Introduction to the Critical Investigation

Are contemporary documentaries, like C4's 'Benefits Street', providing a public service, or simply reinforcing negative stereotypes to generate a larger audience?

In my opinion, I think that contemporary documentaries, like C4's 'Benefits Street' mainly reinforce negative stereotypes to generate a larger audience. They give the audience what they want to hear or are used to hearing through these stereotypes and use comedy as a cover up. 

For example, one of the main negative stereotypes reinforced is immigrants. In Britain, immigration is a problem especially for the white English people as some believe that immigrants are taking away their jobs. In Benefits Street, immigrants are often ridiculed or the point about them stealing jobs is portrayed in one way or another. Since it is a dominant representation of immigrants, not much is said about the way immigrants are represented. Also it is the preferred reading (hall) as the audience would find it funny. It is clear that Benefits Street is reinforcing a negative stereotype here, because the truth is that immigrants brought much more money through taxes into the country than the rest of the country.

It is also to note that since the media is controlled by people in power, it is common for them to stereotype those less in power (Dyer). In a sense, the hypodermic needle theory comes into place here because the media inject these ideas of stereotypes into the minds of the audience so as to make it normal for them to stereotype immigrants in such a way. They slowly bring moral panic (cohen) into this because they bring out the idea that immigrants, who don't even know English properly, are taking over jobs and gaining more money than other people.  

All of these techniques are used to generate a larger audience because Benefits Street use comedy to draw more people into the programme but also allow those who agree with the stereotypes to be drawn to the show also.

Media Magazine Research Task

The representation of women in the media

MM34 18-
Engendering change what’s happened to representations of women?

In 1972, Berger summarised the way in which gender was represented in the media through visual images. He introduced the theory that "Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at." Then in 1975, Laura Mulvey cast her eye on Hollywood movies and concluded:In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female.  Today we can see this in elements such as in school. Consider the option subjects that girls today are likely to take in schools, compared to boys’ choices. To what extent are these still gendered? Are cooking and textiles classes still predominantly female; is ‘resistant materials’ more likely to be taken by males? Although there has been change in the way women are represented, since the 1960s, it appears that the difference may be merely cosmetic. Occasionally the media does represent women as powerful and independent characters, and yet they still almost invariably require a man to tell them what to do.

MM50 13-
The Female Gaze, Rethinking Representations

Debates around gender representation in Media and Film Studies have traditionally been dominated by discussion of ‘The Male Gaze’. But it could be argued that the most important gaze for many advertising texts is, in fact, a ‘Female Gaze’.Accusations have been made by the likes of Naomi Campbell and Dame Vivienne Westwood that representations of women in advertising are too white and nearly exclusively under size 6. This ‘sizeism’ in the media today is totally at odds with the facts, as if we live in some kind of virtual ‘size zero’ universe; Western women, on average, are size 14 or above. The ‘Plus Size’ model is a term that has become popular as advertisers in the media have realized they can be very successful in embracing, or at least attempting to project, tolerance for what people actually look like. A Perfect 14: Representing ‘Real’ Women... The documentary challenges the idea of beauty and what is beautiful or normal, with the rejection of the traditional concept of what a woman should look like. A Perfect 14 shows the desperate need for diversity and a true reflection of today’s society in the fashion industry, our media and role models. The subjects of the film are determined to eliminate the established perception in society that one size fits all. In analysing female representation, you will invariably encounter theorist Laura Mulvey and her pioneering 1970s work on ‘The Male Gaze’. The female ’look’ does not have to assume a male perspective, as Mulvey argues, but can be neutral, engaged and not gender specific. Some believe it is unlikely that many brands will gain market share by using heavy models in their ads.

mm42 12-
Does Pink Matter?

Young children are taught gender roles from a very young age; and whilst you probably don’t pay any mind to nursery rhymes nowadays, it is possible that they had an impact upon you then ... and therefore continue to have an impact on you now, whether you are conscious of it or not. Pinkstinks is a campaign that targets the products, media and marketing that prescribe heavily stereotyped and limiting roles to young girls. We believe that all children – girls and boys – are affected by the ‘pinkification’ of girlhood. Our aim is to challenge and reverse this growing trend. We also promote media literacy, self-esteem, positive body image and female role models for kids. ‘Pinkification’ here refers to the prevalence of gender colour-coding, as well as to the fact that boys’ toys are more adventurous whilst, for girls, the emphasis is upon the domestic world.‘Little boys’, of course, are meant to blue but that preference cannot be in our genes and so is a social construct. These days everything is different: women have the vote, there’s even been a female Prime Minister in Britain, and it has been illegal to discriminate on the basis of sex since 1975... However, despite this, it is clear that there is a long way to go before there is true equality between the sexes.