A2 Advanced Portfolio

1. A2 Advanced Portfolio A guiding handbook

2. Representation, Audience & Pleasure • Aim: to link representation in music videos with the identity of the target audience and their pleasures,‘uses & gratifications’ • Task: • you need to be able to discuss ideas of audience theory • You need to be able to identify your target audience and identify key pleasures, uses & gratifications of your audience that will be satisfied by your text.

3. Representation, Audience & Pleasure • Proposition: that the ‘core target’ audience for mainstream music videos is pubescent male teenagers who wish to buy into the highly charged, highly (hetro) sexualised fantasy dreamland created by mainstream music videos • Methodology: • academic ideas, • content analysis, • semiotic analysis, • audience research (informal discussions)

4. Representation, Audience & Pleasure • Starting points: • ‘Uses and Gratifications’ (Blumler & Brown 1972) • Diversion—Escape from routine and problems; an emotional release. • Personal Relationships—Social utility of information in conversation; substitution of media for companionship. • Personal Identity or Individual Psychology—Value reinforcement or reassurance; self-understanding, reality exploration. • ‘Screen Theory’: ie audience ‘sewn’ into text • associated with the British journal Screen in the 1970s. The theoreticians of this approach -- Colin MacCabe, Stephen Heath and Laura Mulvey propose that the subject is reflected and/or created in the text • Analysis of MTV by Sut Jhally

5. Representation, Audience & Pleasure • Sut Jhally : • Professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Founder and Executive Director of the Media Education Foundation (MEF) • In his production Dreamworlds 3 he examines the stories contemporary music videos tell about girls and women, and encourages viewers to consider how these narratives shape individual and cultural attitudes about sexuality. Dreamworlds 3 offers a unique and powerful tool for understanding both the continuing influence of music videos and how pop culture more generally filters the identities of young men and women through a dangerously narrow set of myths about sexuality and gender. In doing so, it inspires viewers to reflect critically on images that they might otherwise take for granted. Sections: Introduction | Techniques of Storytelling | Constructing Femininity | The Pornographic Imagination | Ways of Looking | Female Artists: Trapped in the Pornographic Gaze | Masculinity & Control Viewer discretion advised: Both full & abridged versions contain violence and sexual imagery. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iTQ5IA7Uqw • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6LHg_OFFRY&feature=related

6. Representation, Audience & Pleasure • Conclusions: • Mainstream music videos highly sexualised • Sexualisation is used to sell products to young males • Sexualisation is patriarchal – serves a male interest • Sexualisation objectifies and marginalises female identity • Sexualistion is heterosexual so marginalises any other forms of sexual identity • Sexualisation is often dominated by Caucasian identity so often marginalises other forms of racial identity • In summary mainstream music videos don’t appear to offer a progressive or challenging form of representation, identity or pleasure for it’s mainly adolescent audience, which most probably serves a commodity culture.