Theories of Representation.

Aims and Outcomes

By the end of this session you

should be able to:

Identify key terminology in

regards to theoretical approaches

of representation.

Discuss key theoretical

perspectives with reference to

moving image.

Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of signs and sign systems.

Developed by Ferdinand de Saussure considered

how language denotes meaning.

Semiotics is concerned with how meaning is

created and conveyed in texts and, in particular, in

narratives.

Signs can be words, images, sounds, odours,

flavors, acts, gestures, words and objects.

Semiotics foregrounds the process of

representation.

Signs

Semioticians believe that:

Everything is a sign (or a symbol that represents something else)

Signs are composed of two parts –

1. the signifier 2. what is signified by that signifier

SIGNIFIER + SIGNIFIED = SIGN.

The signifier is usually an object, or icon, or symbol that we recognize; the form which the sign takes.

What is signified is total meaning that results from associating the signifier with the signified- the concept it

represents.

The relationship between the signifier and signified—and this is crucial—is random, unmotivated and unnatural.

Laura Mulvey- Male Gaze

Mulvey is a feminist film scholar.

Wrote ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1975)- one of the most widely cited articles in the whole of contemporary film theory.

She analysed Hollywood Cinema and argued that female characters are were represented as passive objects of male desire

Her theory ‘Male Gaze’ – male characters are ‘bearers of the look’ which is aimed at physically sexually, submissive and desirable females.

Female viewers must experience the narrative secondarily, by identification with the male.

Laura Mulvey

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

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

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

Mulvey argues the female character offer no real importance herself, the female character exists in relation to the male.

Active narrative roles of making things happen and controlling events, usually falls to the male character, while the female character remains passively decorative.

Relegates women to the status of objects- spectacle to be looked at.

Theory suggests that the male gaze denies women human identity.

Laura Mulvey

Scopophilia- means the ‘Pleasure in Looking’

Cinema offers voyeuristic pleasures – visual

pleasures. Various features of cinema viewing

conditions facilitate for the viewer both the

voyeuristic process of objectification of female

characters and also the narcissistic process of

identification with an ‘ideal ego’ seen on the

screen.

Male scopophilic desires satisfied.

Women connote ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’.

Men look, women are looked at.

Analysing Male Gaze

◦ What are the characters (the bearers of the look) shown to be looking at?

◦ What is the camera looking?

◦ What is the audience expected to be looking at?

◦ What are the purposes of the shots of the male and female characters?

◦ Who is the presumed spectator?

◦ Which characters are dominant and which are submissive?

James Bond Rear Window

Richard Dyer

Dyer draws on Mulvey’s work to argue

that ways of looking reassert male

dominance.

He suggests that images of men aimed

at women undermine those codes.

When men are objectified they will

attempt to resist the gaze of the camera

– they may look away, close their eyes,

wear sunglasses, look aggressive. They

tend to be doing something, i.e. being

active not just posing.

Dyer’s Typography (1985)

Dyer identifies four questions to ask of a

representation:

1. What is represented?

2. How is this representative of social

groups?

3. Who is responsible for the

representation?

4. What does the audience make of it?

Stereotypes.

Media representations often use stereotypes as a

cultural shorthand.

Dyer argues stereotypes are a way of reinforcing

differences between people, and representing these

differences as natural.

Stereotypes reinforce the idea that there are big

differences between different types of people.

Stereotypes legitimise inequality

Steve Neale.

Wrote “Masculinity as spectacle: Reflections on

men and mainstream cinema” (1993)

Illustrates how identification is not a simple matter

of ‘men identifying with male figures on the screen

and women identifying with female figures’ but it

has much more substance to it.

His theory- Narcissistic identification- the act of

identifying and aspiring to replace oneself with the

representation of the powerful, omnipotent figure of

masculinity.

Male’s are encouraged to identify with this ‘ideal

male alter ego’- power, mastery and control.

Steve Neale

Suggests this is presented through current ideologies such as aggression, power and control.

May provoke feelings of anxiety and insecurities.

Male body can actively be the spectacle but is disqualified as an erotic object in Hollywood cinema.

Fetishism lets male bodies to become objects on the screen as well, but in a different, non-erotic way.

Fetishist gaze- ‘it is heavily meditated by the looks of the character involved. And these

looks are marked not by desire, but rather by fear, or hatred, or agression.’ (Neale, 1993,

p.18)

Ferdinand de Saussure

Semiotics

signifier

form

signified

represents

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

1975

patriarchal society

active

passive

‘as image’

bearer of the look’

male gaze

Scopophilia

Objectified

• what is represented?

• how is this

representative?

• who is responsible?

• what does the

audience make of it?

• stereotypes

• reinforces

• inequality

•1993

• narcissistic

identification

• male

• “ideal ego”

• fetishist gaze