Maisy - Representation

Apply media representation in one of your coursework productions.

In my A2 music video, the representation of the characters as well as the ideas I wanted to present was made through the prominent themes I tried to portray. The main theme of my video involved the Marxist idea of a people fooled into a form of equality but with some form of dictatorship – in my video I represented this via a group of young people being physically kept inside with the band portraying a ragged form of bourgeoisie.  The lead female protagonist fights against and rejects the hegemonic authority, which the band playing depicts. This running political theme of control over a mass can be supported the ideology of Marxism and this was something I portrayed primarily through the narrative. As Rosalind Brunt states that ideologies are never just ideas but are myths which we live by and are attributes to our self worth, this supports how the lead protagonist Rhi, how she takes the situation that has been forced upon her and to make herself and her life better, she rejects the control that has been held over her and escapes. I portrayed Rhi as being a headstrong and independent female who carries the film, which contradicts Laura Mulvey’s idea of the male gaze being prominent and the idea that the camera objectifies women. In my video, there are no shots which present Rhi as being weak, objectified, or being there for the purpose and pleasure of a male viewer. The target audience I made the film for was not gender specific and I wanted to present this idea of equality from the audience projected in the film, giving no gender dominant point of viewing.  However, the idea of viewing people leads directly to the idea I wanted to portray of society being constantly watched. I presented this politically heavy idea of surveillance and how we are being watched through shots of CCTV cameras and also the narrative structure of the film being a chase scene as Rhi runs away from the governmental organization represented as the band and how even that is being watched and recorded, as the viewers watch the video. This was how I presented the socially increasing theme of voyeurism and how the controlling aspect of this has an affect on our culture’s behaviour.  Foucault’s theory of Panopticon suggests that although we cannot see each other, we are all connected via another being observing us, just as Rhi and the other characters captive to the organization are being watched, so are we in the real world and in our postmodern influenced society.  Although in my film, the world is hyper real as gold and black masked characters chase people through the streets of a dystopian London, the themes I presented are reminiscent of the way our society is according to Lyotard’s postmodern theory that because nothing new can be created, there is no hope for the future and this I tried to present through the setting and structure of the narrative.  As David Gauntlett’s theory that Identity is a complicated idea because it can be changed so frequently, as many artists play with the realms of identity and characterisation, I wanted to play too and did this by giving the band varying identities including being the band themselves and also the organization controlling the audience. With this I was able to experiment with how the band present themselves and how others might see them, in the same way that bands are marketed and sold in the real world.