Oh Comely is part of a development in lifestyle and environmental movements of the early twenty first century which rebrand consumerism as an ethical movement. Its representation of femininity reflects an aspect of the feminist movement which celebrates authenticity and empowerment

In contrast to Men’s Health magazine, Oh Comely is an independent magazine published by Iceberg Press, a small London publisher which publishes only one other title. 

• So this is a case study of Iceberg as an independent media company. 
• Which shows how developments in new technology mean that small companies can also use the internet to communicate and target audiences. 
• Presenting new strategies for institutional development and creative working practice. As well as suggesting ways for keeping print popular and relevant – Iceberg’s branding includes a commitment to print over other media forms.

• Oh Comely constructs a representation of femininity with its focus on creativity and quirkiness. 
• The focus is on women as artists, entrepreneurs, athletes and musicians and female empowerment is a major theme. 
• The absence of men as part of the representation of masculinity in Oh Comely magazine. 
• Representation of social groups: Oh Comely constructs a lifestyle through its focus on culture and the environment. This analysis would offer the opportunity to question some of the messages and values constructed by the magazine. 
• Theories of representation including Hall 
• Feminist theories including bell hooks and Van Zoonen 
• Theories of gender performativity including Butler 

• Therefore it is possible to apply feminist critical thinking to this CSP for example theories of representation including
  • Hall
  • bell hooks
  • Van Zoonen
  • gender performativity – Butler

In the film bombshell and real life, Roger Ailes abused his power for sexual gratification by asking attractive females to aid in his sexual wishes so the young and aspiring girls can get a promotion, success and financial reward.This inspired feminist critical thinking within the office leading to a law suit and his removal from the company.

Key words: 

• Media concentration: Concentration of media ownership is a process whereby progressively fewer individuals or organizations control increasing shares of the mass media.
• Conglomerates: A conglomerate is a multi-industry company
• Globalisation:the process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale.
• Horizontal Integration:  is the process of a company increasing production of goods or services at the same part of the supply chain. 
• Gatekeepers: information is filtered for dissemination, whether for publication, broadcasting, the Internet, or some other mode of communication. … Individuals can also act as gatekeepers, deciding what information to include in an email or in a blog.
• Regulation: Tax, government, police
• Deregulation: lack of tax, government, police
• Free market: an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses.
• Monopolies: A monopoly is a business that is the only provider of a good or service, giving it a tremendous competitive advantage over any other company that tries to provide a similar product or service. 
• Mergers: A merger is an agreement that unites two existing companies into one new company. 

Hesmondhalgh’s key ideas are:

• Hesmondhalgh discusses the way the cultural industries operate and explores their effect on audiences: “Of one thing there can be no doubt: the media do have influence.”
• He points out that societies with profitable cultural industries (e.g. USA, UK) tend to be dominated by large companies, have minimal government regulation and significant inequality between rich and poor.

• the idea that the largest companies or conglomerates now operate across a number of different cultural industries
• the idea that the radical potential of the internet has been contained to some extent by its partial incorporation into a large, profit-orientated set of cultural industries

major cultural organisations create products for different industries in order to maximise chances of commercial success. 

Murdoch Empire

A good way to develop an understanding of this term is in his exploration of the mirror stage of child development, whereby, as we cannot actually see ourselves as whole, we use a reflection to understand who we are / who we are not. Lacan proposed that in infancy this first recognition occurs when we see ourselves in a mirror. Applying that theory to culture, communications and media studies, it is possible to see why we are so obsessed with reading magazines, listening to music, watching films, videos and television because, essentially, we are exploring ‘The Other’ as a way of exploring ourselves.

REPRESENTATIONS of – the East /the Orient / the ‘Other’ – are CONSTRUCTED through the lens of WESTERN COLONIAL POWER. So as much as the concept and image of ‘the West’ itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West. The two geographical entities thus support and to an extent reflect each other.

all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, through the functioning of the category of the subjectAlthusser (1971:190)

• The film begins with Leonard shooting Teddy – the climax of his quest for vengeance. The main question facing Leonard is ‘Who killed his wife?’ and ‘How can he find him to take revenge?’ These questions seem to be answered in the first five minutes – so what enigmas are created for the audience as the plot moves (backwards in time)? How are these enigmas answered? Are the answers stable (i.e. are the undermined by what we discover later)?
• If you had to plot this narrative – what shape would it take? Think about direction and shape ie Freytag’s pyramid. Can you draw out a schematic representation (ie a drawing) of this narrative structure?

Big Question:

How could ‘Memento’ be classed as a postmodern text?

• Intertexuality: sampling artistic styles, plot or character conventions from other forms and genres
• The ‘writerly text’ (Roland Barthes): a text whose meaning is created by the reader/consumer rather than being fixed in the text by the writer/producer.
• There is no cohesive identity, no ‘real you’; we are different people in each individual situation, virtual and actual. Our identities are in constant flux.
• There is no ‘truth’ in history (personal or national), memory cannot be relied upon as evidence for knowledge;
• People who claim to know the ‘truth’ can’t be trusted;
• Fiction and fact depend on each other to the point that they can’t be divided – in the end they can’t be separated;
• Knowledge doesn’t ‘add up’ cohesively to ‘truth’; there are too many contradictory elements.

Rhizomatic thought = ‘rhizomes’ are plant life that don’t follow the root-tree system e.g. fungus or mould. There is no ‘core’, no lesser or greater elements. If you destroy the centre of a mould the rest doesn’t die (like if you destroyed the trunk of a tree), it continues to thrive. Modern terrorist movements have a ‘rhizomatic’ structure: there is no single leader, issuing orders down the chain of command with an overall goal that every unit is working towards.

When looking at moving image products, it is therefore possible to look for patterns, codes, conventions that share a common features. 

it is clear that narratives are a combination of many individual elements (sound, image, text etc) which are edited (connected) together. Narratives are organised around a particular theme and space and are based in an idea of time.

STORY is often associated with themes and meaning and can be decoded from all of the different elements that are used, for example, the characters, setting, props and themes etc. Whereas the PLOT is the way in which the story (elements/themes/ideas/meaning) is organised and sequenced. 


Tripartite narrative structure (Tztevan Todorov)

• Equilibrium
• Disruption
• New equilibrium

This structural approach could also be referenced to Freytag’s Pyramid exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, and denouement as illustrated below.

Vladimir Propp (Character Types and Function)

STOCK CHARACTERS 

1. Hero
2. Helper
3. Princess
4. Villain
5. Victim
6. Dispatcher
7. Father 
8. False Hero

Often there is a villain who has done something to a victim. This means that we need a hero, who (often) accompanied by a helper is sent out (by a dispatcher) to fight the villain. The dispatcher or similar donor(such as a father figure) prepares the hero in his ‘quest‘ and gives the herosome magical object. Thehero generally meets the princess as part of his quest / journey which usually provides a happy ending. During the narrative we (and the princess) may be presented by a false hero.

Spheres of Action

1. PREPARATION
2. COMPLICATION
3. TRANSFERENCE
4. STRUGGLE
5. RETURN
6. RECOGNITION

Claude Levi-Strauss (Binary Oppositions)

BINARY OPPOSITIONS eg: good v evil; human v alien; young v old etc etc. 

Elision- speeds up, simplifies, and generally enhances the flow of conversation.

Ellipsis- Ellipsis concerns the omission of a section of the story that is either obvious enough for the public to fill in or concealed for a narrative purpose, such as suspense or mystery.

Seymour Chatman: Satellites & Kernels

• Kernels: key moments in the plot / narrative structure -absolutely essential to the story / plot / narrative development
• Satellites: embellishments, developments, aesthetics

Roland Barthes: Proairetic and Hermenuetic Codes

• Proairetic code: action, movement, causation
• Hermenuetic code: reflection, dialogue, character or thematic development
• Enigma code: the way in which intrigue and ideas are raised – which encourage an audience to want more information.

Parody v Pastiche 

pastiche is a work of art, drama, literature, music, or architecture that imitates the work of a previous artist

parody is a work or performance that imitates another work or performance with ridicule or irony

Intertextuality: surface signs, gestures & play

A good place to look for illustrations of postmodern culture, in terms of media studies, is the music video. As Shuker notes, two points are frequently made about music videos: ‘their preoccupation with visual style, and associated with this, their status as key exemplars of ‘postmodern’ texts.’ (2001:167). Shuker refers Fredric Jameson’s (1984) notion of the ‘metanarrative’ (discussed in more detail below) that ’embody the postmodern condition’ (168). For example, the fragmentary, decentred nature of music videos that break up traditional understandings of time and space so that audiences are ‘no longer able to distinguish ‘fiction’ from ‘reality’, part of the postmodern condition’ (ibid). Alongside their similarity to adverts (essentially the music video is a commercial tool to sell music products) ‘making them part of a blatantly consumerist culture‘ (ibid). And of course, the ‘considerable evidence of pastiche, intertextuality and eclecticism‘ (ibid) which is the focus of this next section.

BRICOLAGE is a useful term to apply to postmodernist texts as it ‘involves the rearrangment and juxtaposition of previously unconnected signs to produce new codes of meaning’ (Barker & Jane, 2016:237). Similarly, INTERTEXTUALITY is another useful term to use, as it suggests signs only have meaning in reference to other signs and that meaning is therefore a complex process of decoding/encoding with individuals both taking and creating meaning in the process of reading texts. In other words . . .

In 1959, Richard Hoggart (Uses of Literacy) noted the shift in modern societies particularly the impact on our ‘neighborhood lives’, which was ‘an extremely local life, in which everything is remarkably near‘ (1959:46). As John Urry comments, this was ‘life centred upon groups of known streets’ where there was ‘relatively little separation of production and consumption‘ (2014:76). Urry goes on to note that ‘because the global population grew during the twentieth century from 2 to 6 billion. Cities, towns, villages and houses all became high-consuming energy centres’ (97). Thus, a characteristic of modern (postmodern?) societies, is the creation, development and concentration of centres of high consumption, with a displacement of both consumption and production that has radically altered the nature of societies and individuals living in them. 

Fragmentary consumption = Fragementary identities.

This process of fragmented consumption separating, splitting up and dividing previously homogeneous groups such as, friends, the family, the neighborhood, the local community, the town, the county, the country and importantly, is often linked to the process of fragmented identity construction. Again think about mobile telephony which is now able to construct multiple possibilities identities, at multiple moments in time and space. Think about the way we construct, our (multiple) digital identities, visable and varying across different digital platforms – work identity, social identity, family identity etc, which is most often not consistent with our analogue (human?) identity – look for example, at your profile pictures?

So in summary, the focus on FRAGMENTATION OF IDENTITY is characterised and linked to an increase of consumption and the proliferation of new forms of digital technologies. In effect, another key characteristic of postmodernism is the development of fragmented, alienated individuals living (precariously) in fragmented societies.

The loss of a metanarrative

A good starting point would be to return to the concepts of PASTICHE and PARODY, as Fredric Jameson claimed that Postmodernism is characterized by pastiche rather than parody which represents a crisis in historicity. Jameson argued that parody implies a moral judgment or a comparison with previous societal norms. Whereas pastiche, such as collage and other forms of juxtaposition, occur without a normative grounding and as such, do not make comment on a specific historical moment. As such, Jameson argues that the postmodern era is characterised by pastiche (not parody) and as such, suffers from a crisis in historicity.

This links to Jean-Francois Lyotard’s proposition that postmodernism holds an ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives‘ (1979:7) those overarching ideas, attitudes, values and beliefs that have held us together in a shared belief, For example, the belief in religion, science, capitalism, communism, revolution, war, peace and so on. Lyotard points out that no one seemed to agree on what, if anything, was real and everyone had their own perspective and story. We have become alert to difference, diversity, the incompatibility of our aspirations, beliefs and desires, and for that reason postmodernity is characterised by an abundance of micronarratives.^[28] It can be also characterised as an existence without meaning, as Žižek suggests it is an existence without ‘The Big Other’ , an existentialistt crisis of existence when we realise we are alone (Lacan).

Strinati points out that ‘the distinction between culture and society is being eroded’ (231) and suggests that our sense of reality (the overarching metanarrative) appears to come from the culture (eg the media), rather than from society which is then reproduced, represented and relayed through media communication. In terms of media studies, this marks a juncture from previous conceptions of mass media communication, for example, as a ‘relay system’ – a process which just relays information and events in real time to a mass society, or the conception of the media as a ‘window on the world’ (Strinati:233). From a societal perspective the ‘real’ seems to be imploding in on itself, a ‘process leading to the collapse of boundaries between the real and simulations’ (Barker & Emma, 2015:242). A process which the French intellectual Jean Baudrillard would describe as IMPLOSION which gives rise to what he terms SIMULACRA. The idea that although the media has always been seen as a representation of reality – a simulation, from Baudrillard’s perspective of implosion, it is has become more than a representation or simulation and it has become SIMULACRUM not just a representation of the real, but the real itself, a grand narrative that is ‘truth‘ in its own right: an understanding of uncertain/certainty that Baudrillard terms the HYPERREAL.

Key Thinkers

Although Postmodernism sometimes refers to architectural movements in the 1930’s the most significant emergent point is to be found in the 1980’s with clear philosophical articulations from eminent thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Fredric Jameson and others. From which develop a number of key terms which are important to understand as they not only shed light on what is clearly a complicated and confusing topic, but they also form the body of knowledge that students are most likely to be assessed on.

1. Pastiche- work of art,drama,literature,music or architecture that imitates another artist
2. Parody- work or performance that imitates another piece of work with irony or ridicule.
3. Bricolage – lots of things put together 
4. Intertextuality- deliberate inclusion of another text(surface signs,gestures and play)
5. Metanarrative- overarching ideas,attitudes,values and beliefs are now questioned,people now have there own perspectives and stories about history,science,religious beliefs.
6. Hyper reality- the inability to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality. 
7. Simulacrum- is an image or a representation of something or someone.
8. Consumerist Society- towns/villages/cities have high desires of consumption. They are no longer producing just constantly consuming.
9. Fragmentary Identities- disconnecting and recreating an identity.(eg-profile pictures,Facebook accounts)
10. Implosion- links to simulacra- simulations of reality, not judt a representation of the real but the real itself.
11. cultural appropriation- the adoption of elements or an element of one culture or members of a culture.
12. Reflexivity- In epistemology, and more specifically, the sociology of knowledge, reflexivity refers to circular relationships between cause and effect, especially as embedded in human belief structures

Overall, this is a topic that concerns IDENTITY and REPRESENTATION. In other words, where does our identity come from? How is our identity formed? How do we understand our own identity and how is our identity represented in the local, national and global media? You can look at another post that looks at identity, representation and the self.But here it is specifically looking at identity and representation through the lens of Empire and Colonialism.

ORIENTALISM: 

The Link between culture, imperial power & colonialism

the power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism

Edward Said Culture and Imperialism, 1993: xiii

‘the privileged role of culture in the modern imperial experience’ (1997:3)

‘an economic system like a nation or a religion, lives not by bread alone, but by beliefs, visions, daydreams as well, and these may be no less vital to it for being erroneous’

V. G. Kiernan (American: The New Imperialism) (cit in Said, 1993:350)

‘the East becomes the repository or projection of those aspects of themselves which Westerners do not choose to acknowledge (cruelty, sensuality, decadence, laziness and so on). At the same time, and paradoxically, the East is seen as a fascinating realm of the exotic, the mystical and the seductive.’ (Barry, 2017:195)

Overall, POSTCOLONIALISM operates a series of signs maintaining the European-Atlantic power over the Orient by creating ‘an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness‘. (Said, 1978:238). Or as Paul Gilroy puts it, ‘a civilising mission that had to conceal its own systematic brutality in order to be effective and attractive’ (2004:8)

Often discussed by contempoary philosopher Slavoj Zizek, the recognition of the ‘Other’ is mainly attributed the French philosopher and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. A good way to develop an understanding of this term is in his exploration of the mirror stage of child development, whereby, as we cannot actually see ourselves as whole, we use a reflection to understand who we are / who we are not. Lacan proposed that in infancy this first recognition occurs when we see ourselves in a mirror. Applying that theory to culture, communications and media studies, it is possible to see why we are so obsessed with reading magazines, listening to music, watching films, videos and television because, essentially, we are exploring ‘The Other’ as a way of exploring ourselves.

REPRESENTATIONS of – the East /the Orient / the ‘Other’ – are CONSTRUCTED through the lens of WESTERN COLONIAL POWER

Louis Althusser: ISA’s & the notion of ‘Interpellation’

all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, through the functioning of the category of the subject

Althusser (1971:190)

deological state apparatus (ISA), is a theoretical concept developed by (Algerian born) French philosopher Louis Althusser which is used to describe the way in which structures of civic society – education, culture, the arts, the family, religion, bureaucracy, administration etc serve to structure the ideological perspectives of society, which in turn form our individual subject identity. According to Althusser, ‘the category of the subject . . . is the category constitutive of all ideology’ (214:188). In other words, we are socially constructed and what socially constructs us is ‘despite its diversity and contradictions . . . the ruling ideology, which is the ideology of ‘the ruling class’,’ (2014:245)

Althusser noted that individuals often believe that they are ‘outside ideology’ and suggested the notion of ‘interpellation‘ as a way to recognise the formation of ideology. In that ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way as to recruit subjects among individuals. In other words, the way in which society calls / addresses / hails you is interpellation, which is the way in which your subject identity is formed and which, more often than not, corresponds to the dominant ideology.

‘Ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way to ‘recruit’ subjects among individuals . . . through the very precise operation that we call interpellation or hailing.

Althusser 2014:190

Frantz Fanon

In terms of postcolonialism, we can look at The Wretched of the Earth (1961), by Frantz Fanon, which for many (Barry, 2017, McLeod 2000 etc) is a key text in the development and ancestry of postcolonial criticism. Fanon was born in the French colony of Martinique and appears to recognise the ‘mechanics of colonialism and its effects of those it ensnared‘ (McLeod 2000:20) 

1. Assimilation of colonial culture corresponding to the ‘mother country’ Chinua Achebe talks of the colonial writer as a ‘somewhat unfinished European who with patience guidance will grow up one day and write like every other European.’ (1988:46)
2. Immersion into an ‘authentic’ culture ‘brought up out of the depths of his memory; old legends will be reinterpreted’
3. Fighting, revolutionary, national literature, ‘the mouthpiece of a new reality in action’. 

Antonio Gramsci – Hegemony

‘It is well known that Alhussser drew part of his inspiration from Gramsci’ (Althusser, 2016: xxiv) the way in which class relations and subject is ‘exercised through a whole set of institutions . . . the place where encounters between private individuals occur.’ (ibid)

 Gramsci suggests that power relations can be understood as a hegemonic struggle through culture. In other words, Gramsci raises the concept of Hegemony to illustrate how certain cultural forms predominate over others, which means that certain ideas are more influential than others, usually in line with the dominant ideas, the dominant groups and their corresponding dominant interests. In terms of postcolonialism Said, notes how ‘consent is gained and continuously consolidated for the distant rule of native people and territories’ (1993:59).

Case Study: Letter to the Free

Common is an Oscar and Grammy award winning hip/hop rap artist who wrote Letter to the Free as a soundtrack to The 13th – a documentary by Ava DuVernay named after the American 13th amendment (the abolition of slavery). His output is highly politicised, existing in the context of a variety of social and cultural movements aimed at raising awareness of racism and its effects in US society (e.g.: Black Lives Matter). Letter to the Free is a product which possesses cultural and social significance. It will invite comparison with other music videos allowing for an analysis of the contexts in which they are produced and consumed.

• Q1:How can you apply the concept of Orientalism to Common’s Letter to the Free? 
• Q2: Can you apply Fanon’s 3 phase plan of action to this music video?
• Q3: How is the audience called / addressed / hailed (interpellated)? Use examples from both the lyrics and the visual grammar (shot, edit, mise-en-scene) to show how audiences are drawn into a specific subject position / ideological framework?

Syncretism, double consciousness & hybridisation

mechanisms for understanding cross-cultural identities.

“Ain’t No Black In The Union Jack” — A proposal for a new flag for the UK and other socially engaged art work by Gil Mualem-Doron

Paul Gilroy is insistent that ‘we must become interested in how the literary and cultural as well as governmental dynamics of the country have responded to that process of change and what it can tell us about the place of racism in contemporary political culture.’ (2004:13) His theme of Double Consciousness, derived from W. E. B. Dubois, involves ‘Black Atlantic’ striving to be both European and Black through their relationship to the land of their birth and their ethnic political constituency

As with much postcolonial criticism the aim to understand and reconcile individual and national identity. Gilroy highlights Enoch Powell’s notorious 1968 ‘rivers of blood speech’ full of the ‘terrifying prospect of a wholesale reversal of the proper ordering of colonial power . . . intensified by feelings of resentment, rejection, and fear at the prospect of open interaction with others.’ (2004:111) 

Barry notes the stress on ‘cross-cultural’ interactions is indeed a characteristic of postcolonial criticism. Often found by foregrounding questions of cultural difference and diversity, as well as by celebrating ‘hybridity’, ‘ambiguity’ and ‘cultural polyvalency’. A unique position where ‘individuals may simultaneously belong to more than one culture – the coloniser and the colonised’. (2016:198) Even Fanon suggests an emphasis on identity as ‘doubled, or ‘hybrid’, or ‘unstable’.

• Q1: Where can you identify ‘hybridity’, ‘ambiguity’ and ‘cultural polyvalency’ in this music video? 
• Q2: How does this text apply to Fanon’s 3 phase plan of action?
• Q3: How is the audience called / addressed / hailed (interpellation)? Use examples from both the lyrics and the visual grammar (shot, edit, mise-en-scene) to show how audiences are drawn into a specific subject position / ideological framework?

“Ghost Town” (1981) by the band ‘The Specials’ is an ironic take on the isolation and fall out in Britain at that current time. This song was the first British multi race production as it contained Jamaican ska brought over in the late 40’s creating a hybrid of styles of music which also contained elements of reggae and a two tone beat which was the trend at the time. This representation of Britain’s emerging multiculturalism, is reinforced through the eclectic mix of stylistic influences in both the music and the video. 

Using Todorov’s reception theory to follow the plot of the music video you can see the the Equilibrium begins in an empty city with deserted streets and buildings as the cinematography focus’ on establishing isolation. The reason the cities are deserted are because of the Handsworth and Toxteth riots which took place in Birmingham due to lack of employment and boredom. Shortly into the music video the disruption occurs with changes in pitch in the vocals, music and driving ability as they steer frantically to avoid potential supernatural beings which can be heard in the screams by the vocalist during the chorus as well as low sombre moments where the shadow of the car is projected which presents the opportunity to see a shadow of any being following them but of course ghosts supposedly don’t have shadows which can confuse the view as they attempt to connect to an invisible antagonist. Eventually they escape and make it to the beach leaving the grey bland and dull urban landscape where supernatural beings chase and scare the group.