Age Representation in Media

This representation suggests that this is generally considered the dominant representation of young people in the media, enough to encourage a parody. The main media texts which offer positive representation of young people are usually situations which allow them to represent themselves, within a specific context. For this assignment i will research on how people of both young and old are represented in the media with examples.

Firstly, i will explain how the elderly are represented in media, the example i have uses for this is the dinner table scene from the christmas movie 'National Lampoon's christmas vacation' as seen above.From this scene, there is a christmas family celebration as they gather at the table to say grace before they eat the banquet, and on the table there are the elder family members such as the grandpa, grandma etc. And in this scene they are represented to be senile, this is shown with the older woman who cannot hear so she requires her other elderly partner to shout in her ear in order to hear him, this is the stereotype that older people have poor hearing and this relates to all the stereotypes of older people being slow and too senile to even understand whats going on around them, also the way her husband reacts to her not being able to hear/understand what hes saying he gets frustrated in his many attempts to try make her understand by constantly yelling in her ear, so this could link to the grumpy/bitter old man stereotype. This contrasts against the other view of elders being more wise, smart and knowledgeable.

I will now explain the different ways younger people are represented in the media, the example i have used is the trailer from the 'Inbetweeners movie' shown above. From this trailer young people are shown to be very sexually competitive, as throughout the trailer and the movie itself you see the group of friends all attempting to get the attention of an attractive woman but only to fail each time. This is due to this representation of young people to be the stereotypical 'nerd'. This is why these characters are shown to be sexual failure but obsessed with sex at the same time. The 'Lad' stereotype is also shown in the trailer with all the drinking and stupid and ignorant behaviour of some of the characters during the movie, this is how they code youngsters throughout. However the audience accepts this due to the comic relief of the characters as they are also presented to be the stereotypical 'nerd' which persuades the audience into supporting or sympathising with them in finding a love interest.

Ethnicity Representation in Media Analysis

For this Assignment I will be using the music video for 'welcome to the jungle' by the band AXE Sunar, which I will analyse to find the representation of ethnicity in media.

Firstly the music video begins with us seeing the scenery through the eyes of a young white blonde women, she walks through dense fog only to discover that the first thing she sees on the other side to be a group of thugs/gangsters, all consisting of young black males, the audience is greeted by this gang who are shown to be quite aggressive and dangerous as the young black male most close to the camera has a almost rabid looking dog who is aggressively barking toward the camera (the audience). This gives the audience the idea that the city is filled with dangerous people, those of which are black, showing that there showing black people in a bad light. Furthermore the black males are shown to all have big chains which clearly relates to the stereotypical look of young black males nowadays. This shows this music video has already shown us there using clear stereotypes to represent the black people overall, even throughout the rest of the video they aren't shown in a different light except how they were shown in the first opening of the music video.

On the other hand, white people in this ad are shown in a much different light, this is because the first white male we see in this ad is a older man sitting in a limo with many younger women by his side, this gives us and idea that he is wealthy and has a large status whereas the black people are shown to be thugs and almost animalistic looking as they screw the camera. Furthermore, nearer to the end of the music video white people are also shown to be wealthy men of high status once more as when the main women (the audience) is lost amongst all the people she finds a way through tall buildings and in those buildings are wealthy middle-aged white men in suits throwing money down from the building as it rains down on us. This is giving white people another image of wealth and status as a suit is a sign of masculinity and power, and the white businessmen throwing down money prove the idea of them being wealthy whilst in this ad women are shown to be sex objects with the models and dancers, and black people are shown to be dangerous thugs. This is the idea this music video is giving the audience what the experience of city life is like.

Product Advertisement Half-Term Assignment

The product we chose to advertise in our campaign is a trainer, for sport activities, fashion or just for casual wear. I will explain how we are going to inform, persuade and sell our product by using persuasive elements and what will distinguish ours from others.

Our campaign looks to inform, persuade and sell to the general public by using methods to target our most receptive audience with certain traits (also called target advertising), based on the our product, so in that case any age, gender, ethnicity or religion, however those more interested in sports or casual wear. the Traits we will look for in demographic would only be economic status and income level as we wish to make our trainers affordable and available to as many people as we can. And for our campaign we will also use psychographic values to target our desired audience such as our costumers values, personality, attitudes, opinions, lifestyles and interests as i feel this will be essential in finding the right audience for our product for the most effected sales. We will also take in behavioural variables, such as their recent activity. We use are using all these variables to find costumers who are likely to have a strong preference and will receive the message of our product instead of those who have no interest.

The different platforms for our advertisements would use traditional forms such as billboards, newspapers and magazines to make sure the older costumers and those who do not have access to many access to electronic devices are taken into consideration to reach as wide a audience as we can, but for our main source of advertisement we will look to advertise online. This is due to information and communication technology developing greatly over the recent years resulting in a wider audience on ICT technologies such as the internet, mobile environments and social medias, these forms of media are the most important as its where the largest demographic stands, mostly consisting of younger people such as teens, children and also young adults. These demographics spend huge amounts of time on the internet and social medias, making it the most beneficial media to advertise your product on. 

So to persuade our large audience we will need to make our advertisement stand out above all to achieve maximum exposure so that means using some sort of a aspect of humour to be a entertaining but also a serious depiction of our trainers performance which means our ad can than resonate with those who want the trainer to improve there capabilities to there full potential to really show our products worth and what it actually has to offer costumers, even with the design of our trainers, its to captivate audiences into fashion but also make our product more efficient for its uses in sports to really sell our product as not being a waste but instead to persuade them to understand that its a valuable investment into helping themselves achieve their various goals to make themselves more confident. And finally we must make our advertisements relatable overall as in the end thats whats gonna earn our audiences trust, respect and attention.

To do this we must use various visual and audio techniques. For our visual techniques we were to use different scenes of different people, such as different ages, ethnicity, religion and gender, and even body type as this is to consider every possible person in our audience when watching the ad to make them feel involved and not left out or discriminated, this will also create a bigger audience. We also wish to show all the different people wearing our trainer during the ad, this is to sell our main product to the audience as we will show these people participating in different sports as well as a scenes of some of them doing casual activities or hobbies, this is to show the audience that our trainer is not only for sport but for casual wear too. also their will be captions on screen spelling out the slogans that will be heard throughout whilst cutting scenes for each person, it would sound like this:

Person 1: anyone can succeed
Person 2: in your passion
Person 3: if you work for it
Person 4: and believe in yourself

and so on..

each slogan is read out in each different scene this is to persuade the audience to become more confident in their passion and inspired to improve, and our product will help them complete those goals. Other audio codes we will use will be things such as inspiring and exiting music to really get our audiences interested in our ad to gain their full attention, and finally a closing scene with just our trainer in the spotlight to draw all attention from the previous scenes onto the shoe to help the audience focus on our product to be the last thing they see before it ends to achieve a desire for our product.

An example of how our ad would be presented is similar to this Nike ad shown below. however in the Nike ad they didn't advertise there products as much as we would've in our own. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYP9AGtLvRg&t=196s

Representation Analysis-

Meghan Trainor - 'Dear Future Husband'

For this essay I will be analysing the music video for the song ‘’dear future husband’’ by the singer Meghan Trainor. During this music video there are many representations of men and women in different ways and you could even say it changes throughout the video. I will be analysing the music video to analyse Meghan herself and also the male extras to see how each is presented throughout. I will be talking about how they are represented than I will go on to talk about the technical techniques used such as audio and visual codes.

Firstly, the setting of the video is seen to be around the 50’s as seen by the quite vintage clothes shown in the video. We than look at the story or characters there are in the music video. Meghan herself seems to be a housewife who cooks, cleans and looks after the children, which was common in the 1950’s whilst the men would go to work. But in this video Meghan attempts to change that stereotype as the video goes on. Her clothing also changes throughout the video as in the beginning she is wearing traditional clothes worn by women back in the 1950's such as a long skirt and a buttoned shirt, so overall not very revealing. However as the video goes on she begins to act rebellious and begins wearing leather jackets, short leather skirts and animal print clothing, which is not usually associated with house-wives in those times, this is showing that Trainor is challenging the norm.

In this video Trainor considers herself a symbol for female empowerment, she than combats the medias and societies unhealthy obsession with women being 'perfect'. As the main thing shes trying to point out in the video is ant culture that privileges men by promoting traditional gender roles, which is why in the video she tries her hardest to contrast against this usual view of a house-wife, and she somehow does it successfully. She's also telling us that we live in this patriarchal society sees the historical model of the 'perfect wife', who thinks of a women who cooks, cleans, look after kids and wants to please her husband. Trainor combats the notion of the societal idealisation of the 'perfect wife'.

Aside from Trainor showing stereotypical representation of women she also shows a very feminist view of how men should treat women. This is shown by the many shirtless male back-up dancers which she uses to combat the usual stereotype of half-naked women in music videos. Also throughout the video she is shown to have many husbands serve her meals, and at first a man makes a very delicate, small amount of food on a plate beautifully presented, however she does not take a liking to this and sends him away, this also challenges the norm of the wife making the husband dinner but also her disliking his cooking of a delicate small dish could show that shes saying shes not a women that likes to eat a small amount of food (which challenges the norm of women having to be thin and skinny) and instead near to the end of the video Trainor answers the door to see a man which a box of pizza and she instead accepts him rather than the other man, again this is to challenge the norm of women being thin, Trainor once addressed this before in one of her previous songs called ''all about that bass'' which showed that larger women should also be accepted and people should appreciate there curves.

'Save the Children' Advertisement Analysis

I think that this ad is very effective due the imagery of children in danger and also a good use of the common problem in todays society of the threats of terrorism, however this ad is based in London, this is significant as they use this to tell the viewers to ask themselves would they care if it was their children in that nightmare of being in constant fear. They have done this as they feel as if people aren't really realising the problems going on else-were such as the war in Syria and they want people to help and act instead of just brushing it aside due to this not effecting their lives personally. The use of a child's point of view in a apocalyptic setting such as this allows the audience to sympathise easier with this cause knowing that this is whats really happening to other kids elsewhere but the main point was to show that this could be our kids one day and to see it in that light, and so they should help the cause to help our future generations from a world of violence.

Representation of men and women

The show 'Big bang Theory' shows a different side to the 'macho man' stereotype and instead embraces these characters as instead the nerdy or dorky character. The series also attempts to create a false reality or even fantasy for these characters and this is what i will be addressing, the false representation of men and women and how the show creates a unlikely situation for the audience to love and immerse themselves with.

From the analysis video i have shown, the speaker makes valid points which i undoubtably agree with. One of the problems with this show is the false reality it creates, as these nerdy, awkward and somewhat unattractive characters manage to be very close to this beautiful women seen across the corridor, and she even begins to form a bond with one of these men, this is a false reality as the writers of the show give the audience of a realty of a women that finds these dorky men attractive, this is to feed into the viewers that can relate to the characters and wish there lives could be like theres and gives them false hope. However you could say people respect this show as it does acknowledge the people that aren't the manly representation of men shown in the ''blurred lines'' video and what is shown nowadays as the norm of men and how they should be. But this show makes these dorky characters sympathise with the audience and makes them adored by the audience also, despite there unattractive actions.

I will now talk about the characters and what representation best links with them. Firstly, when it comes to each of the characters there all very competitive with finding a girlfriend, however, due to them being stereotyped as the nerd and as sexual failures they are unable to obtain a girlfriend, accept for one or two characters, and the producers due this because they need the audience to be happy with the end outcome of all there efforts to satisfy them and again feed into this false reality, and so because of this they give the characters a underdog story to satisfy the audience. However these sexual obsessed characters are shown to be quite perverted especially one of the characters who is a borderline sex offender, sometimes committing crimes throughout the show such as candid filming of models and even sexual harassment, feeding more into this sexual obsessed nerd stereotype, however because these characters are someone comedic this is acceptable to the audience and they find it funny even if making sexist remarks which is quite rude but the way its delivered and the nerdy character who says it, the audience find this humorous. however if you put a manly/alpha male stereotype cast of characters rather than the nerdy/dork stereotype, the actions and things they would do would instead be seen as creepy and the audience would hate these characters and see them to be irritating.

In this show the stereotype of male, smart nerds is the main premise of the show as each characters are all defined with these terms, but this stereotype of intelligence being gendered masculine is also a example of representation on this show as all characters are also very intelligent, especially in subjects such as mathematics and all sciences, however due to them being nerds they lack the social aspect of their personalities and end up being very socially awkward and sexually repressed and because if that contrast they end being loved by the audience.

Independent Assignment - TV advertisement campaign

The TV Advertisement campaign i have chosen to analyse is the Nike 'Come out of Nowhere' ad:

The target audience of this Nike ad would mainly be focused on someone of any age however it would target more people interested in sports, this is nike being mainly directed towards sport equipment or sport efficient clothing, this theme of sports is mainly shown through the basketball star featured in the video, Lebron James. I think this message is conveyed very well throughout the advert, the message being to strive to become the best despite failure to keep trying to succeed, this is shown from the recurring sentence ''it is not supposed to be here'' showing the boy to be insecure about his poor basketball skill compared to the other kids and than he says ''yes, you would be told that you'll be one of the great someday. The ad also repeats the words 'take chances'. I feel as if this ad is very convincing to inspire and relate to everyday people the audience watching the ad although i don't think it is very effective in selling nikes products. However you could say that due to this relatable ad of how you must make mistakes to improve and succeed, this is something everyone can relate too in one way or another, so maybe this could be used for people to share a bond with this ad and than maybe even the nike brand in general by knowing and relating to the thoughts of the audience. This can help build trust in the nike brand than leading to sales in their products whilst being convinced to strive to be the best they can be.