Representation Laura Froggatt

Week 6 – Exhibiting cultures: Museums For this week’s topic, we were asked to represent ourselves using a shoe box and any other physical objects. I started this project by considering what would represent aspects of both my past and present and decided on using photos to show the difference between childhood and adulthood. Like sixteenth century ‘collection of rarities’, I decided to include products of personal preference that had no scientific meaning, which could represent the ethnological approach of focusing on humans and their relation to each other.  When constructing the box, I decided to  categorise my photos to show the transition from past to the present which I thought would display my habit to document my relationship with people and places over time. In hindsight, this idea of classifying photos according to specific periods of my life was successful in showing a transition because the photos produce a visual display of my life as a child and as a...

Week 5 – National Identity This week we considered the concept of national identity and how it is formed. I found it interesting discussing the power an image can have in constructing meaning, for example a red London bus or the royal family being symbolic of the concept of “Britishness”. This could suggest that images we consume from the media can help us form a sense of national identity and this circulates hegemonic representations of nationalism. Through newspapers, the idea of being ‘British’ had immense power in periods of history like World War Two. The inclusion of big bold titles like “We never surrender” and “Britain at war” in daily newspapers characterises the war as being a conflict between Britain and the rest of the world, rather than Britain having allies to fight with against the Germans. This use of personal pronouns to reference Great Britain shows that the representation of national identity forms an ‘imagined political community’ (Benedict Anderson) whi...

Week 4 – Genre and Class In this week’s lecture we were introduced to the concept of genre and class being linked together when represented in the media. The representation of class in television such as Peaky Blinders would suggest that within genres like drama there’s a normative and this carries a subliminal framework which portrays class in a derogative way. Mia Wallace and Clint Spinner suggested that being a ‘chav’ is a lifestyle choice which parallels with the characterisation of the Shelby family in Peaky Blinders. The idea of Tommy inheriting the family business and choosing to continue and share the illegal conduct with his brothers implies that the ‘underclass’ lifestyle is an active choice and even though it’s a fictional drama, the representation of working class people still matches derogative and stereotypical views of  class.   As well as this, the characterisation of the Shelby family being violent, rebellious and mostly made up of men para...

Week 3 - Exhibiting Masculinity According to The Sexuality of Men (Metcalf and Humphries, 1985) masculinity can be described as characterised by aggression, competitiveness, emotional ineptitude and coldness. I found it interesting that in Touching the Void, the climbers Joe and Simon displayed some of these characteristics and even though they nearly died, they still maintained a ‘manly’ exterior and initially seemed to have no visible emotion when talking about their experiences. I also found that the mimetic effect of the docudrama created a dramatized version of reality and the staggering shots of Siula Grande and the background music just attributed to the climbers being portrayed as overly ambitious and heroic.  For instance, when Simon says climbing Siula Grande would be a “challenging day out” and there was something “compelling about stepping into the unknown” this created the impression that the climbers were following the stereotypical idea of men bei...

Week 2 - Recording Reality In this week’s lecture we were introduced to the theories surrounding the depiction of gender and how different types of documentary can show the representation of masculinity in sport. I found that in observational documentaries like Senna, the social norm of men being competitive and regarded as ‘god like’ for winning in sport was a central part of the documentary. At some points, Senna appeared to be emotional and the opposite of a stereotypical ‘macho man’  like when he won the grand prix for the first time and cried however the documentary goes on to represent Senna as competitive and aggressive.  The display of Senna’s ‘pure anger’ towards losing and his constant need to ‘humiliate’ Prost shows that even though Senna was regarded as a pure and untouchable figure in formula one, he still had the capacity to act like a stereotypical ‘macho man’ that needs to constantly prove their superior ability.     Arguably this could...

Week 1 - Media Communication and Representation This week we considered ideas and theories about representation and the thing that struck me was that representation of groups such as women can be malleable to current social attitudes. The film Carry on Camping uses the image of a woman’s chest to create a comedic effect which during the 1960s could be interpreted as being funny but to a modern audience this could be derogatory and a sign of patriarchal influence over the media. This could show that the media can be historicising and the relationship between denotation and connotation can evolve from positive to negative depending on changing social norms and values. Similarly, in Janelle Mon á e’s PYNK, the use of pink in the costumes, setting and the references to all women’s bodies being pink creates a sense of unity between women and this unifying image contributes to the improving relationship between denotations and connotations therefore promoting positive representati...