REPRESENTATIONS IN TRAILERS

By the end of the lesson you will be able to discuss how the trailers represent groups within society.

Why?

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

You will need to be able to talk about how conventions are used and challenged within the genre you have chosen. Representation is a key part of that.

You will need to consider in your own work- using, challenging representations.

Task one Find a trailer that you think

reinforces typical representations Find one which you think challenges

it- be prepared to share!

Representation

As we go through we will need to consider the representations that the trailer gives us:

Representation in the media (AQA BOOK) is concerned with how people, events and ideas are

presented to audiences. What we see, hear and read in the media is a representation of a subject. Even a live broadcast is a representation, because you only see what is filmed by the camera operator. As a media studies student, it is important that you are able to identify and understand these representations.

How have different genders been represented? How have different age groups been represented? How have different races or religions been

represented? How have certain countries/ places been represented Have any groups been unrepresented? If so, why? How accurate is the representation? Can the representation be interpreted in different

ways? Who has constructed the representation and why? What effect does the representation have on theintended audience?

Police are often represented as having troubled home lives as they are married to their job. Criminals and killers are often represented as having a bad background

Representations we will be looking at:

Good and evil Male and female Representations of the other Representations of the monster Representations of the teenager

For your own trailer you can look at other representations- representations of age, place, certain jobs, superheroes , love, hardworking, positive, negative etc.

Some films for example will represent women as desperate to find a man and get married

The Other is an individual who is perceived by the group as not belonging, as being different in some fundamental way.

Any stranger becomes the Other. The group sees itself as the norm and judges those who do not meet that norm (that is, who are different in any way) as the Other.

Perceived as lacking essential characteristics possessed by the group, the Other is almost always seen as a lesser or inferior being and is treated accordingly.

The Other in a society may have few or no legal rights, may be characterized as less intelligent or as immoral, and may even be regarded as sub-human

The other

The horror monster:

Stephen Neale identified that horror texts have different types of monster. The monster is the source of the fear and it can represent things we fear in society.

They can act as a metaphor for societies concerns.

   

 

The monster

Characteristics Key idea

The External Monster – an outsider.

The external monsterwill be one who comes from‘somewhere else’ and brings thethreat to a community.Vampire films are good examplesof this as traditionally they comefrom Transylvania and wereshown terrorising a Britishcommunity.They are outsiders as they arenot (and never can be) membersof the community and theyinvade a previously safe andpeaceful environment.

Some monsters have traits of more than one of Neale’s categories.Frankenstein’s monster for example is ‘man made’ but when he goesto the village he brings in violence and death as an ‘outsider’ to thecommunity

The Man-made Monster – man’s creation.

The archetypal man-made monstercan be found in Frankenstein (1931).A collection of body parts is put togetherand Dr Frankenstein brings the creature tolife. The creature then brings death anddanger to the community. Like the vampirehe could never be part of the community,the difference is, he is a creation of a memberof the community.

The Internal Monster – man gone wrong

Here the monster is human.The human may come from within thecommunity but they are thinking or behavingin a way that creates a threat from the inside.The archetype for this kind of monster isNorman Bates in Psycho (1960). He is a mildmannered ‘boy next door’ character on thesurface but the film reveals that he ismurderously insane.

The monster is often represented as bad and dangerous- it is their natural instincts. What happens if they are represented in a different way?

Representations and ideology Representations may link into

ideologies in society Ideologies are ideas that we hold to

be true in society Some ideologies may be created and

reinforced through the media- e.g that good must always win out over evil

That teenagers do not follow rules and have no ambition

Group Stereotyped representation- ideas that we have about these groups.

Good

Evil

Male

Female

The other/ the monster

Watch the sinister trailer How is the monster represented in

the trailer?

Watch the sky fall trailer: How is the hero represented? The villain How is gender represented?

Twilight

In the Twilight trailer how are the following represented:

Males Females The other/ the monster http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S

2T7d8j6I5I

Sucker punch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrIiYSdEe4E

How are females represented in this trailer?

Is this what we are used to seeing or is it challenging representations?

The back up plan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FZuNElrx7A&feature=related

How is love represented? Males Females?

Bride wars

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjsA0_arKtk

How is love represented? Males ? Friendship? Females?

Attack the block

How is inner city London represented?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD0gm7dHKKc

Also consider how teenagers are represented

The other is represented

Captain America

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J3HfllvXWE

How is the idea of the hero represented?

Why do you think that the representation of the superhero and the superhero movie has increased in recent years? (link to Societies fears)

Task

Look at a trailer of your choice (you can use the ones on student shared too)

identify and analyse the representations in the trailer Think about why the ideas may have been

represented in this way. It could be for example a horror trailer- you could

then think about how good and evil are represented Think about whether the representations are

stereotyped, they challenge ideologies Consider how mise en scene, costume, performance,

lighting and sound help create these representations.