28/01/11

SIGHT/SITE (SOCIAL SPACE)

-Urban space/hidden power structures

-Anti-war protest-London

-In all urban spaces mechanisms of control/power

-Hausmanisation- to stop crime/ to segregate/control/power

-Power by state

-Adverts/billboards change how feel/act/

-Business control- spend/ consumption

-Dog whistle for chavs-shops

-Crossings/traffic lights

-John Berger- Single point perspective (way of representing space)

e.g. lighthouse-instead of light going in/coming out (appearances)

-Arrogance/god like power/world=stage for us/viewer as central object

-One way situation/panopticism= one all seeing eye

-Understanding is limited + inhibited by our own vision (flawed)

-UN=see themselves in charge of world

-Jemima Stehli-'strip'-giving critic choice of when to take photo

-Power/ illusion of power

-Forces to see person gazing back / awkward

-Critics control art

-Transgression as a result of space; response to limits- Vito Acconci (1969)

-Henri Lefebvre (1905-1991)

-Dirty Protest (1977-8)

-French intellectual, Marxist , sociologist

-Maze prison belfast

-Revolution via everyday life

-Influenced the situationist (challenged the hidden power structures) 1950's, 60's

-Guy Debord

-Theorist of radial movements

-Spatillisation- creative + function of space

-Conventions of space- act in the space how you would think to act in space

-Action/ presence/ discourse= controlled

-Creates opportunity for resistance/ possibility of rebellion

-Signs/illusions of control/ can ignore

-women- think they're meant to look a certain way/ don't have to

-View from above-doing solution

Lecture 6

THE MEDIA, GLOBALISATION AND SUSTAINABILITY

-Socialist- process of transformation of local/regional phenomena into global ones.

-Described as a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together.

-Process=combination of economic/technological/sociocultural and political forces.

-Capitalist- elimination of state-enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders

-McDonaldization - mc donalds dominating society

-Manfred B. Steger, Globalization: A very Short Introduction

-Marshall McLuchan

-Global village thesis

-Centripetal forces (good) vs. Centrifugal forces (bad)

-New cold war-loss of faith in the secular nationstate

Religious Nationalism

self-society- Communal

knowledge- Faith

religion- Church/state joined

politics- authoritarian, personal

economy- local capitalism/ socialism

Globalisation

self-society- Unit in global market

knowledge- Media

religion- Religion irrelevant

politics- Superpower (US) & transnational agencies e.g. WTO, UN

economy- Transnational corporate

-Problems of globalisation:

1)sovereignty

2)accountability

3)identity

-Cultural Imperialism

-Schiller

-Chomsky (key thinkers)

-owenership

-sourcing

-funding

-Flak

-Anti- ideologies

-An inconvenient truth (2006) Al Gore

-Flat earthers

-Sustainability \

- Greenwashing

-G20 Summit

Essay Ideas - Portfolio Task 4

Propose a topic and a working title for your Level 5 essays. Your proposal should include:

-5 bullet points explaining the main thrust of your argument

-Your chosen methodical approach

-At least 5 texts (referenced using Harvard) that you think will be useful for this essay, with a comment next to each explaining why

-A j.peg of an image that you may/could discuss in the essay, again, briefly stating why

For my essay I have chosen the topic of the gaze and psychoanalysis as it interest me the most and i want to find out more about it. I also wanted to link these to today and how this affects women. Therefore my question I have come up with I got by using a quote on the gaze and psychoanalysis handout from the lecture. My title is:

'Women exist as 'sexual' objects only to be looked at.' Does this statement apply to modern media?

In my essay i will look at how women were perceived in the past (through paintings/pinnups) how this changed and then how it has changed back again, now in modern media. Who is driving this change, male or female? I am also looking at quite a few theorists to back up what I am saying. My plan for the essay is to go through each of my theorists first, John Berger, Laura Mulvey and Rosalind Coward, then to apply this theory to examples (analysing in depth), then my conclusion.

Texts I am going to use:

-Berger, J (2008) Ways of Seeing, 2nd Edition, London: Penguin Books Ltd.

I'm using this book as one of the essays in it is very appropriate. It talks a lot about how women are represented in paintings. Berger believes that the western world objectifies the nude women and how these ideals have been carried on into todays society.

-Mulvey, L, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema: Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. New York: Oxford UP: p.833-44

This text carries on fluidly from Berger as Mulvey talks about these ideals in todays society, in modern media, with the male as the observer and the female as the object.

-Coward, R, (1985) Female Desire and Sexual Identity, In: Diaz-Diocartz, M & Zavala, Women Feminist Identity and Society in the 1980's. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co, pp.25-36

Coward talks here, about desire and how we as humans are driven by pleasure. Desire is driven by pleasure and the constant promise of perfection. Coward looks at how this affects women

-Walter, N (2010) Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism, London: Virago press.

This is a book that I found in the library at college, the title dragged me to it at first and whilst I had the book out I couldn't put it down. Really interesting view on how men aren't driving this way of seeing women but women are. Contains some interviews with women that are looked at for a living, about how they got into what they do and why they do it.

-Miriam O'Reilly wins Countryfile ageism claim, BBC NEWS: Entertainment & Arts [online] Available at:

This article is really interesting as my essay question is 'Women exist as sexual object only to be looked at' Does this statement apply to modern media? and this pretty much proves it as O'Reilly was fired for being too old and as when the program went in to HD you'd be able to see her wrinkles apparently.

An image you could discuss:

As I am looking at the gaze as well, an image that I could talk about is Degas' painting Le Viol (The Rape) (1869). This painting shows the intra-diagetic gaze, which means another person in an image looking at another person in the image. In this painting the man looks across the room at the young girl the way she is facing and is stood shows that she hasn't noticed him stood there. The painting makes you feel bad as you know what is going to happen but you don't feel guilty, as you're not doing anything wrong as the viewer.

Lecture 5

9/12/10

REALITY, VIRTUALITY & HYPERREALITY

-Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007)

-Plato-alergy of the cave

-Teaches us a lesson on how we react with the world/ Ignorance is bliss

-Only know shadow/1 dimensional view of cave

-Only see what were shown/close minded e.g. how wars are portrayed

-Baudrillard

-Hyperreality - inception/coca cola ads

-Coca-cola ad- Santa in red

-Before this santa was portrayed wearing green 1930's Haddon Sundblom

-Santa doesn't exist!!!!!!!!!!

-'Cognitive illustration'

-Think you know stuff because of label (in test cola and pepsi taste same, without label tastesa same)

-Like emotions, you THINK you're in love, just copying images in films. Can't access real emotion just copy/think we are

-Post-structuralism

-Structuralism

-Georges Baille

-Guy Debord- images of the world, rather than world

-Update of Marx for consumer age

-Systems of Objects (1968)

Marx

commidity

-use value

-exchange value

Baudrillard

commodity

-use value

-exchange value

-sign value

-Baudrillard- simulacra are copies of reality, either

of the thing they are intended to represent or are merely copies of other copies

-Simulacrum- key term in post modern theory & culture

-Baudrillards book: SIMULACRA & SIMULATIONfeatures in the Matrix films

-Desert of the real

-Second order simulacra- so similar it confuses/gone so far we thin copy is real/real for us

ROBOTS:

1st order simulacra:

2nd order simulacra:

-Disney=Hyper-reality

-People say castle in prague is 'just like disneyland!' this is backwards

-Disney based on castle not other way round

-Same with Christkindlmarkt, Leeds

-Reality tv... not real its hyperreal

Semiotic Analysis - Portfolio Task 3

Write a 300-400 word semiotic analysis of this Sun front cover. Make sure that your analysis highlights all of the key signifiers, and what they denote and connote. Also, try to highlight any examples of myth that you can see- what ideologies or cultural prejudices are naturalised by the text?. Also, pay attention to paradigmatic and syntagmatic structures and suggest how these shape our reading. Try to outline who the text is trying to communicate, and what cultural codes it relies on to do this. Pay attention to the interrelation of text and image. Pay close attention to the language used in both headline and text.

This newspaper is aimed at the working class, which you can tell by the price of the paper (14p then which would be about 5p now) and the way its written. When you first look at this Sun front cover your eyes are automatically drawn to the title 'GOTCHA' and then to the images of the ships. 'Gotcha' is a word associated with child play (e.g. games of tig), which straight away takes away the seriousness of the situation like the war is a game which england is winning. The images of the ships are meaningless without the text as Barthes said. The text that catches your eye under the text are short and simple, the words, 'sunk' and 'crippled', these word combined witht the images make the reader feel like our country is victorious and strong. The childlike way of talking continues into the text with shortening of''Argentinians' to 'Argies'. This is a derogatory term and to see it used in a newspaper is quite shocking nowadays. This made the reader feel that 'Argies' was the correct term to use in referring to 'Argentinians' and there was nothing wrong with it.
Also now looking at the other article on this page you can see how they differ. The main article, like I have said is written childishly about us having a lead in the war the article does not let us think about the seriousness of the situation. The second article 'Union boycotts war' is written as if this matter is more serious matter, yet in comparison its not.

Lecture 4

25/11/2010
COMMUNICATION THEORY

-'Who says what to whom in what channel with what effect?' -Lasswell's Maxim
-Traditions of communication theory
-Multiple theories/ 7 traditions
-Transmissional (informational)
-Cybernetic/information theory
-Constitutive (process of production/reproduction of shared meaning)
-Semiotics
-Phenomenological tradition
-Rhetorical
-Socio-psychological
-Socio-cultural
-Critical theory
-Cybernetic/Information theory-Shannon& weaver bell labortories 1949
-Potential communication problems:
-level 1-technical (systems, accuracy)
-level 2- semantic (presision of language)
-level 3- effectiveness (does message affect behavior)
-Systems theory
-BARB (broadcasters' audience research board)
-Semiotics- semantics, syntactics, pragmatics
-Semiotics examine signs as if they are a language
-Culturally shared codes
-Semiotics- how we make meaning in any given situation/how art/design is read within that situation
-Phenomenological Tradition- process of knowing through direct experience
-Embodied minds- communication seen as extention of nervous system
-Process of interpretation is central
-Rhetoric- hyperbole, irony, personification
-Rhetoric can be used to change the way we ‘read’ things. It persuades us to see or read things differently. Because most of the information we receive is ambiguous we can easily be persuaded to read it as others do. Rhetoric relies on communication as a social activity and is a device that is designed to help individuals exert the power of their ideas and views over others

Lecture 3

18/11/10

FILM THEORY, 'THE GAZE' & PSYCHOANALYSIS

-Psychoanalysis - way of thinking linke

d to psychology + psychiatry

-Laura Mulvey- (Film writer informed by both feninism and psychoanalysis. Most famous work 'Visual pleasures and narrative cinema' (1975) later turned into a longer book of the same name. Some key points developed by Mulvey:

- Hollywood film is sexist in that it represents the gaze as powerful and male/ heros typically male and drive the plot/ women in film exist as 'sexual' objects to be 'looked at'.

-Scopophilia- pleasure of looking at others' bodies as objects '...at the extreme [scopophilia] can become fixated into a perversion, producing obsessive voyeurs and Peeping Toms whose only sexual satisfaction can come from watching, in an active controlling sense, an objectified other.'

-Narcissistic Identification- Identify with male character. 'The cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking, but it also goes fu

rther, developing scopophilia in its narcissistic aspect.'

-Mirror Stage- 'The moment when a child recognises their own mirror-image as a project perfected model of 'ego'. Film (like its similarity with the mirror) produces a fascinationin the image that can itself, induce a loss of ego. In our increasing identification with a projected 'ego', our own sense of ego becomes lost..' Projection of 'ideal ego' comic book guy in the simpsons thinks he's radioactive man.

-Suture- spectators look through eyes of the actors in the film

-We are able to follow 'their' gaze without feeling guilty

-Suture can be broken e.g., when an actor speaks out to us

-When broken, the audience are aware of their own gaze

-Possibility then, to make the spectator feel guilty

-Jacques Lacan- Famous french psychoanalyst, particularly influential on art history and theory.

-Different types of the 'gaze'- spectator's gaze, intra diagetic gaze, extra diagetic gaze, suture

-Le Viol - Degas

-A bar at folies-bergere- Manet

-Duchamp- Etant Donnes (1946-1966) being given power of the gaze

-Peeping Tom