The Simpppsssoooonsssss.

The Simpsons says a lot about its production company. One of their values is family values which is present in all of their episodes. Even when in some episodes, the disequilibrium may suggest jeopardy within the family, the new equilibrium always shows the family back together happily.

The dominant reading is that the family is a conventional one, where the male is the breadwinner, the boy child is rebellious, the girl child is intelligent and an ‘angel’ and the mother stays at home and looks after her children.

A negotiated reading would be that there are gender challenges. Marge could be seen as a liberal independent woman and Homer is reliant on her, rather than her on him.

An oppositional reading is that the family are not happy at all, there is havoc all day long.

I agree with the dominant one.

What is the effect of this violent scene on the audience?

This scene from Robocop shows an extreme explicit nature of fights. Usually the audience see a tiff amongst the hero and villain of a movie, however in this scene; the villain graphically shoots the hero’s hand off, followed by shots of blood from his arm. After this the villain laughs with his friends, suggesting that the shooting was humorous. This can lead to the audiences to make their own readings of the scene. They could either sympathise with the Hero and feel hatred towards the villain, or the audiences could laugh too. If the latter is the case, we could assume that violence has become desensitised, which can affect the viewers as they may feel that it is acceptable to horrifically kill someone. If that is the case, this may then go on to lead to the copycat theory, where the audiences may aspire to have power like the villain and go out and fight people. This has been a theory that people have studied in order to find a correlation between violent games and knife/gun crime.

Scenes like these can also make audiences view a ‘false’ world according to the cultivation theory. People may become so used to watching these sorts of scenes that they feel that events like that do take place in reality. This, then may lead to a realm of hyper reality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOkZIay0J00

To what extent has new and digital media given younger audiences the opportunities to shape their own media representations?

New and digital media has been able to empower its users. These users can produce their own texts (UGC) which enables them to put forward their own personal views and share them with people internationally. This has specifically been of good use to those a part of the younger audiences, who feel that they have been misrepresented within the media.

Facebook initially began in 2004 and was intended for the use of Harvard university students. Though it was intended for these people, the website was soon used by most of America and the phenomenon grew rapidly until it reached an international level. Facebook allows people to upload personal information, pictures and set up small virtual communities by creating pages which people can join if they feel they share things in common. This, rather than creating an isolated society as Sherry Turkle says, it can be argued that social networking sites actually allow people to socialize with people. By updating their statuses, the users of Facebook are able to represent their ‘true’ self, which can be seen as a more genuine representation.

Sites such as YouTube are also advantageous to younger users, as it gives them a chance to upload videos showing their talents. Like the current global star Justin Bieber who was founded on YouTube. He uploaded videos of himself singing, recorded at home and instantly people were able to view these videos comment, rate and subscribe. Subscriptions can be seen as a way of audiences appreciating the creator of the video.

Digital media has provided a foundation for users to build their own representations and challenge the dominant readings of themselves through the media.

Consider the view that the current representation of teenagers is simply ‘moral panic’.

Moral panics are issues that are repeatedly shown within the media, and make audiences/receivers worried about their safety. In the past moral panics have been affective and audiences do tend to take on hegemonic values that are of production companies and subconsciously stereotype certain groups of people and certain places. In recent years teenagers have in fact simply been represented as a ‘moral panic’.

Knife crime, teenage pregnancy and ‘dumbing down’ are only a few of the issues revolving around teenagers these days. The worst of the three is knife crime which is dominantly associated with young black teenagers. This makes the audience fear this group of people, and stereotype them due to some knife related crimes associated with their race. We must also take into consideration the owners of these media texts, and their production values. The news must be bias, however with a great number of knife crimes relating to males of the black race, it is inevitable that the audience fear this group.

Other issues such as teenage pregnancy has also seen a rapid increase, despite the government making laws where the pill was made legal. Teenage pregnancies have mostly been presented though documentaries, which follow the lives of these young mums. These reality documentaries enable the audiences to perceive a oppositional reading of the issue. Where the dominant reading would be that teenage pregnancy is caused due to irresponsible behaviour and that the mothers are immature, some of the mothers they follow suggest a oppositional reading that some mothers plan the pregnancy and are rather mature.

However, regardless of these oppositional readings, predominantly, the representation of teenagers is that they are indeed a moral panic. The males are represented as ‘gangsters’ and ‘thugs’ according to the news associated with them, and the women are increasingly represented as promiscuous individuals.

Compare and contract the representation of teenagers in the two texts.

The portrayal of teenagers within the Bully trailer is predominantly negative. The young male protagonist of the text wears an un-tucked shirt and says “I’m just trying to fit in” connoting that teenagers stereotypically try to fit in with colleagues and prefer to be part of the mainstream. Within the montage we see the subject causing havoc and with the long shots of the setting (private school) the audiences are able to take on the dominant reading, that ALL teenagers are troublesome. However the trailer suggests that teenagers conform to stereotypes in order to try and make friends, who also conform to these stereotypes.

The opening credit of skins introduces all the important characters of the show, by using specific shots that show them doing something that forms their personality. Within the fast montage there are several shots of people kissing, smoking and partying, all which are portrayed to be negative within the media. There is also a shot of two females, even though they debut in many soaps, the idea same sex relationships is still frowned upon. These sexual shots also provide sexual gratifications for their primary audiences, which are teenagers themselves.

"Media representations favour those with power at the expense of those without”. To what Extent do you think this statement is true?

Media representations are initially how certain people, genders and race are represented in the media. Through the cultivation theory, we can see that when we are repeatedly exposed to the same text/representations, as audiences we tend to accept that these representations are true, and soon enough they become our expectations of specific people. The elite are predominantly in control of the media and consume most of it and therefore are able to ‘inject’ their hegemonic values through the hypodermic needle theory. Inevitably, this suggests that the media do in fact favour those with power at the expense of those without.

During the 1950s there was a rise in ‘raw portrayals’ of the British public, and this was the first time that society had seen issues about ‘real people’ on their TV screens. Before this, entertainment programs where mostly of the comedy genre, dramas about real life only started to rise after the Second World War. This was because the public had seen the devastation the war had caused first hand. Also during the war, the government who were the elite weren’t supported as much beforehand. Shows such as Coronation Street during the 1960s conformed to the issues that societies were facing, they also had the typical British accent rather than the posh accent people were used to hearing. Although most of these representations of the general public were negative, as they were shown to live in working class environments and they faced problems with money, they were also liberating. People preferred to see what other people like them were facing, it was a sense of escapism from their own problems.

However their liberating aspects didn’t make it favour those who aren’t the elitist. The raw portrayals of society still portrayed the flaws of those who aren’t apart of the elite.

There are always concerns about new technology. In your view, what are the possible benefits and problems attached to social networking?

Social networking sites, in recent years have become increasingly popular. It could be argued that social networking sites connect people and creates virtual societies which enable people to feel included rather than excluded. However a stronger and more concerning argument is that the more popular sites such as Facebook are isolating people and ‘dumbing down’ its users.

Social networking sites such as MSN Messenger, Twitter and Facebook, are sites that people use in order to stay connected to one another. This makes it easier for people to talk to one another. In 2009 Twitter recorded that there were 2.7 million tweets being made every day. Status updates on Facebook and tweets on Twitter, creates a sense of freedom of speech, as people are allowed to express their views about anything they want openly. Also sites such as Twitter, which is popular for its celebrity users, somewhat abolishes the hierarchy of the elitist at the top and the general public at the bottom, as people of all backgrounds and lifestyles could sign up to become a part of the network.

Facebook was created in 2004 by a Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg. The site was initially created for Harvard students to make them connect to one another however; this website was then used by students from a wide range of universities, including those from other countries. Rapidly the number of Facebook users increased and now there are more than 400,000 users just in America. With people connecting via the web, people have willingly decided to segregate themselves from the rest of the world. Sherry Turkle, a theorist said: “Under the illusion of allowing us to communicate better, it is actually isolating us from real human interactions in a cyber- reality is a poor imitation of the real world”. This supports the idea that in fact, social networking sites do rather isolate people which, this fades away the physical interaction people used to have.

Consider the view that the current press treatment of teenagers is simply another “moral panic”

The current press has covered a lot of news about today’s teenagers, and most of the news which involves them is about teenagers committing crimes and having bad behaviour towards other members of society. This is increasingly shown over the past few years and with repeated representations of teenagers being in ‘gangs’, society tend to accept the fact that this is a moral panic which is affecting the nation. However, as the news is altered according to the production company, it could be argued that the news presents hegemonic values by contrasting the middle/working class representations to those of the elite. Although the rate of knife crime and gun crime amongst teenagers has increased, the news heavily emphasis on the fact that they are ’teenagers’. The dominant reading of these news bulletins is that teenagers cause havoc and are a threat to our nation. With repeated representations of these teenagers, the audiences of the news become passive and the hypodermic needle theory suggest that the production companies are able to inject their values into the audiences, which shapes their views and opinions on certain topics. The idea that today’s teenagers are dangerous therefore becomes a moral panic.

Compare and contrast the two texts, with particular reference to the representation of teenagers.

Text one, the metro newspaper headlines ‘The YouTube gangsters’ in a bold white font against a black background, which highlights the headline. Also as YouTube is a website that is a phenomenon and is used by almost everyone on a global scale, the story is more identifiable to the readers. The main adjective used to describe the teenagers is ‘gangsters’ which connotes crime, bad behaviour and violence. This makes the readers of the metro to view teenagers as barbaric groups of people who are becoming more of a danger for society.

The image of the gun is captioned with “threat: A revolver favoured by London’s gangs”, by saying that the gun is a threat and as they associate the teenagers with the gun, the metro is trying to represent teenagers as a threat. However it is not all teenagers, predominantly, their portrayals of teenagers being wild and criminals are of the males. There is also a secondary image on the front cover, of a black male holding a gun near his face. Therefore the representation of black males is negative and they are seen as the main ‘gangsters’. In the introduction, the teenagers are said to be ‘thugs’ and ‘armed’. Though the newspaper is trying to inform their readers about the issue of teenage crime, they are also conforming to the reader’s stereotypical expectations by inferring that most of these gangsters are black teen males.

In contrast to this, the daily mail article represents teenagers to still be a concern but rather than just targeting the black males, the primary image on the article is of a group of white teenagers. This is an alternative representation of teenagers compared to that of the metro, as the daily mail is collectively suggesting that most if not all teenagers of other ethnic groups are thugs and gangsters. The article also explains that teenagers are yobs rather than gangsters, which makes them, seem like a nuisance rather than criminals.