Paragraph Plan
- Intro (Print in a digital world)/ Overall statement about how the magazine challenges ideas.
- Habermas (Origins of newspaper publishing, public sphere)/ genre (Steve Neale)
- Institution and demographic/ audience. Key structural facts, horizontal integration.
- Bell Hooks (Mainstream presentation of feminism, intersectionality) – Feminist critical thinking
- Language – Speaking out article, diversity
- Psychological profiles – Young and Rubicam
- Stuart Hall – Representation, Gauntlett
- Language – Front cover, Judith Butler
Habermas looks at how the invention of the ‘Printing Press’, in stimulated the transformation of the public sphere
Genre: Steve Neale, repetition and difference, corpus of elements, repertoire of elements. Codes and conventions of typical magazines (often focusing on makeup, fashion, beauty rather than true identity) – Start talking about front cover. (model, setting, handwriting, scrapbook
Absence of men throughout the magazine?
In terms of representation, Bell Hooks looks at how the mainstream presentation of feminism often ignores the diversity in the world, she says that “feminist movements of the twentieth century have largely been dominated by white view points”. Her work around the 1980’s focused on intersectionality which is “the exploration of oppression having an interconnected or underlying set of causes,” meaning that all forms of oppression stem from a small number of reasons.
For example, within the ‘Speaking Out’ article, 5 very different woman are given space to tell the reader of their unique life experiences. The article focuses on ethnic and racial diversity, body positivity and women in positions of authority and how their stories are so valuable to sparking change. Each ‘profile’ follows the same, minimalistic/simple graphological and narrative structure: a medium close up shot, captioned with their name, followed by a biography highlighting who they are, their experience and what they are doing to ‘speak out’. The by-line comments on “strong voices to admire, follow and inspire your own reflection,” this gives an impression of the type of audience the magazine has. Young and Rubicam’s theory on psychological profiles and how audiences are categorized based on what they want to get from the media. It seems that Oh! is trying to connect with The Aspirer and The Explorer, women who want to make a change explore their own identities.
It is evident, through the wide scope of representation throughout ‘Oh!’ that the producers want to give diverse voices a platform to share positive stories that challenge the marginalised, negative stereotypes associated with certain cultures. Supporting Hooks’ ideas, Stuart Hall formed the distinction between representation (how something is presented) and re-presentation (how something in the real world is manipulated by an image produced by the media). He says that stereotypes are used to create “instant characterisation” and, like Gauntlett theorises, construct a ‘collective identity‘ that are connected with negative behaviours due to re-presentation.
Radical representation of feminity and challenging social ideals is a pattern throughout the publication. The lexical field on the front cover: “power”, “wisdom”, “strong”, “hard-won”, “ideas” often connote to a reactionary presentation of masculinity. It seems that Oh! have re-purposed these masculine traits to create a alternative view on femininity. This view reflects that of Judith Butler’s who explains that gender is not fixed by our biological sex, it is fluid and is constructed through “micro-rituals” and how we choose to present ourselves. The fluidity of identity and specifically gender is shown in the article “More than gender”. This Q and A style interview focuses on Ash who identifies as transgender. Through the anchorage within the article, gender is represented as something that is ever evolving: “shifting identities”, “gender shifts” and “oscillating between two binary codes”, solidifying Butlers ideas on non-binary identities in a “heteronormative society”
- Even though Oh! want to encourage the continuation of print production, through linking to each of their social media handles, perhaps they are also encouraging online interactivity.