Paper 1 Total Marks: 52 / 84

Grade Boundaries break down: Paper 1 and Paper 2 max mark 84 each-

B- 51

C- 42

How many marks to secure target grade:

Questions needed to be re-written:

Question 1)

Specific signs can construct meaning about Christmas through the bold text and the top tagline “When it comes to Christmas, there’s no place like.. Manchester”. It constructs that the word is important and crucial to remember. Other things, like the stating of Christmas and then presenting a familiar Christmas aesthetic through the tall buildings and families presented at the bottom. In terms of Santa’s feature in the adverts as a hero (Propp’s character types) it positions the advert in a positive outlook.

Question 2:

Economic and political contexts influence the way in which media products represent reality through the music video Ghost Town and Figure 1. This is because in Figure 1 the buildings are presented in a similar way in real life as well as the city scapes being The Public Sphere, iconic buildings, the central shopping area and the figures at the bottom of the advertisement, both figures showing different styles of representation through their dressing and hairstyle. This presents a sense of reality as the difference in cultures can be prominent in Manchester, more diverse.

Economic and political context influence the way in which media products represent reality in Ghost Town. This is because in the music video the production presents the town as empty, this historically links to the unemployment rate being at 3.3 million people jobless and leading to more elsewhere. The music video being published in the early 1980s and Margaret Thatcher’s Britain (riots, killings, strikes) presents that there was a large political divide and stance at the time and many were homeless, dying and a booming city as well as the south east juxtaposing with post-industrial collapse
of the economy everywhere else drew up lines of opposition across the 1980s.

These themes of eeriness etc. can be explored in the music video through the eeriness of the sound, the block and video atmosphere and when the singers are throwing rocks into the water