Feminism

This lesson we looked more at feminism (post) and Lucy Irigary (1932) in her statement that she exists only by metonymy as a possibility for men. This feminist perspective is suggestive that the conformities and expectations of women are presenting them as objects for the male gaze. I agree with this because by conforming to these expectations women are no longer identified as individuals they are merely sexualizing themselves through appearance and behaviour to grab male attention. This is why people assume that only pretty women can be successful. Women very much are victims of scopophilia as the male audience is gaining pleasure from viewing women presented in this way and this is what they expect. Women are objectified in many ways through synecdoche as only a part of them is intended to represent them as a whole. 

Terminology and Theories

Today we were given an introduction to A2 media studies, focusing on integral terminology and narrative codes of theorist Roland Barthes; he studied the cultural signs and symbols within a text. He stated that all narratives share similar structures but are moulded in different ways, that a text was a tangled ball of threads that needs to be unraveled and once unraveled can be looked at various different angles. He suggested by continuing to unravel texts, different meanings can be derived. His theory that there are open and closed texts links with Mort de ‘auteur as the open text would be open to the interpretation of the audience rather than having a predetermined elucidation imposed by the author. Barthes strongly believed that "To give a text an Author" and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it "is to impose a limit on that text". This links with Barthes’ enigma code as there is an ambiguity that draws the audience in and allows them to unravel or solve the story line or meaning behind the text. There are four other narrative codes; Action, Semantic, Symbolic and Cultural. Action refers to any part of the text that entertains or builds intrigue or suspense to make the audience more immersed in the text. The Semantic code refers to elements of a text that infer an additional meaning, usually done by using props or dialogue. Symbolic codes are called signifiers which convey meaning through symbolism. The cultural code is a point in the story where shared knowledge is pointed out, this code often refers to an external body. Besides these narrative codes there are other elements of a text that intrigue the audience; scopophilia is the love of looking where pleasure is gained from viewing, it is closely linked with voyeurism as women portrayed in the media for the male gaze are targets of gathering this type of interest. The male gaze is the way men view women subconsciously in way of judgment. John Berger talks about the ideology of women being a ‘sight’ to men, therefore women being very conscious of their image to fit these expectations. He also suggests that the surveyor of woman in herself is in fact male, judging herself to see fit the conformity of her gender for the male gaze. This often means that women are portrayed as objects of desire and not as individuals; throughout the history of film production women have been presented as sexual objects for the desires of men. Also dominant ideology is reflected in media texts. Ideologies are values, attitudes, beliefs and morals of which an individual, group or society possesses. A dominant ideology is the ideal shared by the social majority which is told to us by important institutions such as the law, the church, education, the government and the media. These are ideologies effectively and repeatedly communicated to us as they become common sense to dissuade rebellion against them. The media is a successful carrier of ideologies as it reaches such a huge demographic, although the way that this is relayed we may not be aware of.  We can study the media through different ideological perspectives, for example a feminist or Marxist perspective which would lead to different interpretations of a text based on their particular ideologies. Different societies have different dominating ideologies the most common determinant is religion, culture and the beliefs associated. Therefore the theory Barthes brings forward, the enigma code especially makes texts universal in a sense as there are no limitations to the message and meaning for others, therefore a text can be more appealing and more so intriguing. Furthermore there is binary opposition. Levi Strauss concluded that binary opposites are how we make sense of the world; he suggests that all narratives are based around this conflict and that the binary opposites are the central climax for any narrative structure. Someone has defined binary opposition as ‘the contrast between two mutually exclusive concepts of things that create conflict and drives a narrative’, for example, love/hate, good/evil, male/female etc.