REPRESENTATION
STEREOTYPES
SOCIAL GROUP/PERSON AND SYMBOLISM
- IN OUR VIDEO
Our video has minimal human representation. Instead, we
use the visage of an animal - the lead actor will be obscured
beneath the mask. Our main character is of
non-specific gender. The rabbit symbolism that
we use is very interesting to me as someone
enthusiastic about folklore and cultural symbolism.
Rabbits can represent:
- Innocence, naivety and childlike curiosity. The white rabbit from The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll) embodies a lot of this as the titular character, Alice, follows him. He may represent her curiosity and is now well known and recognised in pop culture.
- In some circles, rabbits may be seen as lucky creatures or a symbol of good fortune. The white of the rabbit we're representing in the video links to purity - perhaps perfection to a degree that's slightly eerie.
- Rabbits are also associated with spring, Easter and fertility. This could link to the idea of rebirth, new life or vitality.
- Childishness. This rabbit could represent a child dealing with loss.
The singer will appear for short moments throughout
the video, though vague and disjointed. This is to shroud
his appearance and create mystery. The only other human
beings in the video will also be disjointed and the viewer
will only see certain parts of their bodies. As the crew, we
will be playing these other small parts. There is no relevant
representation of and religion or sexuality.
PLACE/SPACIAL REPRESENTATION
We're using certain places in our local area, including a
graveyard. With this, there are obvious things we have to
consider such as respect for the dead and it being a general
public place.
The way in which we're representing it concerns:
- The way the character interacts with the space; they briefly touch and observe the graves - we haven't chosen it for religious reasons although some of the graves do depict christian crosses. This is irrelevant to the concept but we were careful to treat them respectfully. The character is shown to be unknowing of human culture and confused, therefore they are inspecting the graves with wonder.
STUART HALL'S REPRESENTATION THEORY
Hall believed that the media gives things meaning - if you see something in the media, that information is being filtered through somebody or multiple people, all with opinions and agendas of their own. This means that news and representations of people, places and social groups will go through various degrees of distortion before you see it.
Take, for example, Jeremy Corbyn:
A paper biased against Corbyn
A paper biased for Corbyn
Here, he is being represented in two different ways. The point here is that, because you've likely never met him in person, your perception will always be warped by the media and (by extension) consumers of that media around you. Media re-creates reality rather than capturing it and so will always be different to life. No one subject or figure, such as Corbyn, has a single meaning in reality. The media creates meaning and spreads agendas - for instance, many people believe that "the media" at large is biased towards attacking him. He is an excellent example of people pushing agendas through media. This is the basis of Hall's theory.
It is important to keep in mind that those who run the media have the power to warp our perceptions of the world. Our views on certain social groups, people and places are all influenced by the media, and by extension those who control it. Unfortunately, those who run our current media are generally described as older white men. This means that our perceptions and preconceptions are being overseen by people likely out of touch with us and social groups that aren't their own. Until other people can make it up in the world enough to overtake them, we will be stuck with this old-fashioned system of thought influencing by hegemonic media companies. Their distinct lack of focus on diversity narrows our perceptions as the general public. Their attempts to fixate the media around their own views is done, in part, due to a desire to maintain social security and push others out. Therefore, it is difficult to challenge these companies or people at all. I'm hopeful that this will change in my lifetime, but this may require proactivity on the part of the youth of today.
Stuart Hall's further idea of Reception Theory is that audiences should always, constantly be questioning the media they consume. If we interrogate what we watch, read and witness then perhaps we can make a headway into taking the media into our own hands.
