Representation Essay - Y13 Film 'The Secret' October Assessment

Representation refers to the construction in any medium of aspects of 'reality' such as people, places, objects, events, cultural identities and other abstract concepts. Our film 'The Secret' is based around a homosexual teen male, so the main topics represented in the film are sexuality and age. We tried to represent the topic of sexuality through the eyes of the character of Will himself, and show the audience what many homosexual people have to deal with on a daily basis.

Judith Butler's 'Queer Theory' challenges the idea that gender is part of the essential self that is fixed and immoveable; in other words, that our male/female gender doesn't control all aspects of our identity or how we perceive other peoples identity. The theory developed as a way of combating negative representations of gay sexuality in the media. It combats the idea that people should be divided and categorised due to their sexual orientation or practice and that a persons' identity shouldn't be limited to their sexual preference. This theory can be applied to 'The Secret' as we tried to break the 'gay stereotype' as much as possible, by making the setting of the room just like a typical teenage boy's room which we thought helped to challenge the stereotype that all gay people are feminine.

'The Secret' contains many aspects which represent sexuality through the 'Queer Theory' such as costume and setting. Will's costume consisted of a regular blue hoodie and some tracksuit bottoms, which is the outfit of a typical teenage boy. To give the same effect, we made the setting of the bedroom very gender neutral, and almost edging on masculine to represent his gender, despite his sexual orientation. For example, we had multiple text books and school books lying on the first desk you see as Will enters the room, accompanied by a pair of tossed shorts and his school blazer which represents how he is a typical teenager with a messy room. As well as these, we also had some aftershaves placed on another desk above it, which helps to represent the more masculine side of Will's character.

Along with the objects within Will's room being gender neutral and almost slightly masculine, we also kept this theme in place by keeping the colours throughout the film neutral, featuring blues, greys and reds which are all gender neutral colours. All of these small details add up to give the audience an overall feel that Will is just as masculine as any other boy of his age, despite his sexuality.

Another theory that can be applied to our film is Anthony Gidden's 'Traditionalist vs Post Traditionalist View of Society' theory. Media representations of society can be seen as traditional or post traditionalist. Traditional views in terms of our film would be people having a narrow minded view towards sexuality and believing that romantic feelings are only acceptable between a man and a woman rather than between two people of the same sex. This theory heavily relates to our film as Will obviously has a post traditionalist view on sexuality within society, where as his sister and other family members have a traditional view on sexuality, as we see when Will's sister uses a derogatory term for homosexuals as she hears Will listening to a debate for gay rights. Added to this, we purposely added the radio interview debate about gay rights to allow the audience to have an insight into the current societies views on the topic, and into Will's personal views on the topic. It also allowed us to show how serious the topic of gay rights is to Will, and how his post-traditional views help to define him. The fact that this theory can be applied to our film suitably shows that we efficiently brought across the topic and showed the views of two separate people within a short amount of time, while also expressing Will's emotions towards his sister's views by showing his stuttering and unsure reaction towards his relationship as she insults homosexuality.

Media texts usually represent the world in order to support a dominant ideology. An ideology is a belief system that is constructed and presented by a media text. Dominant ideologies are central to people's belief systems, and it's often difficult to challenge them effectively, but as traditional views are changing on homosexuality, we decided to challenge the dominant ideology of marriage and family. This dominant ideology states that the 'right way' to live is to marry an opposite sex partner and have children, which we decided to challenge by surrounding the film around a homosexual teen; so although the film doesn't feature marriage or children, it does surround a same sex relationship which is seen as taboo to many people. Dominant ideologies are considered hegemonic, which is the way in which those in power maintain their control. Our aim for the film was to challenge the belief that romantic relationships are strictly between two people of the opposite sex, by trying to normalise same sex relationships - this is why we named the other boy in the relationship 'Taylor' because it is a unisex name, so to the audience, the romantic relationship occurring was nothing out of the ordinary in terms of the dominant ideology until they were actually introduced to Taylor.

Dick Hebdidge said that subculture is a group of like minded individuals who feel neglected by societal standards and who develop a sense of identity which differs to the dominant in which they belong. 'The Secret' represents Will and Taylor as a group of these like minded individuals as they both belong to the gay community and have the same belief system, and as a whole many people disagree with that belief system, so it can be argued that they feel neglected by societal standards. However, the two characters experience this differently, as Will clearly doesn't have the support system of his family, which Taylor seems to have as we see when he mentions that his mother wants to meet Will, suggesting that Taylor's family are open to and accepting of his sexuality. So, although they both belong to the same subculture group, they experience their neglect from societal standards differently based on the company they surround themselves with.

The dominant representation of young people/teenagers tends to involve anti-social behaviour, gang culture, disrespect, drink and drugs, and teen pregnancies. In order to present the struggles Will goes through with his sexuality as a teen, we decided to leave these typical themes out of Will's character, and simply focus on his inner issues. The theory on age representation of teenagers doesn't necessarily apply to Will's character, however, it can be applied to the character of his sister. This can be argued because, as stated before, a typical tendency of a teen in films is disrespect, and in our film, Will's sister disrespects the opinion of others as she insults the gay community and those standing up for them, as she uses a derogatory term as she voices her opinion on the gay rights debate playing on the radio.

Another theory that can be applied to the film is Psychoanalysis and 'The Mirror' by Lacan. Lacan's theory about 'the mirror' is an idea around the idea of identity. He considers the point which a person develops a sense of self and conscious identity. He considers the point at which a person recognises their own reflection and begins to consider how other perceive them and modify themselves to satisfy the perception of how others see them. Will never physically changes himself in the film, however he does hide his sexuality in order to gain the respect of his family and avoid being an outcast due to their opinions. This was important to us in the film, as this is a true representation of many gay people in society which we felt was an important aspect to include so many viewers who are gay themselves could relate to Will's hesitation to be honest about his sexuality, even to the closest people in his life.

In conclusion, many theories can be applied to 'The Secret' intentionally or unintentionally. These theories help to make the film come to life and present the real meaning behind the film itself. The theories also help viewers relate to the film or even change their opinions based on seeing issues from a characters point of view.

Representation Theory

Representation refers to the construction in any medium (especially the mass media) of aspects of 'reality' such as people, places, objects, events, cultural identities and other abstract concepts. Such representations may be in speech or writing as well as still or moving pictures.

It is the ability of texts to draw upon features of the world and present them to the viewer, not simply as reflections,  but more so as constructions. Hence, the images don't portray reality in an unbiased way with 100% accuracy, but rather, present 'versions of reality' influenced by culture and people's habitual thoughts and actions.

In a world dominated by print and electronic media, our sense of reality is increasingly structured by narrative. Feature films and documentaries tell us stories about ourselves and the world we live in. Television speaks back to us and offers us 'reality' in the form of hyperbole and parody. Print journalism turns daily life into a story. Advertisements narrativise our fantasies and desires.

We often analyse representations in the media according to categories such as; age, disability, gender, socio-economic grouping, race, nationality and sexuality.

Ideology 

An ideology is a belief system that is constructed and presented by a media text. Media texts represent the world in order to support a dominant ideology. Eg; newspapers often promote the dominant ideology of patriotism through their representation of race and nationality.

Some dominant ideologies...

• Capitalism; the production of capital and consumption of surplus value as a life goal.
• Patriotism; To love, support and protect one's country and its people.
• Marriage and Family; The 'right way' to live is to marry an opposite sex partner and have children.
• Male superiority; Men are more suited to positions of power and more suited to decision making at work and at home.

Many dominant ideologies are extremely culture-specific, for example; Christian fundamentalism as a political force in the USA, Shariah Law is some Muslim countries, the principle of individual freedom in the Netherlands.

Dominant ideologies are central to people's belief systems. It is often difficult or impossible to challenge them effectively.

Dominant ideologies are considered hegemonic; power in society is maintained by constructing ideologies which are usually promoted by the mass media. Hegemony is the way in which those in power maintain their control. Examples of hegemonic values include:

• The police are always right
• It's important to be slim
• A credit card is a desirable status symbol
• Mass immigration is undesireable
• The poor are lazy and deserve their hardship
• Men are better drivers than women

Antonio Gramsci

An Italian political theorist who is renowned for his concept of cultural hegemony as a means of maintaining the state in a capitalist society. His theory means that a diverse culture can be ruled or dominated by one group or class and that everyday practices and shared beliefs provide the foundation for complex systems for domination.

Stereotypes

Stereotypes are characters in a media text who are 'types' rather than complex people. Stereotypes are often defined by their role, such as 'bad cop' or 'nice old lady'. 

Children's media texts often use stereotypes so a young audience can identify quickly with the characters. 

Stereotypes are usually negative representations considered to be too reductive. Many are considered offensive, such as 'drunken Irishman' or 'over-emotional woman'.

Extension/restriction of our experience of reality

By giving audiences information, media texts extend experience of reality. Every time you see a media text, you extend your experience of life but in a second-hand way. However, because the producers of the media text have selected and constructed the information we receive, then our experience is restricted.

Process and product

Representation involves not only how identities are represented (or constructed) within the text but also how they are constructed in the process of reception.....

THE GAZE

The gaze refers to how an audience views the way people are represented in the media.

The gaze can be charactered by who is doing the looking:

• The spectator's gaze: the spectator who is viewing the text; often us, the audience of a certain text.
• Intra-diegetic gaze: where one person depicted in the text is looking at another person or object in the text, such as another character looking at another.
• Extra-diegetic gaze: where the person depicted in the text looks at the spectator, such as an aside, or acknowledgement of the 'fourth wall'.
• The camera's gaze: which is the gaze of the camera and if often equated to the director's gaze.
• Intra-intra-diegetic gaze: such as Bart&Lisa watching Itchy&Scratchy in The Simpsons.

LAURA MULVEY'S MALE GAZE THEORY...
The male gaze occurs when the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual man. A scene may focus on the curves of a woman's body; putting you the viewer in the eyes of a male. However, it is only the Male Gaze Theory if these curves are highlighted with specific conventions such as slow motion, deliberate camera movements and cut aways. Male Gaze is very common in James Bond films

The theory suggests that the male gaze denies women human identity, relegating them to the status of objects to be admired for physical appearance. Women can ore often than not only watch a film from a secondary perspective and only view themselves from a man's perspective.

However the presence of a woman in mainstream film texts is vital. Often female characters have no real importance themselves, it is how she makes the male feel that is the importance, many females only exist in relation to the male. The male gaze leads to Hegemonic ideologies in our society.

Mulvey states that the role of a female character in  a narrative has two functions;

1. As an erotic object for the characters within the narrative to view
2. As an erotic object for the spectators within the cinema to view

Gender roles;

The characters that look at others are seen as the active role (MALE)

The characters that are to be looked at are passive (FEMALE). They are under control of the males gaze and only exist for visual pleasure.

Females often slow down the narrative and act as inspiration for men to act.

Males on the other hand, push the narrative forward and make things happen (are active).

Patriarchal society = men dictate the rules; Mulvey argues that we live in a patriarchal society in which men set the majority of the rules and construct and represent the ideal visions, roles and male dominance over women.

Objectification is related to the gaze - the persons gazed at are objectified, treated as an object whose sole value is to be enjoyed or possessed by the voyeur.

SOME MORE THEORIES....

Psychoanalysis and 'The Mirror' - Lacan

Lacan's theory about 'the mirror' is an idea around the idea of identity. He considers the point at which a person develops a sense of self and conscious identity. he considers the point at which a child recognises their own reflection and begin to consider how others perceive them, modifying their appearance to satisfy their perceptions of how others see them. Mulvey extends this idea when she writes about 'the silver screen' which she suggests operates like a metaphorical mirror; reflecting back to the female viewer representations of female identity, but these representations aren't genuine reflections of the viewer but rather male perceptions of idealised femininity. 

Queer Theory - Judith Butler

Queer theory challenges the idea that gender is part of the essential self, that is fixed, immovable - in . other words, our male/female gender doesn't control all aspects of our identity or how we perceive other peoples identity. Gender is fluid and flexible depending on the context in which it is seen. EG Tom Cruise plays a heterosexual pilot in The Right Stuff but although he is male he's seen as having "queer" attributes. 

The theory developed as a way of combating negative representations of gay sexuality in the media, it combats the idea that people should be divided and categorised due to their sexual orientation or practice and that a persons' identity shouldn't be limited to their sexual preference.

Subculture- Representation of Groups - Dick Hebdidge

Dick Hebdidge said that subculture is a group of like minded individuals who feel negelcted by scoietal standards and who develop a sense of identity which differs to the dominant on to which they belong. 

Ken Gelder lists 6 ways in which subculture can be recognised:

1. Often have negative relationship to work
2. negative or ambivalent relationship to class
3. Through their associations with territory  (The street, the hood, the club) rather than property
4. Through their stylistic ties to excess
5. Through their movement out of home into non-domestic forms of belonging (social groups rather than family)
6. Through their refusal to engage with what they might see as the 'banalities' of life

Other ways of recognising a subculture might be symbolism attached to clothes, music, visual affections like tattoos etc. Subcultural values often associated with being cool.

Traditionalist vs Post Traditionalist views of society - Anthony Giddens

Media representations of society can be seen as traditional or post traditionalist. Traditional societies are ones in which individual choice was limited by its dominant customs and traditions, where as, post traditionalist societies are one where the ideas set by previous generations are less important than those of individuals. Post traditional societies no longer feel so dependent and limited to time and place. Gidden says, we are living in a post traditional society where we are much less concerned with precedents set by previous generations and that our options are only limited by what the public opinion and law allows. 

Interconnectivity of race, class and gender - Bell Hooks

Bell Hooks wrote "Ain't I A Woman? Lack, women and femininity" in 1981. It focused on the perpetuation of systems of oppression and domination in the media paying particular attention to the devaluation of black womanhood. The idea of 'lack' or 'otherness' refers to way that women and ethnic minorities are usually represented as 'other'. Their primary purpose is simply to be other than the norm - they are therefore known more by the context of lack than by a realised or complex identity. This theory can be linked to ideas of the monstrous feminine found in feminist analysis of literature and art.

Genre Theory

Genre is a way of categorising a text through style and form. It's vital to be able to categorise texts in this way - both for production and analysis. It is a class or category of artistic endeavour having a particular form, context, technique or the like.

A text is classified in a genre through the identification of key elements which occur in that text and in others of the same genre. These elements may be referred to as paradigms, and range from costume, to music, to plot points, to font (depending on the medium). Audiences recognise these paradigms, and bring a set of expectations to their reading of the text accordingly; the criminal will be brought to justice at the end of a police thriller. These paradigms may be grouped into those relating to iconography  (ie the main signs and symbols that you see/hear), structure (the way a text is put together and the shape it takes) and theme (the issues and ideas it deals with).

According to Daniel Chandler, genres create order to simplify the mass of information available. Creating categories promotes organisation instead of chaos. Conventional definitions of genres tend to be based on the notion that they constitute particular conventions of content or form which are shared by the texts which are regarded as belonging to them.


Jane Feuer has divided ways to categorise genres into three groups;

1. Aesthetic: organising according to certain sets of characteristics, and so the overall work of the artist isn't disparaged by generalisation.
2. Ritual: ritual uses it own culture to help classify - if one performs a ritual associated with the system of ritual, one can be said to be practicing as a member of that system.

Amy J. Devitt focuses on rhetorical genre. Scholars generally recognise the restrictions placed on works that have been classified as a certain genre. However, viewing genre as a rhetorical device gives the author and the reader more freedom and "allows for choices". Genres aren't free-standing entities, but are actually intimately connected and interactive amongst themselves. Rhetorical genre recognises that genres are generated by authors, readers, publishers and the entire array of social forces that act upon a work at every stage of its production.

This recognition doesn't make the taxonomy of texts easy. Chandler points out that very few works have all the characteristics of the genre in which they participate. Also, due to the interrelatedness of genres, none of them is clearly defined but instead they fade into one another. Genre works to promote organisation, but there's no absolute way to classify works, and thus genre is still problematic and its theory still evolving.

Quotes and theories from theorists such as Chandler, Neale and Ryall;

Genre is important for both the audience and producers...



Classification by genre is seen as both positive and negative by audiences, producers, and theorists. On the one hand, rigorous conformity to established conventions while giving the audience what they want, can actually lead to stagnation and the eventual ossification of a genre as a "they're all the same" judgement is passed. This is what happened to the traditional Hollywood Western and Musical - once many profitable examples of these genres were pumped out by the studio each year, but the formats became stale through repetition and audiences lost interest. It is now only when a Western or Musical that challenges the conventions and defies expectation (eg Brokeback Mountain or Moulin Rouge) comes along that non-niche audiences are willing to watch.

On the other hand, the genre of reality television has defied criticism that it is stale, contrived and predictable, and is now the basis of programming for entire networks. Although all possible variations of the same structure, iconography, and theme seem to have been run through in the space of a decade, it's still popular with audiences who seem to enjoy the familiarity of the patterns presented onscreen. "Television producers set out to exploit genre conventions" - Nicholas Abercrombie; which essentially means that media producers use conventions to create familiar and 'safe' products, which are likely to be successful.

Genre can provide structure and form which can allow a great deal of creativity and virtuosity, especially when a genuine reworking of generic conventions comes along. Genre provides key elements for an audience to recognise, so that may further appreciate the variation and originality surrounding the representation of those elements.

Narrative Analysation Essay - Y13 Film 'The Secret'

The Secret is a two minute opening for a film which my group created for our Year 13 coursework. The film surrounds a closeted homosexual teenage boy, Will, who lives within a homophobic society and household. However, Will has a boyfriend, Taylor, who has been led to believe that Will has told his family about their relationship, which isn't true.

The film opening takes place in Will's home. By showing Will driving into a driveway and entering a house, the audience automatically links what is happening in one shot with what is happening in shots either side of it, so the audience knows that the house is Will's family home. In this way, the audience is interacting with the film. We chose to set the location in the family home, as it gives the audience a direct insight into Will's life at home, and lets us into a private part of his life both in terms of location and relationships. By the film being set in Will's room, it could represent how Will keeps a large part of his life behind closed doors. The structure of the film follows Todorovs narrative theory, as the film opens in a state of equilibrium- the colours are bright white outside, no problems have occurred thus far and overall the film opens on a content scene.

Immediately as Will enters his room, technical code is introduced as the colour choice of a black wall in the room could reflect how the audience is entering the dark, private part of Will's life that no one else knows about. This makes the audience feel more included in what is taking place on screen.

Action codes are used effectively in the film once Taylor is introduced, as Will stutters and sounds uneasy when talking to his boyfriend about being public about their relationship. This propels the narrative forward, and also acts as symbolic code as these actions act as a clue towards Will not being open about his sexuality to his family and being uncomfortable with his sexuality, which eventually causes problems within his relationship. Will's actions also make the audience question why he is acting uneasy which is eventually revealed.