Representations in trailers a2

By the end of the lesson you will be able to discuss how the trailers
represent groups within society.

REPRESENTATIONS IN TRAILERS

Why?

 1. In what ways does your media product
use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?

 You will need to be able to talk about how
conventions are used and challenged within
the genre you have chosen. Representation is
a key part of that.
 You will need to consider in your own work-
using, challenging representations.

 Task one
 Find a trailer that you think reinforces typical
representations
 Find one which you think challenges it- be
prepared to share!

Representation

 As we go through we will need to consider the
representations that the trailer gives us:

Representation in the media (AQA BOOK)
is concerned with how people, events and ideas are
presented to audiences. What we see, hear and read
in the media is a representation of a subject. Even a
live broadcast is a representation, because you only
see what is filmed by the camera operator. As a
media studies student, it is important that you are
able to identify and understand these
representations.

Police are often represented as having
troubled home lives as they are married to
their job. Criminals and killers are often
represented as having a bad background

 How have different genders been represented?
 How have different age groups been represented?
 How have different races or religions been represented?
 How have certain countries/ places been represented
 Have any groups been unrepresented? If so, why?
 How accurate is the representation?
 Can the representation be interpreted in different ways?
 Who has constructed the representation and why?
 What effect does the representation have on the
intended audience?

Representations we will be
looking at: Some films for
example will
 Good and evil represent
women as
 Male and female desperate to
find a man and
 Representations of the other get married
 Representations of the monster
 Representations of the teenager

For your own trailer you can look at other representations-
representations of age, place, certain jobs, superheroes
, love, hardworking, positive, negative etc.

The other
 The Other is an individual who is perceived by the group as
not belonging, as being different in some fundamental way.
 Any stranger becomes the Other. The group sees itself as
the norm and judges those who do not meet that norm
(that is, who are different in any way) as the Other.
 Perceived as lacking essential characteristics possessed by
the group, the Other is almost always seen as a lesser or
inferior being and is treated accordingly.
 The Other in a society may have few or no legal rights, may
be characterized as less intelligent or as immoral, and may
even be regarded as sub-human

The horror monster:

 Stephen Neale identified that horror texts
have different types of monster. The monster
is the source of the fear and it can represent
things we fear in society.
 They can act as a metaphor for societies
concerns.

The Characteristics Key idea
monster
The External The external monster Some monsters have traits of more than one of Neale’s categories.
Monster – an will be one who comes from Frankenstein’s monster for example is ‘man made’ but when he goes
outsider. ‘somewhere else’ and brings the to the village he brings in violence and death as an ‘outsider’ to the
threat to a community. community
Vampire films are good examples
of this as traditionally they come
from Transylvania and were
shown terrorising a British
community.
They are outsiders as they are
not (and never can be) members
of the community and they
invade a previously safe and
peaceful environment.

The Man-made The archetypal man-made monster
The monster is often
Monster – man’s
creation.
can be found in Frankenstein (1931).
A collection of body parts is put together
represented as bad and
and Dr Frankenstein brings the creature to dangerous- it is their
life. The creature then brings death and
danger to the community. Like the vampire natural instincts. What
he could never be part of the community,
the difference is, he is a creation of a member happens if they are
of the community.
represented in a
The Internal Here the monster is human. different way?
Monster – man The human may come from within the
gone wrong community but they are thinking or behaving
in a way that creates a threat from the inside.
The archetype for this kind of monster is
Norman Bates in Psycho (1960). He is a mild
mannered ‘boy next door’ character on the
surface but the film reveals that he is
murderously insane.

Representations and ideology

 Representations may link into ideologies in
society
 Ideologies are ideas that we hold to be true in
society
 Some ideologies may be created and
reinforced through the media- e.g that good
must always win out over evil
 That teenagers do not follow rules and have
no ambition

Group Stereotyped representation- ideas that we have about these groups.

Good

Evil

Male

Female

The other/ the
monster

 Watch the sinister trailer
 How is the monster represented in the trailer?

 Watch the sky fall trailer:
 How is the hero represented?
 The villain
 How is gender represented?

Twilight

 In the Twilight trailer how are the following
represented:
 Males
 Females
 The other/ the monster
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2T7d8j6I
5I

Sucker punch

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrIiYSdEe
4E

How are females represented in this trailer?

Is this what we are used to seeing or is it
challenging representations?

The back up plan

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FZuNElr
x7A&feature=related

 How is love represented?
 Males
 Females?

Bride wars

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjsA0_ar
Ktk

 How is love represented?
 Males ?
 Friendship?
 Females?

Attack the block

 How is inner city London represented?
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD0gm7d
HKKc

 Also consider how teenagers are represented
 The other is represented

Captain America

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-
J3HfllvXWE

 How is the idea of the hero represented?
 Why do you think that the representation of
the superhero and the superhero movie has
increased in recent years? (link to Societies
fears)

Task

 Look at a trailer of your choice (you can use the ones
on student shared too)
 identify and analyse the representations in the trailer
 Think about why the ideas may have been
represented in this way.
 It could be for example a horror trailer- you could
then think about how good and evil are represented
 Think about whether the representations are
stereotyped, they challenge ideologies
 Consider how mise en scene, costume, performance,
lighting and sound help create these
representations.

Representations in trailers a2

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