1. Q1b Key Concepts
Representation

2. Do you agree with this view
from the seventies?
Berger (1972)
“Men act and women appear. Men look at
women. Women watch themselves being looked
at.”

3. Richard Dyer provides a useful framework to help us analyse
representation….

4. Richard Dyer’s Typography (1985)
1. What is represented?
2. How is this representative of social
groups?
3. Who is responsible for the
representation?
4. What does the audience make of it?

5. 1. What is represented?
What information, through the use of media
language, does the text give you about characters,
subject matter or place?

6. 2. How is this representative of
social groups?
What does the text suggest is typical? Consider what
it says about particular social groups (think of AS TV
drama; gender, age, sexuality, ethnicity, physical
ability/disability, regional identity and status).
 Stereotype? Countertype?
 Positive? Negative?
 If stereotypes are used, why are they there?
 Does it reinforce or challenge the dominant ideology?

7. 3. Who is responsible for the
representation?
Consider the filmmakers and the institutions responsible for
production.
What agenda do the producers have? Why would they want
to represent things in a certain way? - think about:
 target audience
 genre
 commercial aspect
 artistic expression
When analysing your own work, don't just think you are the
producers, think about who you have suggested are the
producers of your text? Independent producer/distributor or
major studio? British/American? Etc.

8. 4. What does the audience
make of it?
Taking all of the above into account what
might the audience response be?
As we know not everyone will respond to the
text in the same way so there is not one answer
to this! Consider different audiences.
Megan Fox in transformers clip
It is useful to look at the concept of audience in
more detail here to help answer question 4…

9. Audience - Stuart Hall
 Preferred reading
 Negotiated reading
 Oppositional reading

10. Stuart Hall
 Some people may take a preferred reading and look
at the representations as 'how it is' and something to
emulate. They would not question the
representations.
 Stuart Hall argues that this is the reading that the
producers intend audiences to take.
 What is the preferred reading of your Trailer?
 Which audience is most likely to take a preferred
reading?

11. Stuart Hall
 Some people may take a negotiated reading and
recognise that, for example, a film is made for
commercial gain and offers a glamorous
Hollywood version so does not accept the
representations as reality but perhaps still buys
into them as unattainable cultural ideals that are
pleasurable to consume for entertainment.

12. Stuart Hall
 Some people may take an oppositional reading
and completely reject the representations as they
do not agree with the values they see embedded
in the text. For example, I got really annoyed by
the representation of women in the film 'The Social
Network' as in many scenes women were there as
sexual objects and this really put me off the film as
it was no longer a believable on screen world that
I could engage with – it took a perspective that I
rejected.
 Megan Fox in Two and a Half Men

13. Apply to your product
Write a summary of how different audiences
would respond to your trailer.
 What is the preferred reading and who would
take this reading?
 Who might take a negotiated or oppostional
reading and why?
 Consider the purpose of a teaser trailer and
how different audiences might respond to it
as a result of the representations.