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blinded by the light

On February 28, 2008, Time Warner’s CEO at the time, Jeffrey Bewkes, announced that New Line would be shut down as a separately operated studio.

n May 8, 2008, it was announced that Picturehouse would shut down in the fall. Berney later bought the Picturehouse trademarks from Warner Bros. and relaunched the company in 2013.

New Line moved from its long-time headquarters on Robertson Boulevard in Los Angeles in June 2014 to Warner Bros.’ lot Building 76, formerly used by Legendary Entertainment, a former Warner Bros.

In 1987, during the austere days of Thatcher’s Britain, a Muslim teenager learns to live life, understand his family and find his own voice through the music of Bruce Springsteen.

Bruce Springsteen writes songs which combine mainstream rock musical style with narrative songs about working class American life. 

media insttutions- key terms

  1. Cultural industries – A cultural industry is an economic field concerned with producing, reproducing, storing, and distributing cultural goods and services on industrial and commercial terms.
  2. Production – Production is the process of combining various material inputs and immaterial inputs  in order to make something for consumption. It is the act of creating an output, a good or service which has value and contributes to the utility of individuals.
  3. Distribution-Content Distribution is the act of promoting content to online audiences in multiple media formats through various channels.
  4. Exhibition / Consumption-  consumption is defined as how your content audience reads, views and/or listens to information.
  5. Media concentration-  a process whereby progressively fewer individuals or organizations control increasing shares of the mass media.
  6. Conglomerates- a company that owns numerous companies involved in mass media enterprises, such as television, radio, publishing, motion pictures, theme parks, or the Internet.
  7. Globalisation (in terms of media ownership) -The production, distribution, and consumption of media products on a global scale, facilitating the exchange and diffusion of ideas cross-culturally.
  8. Cultural imperialism –  the over-concentration of mass media from larger nations, negatively affecting less powerful nations.
  9. Vertical Integration – when a Media Company owns different businesses in the same chain of production and distribution
  10. Horizontal Integration – a Media Company’s Ownership of several businesses of the same value
  11. Mergers – a merger or acquisition in which 2 or. more of the undertakings involved carry on a media business in the State
  12. Monopolies –  concentrated control of major mass communications within a society
  13. Gatekeepers – Gatekeeping is the process through which information is filtered for dissemination, whether for publication, broadcasting, the internet, or some other mode of communication
  14. Regulation – encouraging competition and an effective media market, or establishing common technical standards to achieve a goal
  15. Deregulation – deregulation of the telecommunications industry pertains to relaxing ownership rules regarding such items as the number of stations a single television or radio owner can possess in a market and whether or not a single corporation can own a newspaper, or television and radio station in the same market.
  16. Free market –  an economic system based on supply and demand with little or no government control
  17. Commodification  – critical view of the media sees the commodities and commodification with two things that connect the object and process.
  18. Convergence  –  the interconnection of information and communications technologies, computer networks, and media content.
  19. Diversity  – finding ways to make content both physically accessible and visibly diverse. 
  20. Innovation – is about change, and media products and services are changing

david hesmondhalgh

Hesmondhalgh has a book called cultural industries, his work is about tracing the relationship between media work and media industries.

Working in the media is basically down to pure luck due to the media industry having such a high demand of people wanting to join such industry but not enough places actually in the industry to allow everyone to get into the positions.

‘for every individual who succeeds, there are many who do not. For many, it will be the result of a perfectly reasonable personal decision that the commitment and determination required is not for them

Family connections boosts the chances of being able to enter the media industry.

Hesmondhalgh stated that the media industry is a risky business. As you cannot predict the audiences taste.

murdoch news uk

  1. Keith Rupert Murdoch born 11 March 1931
  2.  English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry. 
  3. Born in Melbourne, Victoria Australia.
  4. Worth:  $17.1 billion.
  5. Murdoch found a political ally in Sir John McEwen, leader of the Australian Country Party 
  6. In 1968, Murdoch entered the British newspaper market with his acquisition of the populist News of the World, followed in 1969 with the purchase of the struggling daily The Sun from IPC
  7. In 1981, Murdoch acquired the struggling Times and Sunday Times from Canadian newspaper publisher Lord Thomson of Fleet.
  8. In the light of success and expansion at The Sun the owners believed that Murdoch could turn the papers around. Harold Evans, editor of the Sunday Times from 1967, was switched to the daily Times, though he stayed only a year amid editorial conflict with Murdoch.
  9. Murdoch bought the newspaper, ‘News of the World of London’, in 1968
  10. Murdoch became a US Citizen in 1985 in order to be able to expand his market to US television broadcasting.
  11. 1980s, Murdoch formed a close alliance with Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
  12.  February 1981, when Murdoch, already owner of The Sun and The News of the World, sought to buy The Times and The Sunday Times
  13. In the general elections of 1997, 2001 and 2005, Murdoch’s papers were either neutral or supported Labour under Tony Blair
  14. In July 2011, Murdoch, along with his youngest son James, provided testimony before a British parliamentary committee regarding phone hacking. In the UK, his media empire came under fire, as investigators probed reports of 2011 phone hacking.
  15. On 15 July, Murdoch attended a private meeting in London with the family of Milly Dowler, where he personally apologized for the hacking of their murdered daughter’s voicemail by a company he owns.
  16. 16 and 17 July, News International published two full-page apologies in many of Britain’s national newspapers. The first apology took the form of a letter, signed by Murdoch, in which he said sorry for the “serious wrongdoing” that occurred. The second was titled “Putting right what’s gone wrong”, and gave more detail about the steps News International was taking to address the public’s concerns.
  17.  Murdoch accepted the resignations of Rebekah Brooks, head of Murdoch’s British operations, and Les Hinton, head of Dow Jones who was chairman of Murdoch’s British newspaper division when some of the abuses happened. They both deny any knowledge of any wrongdoing under their command.
  18. On 27 February 2012, the day after the first issue of The Sun on Sunday was published, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers informed the Leveson Inquiry that police are investigating a “network of corrupt officials” as part of their inquiries into phone hacking and police corruption. She said that evidence suggested a “culture of illegal payments” at The Sun and that these payments allegedly made by The Sun were authorised at a senior level.
  19. In testimony on 25 April, Murdoch did not deny the quote attributed to him by his former editor of The Sunday Times.
  20.  1 May 2012, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee issued a report stating that Murdoch was “not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company”.
  21. On 3 July 2013, the Exaro website and Channel 4 News broke the story of a secret recording. This was recorded by The Sun journalists, and in it Murdoch can be heard telling them that the whole investigation was one big fuss over nothing, and that he, or his successors, would take care of any journalists who went to prison.[97] He said: “Why are the police behaving in this way? It’s the biggest inquiry ever, over next to nothing.”
  22. Murdoch’s downfall beings
  23. Murdoch is played by Malcolm McDowell in the 2019 film Bombshell.
  24. Murdoch stuck up for Roger during his allegations.
  25. Women working at fox go against Murdoch, Female employees at Fox News were quick to controvert Murdoch. “I have had to put up with a hostile work environment for years, and now I’m told that it doesn’t exist by a man who doesn’t have to walk these halls every day? I’m hungry for justice,”

advertisement essay

Judith Butler describes gender as “an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts.” In other words, it is something learnt through repeated performance. 

How useful is this idea in understanding gender is represented in both the Score and Maybelline advertising campaigns?

In this essay I will be discussing the difference between Maybelline and Score, and how gender roles are played within these advertisements. I will also be discussing who Judith Butler is and her work towards the third wave of feminism and discuss the other waves of feminism we have experienced to make the world we live in today and how these waves of feminism have affected how women are treated today.  

Firstly, Judith Butler a gender theorist discusses with her audience that gender is just performed. By this Butler means that we act our gender and the way we act is how we are perceived. It is not about how long your hair is or whether you wear makeup or not, Butler believes that is the way we act influences the gender we are perceived as. Judith works in the third wave of feminism, within this Butler is working towards stopping women from being looked at as objects and being called names such as a “slut” for showing off skin. Raunch culture suggests the sexualised performance of women in the media that can play into male stereotypes of women as highly sexually available, where its performers believe they are powerful owners of their own sexuality. This culture is a massive part of the third wave of feminism as it presents that face that not just women, but everyone should have the freedom to identify as what they want to be identified as. There is one problem which comes along with Raunch culture which is it may be presenting old misogynistic ways due to the idea of men wanted to identify was women and the idea that women cannot do what men can do but women wanting to be men. This may cause misogyny as a woman cannot become a man as she does not have the capability to-do what a man can do. 

Raunch culture links into the Maybelline advert Bossed up as a man who is in the Advertisement wears the mascara that Maybelline are trying to promote. Manny Gutierrez the male starring in this advert was the first male Maybelline ambassador, the advertisement was released in 2017 which suggests that there is a new revolutionised way to look at gender. Manny wears makeup like the other females and is hired by a female-based company. Manny received little to no scrutiny about this due to the fact that it was becoming more normal the idea that men wear makeup too as men like drag queens have been becoming more seen. Not only that when we see the product being held as it is about to be used it shimmers and once it is placed on the eyelash the eye shimmers. This suggests that the product gives you a glisten in your eye and makes your eyes pop due to the use of the product. 

The idea of men wearing makeup goes coincides with what second wave feminism worked towards, as second wave feminism spoke about equality between male and females. So understandably the second wave of feminism achieved something as men and women can equally use makeup as presented in Maybelline. But Score on the other hand is the complete opposite as the women in the advertisement are lifting a man and the whole advertisement is about men using this hair product and getting loads of skinny women who will love him. The fact that the man is placed higher than the women present the idea that he has more power over them due to his masculinity. Also, the slogan “get what you always wanted” suggests that men always wanted women who would treat them like royalty and women who are heard over heels for them as well as them being dressed in skimpy clothes and are considered beautiful. Jean Kilbourne and Laura Mulvey worked in the second wave of feminism and faught for equality and rights for women. Laura Mulvey spoke about the male gaze and introduced to women that fact that males looked at women as objects and as though women were only there for the males’ eyes and pleasure. Jean Kilbourne said, “You almost never see a photograph of a woman considered beautiful that hasn’t been Photoshopped,” which suggests that the image of women is structured whereas the image of men is not so structured. Which is where the idea of equality is and links into first wave feminism due to the idea that men and women are treated differently and why can men and women do the same thing? 

First wave feminism is all about the questioning on why women cannot do what men do. Before the suffragettes, the world was a brutally sexist place to live-in but when the suffragettes came into play, they changed how women were viewed due to their devotion to change the matter. The suffragettes campaigned for the rights of women and were activists in gaining equality for men and women so that we could live freely and equally due to how much men were place above and how sexist the world actually was. The suffragette’s struggled to make a change in society and change how women are viewed today but without the suffragettes there would not have been change due the fact that women now no longer have to fight so hard for equality as nowadays many people believe that men and women are equal and there is no divide in men and women.  

Overall, the idea of feminism development has been presented in both CSP 3 and CSP 4 as in CSP3, Score we can show the idea of a man being dominant over the women but in CSP 4, Maybelline we can see the development of feminism as both male and female are placed with the same role and there is no dominance of one over the other.  We can also see the change in advertisements due to people with colour now being in ads aswell as men wearing make up which wasn’t seen in the earlier days of advertisement

bombshell

Women who work at Fox News a news company based in the US try to expose the CEO Roger Ailes for his sexual harrassments.

Roger Ailes was offering the female workers of Fox News a rise in pay if they were to sleep with him. He abused his power for his sexual intentions and got away with it for a while due to the fact that he had such a high position. Women who he had encountered and offered such raises to set out to expose him of his crimes to eventually fire him.

Gretchen won 20 million dollars after suing roger for sexual assault.

feminism

first wave feminism, questioning why women cant do certain things. People seeking equality started about 150 years ago.

second wave feminism– 60s and about civil rights. In the 60s there was a big social change and a campaign about equal rights for women. 1960s, Jean Kilbourne and Laura Mulvey. 1867 suffragettes. Council of women in 1888.

Third wave feminism According to Barker and Jane (2016), third wave feminism, which is regarded as having begun in the mid-90’s has following recognisable characteristics:

  • an emphasis on the differences among women due to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion
  • individual and do-it-yourself (DIY) tactics
  • fluid and multiple subject positions and identities
  • cyberactivism
  • the reappropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ for liberatory purposes
  • sex positivity

According to Ariel Levy, in her book Female Chauvinist Pigs raunch culture is on the one hand, the idea of liberation involves new freedoms for sexual exhibition, experimentation and presentation, and on the other, it may well be playing out the same old patterns of exploitation, objectification and misogyny?

Raunch culture is the sexualised performance of women in the media that can play into male stereotypes of women as highly sexually available, where its performers believe they are powerful owners of their own sexuality’

fourth wave feminism also looked to explore these contradictory arguments and further sought to recognise and use the emancipatory tools of new social platforms to connect, share and develop new perspectives, experiences and responses to oppression, ‘tools that are allowing women to build a strong, popular, reactive movement online‘ (Cochrane, 2013). As such, from the radical stance of #MeToo to the Free the Nipple campaign, which Miley Cyrus endorsed and supported (which may encourage you to re-evaluate your initial reading of her video Wrecking Ball above), the use of new media technologies has been a clear demarcation for broadening out the discussion and arguments that are played out in this line of critical thinking.

Intersectionality:

‘In an attempt to understand what it means to be oppressed as ‘a woman’, some feminist scholars sought to isolate gender oppression from other forms of oppression’. Put another way, there was a tendency to be either ‘preoccupied with the experiences of white middle-class women or to ignore completely the experiences other women’ (Sigle-Rushton & Lindström, 2013, 129). It is from this that the development and articulation of intersectionality began to take shape. The early ideas around intersectionality can be traced to theoretical developments from the 1980’s, see for example, the work by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) or some of the propositions asserted around Queer Theory (see below) that brings together a set of complex ideas around the ‘multidimensionality of subjectivity and social stratification’

you cannot ‘understand Black women’s experiences of discrimination by thinking separately about sex discrimination and race discrimination’

(ibid)Sigle-Rushton & Lindström, 2013 p131

Hook: Multicultural Intersectionality

As Barker and Jane note, ‘black feminists have pointed ot the differences between black and white women’s experiences, cultural representations and interests’ (2016:346). In other words, arguments around gender also intersect with postcolonial arguments around ‘power relationships between black and white women’. So that ‘in a postcolonial context, women carry the double burden of being colonized by imperial powers and subordinated by colonial and native men’ (ibid).

As a way of exploring this notion of intersectionality ie the idea that an approach such as feminism, is NOT UNIVERSAL, SINGULAR or HOMOGENEOUS as this is a REDUCTIONIST and ESSENTIALIST way of seeing the world. Rather intersectionality highlights the way ideas and concepts such as ‘female‘, ‘feminist‘, ‘feminine‘ (Moi 1987) intersect with other concepts, ideas and approaches, such as, sexuality, class, age, education, religion, ability. A way of exploring these ideas is through the work of bell hook.

bell hook (always spelt in lower case – real name: Gloria Jean Watkins) advocates media literacy, the need to engage with popular culture to understand class struggle, domination, renegotiation and revolution. Put another, encouraging us all to ‘think critically’ to ‘change our lives’.ethnicity and race, see for example here work ‘Cultural Criticism and Transformation‘

Queer Theory

In the UK the pioneering academic presence in queer studies was the Centre for Sexual Dissedence in the English department at Sussex University, founded by Alan Sinfield and Johnathon Dollimore in 1990 (Barry: 141). In terms of applying queer theory to feminist critical thought, Judith Butler, among others expressed doubt over the reductionist, essentialist, approach towards the binary oppositions presented in terms of: male/femalefeminine/masculineman/woman. Arguing, that this is too simple and does not account for the internal differences that distinguishes different forms of gender identity, which according to Butler ‘tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes . . . normalising categories of oppressive structures‘ (14:2004).

identity can be a site of contest and revision‘

GENDER IS A PERFORMANCE

We perform a gender we aren’t actually one gender.

score and maybelline

SCORE- The male in score is placed higher then the females which suggest that the man has more power over the females as he is being held up by them. Also the slogan “get what you always wanted” suggests that men always wanted women to go after them as the male figure in this advert is getting swarmed by females and they are trying to protect him and reach up to him. Also the females in this advert are shown in skimpy outfits which shows off a lot of their skin to show to men who see this advert that they get skinny girls who will show skin off to them.

MAYBELLINE- The advert as a whole is extremely cringy. But with this make up advert they have a male using the product as well and jot just a female which shows a change in society. In the advert they also specify where they are which gives us the idea of how wealthy they could be due to the fact that they are in a big well known expensive city. As well they have the characters all in dull colours to show the switch between before using the product and after using the product.

judith butler

Judith Butler is a gender theorist whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory, and literary theory. Butler has written many books which explore gender identity. Much of Butler’s early political activism centred around queer and feminist issues, and they served, for a period of time, as the chair of the board of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. Over the years, Butler has been particularly active in the gay and lesbian rights, feminist, and anti-war movements.

my understanding of the four categories of representation

Fluidity of identity

Fluid of identity is having the option to change the way you look however you like. If you don’t want to look a certain way fluid of identity creates the meaning of being able to change that and change how you perceive yourself as a person. Not only that Fluid of identity also means having the fluidity to change the way you act to something preferred or to something which can be categorised as normal. Fluid of Identity is the freedom to change who you are as a person inside and out if you prefer to-do that.

Constructed identity

Constructed identity is stereotypical. For example the fixed idea that a women should have long straight blonde hair with blue eyes and a man should be tall with big muscles and a brunette. These ideas have been constructed within society to change how we look at men and women. Constructed identity isn’t all about gender its also for who your preferred gender attraction is. Once again society has created ideal attraction preference, males are supposed to be attracted to women, and women are supposed to be attracted to men. Men aren’t supposed to like other men and women aren’t supposed to like other women, Society has constructed those identity’s for people which places pressure and shame onto those who are gay and do prefer people of the same gender.

Negotiated identity

Negotiated identity is when people come to an agreement of who is who and who identifies as something other than their birth gender. Men may come to terms and agree with the fact that they are a man and friends may be women or men and vice versa. Not only that people may agree that their friends may want to change from their assigned gender to become another gender as of which they are more comfortable being in. Not just that in gay relationships both partners come to terms of who is who in that relationship. This can be described as “wearing the pants in the relationship” which is basically who takes on the dominant role within the relationship.

Collective identity

Collective identity is associating with a group or a group associating as something. An example of this is drag queens. These people identify as men but have feminine traits and perspectives. Majority of these men are gay but love to dress up as women and do make up. Collectively these men all identify as drag queens. Also religions, many people collectively identify as Christian or Hindu, which society don’t have a problem with as its something they believe in but some people in society may argue that drag queens are wrong due to stereotypes that men should work for the family whereas the women are supposed to dress up to please them and apply make up to look pretty for the men. Everyone is apart of a group that have a certain identity, for another example actors. They all identify as actors same with the scouts they all identify as a scout until they leave the group but the traits and skills they learnt as a scout will stay with them for life.