Liam Metcalfe - Unit 4: theorists and theories

1. Media Theory
By Liam Metcalfe

2. Laura Mulvey
Laura Mulvey is a British media theorist, she’s currently teaching film and media
studies in the university of London. Most people know her from her Essay ‘Visual,
pleasure and narrative camera.’ which she wrote in 1973. In 1975 her essay was
published into the influential British film theory journal called screen
The Male gaze theory is how the media presents females and how the media
wants people to see them as objects for men to desire. This is done by them
wearing short or tight clothes in movies or the cameraman focusing on the
middle part of their bodies. It’s a way of getting more people to go and see a film
is there are attractive actors in the movie. However, this suggests to young girls
that this is what every girl should look like but that’s not true. It gives them the
wrong idea that every female needs to look like a model.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Mulvey
https://www.filminquiry.com/film-theory-basics-laura-mulvey-male-gaze-theory/

3. John Berger
John Berger was known for multiple things such as being as being a painter,
novelist, art critic as well as a poet. In 1972 his novel ‘G’ won the Booker Prize
and Universities use his essay ‘ ways of seeing’ about art criticism. He wrote
about how both men and women are seen and represented for example: he
wrote about Men look at women while women watch themselves being
looked at by men. He said that the Woman is usually there to please the
audience and that they are also studied by not only men but also other
women as well as themselves. Another way women are used to intrigue the
audience is by them having a lack of clothes or by having them glance at the
audience through the corner of their eyes.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Berger
http://wilsonwykemedia.blogspot.com/2013/12/john-berger.html

4. Bell hooks
Bell Hooks is from America and is known for being an author, feminist, social
activist and professor. Her writing mostly focuses on the addressing race,
capitalism, gender and intersectionality. She has had over 30 books published
and had appeared in documentary films.
Bells Hooks feminist theory is where she thinks that if you’re not white, male
or upper class that you wont see their own values in the media and media
products. She also believes that people who are white, upper-class and male
control the media and that the media represents black women as the lowest
status.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_hooks

5. Stuart Hall
Stuart Hall was known for being a cultural theorist and political activist. From
1995-1997 he was president of the British sociological association. He speaks
about two stages of the representation of black subject. The first stage was
challenging the stereotypes and trying to assert a positive black energy. The
second stage is how the black subject is produced inside the government.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hall_(cultural_theorist)
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Stuart-McPhail-Hall

6. Michel Foucault
Michael Foucault was known for being a social theorist. His theory is about
showing the relationship between power and knowledge and how they can
be taken advantage of to be used to control Societal Institutions.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault

7. Audience Reception Theory
Preferred reading
Preferred reading is when the person reading believes everything that they read and believes the
messages that the author has written. For example if they read an article in the newspaper about
someone being arrested then they’d believe that they were guilty, even if they’re innocent.
Negotiated reading
Negotiated reading is when someone is giving some information and they sort of believe it, but
they also don’t believe it as they don’t think some of the text is reliable or trustworthy as well as
sometimes being biased. Once they think that it cant be trusted or seems biased, they would
then compare to other sources related to the subject to check the facts and see if it’s true.
Oppositional reading
Oppositional reading is when someone lets their position in society and their moral values chose
how they see the content. This mostly leads to the person rejecting the information.
Aberrant reading
Aberrant reading is where the author uses different was to display messages and how the sender
wanted to interparent the messages to the people reading them.
Sources:
http://daniellewhitemedia.blogspot.com/2015/06/stuart-hall-preferred-reading-theory.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberrant_decoding

8. Hypodermic Theory
The hypodermic theory is where the audience consumes the information as
they’re given it. They accept whatever intended message they’ve been given
and it’s automatically inserted into their brains.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypodermic_needle_model

9. Uses and Gratification Theory
Uses and gratification theory is explaining and showing what people decide to
do with the media in their own way. For example some people may watch a
movie because they’re interested in it and want to actually watch it and a way
of escaping reality, whereas other people may just have it on in the
background as a way of background noise.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uses_and_gratifications_theory

10. Moral Panic
Mortal panic is where society over reacts to news, something that has
happened in the media or a group of certain people. Sometimes it can cause
people to cause even more trouble, due to what they’re reading in the media,
this is known as deviancy amplification.
Source:
https://revisionworld.com/a2-level-level-revision/media-studies-level-
revision/moral-panic-theory

11. Todorov’s Narrative Theory
Todorov always believed that each movie always followed the same pattern:
The beginning where everything is normal, a problem then occurs, people
realising that there’s a problem, they then try to fix the problem, the problem
is resolved and everyone goes back to their normal lives.
Source:
http://mikedyera2mediastudies.blogspot.com/p/todorovs-theory.html

12. Propp’s Narrative Theory
Propp’s narrative theory is that he analyses the characters from
movies and tv shows and explains what makes up their
characteristics, for example: The hero is normally the good
character and we can tell this by how his goal is to rescue someone
or retrieve something that has been stolen. Whereas the villain is
the one trying to stop the hero from fulfilling his quest, they
normally do this by creating a diversion, so that it will delay the
hero’s quest.
Source:
https://www.filminquiry.com/character-conventions-propp/

13. Levi-Strauss: Binary Oppositions
Levi-Strauss’ theory about binary opposites is when the two main characters of
the movie or tv show are complete opposites, for example in superhero films
there's the superhero ( Good) and the villain (Bad) so the theme of the film
would be good vs evil. However if it was a horror movie about zombies, then the
theme may be different as you would have the theme as human vs supernatural.
Source:
https://www.mytutor.co.uk/answers/8161/A-Level/Media-Studies/What-is-Levi-
Strauss-Theory-of-Binary-Opposites/

14. Roland Barthes: Enigma Code
Roland Barthes’ enigma code theory is when mystery is added to grab
the audience's attention and gets them wanting to find out more for
example: People go to watch murder mystery movies to find out who the
killer is and during the movie there would be clues to get you to suspect
who it is, until the killer is revealed.
Source: https://prezi.com/y6nbre6ivft4/barthes-enigma-code-theory/

15. Comparisons…
The preferred reading theory doesn’t really give the audience a
chance to think about what the believe, whereas the negotiated
reading theory causes people to question if what they’ve read is real
or not and gives them a chance to question and do research on it.
Stuart Hall mainly tries to assert positive energy about black women,
where as Bell Hooks believes that black women are shown in a
negative way and represented as the lowest status.
Both Laura Mulvey and John Berger agree that women are studied
and are seen as objects in the media as a way to try and intrigue
men.
Uses and gratification theory shows what people chose to do with the
media, whereas the hypodermic theory just automatically inserts the
information into people's brains and they just accept what they hear
or see.

16. Explain Theory in own work
In my own trailers I used Levi Strauss’ binary opposites theory, as my
trailer is about a ghost girl and a human in the park, so it would be the
Human VS supernatural.
I used Propp’s narrative theory as the main character is shown trying
to discover the truth about recent rumors, while the ‘ghost girl’ is trying
to hurt him and distracting him.
I also used Todorov’s narrative theory as my trailer shown that it was
just a normal walk in the park, until I spot the ghost girl and then
spooky things start to happen. My trailer is also liner as it had a
beginning, middle and end.