities between different societies from the stories that they all tell. He found that the stories were generally about binary oppositions.
• Telling stories about what is good and bad.
• We never know what is, we only know what isn’t. We don’t know who we are, we only know what we are not.
• Narratives play out a binary opposition by showing what is good and bad.
• Contrasting opposites
• Seymour Chatman = You can divide stories into two parts
• Kernels = big parts of the story that if they were taken out, the story would not make sense.
• Satellites = things that can be changed and it won’t drastically effect the story. They are used for embellishment and can be adapted. Character looks for example, can be satellites and can be changed without the story being really effected.

I think my video will include a main character whom

• Narrative – Time
• Time could be linear, non – linear, always sequential or non – sequential
• Chronologically
• Narratives are organised around a particular theme or space
• Narrative – overall construction
• Story – themes and meaning
• Plot – sequences, chronological
• Todorov instead says to use – Equilibrium, disruption, new equilibrium
• Propp – stock characters in order to structure a story (Hero, helper, princess, villain, victim, false hero etc.)
• 1. Preparation 2. Complication 3. Transference 4. Struggle 5. Return 6. Recognition
• Strauss – binary oppositions, for instance myths structured by binary oppositions (Good vs evil, human vs alien)
• Chatman – Kernels: key moments in the plot/narrative structure Satellites: embellishments, developments, aesthetics

Narrative planning

Setting – home, woods, beach

Characters – 3 males