Theorists

Tim’s Theorists - Narrative Theory
Tim O’Sullivan argues that all media texts tell us some kind of story. Through careful mediation media texts offer a way of telling stories. ‘The story of us is as a culture or set of cultures.’

Kate Domaillie stated that every story ever told can be filtered into one of eight narrative types. Each of these narrative types has a source; an original story on which others are based. These stories are as follows: Candide, Cinderella, Love, Circe, Faust, Orpheus, Romeo and Juliet and Tristen and Iseult. Without love, there would not be us; love is the ultimate narrative.

Sven Carlson (1999) suggested that music videos in general videos fall into two rough categories: performance or conceptual clips.
Performance contains filming from live performances.

Bordwell and Thompson (1997) deterred the difference between story and plot.
Structure of narrative:

• Linearity of cause and effect within an overall trajectory of enigma resolution.
• High degree of narrative closure
• A fictional world that contains verisimilitude especially governed by spatial and temporal coherence.

Equilibrium of Diagesis: Todorov (1977)

Claude Lèvi-Strauss (1958) had ideas about narrative amount to the fact that he believed all stones operated to certain clear Binary Opposites e.g. good vs evil

Binary Opposites – mise-en-scene

Protagonist	Antagonist
Colour
Location
Country	Urban

Michael Shore (1984) argues that music videos are recycled styles.
For recycled styles look at Buddy Holly by Wheezer (1984).

• Happy Days was released in 1970 but was set in 1950’s America
• Used original footage from Happy Days
• Our understanding of this look is based purely and simply on other media products.
• Look is more important than meaning (surface without substance)

Becky’s Theorists - Representation Theory

Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze Theory

Looks at how the audience view women who are presented in the media. She states that women are there to be seen and that the use of the camera portrays them as sexual objects through shot types and movement.
1. How men look at women
2. How women look at themselves
3. How women look at other women

Mulvey focuses on:

• Emphasising curves of the female body
• Referring to women as objects rather than people
• This display of women is how men think they should be perceived
• Female viewers view the content through the eye of a man
• Women are often sexualised as objects and viewed based on sexual desire and the way they look

Richard Dyer’s Star Theory
Star Theory is the idea that icons and celebrities are constructed by institutions for financial reasons and are built to target a specific audience or group of people. Dyer’s theory can be broken down into three sections:
1. Audience and institutions – Stars are made to make money for that purpose alone. Audiences want to consume what they think is the ideal. The institution then modifies the stars image around that target audience. They make a star on what they think the audience want.
2. Construction – The star is built for an audience and is not an actual person; a persona is created for the audience to identify and so stars can differentiate between different stars and why they like them or not. The star is built specifically with someone’s signature.
3. Hegemony (cultural beliefs) – Leadership or dominance especially by one step or social group over them. We relate to the star because they have a feature that we admire or share with them. This develops form an admiration into an idolization.

Quotes from Richard Dyer
“A star is an image not a real person that is constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range of materials e.g. advertising, magazines as well as films and music.” (1979)
“Stars are commodities that are produced by institutions”
“A star is a constructed image, represented across a range of media and mediums”
“Stars represent and embody certain ideologies”

Tessa Perkins – Stereotypes
Stereotyping is not a simple process and contains a number of assumptions that can be challenged.

1. Stereotypes are not always negative – ‘youths’

2. They are not always about minority groups or less powerful

3. They can be held about ones groups

4. They are not rigid or changing – they are difficult to change and take a long time to change

5. They are not always false – where else would stereotypes come from?

Implications of stereotypes – usually we’re wrong because we base our stereotypes on people we have never experienced.

Tim's Theorists - Genre Theory
Barry Keith Grant (1995)
Argues that genre become recognizable characteristics

Steve Neale (1995)
Stresses that "genres are not 'systems', they are a process of systematization." E.g. costumes, locations, props, transport, narrative spheres of action. Genres have to change to reflect the ideology of that era. He suggests genres are dynamic. For evidence, look at Nosferatu (1922) and Interview with the Vampire (1994).

Jason Mittell
Argues that genres are cultural categories that surpass the boundaries of media texts and operate within industry, audience and cultural practices as well. For evidence, look at Jay-Z - 99 Problems and Red Hot Chili Peppers - Can't Stop.

Rick Altman (1999)
Three types of pleasure when watching a music video:
Emotional Pleasure: offered to the audience of genre film are significant when generating a strong audience response.
Visceral Pleasure: psychical feeling
Intellectual Pleasure: when there's a story or twist in the narrative

Christian Metz (1974)
Said genre go through four stages:
Experimental stage - writing
Classic stage - classic conventions
Parody stage - to make fun of something
Deconstruction stage - taken apart, added elements e.g. hybrid

Becky's Theorists - Audience Theory
Uses and Gratification Theory
How certain media texts make us feel.
The uses and gratification model represented a change in thinking, as researchers began to describe the effects of the media form the point of view of the audiences.

The model looks as the motives of the people who use the media, asking why we watch the TV programmes we do, why we bother to read newspapers, why we find ourselves so compelled to keep up to date with our favourite soaps or films.

The theory makes the audience active as they choose what they want to consume; they are not forced into consumption, for example, you only watch the films you want to watch as you are in control of your choices. The media simple creates the product.

The theory argued that the audience has social and psychological needs which generate certain expectations about the mass media and what they are exposed to.

The audience is the active participant, therefore it allows them to make choices in relation to what they consume making ones self in control of what they consume. This does assume an active audience making motivated choices making the audience in control of their own consumption.

The underlying idea behind the model us that people are motivated by a desire to fulfill. This theory is broken down into four areas:
1. surveillance is based around the idea that people feel better having the feeling that they know what is going on in the world around them e.g. the news. Surveillance is about awareness, knowledge and security e.g. Green Day's Wake Me Up When September Ends.
2. personal identity explains how being a subject of the media allows us to confirm the identity and positioning of ourselves within our society.
3. personal relationships comes in two parts:
4. relationships with the media e.g. we can form a relationship with the media and also use the media to form a relationship with others.
5. using media within relationships e.g. how we can sometimes use the media as a springboard to form and build upon relationships with real people. Media can be the start of conversation.
5. diversion - we watch/consume to escape something

Stuart Hall's Representation Theory
The reception theory states that media texts are encoded by the producer meaning that whoever produces the text fills the product with values and messages.

The text is then decoded by spectators. Different spectators will decode the text in different ways, not always in the way the producer intended.

The producer encodes messages/meanings:

• Dominant ideology is that the audience view the media text in the way that the producer intended.
• Negotiated ideology is the compromise between the dominant and oppositional readings; the audience accepts the views of the producers but they also have their own ideas.
• Oppositional ideology is when the audience rejects the preferred reading and creates their own reading of the text. They do not agree with the producers ideology.

Hyperdermic Needle Theory

An injection of information to make us believe everything we see. Several factors contributed to this "strong effect"  theory of communication, for example, fast rise and population of radio and television, advertising and photographs.

Suggests the mass media could influence a very large group of people directly and by 'injecting' them with appropriate messages designed to trigger a response.

Opinion is a big fault in this theory. As it doesn't consider the middle man between the media and the audience.

It expresses the view that the media is a dangerous means of communicating because the receiver or audience is powerless to resist the impact of the message.

People are seen and 'passive' and see seen as having a lot of media material "shot" at them. People end up thinking what they are told because there is no other source of information.

This theory is out of date and invalid, we don't all consume media in the same way.

Tim's Theorists - Themes and Genre Theory
David Bordwell (1989)
'Any theme may appear in any genre'
Horror films are basically just modern day fairy tales.
Fear of the unknown: 'the monster is the monstrous other.'
Sex = death: sex is immoral and must be punished.
The breakdown of society: fear or secret desire of society.
The duality of man/personal journey: conflict between a mans civilized side and his savage.
Segregation and alienation:two opposing beings going through a struggle to survive.

Youth Themes:

• teen angst
• rebellion
• romance
• sex - losing your virginity
• nostalgia - the innocence of youth
• nihilism - the belief there is no future
• coming of age - e.g. prom, love, losing your virginity
• tribalism - populatrity verses unpopularity
• bullying

Teenagers are juvenile delinquents:

• the currency of 'cool'
• hedonism
• friendship

Themes in music videos:

• crime
• poverty
• capitalism
• racism

David Buckingham (1993)

'Genre is not simply "given" by the culture: rather it is in a constant process of negotiation and change'