Representation Laura Froggatt

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...