Q1: the signs that constitute the Father Christmas, the signs that combine as
words to provide anchorage and the signs that draw significance from this
anchored context.
• The Father Christmas is fairly crudely constituted being iconic with low
motivation by colour, styling, positioning to offer instant recognition,
reassurance, benevolence, a warm welcome and a clear focus.
• Here is signification at four levels, reference (denotation), association
(connotation), myth and ideology.
• The setting suggests an urban, business-oriented, consumerist Christmas.
There is warmth here but nothing particularly spiritual unless the audience
identifies a star in the east among the white spots in the sky (which may be
stars or snow and add either way to the manufactured ‘magic’).
• The words provide anchorage through a tag-line “when it comes to
Christmas, there’s no place like Manchester”.
• This stating of Christmas then sharpens up the snow-covered iconic
buildings which add relevance and a familiar Christmas aesthetic.
• It also draws focus to the pretty lights which draw attention to what most will
recognise as a German or continental or merely generic Christmas market.
• There is a semiotic vocabulary for those who want to use it: paradigm,
syntagm, icon/index/symbol, denotation/connotation/myth/ideology.
Equally it is appropriate to respond out of the language of composition and
framing size of shot, camera angle.
Q2 • the effect of economic and political contexts on representations
• the way events, issues, individuals (including self-representation) and
social groups (including social identity) are represented through processes
of selection and combination
• the processes through which meanings are established through
intertextuality.
Economic and political contexts:
• media products and the representations in them can be seen as a product
of the economic and political contexts in which they are created
• issues such as censorship and stereotyping may impact on the creation of
products and the way in which representations of power are created and
received
• products must reflect the cultural values of their target audiences in order to
be successful but these may be diverse and can explain the differences in
representation
• products may take up particular economic and political standpoints from
which to address their intended audiences and ‘the world.
Ghost Town: this is more overtly political, a conscious reproach to Thatcher’s Britain
• a booming City and South East juxtaposed with the post-industrial collapse
of the economy everywhere else drew up lines of opposition across the
1980s
• the video provides a guided tour of deprivation anchored by a literate
protest lyric
• there is also a political message in the multi-racial composition of the band
in a Britain beset by the mobilisation of the hard right
• punk had provided access to expression to the disenfranchised and
prompted a new kind of political pop that was articulate and working class
Q7 • how media organisations maintain, including through marketing, varieties of
audiences nationally and globally
• processes of production, distribution and circulation by organisations,
groups and individuals in a global context
• the relationship of recent technological change and media production,
distribution and circulation
• the significance of economic factors, including commercial and not-for-profit
public funding, to media industries and their products
• the impact of ‘new’ digital technologies on media regulation, including the
role of individual producers
• how processes of production, distribution and circulation shape media
products
• cultural industries as summarised by Hesmondhalgh
Responses are required to consider the extent to which contemporary
debates around diversity are reflected in the kinds of films being produced
and of the CSP being a significant case study in this respect