Tzetan Todorov

The Narrative Theory

Todorov in 1969 produced a theory which he believed to be able to be applied to any film. He believed that all films followed the same narrative pattern. They all went through stages called the equilibrium, disequilibrium, acknowledgement, solving and again equilibrium.

There are five stages the narrative can progress through:

1. A state of equilibrium (All is as it should be.)

2. A disruption of that order by an event.

3. A recognition that the disorder has occurred.

4. An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption.

5. A return or restoration of a NEW equilibrium

A film that follow these steps perfectly is Die Hard.

1. John McClane (Bruce Willis) is coming home to his family for Christmas and all is calm. (The equilibrium)

2. Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) and his team of terrorists take over the nakatomi building which is hosting a Christmas part of which McClane and his wife are attending.

3. (2 points of recognition) McClane isn't in the room when the terrorsits storm in so is able to move up the builiding when he hears screaming. People outside of the building realise there's a disruption when a police man's car is shot at from the building.

4. The police try sending in a SWAT team in which fails. The situation is solved by John McClane throwing Gruber out of a high floor window which kills him.

5. The equilibrium is restored when the police got McClane, his wife and the other hostages out of the building, and the McClanes leave in a police car.

Myths about British Culture

1. Everyone in England speaks with either a London Cockney accent or posh like the Queen.

2. We’re always drinking tea. India, Turkey, China and Ireland drink more (per head of population). Brits drink almost as much coffee as tea. “Come round for tea” = come to our house for the evening meal.

3. We all know Sean Connery, Mick Jagger, David Beckham and The Queen personally.

4. Everyone lives in London or in houses like Downtown Abbey.

5. The food is terrible! Britain has four restaurants that have a 3 michelin stars and has the 4th, 5th and 9th best restaurant in the world, according to Trip Advisor (http://uk.businessinsider.com/tripadvisors-best-restaurants-in-the-world-2015-2015-10?r=US&IR=T) Gordon Ramsey, Jamie Oliver, Heston Blumenthal

6. It’s always raining (Britain is number 46th in a list of worldwide average rainfall,
this is above countries such as New Zealand (29th) and even the USA (25th)).
It drizzles a lot in the UK.
Brits speak about the weather a lot and it’s also common to see rain and bad weather in British art. Winters are longer than summer in the UK.
Do the British always carry umbrellas?

7. All Brits have bad teeth – a study by the OECD, published in The Economist, shows that Brits have some of the healthiest teeth in the world.

8. British people hate Europeans and North Americans.

9. The British are very reserved and unfriendly.

10 We drink warm beer.

Research on Oliviero Toscani

Oliviero Toscani

''When you look at the book, you don't know if I'm a fashion photographer, an art photographer, an advertising photographer, a reporter -- I am a photographer. I'm simply a witness of my time,' Oliviero Toscani says of his new photo book, More Than Fifty Years of Magnificent Failures. Indeed, the release is a document of Toscani's truly dynamic eye. For more than five decades, his campaigns for brands like United Colors of Benetton and Esprit -- and his editorial images for glossies including Elle, Vogue, and the earliest issues of i-D -- have powerfully pushed forward the very possibilities of fashion and advertising images.'

His work for the United Colours of Benetton

'Toscani created the brand's iconic advertising campaigns, which fused poignant social commentary with simple and striking visuals. His subjects ranged from dying AIDS patients and death row inmates to political prisoners and religious clergy members of all sexual orientations and ethnicities.

'Toscani's images catapulted Benetton to stratospheric new highs, but his images were often met with threats of censorship, lawsuits, and boycotts. To this day, they're still predicated with terms like 'controversial' or 'shocking,' a term with which Toscani heartedly disagrees. 'I didn't do any shocking pictures. Where are the shocking pictures? There are some stupid people who say they're shocking but I don't think about those people,' he says. The accurate descriptor? Provocative. 'When I go to a movie, I want to be provoked. When I read a book, I want to be provoked. I want to be provoked intelligently, I want to restart my thinking, I want to ignite the engine,' he says. 'Provocation belongs to art, so if I provoke something, I'm very happy."

Benetton: A History of Shocking Ad Campaigns [PICTURES]

Alien Covenant Context

The Alien Covenant posters are very sinister and dark, they also have a very eery colour palette, consisting pretty much of just black and green. 

Context:

This video was published in February 2016, which, maybe not coincidentally, was two months before Alien Covenant started filming...

The aliens in the film burst out of people. They take over as many people as they can. On the one hand it could be suggested, like it is in the video, that Donald Trump can be compared to this invincible alien. However, Trump could also be compared to the robot, played by Michael Fassbender, who tries his best to convince the other characters that the murderous aliens taking over are actually good but just misunderstood. He also tries to create new aliens and genetically modify them to make them be  'bigger and better'. The aliens are all of the new laws and ideals Trump is putting in place and promoting, and he is the robot, trying to expand the species, help them thrive and convince people to let it continue because they're good.

SEMIOTICS

Semiotics/ semiology is a system of signs. This is a growing field of study that was originally founded by two key individuals. These were Saussure (1857-1913) and Pierce (1839-1914), who continued and worked on to grow Saussure's work and research. Saussure and Pierce both had similar theories regarding semiotics but took these in slightly different directions, developing their own ideas.

Saussure wrote that a sign is made up of two elements: the signifier, which is the physical form, the thing that is being considered, and the signified, which is what this culture has decided this form means. This means, essentially, that people all interpret things in different ways and no two people will imagine the same generic thing in the same way.

Pierce, however, believed that there were different levels of meaning attached to signs. These were; icon, which is what you can see (e.g. pictures), index, which is what you can work out (e.g. fire equals danger and symbol, which is what you can learn (e.g. flags). Pierce also said that a symbol is not necessarily just an image but can be found, also, in the forms of; words, sounds, smells, flavours, acts and objects.

James Bond Hypothesis

Testing a hypothesis:

'The products constructed to market James Bond films are designed to offer a clear appeal to a wide global audience of young men age 17-35.'

The target audience for the first film may have been men from 17-35 as the film is about a womaniser and is full of violence and action, which is stereotypically the type of film that audience would be interested in. However, the target audience may also have been a lot larger than this. for instance, the dominance of the yellow background is connotative of excitement and playfulness and is suggestive of a welcomeness to a younger audience than 17. 

There are many hints throughout this  poster, in particular, that are indicate the genre of the film and the types of  things to be expected from it. This was the first James Bond film, and therefore needed a poster that was bold, exciting and would make a good impression, enticing people to watch what would turn out to be the first of very many. The smoking gun is not only an indication of violence/action as it shows the recent use of the gun, but also 'a smoking gun' is evidence which might suggest mystery as well. Moreover, the image of half a person on the edge of the poster, next to the 'DR. NO' writing, raises a lot of questions. Who is he? Why can we only see half of him? Why is he in black and white? How significant is he? along with a number of other questions. He raises suspicion and intrigue and entices the public as they want to know more about who he is.

Over time the James Bond posters have changed and developed... 

There were many posters that were illustrated after the first one and that were, arguably, just as funky, busy and provocative. However, with every film come a new and unique style. Especially when there was a new actor, each 007 has their own illustrative characteristics.
Now some significant time has passed since the first film you can really see the development and obvious changes in the posters.

For instance, the Casino Royale poster displays significant changes in the style and colour palette. This still shows the smooth James Bond and, of course, a tall, beautiful woman accompanying him in the background. However, it is no longer illustrated and the colour palette has changed significantly. It is now more sophisticated and 'grown up'. the poster is still bold, powerful and eye- catching, but just in a more refined way. This poster is more simplistic than the earlier ones because, now James Bond is so popular and well- known, the posters don't need to be so colourful and busy.
This theory is further proven by the posters for Skyfall. They were made in black and white, and are simple but bold and powerful as well. Instead of needing lots of information, names and colour, all that is needed now is style, star image (featuring Daniel Craig on the posters, as he is the current James Bond), and bold writing to enhance the film name and '007'.

The older posters from the original films were eye popping and full of colour. They may have been designed this way to connote that the film was family friendly. The illustrations of Bond with a gun and the half dressed women show the genre of the film but the colour palette and the fact that the poster was illustrated suggest that the film is appropriate for younger members of the family. With the newer films there was no need for an extravagant poster to connote genre, target audience and actors, for instance, because the Bond films are so famous all over the world that you would have to live under a rock to not know. Now the poster designers can appeal to the nature of the individual film and the style to fit that specifically.

Overall, yes the James Bond films were created for a wide global audience and have certainly more than reached that target, but they weren't designed for men from 17- 35. If this were the target audience then the films would likely have been 15s or 18s and contain material that was a lot more risky and a lot more violent. Also, this would not be the target audience as films like this appeal to younger and older people and women as well, creating such a specific target audience would severely limit the amount of money made from the films and by producing the films the way they did they have not hindered their profits or global market.

‘End of Audience’ Theories – Shirky

In the ‘old’ media, centralised producers addressed atomised consumers; in the ‘new’ media, every consumer is now a producer. Traditional media producers would ‘filter then publish’; as many ‘new’ media producers are not employees, they ‘publish then filter’.
These amateur producers have different motivations to those of professionals – they value autonomy, competence, membership and generosity. User-generated content creates emotional connection between people who care about something. This can generate a cognitive surplus – for example, Wikipedia can aggregate people’s free time and talent to produce value that no traditional medium could match.
‘The Audience’ as a mass of people with predictable behaviour is gone. Now, behaviour is variable across different sites, with some of the audience creating content, some synthesising content and some consuming content. The ‘old’ media created a mass audience. The ‘new’ media provide a platform for people to provide value for each other. 

Fandom – Jenkins

0. Fans act as ‘textual poachers’ – taking elements from media texts to create their own culture.
   The development of the ‘new’ media has accelerated ‘participatory culture’, in which audiences are active and creative participants rather than passive consumers. They create online communities, produce new creative forms, collaborate to solve problems, and shape the flow of media. This generates ‘collective intelligence’.
   From this perspective, convergence is a cultural process rather than a technological one.
   Jenkins prefers the term ‘spreadable media’ to terms such as ‘viral’, as the former emphasises the active, participatory element of the ‘new’ media. 
   

Reception Theory – Hall

Hall’s ‘encoding-decoding’ model argued that media producers encode ‘preferred meanings’ into texts, but these texts may be ‘read’ by their audiences in a number of different ways:

•   The dominant-hegemonic position: a ‘preferred reading’ that accepts the text’s messages and the ideological assumptions behind the messages
  
•   The negotiated position: the reader accepts the text’s ideological assumptions, but disagrees with aspects of the messages, so negotiates the meaning to fit with their ‘lived experience’
  
•   The oppositional reading: the reader rejects both the overt message and its underlying ideological assumptions. 
  

Cultivation Theory – Gerbner

Exposure to television over long periods of time cultivates standardised roles and behaviours. Gerbner used content analysis to analyse repeated media messages and values, then found that heavy users of television were more likely, for example, to develop ‘mean world syndrome’ – a cynical, mistrusting attitude towards others – following prolonged exposure to high levels of television violence.
Gerbner found that heavy TV viewing led to ‘mainstreaming’ – a common outlook on the world based on the images and labels on TV. Mainstreamers would describe themselves as politically moderate. 

Media Effects – Bandura

The media can influence people directly – human values, judgement and conduct can be altered directly by media modelling. Empirical evidence best supports direct influence rather than the alternative models of media effects: two-step flow, agenda-setting, no effects, or the media reflecting existing attitudes and behaviour.
Media representations of aggressive or violent behaviour can lead to imitation.
The media may influence directly or by social networks, so people can be influenced by media messages without being exposed to them.
Different media have different effects. The ‘new’ media offer opportunities for self-directedness. 

Cultural Industries – Hesmondhalgh

Cultural industries follow the normal capitalist pattern of increasing concentration and integration – cultural production is owned and controlled by a few conglomerates who vertically integrate across a range of media to reduce risk.
Risk is particularly high in the cultural industries because of the difficulty in predicting success, high production costs, low reproduction costs and the fact that media products are ‘public goods’ – they are not destroyed on consumption but can be further reproduced. This means that the cultural industries rely on ‘big hits’ to cover the costs of failure. Hence industries rely on repetition through use of stars, genres, franchises, repeatable narratives and so on to sell formats to audiences, then industries and governments try to impose scarcity, especially through copyright laws.
The internet has created new powerful IT corporations, and has not transformed cultural production in a liberating and empowering way – digital technology has sped up work, commercialised leisure time, and increased surveillance by government and companies. 

Regulation – Livingstone and Lunt

Livingstone and Lunt studied four case studies of the work of Ofcom.
Ofcom is serving an audience who may be seen as consumers and/or citizens, with consequences for regulation: consumers have wants, are individuals, seek private benefits from the media, use the language of choice, and require regulation to protect against detriment; citizens have needs, are social, seek public or social benefits from the media, use the language of rights, and require regulation to promote the public interest.
Traditional regulation is being put at risk by: increasingly globalised media industries, the rise of the digital media, and media convergence. 

Power and Media Industries – Curran and Seaton

A political economy approach to the media – arguing that patterns of ownership and control are the most significant factors in how the media operate.
Media industries follow the normal capitalist pattern of increasing concentration of ownership in fewer and fewer hands. This leads to a narrowing of the range of opinions represented and a pursuit of profit at the expense of quality or creativity.
The internet does not represent a rupture with the past in that it does not offer a level playing field for diverse voices to be heard. It is constrained by nationalism and state censorship. News is still controlled by powerful news organisations, who have successfully defended their oligarchy. 

Theories Around Ethnicity, and Post-Colonial Theory – Gilroy

The African diaspora caused by the slave trade has now constructed a transatlantic culture that is simultaneously African, American, Caribbean and British – the ‘Black Atlantic’.
Britain has failed to mourn its loss of empire, creating ‘postcolonial melancholia’, an attachment to an airbrushed version of British colonial history, which expresses itself in criminalising immigrants and an ‘us and them’ approach to the world founded on the belief in the inherent superiority of white western civilisation. 

Theories of Gender Performativity – Butler

 Gender is created in how we perform our gender roles – there is no essential gender identity behind these roles, it is created in the performance. Performativity is not a singular act but a repetition and a ritual that becomes naturalised within the body.

Any feminism concerned only with masculinity and femininity excludes other forms of gender and sexuality. This creates ‘gender trouble’ for those that do not fit the heterosexual norms.
Butler is an important postmodern writer and has influenced Queer theory – theory which deconstructs and aims to destabilise apparently fixed identities based on gender and sexualities. 

Feminist Theory – Bell Hooks

Feminism is a movement to end patriarchy: sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.
‘Intersectionality’ refers to the intersections of gender, race, class and sexuality to create a ‘white supremacist capitalist patriarchy’, whose ideologies dominate media representations. She argues that black women should develop an ‘oppositional gaze’ that refuses to identify with characters – the ‘gaze’ is political for black Americans, as slaves were punished for looking at their white owners. 

Feminist Theory – Van Zoonen

In patriarchal culture, the way women’s bodies are represented as objects is different to the representation of male bodies as spectacle.
Gender is performative – our ideas of femininity and masculinity are constructed in our performances of these roles. Gender is ‘what we do’ rather than ‘what we are’. Moreover, Gender is contextual – its meaning changes with cultural and historical contexts.
Van Zoonen disagrees with arguments that the internet, being based on collaboration, is a technology that is true and close to women and femininity. These views are too simple and based on the idea of an essential femininity, whereas there is a rich diversity of ways that gender is articulated on the internet. 

Theories of Identity – Gauntlett

The media have an important but complex relationship with identities. In the modern world, it is now an expectation that individuals make choices about their identity and lifestyle. Even in the traditional media, there are many diverse and contradictory media messages that individuals can use to think through their identities and ways of expressing themselves. For example, the success of ‘popular feminism’ and increasing representation of different sexualities created a world where the meaning of gender, sexuality and identity is increasingly open.
The online media offer people a route to self-expression, and therefore a stronger sense of self and participating in the world by making and exchanging. These media are places of conversation, exchange and transformation: ‘a fantastically messy set of networks filled with millions of sparks – some igniting new meanings, ideas and passions and some just fading away.’ People still build identities, but through every day, creative practice. However, this practice would be improved by better platforms for creativity. 

Theories of Representation – Hall

Representation is not about whether the media reflects or distorts reality, as this implies that there can be one ‘true’ meaning, but the many meanings a representation can generate. Meaning is constituted by representation, by what is present, what is absent, and what is different. Thus, meaning can be contested.
A representation implicates the audience in creating its meaning. Power – through ideology or by stereotyping – tries to fix the meaning of a representation in a ‘preferred meaning’. To create deliberate anti-stereotypes is still to attempt to fix the meaning (albeit in a different way). A more effective strategy is to go inside the stereotype and open it up from within, to deconstruct the work of representation. 

Postmodernism – Baudrillard

Postmodernism is the idea that society has moved beyond modernism – either modernism in art and culture (early 20th century) or modernism in the sense of a belief in progress, which dates back much further.
Baudrillard argued that, as modern societies were organised around production of goods, postmodern society is organised around ‘simulation’ – the play of images and signs.
Previously important social distinctions suffer ‘implosion’ as differences of gender, class, politics and culture dissolve in a world of simulation in which individuals construct their identities.
The new world of ‘hyperreality’ – media simulations, for example, Disneyland and amusement parks, malls and consumer fantasy lands – is more real than the ‘real’, and controls how we think and behave. 

Structuralism – Levi-Strauss

Structuralism is the study of the hidden rules that govern a structure.
Levi-Strauss thought that the human mind could be investigated by studying the fundamental structure underlying myths and fables from around the world (which he saw as one unitary system). He developed the idea of the ‘binary opposition’ – that the system of myths and fables was ruled by a structure of opposing terms, e.g. hot-cold, male-female, culture-nature, raw-cooked.
Many writers have analysed media products using the idea of the binary opposition, but seeing the overall system as ‘ideology’ rather than ‘human consciousness’. 

Genre Theory – Neale

Genre theory is about what genres are, and about how and why they are created, change endure or decline.
Neale argues that genre is a process by which generic codes and conventions are shared by producers and audiences through repetition in media products.
This means that genres are not fixed, but constantly evolve with each new addition to the generic corpus (the body of products in a genre), often playing with genre codes and conventions or becoming hybrids with other genres.
Generic codes and conventions are not just established in media products but in products that refer to these products such as critical writings or advertising and marketing material, what Neale referred to as ‘the intertextual relay’. 

Narratology – Todorov

Narratology is the study of narrative; in this case, of narrative structure – how the parts fit together to make a whole.
All narratives can be seen as a move from one state of equilibrium (where nothing need occur) to another, new equilibrium. The disruption to the equilibrium is what drives the narrative towards a new equilibrium.
The movement from the initial equilibrium to the new equilibrium entails a transformation (e.g. the hero expresses their heroism and defeats the villain) – this transformation expresses what the narrative values. 

Semiology – Barthes

Semiology is the study of signs. Signs consist of a signifier (a word, an image, a sound, and so on) and its meaning – the signified.
The denotation of a sign is its literal meaning (e.g. the word ‘dog’ denotes a mammal that barks).
Denotations signify connotations – the associations of the denotation (e.g. ‘dogness’ – the thoughts and feelings associated with dogs).
Denotations and connotations are organised into myths – the ideological meaning. These make ideology seem natural. For example, a Bulldog might activate a myth of Britishness.