Overview: Three female African-American mathematicians play a pivotal role in astronaut John Glenn’s launch into orbit. Meanwhile, they also have to deal with racial and gender discrimination at work.

producer: Fox 2000

Conglomerate: Fox

Title Meaning: “Hidden Figures” has a double meaning, On one hand, it refers to the mathematical calculations that went into making John Glenn the first American man into space in 1962. Johnson’s genius with analytic geometry lands her a spot with the Space Task Group to calculate launches and landings.

Hidden figures were based on: based on the book by Margot Lee Shetterly, focuses on Katherine Johnson (left), Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan, African-American women who were essential to the success of early spaceflight.

Budget: 25 million USD, medium budget

Box office: 236 million USD, world-wide

Steve Neale states that genres all contain instances of repetition and difference, the difference is essential to the economy of the genre. Neale states that the film and its genre is defined by two things: How much is conforms to its genre’s individual conventions and stereotypes.

Genre Theory is a collective term used to describe theoretical approaches that are concerned with how similar situations generate typified responses called genres, which serve as a platform for both creating an understanding based on shared expectations and also shaping the social context.

The word genre comes from the French (and originally Latin) word for ‘kind’ or ‘class’.

Genre is important for both consumers and media producers. Consumers can make choices about media texts they wish to consume and media producers can create a media text for a specific audience. Audiences will also expect certain audio codes such as tense, dramatic music.

The Blumler & Katz theory is the understanding of what the audience does for the media not what the media does for the audience. It is the integration that the audience does for the media that helps sales, for example, buying of the product

Uses and gratifications

Uses and gratifications theory (UGTtheory) is an approach to understanding why and how people actively seek out specific media to satisfy specific needs. UGT is an audience-centred approach to understanding mass communication, Unlike many media theories that view media users as passive, uses and gratifications sees users as active agents who have control over their media consumption

Giddens structuration theory

Giddens argues that just as an individual’s autonomy is influenced by structure, structures are maintained and adapted through the exercise of agency so structuration theory attempts to understand human social behaviour by resolving the competing views of structure-agency and macro-micro perspectives.

The structure is the recurrent patterned arrangements which influence or limit the choices and opportunities available. Agency is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices.

A macro perspective is basically looking at the bigger picture of things as a whole. A micro-perspective is taking a “deeper dive” and looking at the specifics of things.

Gauntlett theory of identity

Gauntlett said that rather than being zapped straight into peoples brains, media messages and idea about lifestyle and identity that appear in the media which help individuals think through their sense of self and modes of expression, This can create our own identity and even influence other peoples.

Denotation is its literal meaning, ie. a “pair of white gloves” is literally just a pair of white gloves

The connotation is the idea or feeling that comes with its literal meaning, ie a “pair of white gloves” is a pair of white gloves but gives ideas of purity, wealth and elegance etc

–French literacy theorist

Narrative theory: one of five codes that describe the meaning of a text. He suggested texts may be ‘open’ or ‘closed’. Closed texts are those that are produced with a single, definitive meaning in mind making any interpretation from the audience inaccurate.

why is he important: French philosopher and literary critic, who explored social theory, anthropology and semiotics, the science of symbols, and studied their impact on society. His work left an impression on the intellectual movements of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism.

structuralism challenged the belief that a work of literature reflected a given reality; instead, a text was constituted of linguistic conventions and situated among other texts.

an example of structuralism: is describing your experience at the ocean by saying it is windy, salty, and cold, but rejuvenating.

the post–structuralist: approach argues that to understand an object (e.g., a text), it is necessary to study both the object itself and the systems of knowledge that produced the object.

Syntagms and paradigms explain how signs relate to each other. Syntagmatic relationships are about positioning. Paradigmatic relationships are about the substitution.

paradigms are the collection of similarly associated signs around a specific topic

syntagm is a series of signs that work together

History:

Format:

Editors: Oliver Duff

Political stance: Liberalism, centrism

Target Audience:

Cost: 60p – 80p

Circulation:

Profit: