Mulvey's male gaze - Guns'n Roses Avicii Miley Cyrus

Lets take a fresh look at the male gaze...

To help refresh our semiotic skills, and as a very practical help for the Y11s, we looked at and wrote in feedback on several rough cuts of Y11 music videos, viewable from the playlist below (you can also comment directly on YT and I can pass this on). I'm awaiting updated cuts at the time of writing.



Along the way, we discussed Stuart Hall's argument, plus the male gaze theory and how to formally discuss this - avoiding the trap of writing 'I applied the male gaze theory...' - by looking at two commercial examples:

1: GUNS'N ROSES' Welcome to the Jungle (1987) [video wiki]


With this video we broke down the media language behind the apparent sexism: our protagonist is clearly signified by following him and his gaze, even if the typical rule of thirds is conspicuously NOT applied in the opening shots (the huge space in the left 2/3 of the frame connoting his alienation from this 'jungle' - although he does begin more centrally framed within this fairly long take). His outsider status is neatly anchored not just by emerging from a Greyhound bus, but also by the simple, subtle small detail in the mise-en-scene of him chewing a straw - the hick stereotype!

He is given agency through cutting from extreme long shot with that uncomfortable framing to a more centrally framed medium close-up/medium tracking shot, and the very literal male gaze when we cut from his leering look at the passing woman's legs and behind to a point-of-view shot positioning the audience to empathise with him. The woman is not a full character, or person, simply legs and bum wrapped in a short, tight skirt with high heels; she is thus objectified.

1B Media Language update

TBC
Briefly:
the overall point is what specific media language makes your text recognisably a music video? M.Lang takes in narrative, representations, editing, mise-en-scene, sound, shots, so as the existing guide highlights, you've got a lot of options for this
A couple of things I'd definitely use though: Vernallis; postmodern theory.

POMO/CREATIVITY: Warhol's impact and vision

Nice article from The Guardian:

Andy Warhol's legacy lives on in the factory of fame

15 minutes of fame? The artist whose radical ideas galvanised the 1960s art world continues to dominate the market and permeate popular culture – 25 years after his death 

Alex Needham guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 22 February 2012 10.24 GMT

People are reflected on a portrait of US artist Andy Warhol by Timm Rautert. Photograph: Susana Vera/Reuters

On 22 February 1987, Andy Warhol died unexpectedly in a New York hospital after a routine operation on his gallbladder. Yet 25 years on, the artist described by Truman Capote, quoting Wilde, as "a sphinx without a secret" has never gone away. Not only does Warhol dominate the art market, with his work accounting for one-sixth of contemporary art sales, his influence permeates both high art and popular culture.
Warhol's work is rarely out of circulation in galleries. A show at the De La Warr Pavilion in east Sussex closes this week, but another, of his portfolio prints, starts at Dulwich Picture Gallery in London this summer. The artists he influenced are even more visible. Next month, artist Gillian Wearing, who once photographed herself dressed as Warhol, will show a retrospective of her work at the Whitechapel, while Jeremy Deller, who hung out at Warhol's studio, the Factory, in the summer of 1986, is just about to launch a retrospective at London's Hayward.

Andy Warhol lines up a shot during the filming of Taylor Mead's Ass at his studio, The Factory, New York, 1964. Photograph: Fred W McDarrah/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image

"I think Warhol changed film and documentary forever," says Wearing. "He was completely seminal in that area. His extremely long takes, his exploration of improvisation between fiction and reality came about through his playful and irreverent manner, and gave the world new ways of looking."

Andy Warhol's Marilyns, from the 2002 exhibition at Tate Modern, London. Photograph: David Sillitoe for the Guardian

Warhol's radical idea that the stuff of modern life could be art, from Campbell's soup cans to washing-powder boxes, galvanised the art world in the 60s. "I went to see his 1989 retrospective at Moma," remembers cultural historian Jon Savage. "You walked into the 60s rooms and there it all was – America. Money, sex, fame, death. Warhol summed, up, defined and in many ways embodied the world in which we now live. Everyone thinks he's emotionless and soulless, but the cumulative effect of seeing all the Marilyns and Orange Disasters is extremely powerful – it's not just a mirror," he says, referring to the verdict of art critic Robert Hughes.

Postmodernism

This is a key topic, and a gift really as far as exam prep AND coursework blogging/Eval is concerned: a complex but digestible idea which invites consideration of conflicting views + arguments. Not surprisingly, I've blogged on this many times; I'll gather links to these below then you can carry on to what has been the main post on this key topic.

http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2012/11/gta5-postmodern-theory-baudrillard.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2012/06/your-sample-q1a-answers.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2011/05/1a-1b-guides.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2012/06/dictionary-of-pomo-terms-alterity.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2010/05/you-simply-must-read-this.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2012/05/q1a-guide.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2012/04/pomo-by-louderthanwar-blog.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2012/04/slasher-sitcom-holliston-fearnetcom.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2012/03/q1b-audience.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2012/03/digitisation-self-published-short-film.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2011/04/postmodernism.html;
http://prodeval.blogspot.com/2010/04/some-prompts-for-q1a.html;
 

UPDATE 11TH JUNE 2012: single paragraphs on famous postmodern theorists added to the end of this post. Pick one or more + think of how you can apply such ideas to your own work - you don't have to agree; the point you might wish to make can validly be a rejection of the theory (of any theory) ALSO: dictionary of pomo terms added to bottom of post

A PowerPoint on pomo theory: for all your A2 vids, and most of your AS openings, you should be able to apply the concepts of bricolage or pastiche...

Postmodernism theories and texts

View more PowerPoint from raybloggs

http://alleynsmedia.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Postmodern%20Media is useful.

Strinati's (1995) 5 Key Features of Postmodernism

The following notes are based on the relevant chapter in Dan Laughey's Key Themes in Media Theory, a very useful book as regards the exam...
The concept of postmodernism denies definition to some extent, but Dominic Strinati outlined 5 key characteristics in 1995 that are often cited:

1. Breakdown of the distinction between culture and society
2. An emphasis on style over substance
3. Breakdown of the distinction between high art and popular culture
4. Confusions over time and space
5. Decline of metanarratives ['grand theories such as Marxism, Christianity and ... modernism have lost their currency for modern societies']*

*quoted from pp. 147-148

Jean Baudrillard and Simulacra

Baudrillard is famed for the notorious argument that the Gulf War did not happen, labelling coverage of it an example of hyperreality, or a simulacra:

The Gulf War did not take place, according to Baudrillard, because it was won by the mighty US Air Force before it had begun. The lasting memories of this war for most people were screened images - transmitted via military operations to CNN and other western media - showing how US pilots pinpointed and then bombed Iraqi targets (...) from thousands of miles above land. As such, 'This war is conducted according to the media model: war as a technological relationship ... founded on the abolition of symbolic exchange and the simulation of real communication' (Merrin 2005: 84). This is not a war in the sense of prolonged combat and conflict (the first two world wars, by contrast, really did take place); instead, we experience a virtual war, much like a video game simulates real warfare, and therefore this real-time, media-saturated spectacle is nothing other than what Baudrillard calls a 'non-event'. Subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq amount to 'a rehash of the past, with the same deluge of military forces, bogus information, senseless bombardment, emotive and deceitful language, technological deployment and brainwashing. Like the Gulf War: a non-event, an event that does take place' (Baudrillard 2002: 34). [Laughey, 2007: 151]

A more detailed breakdown (source: http://www.sociology.org.uk/pcpmod.doc) follows:
Www.sociology.org.Uk Pcpmod