Prezi on Regional Identity

Prezi on Gender

Stereotypes in Shameless - Homework

In the previous work that we have done we have established that there are certain things that make you label someone, or a group of people and categorise them even without knowing them. These are called stereotypes. Stereotype are often wrong but help give the audience more of an insight on the characters without actually having to show a back story. There are some aspects that people would put down to be more of a working class thing to do, so the working class stereotypes in this clip are:

• The man has long hair and messy stubble which shows he doesn't really take care of himself and doesn't clean very much.
• He has wearing dirty clothes that are old.
• There is a large family which is generally associated with the lower-working class.
• They will be living in a caravan (which doesn't make you working class if you're a traveller and it's your choice but if you have to live in a caravan because you can't afford your house then it does).
• They swear a lot.
• The man drinks a lot of alcohol, there are many empty bottles and cans of alcoholic drinks on the table in the garden which confirms this.
• The young girl already has a baby (I'm assuming it's hers).
• They wear tracksuits and joggers and the girl walks out on the street in just a dressing gown.
• The house looks untidy.
• They don't have a big garden, or any flowers/grass in their garden.
• They live on an estate.

Some of these stereotypes don't apply to all working class people, but instead just more of the lower-working class. There are some stereotypes that are actually challenged by the clip, these are:

• When the man walks down the stairs he says "Is this my family, which I see before me?" which is an adaption of "Is this a dagger, which I see before me?" from Shakespeare's Macbeth. This shows that he is educated which is going against the lower-working class stereotype that they aren't educated, or at least not very well.
• They also have a moment in the clip where they show their strength as a family and how much they love and care for each other, no matter what they do (even if their dad gets completely smashed all of the time). This opposes the stereotype that all lower-working class families argue and don't get along.

Prezi on Class

Class & Status - Homework

Class and status from NathanFrancisHC

Eastenders - Homework

Initial thoughts

In the clip, Patrick is shown to be talking to the rest of the family. During the time he is speaking, everyone is listening intently. This shows that they have respect for him and the age is represented in the first 30 seconds by showing that older people are generally well mannered and respected. Patrick is telling the rest of his family about a past event, and have portrayed the fact that elderly people will stereotypically, be telling a lot of stories.

There denotation is of empty bottles and half empty glasses of win on the table and the connotation of this is that they have drunk them. Wine is usually thought as more of a sophisticated drink that is drunk by adults and this is how it's representing age, through the use of drink.

At one point, Denise says "Chelsea taking an interest in something? How much have you had to drink?" this shows that this clip has represented younger people to not be interested in peoples past stories and that it is a rare thing for her to be taking interest.

The representation of age is shown by having Chelsea (one of the younger girls) as being quite stubborn so they are showing that younger people are generally more stubborn that older people.

During this clip, Libby is talking and after she finishes she says "Ain't that right Patrick?" which shows the younger people are referring back to the older people to make sure they're correct which shows that the representation of age is shown by having older people more knowledgeable and having a lot more wisdom than the younger people.

Analysis

Age is how old you are, it is the number of years you have been alive and is represented in this clip by showing how the different ages act and how they act towards each other.

From the very start of the clip you see a masters shot to show the proximity of each of the characters but also to see how many characters there actually are. You can clearly see that there is three generations sitting the the dinner table, Libby and Chelsea being the children, Lucas and Denise being the parents and Patrick being the grandparent. I don't actually know if these are the actual relations to each other but from the way they are having dinner and having general discussion, they are either family, or very close friends. From this shot you see that age is represented in this clip by showing that Patrick, as an older man, is leading the conversation and is at the head of the table. This means that he is the head of he family which is obviously a respected role so we can say that the representation of age is showing that because Patrick is older, he is more respected.

As the conversation continues between the family, Chelsea asks Patrick a question to which Denise, her mother, responds "Chelsea taking an interest in something? How much have you had to drink?" which shows that age is represented by showing that the mother doesn't actually know the daughter that well because when she asks a question, Denise makes out as if she never cares about anything but in the clip you see she obviously does. This shows that the younger children are probably more secretive and less sociable with the family so the parents don't actually know them that well.

Libby asks questions throughout the conversation that they're having which shows that she is curious. At one point she says a fact about the riots which she then proceeds to say "Ain't that right Patrick?". To me this shows two things, firstly, that age is represented by showing that the children are still in education and are knowledgable on facts and events. It also shows that she was referring back to Patrick, as he is older than her, to make sure she was right which shows she trusts him to know the answer because she either thinks he must know because he is older than her or because he has lived through it. I think overall in this part, age is represented as older people being more wiser and knowledgable and children still in education.

In conclusion, I think that the overall representation of young aged people are that they are curious, smart, still in education and kept to themselves and the overall representation of old ages people are that hey are wise, knowledgable and respected.

Lecture notes

The media is a "text" that people read.
The producer makes the media.
The consumer reads the media.
The gatekeeper decides what goes in the media.

The producer encodes media with a preferred reading (the meaning that they want the audience to take away from it) which the consumers (the audience) will then receive and decode. This theory related to encoding and decoding was created by Stewart Hall.

However, people may not decode the text the way the encoders want them to, there are three different ways the decoders can do this.
Firstly, they can have negotiated reading which is where the decoders understand the meaning of the text but doesn't relate to it so they have no interest in decoding it.
Secondly there is oppositional reading which is when someone makes a conscious rejection or subversion of the preferred reading.
Lastly. there is aberrant reading. This is when someone misreads or misunderstands the message the producers are trying to portray.

There are three different theories related to how the audience consumers media and these are:

The hypodermic syringe: This is where the audience is passive and heterogeneous and accept all text presented to them. Basically the information passes into the the mass consciousness of the audience unmediated. This theory suggests that we as an audience are manipulated by the media and that the behaviour of the audience could be easily changed by the media-makers.

The Two step flow: This is where the media is consumed by opinion leaders who decode it and then pass it down to less active associates which they have influence over. The audience can then mediate the information they receive form the media with the ideas and thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders.

The uses and gratifications: This is where people watch the media because they want to watch it, they watch it for pleasure and aren't just mindlessly accepting what they're shown. There are four purposed that it is proposed the audience would use the media for and they are:

Diversion: The escape from everyday problems and routine.

Personal relationships: Using the media for emotional and other interaction, e.g substituting soap operas for family life.

Personal identity: Finding yourself reflected in texts, learning behaviour and values form texts.

Surveillance: Information that could be useful for living, e.g The news

The mode of address is the way in which the media "speaks" to the audience, e.g news reporters will be very formal. It is a construction using a number of codes from all elements of the text.

Roland Barthes came up with the idea that symbols in media texts affected how we decoded he information we received. He called this idea semiology (the study of symbols). For example, if you see empty bottles of alcohol on the table with two people acting drunk, you would think that they must have drunk the bottles of alcohol. Two words that are used to describe this is connotation and denotation. Connotation is what you see and denotation is what you deduce from what you see e.g, a red truck with a ladder and sirens is the denotation, and the connotation would be that it is a fire truck.

Conversation

Shameless

Class and status is devised of two separate words meaning different things. Your class is defined by the amount of income you have, people with lower income will be a lower class than someone with a higher income. Status is more to do with the levels of respect you have and your power in society. It is represented in the Shameless clip through the use of camera shots, editing, sound and mis-en-scène.

My initial thoughts on this clip is that the father isn't a very good father. It seems to me that he is a drunk and a drug taker and doesn't really look after his children that well. They don't seem to have a lot of money and are not a very close family as you see that they have an argument in this clip. However at the end, you see that they are all laughing together.

Firstly, the camera shots and mis-en-scène work well together to portray class in this clip. As the man comes down the stairs at around 0:10 there is a medium shot showing the top half of his body. This allows the audience to see the state of his clothes, his face and his hair. From this shot we see that his clothes are reasonably dirty, His hair is greasy and he has short stubble on his face. After this, at 0:12, there is a long shot of the table where you see 4 people and a baby which, in my opinion, may show that they could be of a lower class because having more people in the family means you need to spend more money on food and other resources so you would generally have less money for other things, like a bigger house. Also, stereotypically, people with larger families tend to have lower class than say, someone with only one child in their family. There is then a close up of the mans face to see more detail and features. As the clip progresses, at 0:37 you see a confrontation between the man and a teenager. Just from the shot types you can see the expressions of the rest of the family through use of close ups. This helps us see how the rest of the family are feeling and how they will react to this situation. You can also see the the state of the house in the background, it doesn't look very clean and there house is quite bare. There aren't many decorations and the table is very small so just from these few shot types and the mis-en-scène, we can see that the class is represented through the state of the house and the people living in it.

After this encounter between the two of them, at 1:04 to 1:10 there is a series of close ups on the man. It switches to slightly different angles each time as he does different actions and they are very quick and happen one after the other. To me, this shows that it is very hectic and stressful in the house because of the speed the different shots were happening. We can then link this to the class of the family and say because of this stress and the household, we can put it down to maybe a lack of money. In the shots we see the what looks like the man screaming in anger as his facial expressions are that of an angry person.

The next few shots are pretty much the same shots over and over as they continue to engage in conversation. They are just close ups of the man, to long shots of the family or close ups of an individual member of the family and back to a close up of the man. We can see from the mis-en-scène that the clothes the family wear suggests a lower class family because a family with a higher class would usually wear things like jeans and polo tops, not joggers, tracksuits and jackets.

The next interesting shot is at 2:05 when it cuts to an establishing shot where it shows the state and a caravan outside the house that is being delivered with them all standing outside waiting for it. We can be stereotypical and say that it's just gypsies that have caravans and maybe relate this family to gypsies. In my opinion, most people see gypsies as lower class as they don't tend to have any high paying jobs or a big house but instead, they do cash in hand jobs and live in caravans. However, gypsies do not pay taxes so they will have that extra money and are a lot richer than most people think. You also see in the background the back of another caravan which could belong to the family or could belong to someone else, either way it shows that people on this estate own caravans and we could argue that this is because they haven't got a lot of money, therefor being lower class.

There is then a close up of a turtle crawling down the street at 2:24 while the family just watches and we can say that this could be their pet and maybe they can't afford a dog or a cat so instead bought a turtle and link this back to them being lower class. At 2:49, the turtle in run over by the caravan that is being delivered and the girls of the family walk over to it and the rest of the family start to gather round to look at it, none of them looking that sad.

A man in a suit then approaches them from behind and immediately, just from the look of him we can assume he is an upper class citizen. He is cleanly shaven and has a well kept suit that is ironed and well fitted. He holds a document in his hand which shows that he is an important man and can link class to status as because it looks like he has a lot of money, it also looks like he has a lot of power and respect. There is a medium shot that shows the upper class man handing the lower class man a slip of paper (3:07) while the lower class man looks outraged and the upper class man acts as it's completely fine (3:10). The rest of the family being to laugh and then the lower class man joins in too. The last shot in this clip is at 3:18 where there is a high angle shot that is looking down at the family and the upper class man walking away.

At the start of this clip there is some non-diegetic sound which means it is sound that is not actually in the story, it is just being added for effect. To me, this is just a piece of mood music to set the scene as when he first stumbles downstairs the music adds to the effect that he may still be drunk from the night before and he is confused and can't remember some things.

From the speech in this clip we learn that this man is indeed their father and is a drug taker and a drunk. We also know that they do not have a lot of money and are selling their house to live in a caravan as they can not afford it anymore. From speech it is represented by literally telling us that they are a lower class family.

There is a piece of synchronous, diegetic sound in this clip, it is when the baby makes a sound while drinking milk. The sound is diegetic because it is actually happening in the story and we know it's synchronous because we can see the baby make the sound.

The last piece of sound is when you hear a dog barking. This is what we would call an asynchronous piece of sound because even though it is diegetic and it's actually happening in the story, we can't actually see the source of the sound. This shows that they would probably live in a lower class estate because in films and TV programs the lower class people will have the dogs that bark and the upper class people have well trained dogs that don't bark.

The editing in this clip is mainly only profoundly present at the point where the close up shots were coming really fast over and over to add the effect of stress in lower class families but other than that, I can't really see where the editing in this clip helps represent class. 

Shot types 1 - Nathan Francis

Shot types 2 - Nathan Francis

Gender Identity Health Check

Gender is represented in the media in various different ways, for example males will be wearing suits and women will be wearing dresses, this is just one example of many. Gender doesn't mean male or female, it is nothing to do with the biological gender, it is the gender identity that has been created by humans themselves. There is no law that says women have to wear makeup and men can't wear skirts but because of the way gender is represented in the media, we are influenced and therefor chose to conform to the expectations of society.

The camera shots in this clip is one of the ways that show how gender identity is represented. They do this right at the very start at around 0:15 in the clip by having high angle shots of the male worker looking down at the women. This shows that he has higher status than the women that he is talking to as he is looking down at her and she is looking up to him. This status may be because of money but while this shot is taking place, you don't know that the woman cannot afford the dress, it is merely a status shown through gender dominance. Even though this woman may not be able to afford this dress, she still wants to look nice for her daughter. This sense of women wanting to look their best has been portrayed by her saying herself that it's her daughters wedding and she wants something "nice". This shows that it's the woman's job to look good for other people.

During the confrontation of the shop worker and the woman, the camera shots are placed so you can see that the male has a height advantage over the woman. There are a few master shots that show how close they are and how much taller he actually is, for example at 0:30 when he is mocking her when she says "nice" you can clearly see him towering over her, looking down at her and intimidating her. This represents gender identity by showing that men are superior to women and have more power.

After the woman leaves the shop, the male focusses his attention to the other woman in the store. There are come close ups on the woman to show her accessories like her watch and ring which look expensive. The male notices this and heads over to her and engages in conversation. Even though we see she is a wealthy woman, the camera shot is still high angle which shows it doesn't matter about your class in terms of money, the status and power levels are shown to focus on the gender of the person and the male worker will have higher than any female. This woman is dressed a lot differently to the previous woman, she is wearing a blazer and a knee-length skirt made out of suit material which shows she is more professional and wealthier.

There is a tilt shot after the man gets the dress for the woman which shows the whole of the outfit. I think this objectifies her as more of a sex object now as before the camera was focussing on the accessories that made her look wealthy but now it is focussing on the woman herself. This point is backed up as she says "oh yes, oh yes!" in, what some might think, a seductive tone and the camera tilts up to show the dress is a backless and braless dress. This just adds to the objectivity of the woman as it is showing off a lot of flesh and portraying her in a sexy way. Even in the outfit she was wearing prior to trying on the dress she was still showing some cleavage which backs up the point that she is being shown as a sex object. The reason she is buying this dress it presumable to look good for her man which shows that it's the women that are trying their best to look their best for others.

After the woman agrees to buy the dress, the shot then transitions into a different scene where there is a medium shot of two men. The men are at what is presumably a bar drinking an alcoholic beverage and smoking cigarettes. The Mis-En-Scene in this scene is a very strong, visual portrayal of the gender identity that men can just sit around without a care in the world and it's perfectly acceptable for them to be smoking inside and drinking during the middle of the day. One of them is wearing suits which shows that they are in a position of power and the other is wearing casuals. They are both however, wearing trousers, which is completely normal but in the whole clip you see women wearing skirts and men wearing trousers. This shows that the gender identity is shown through the clothing, the males are expected to wear trousers and the females will usually wear skirts or dresses.

The next scene is back to the shop, where the woman has realised she has lost her ring, she gets really stressed and panicked about it but the male shop worker stays calm and in control instead of losing his head like the woman. The representation of gender identity is quite profound in the scene as it shows that to be masculine you can't be stressed about things, you have to stay calm and the feminine side would be to get really stressed out over everything. She also says that her husband will kill her if she loses it which shows that she is scared of what her husband will think because he is the "leader" in the relationship and she doesn't even care about the value of the ring, just what her husband will think of her. This shows that feminine people care more about what others think of them and less about money. We could generalise this to why more females spend lots of money on clothes, because they don't care about the price of them, they just want to look good for other people.

Then next scene is very short, it is a male doing some manual labour, he is wiring an alarm system. With just this very scene we are shown that it is a masculine thing to do. They could have used a woman to be doing this work but instead a man was used to portray the fact that it is more of a masculine thing to do than feminine.

When it transitions back to the shop, you see a man has entered and a tilt shot is used so you can see his full suit. It then swaps to a high angle shot of the new man looking down at the shop worker who is on the floor. I think this is because it is to show that the new man is now more masculine and therefor has more power so he is given a higher position of power. I think he is more masculine because the shop worker is now starting to feel a little bit stressed while trying to look for the ring because he really wants the reward and we have previously established that getting stressed out is more feminine than masculine.

After this scene it goes back to the two men at the bar, there is no dialogue in this scene, it just shows them sitting and laughing together. I just think it enforces the idea that they don't have any cares in the world, they can just sit and have a drink together while other men are reading newspapers and stuff.

I think the scene after is very interesting. It shows the two men (the male shop worker and the new man) having a heated discussion about the ring that the new man had just found. What I found interesting is that neither of them really wanted to return the ring back to the women just to be a good person, they were both just hooked on the fact that will get a reward if they return it. This shows that masculine people are quite money hungry and greedy.

The last scene in this clip shows that the new man and the woman that lost her ring had met up in a café and new each other and the new man reveals that he got "one and a half" thousand pounds from the shop worker to which she responds with "you did ok". This shows us that they were working together and had set the whole thing up to get £1,500 from a (I'm guessing) worthless ring.

Throughout the whole clip all you see are men working, for example, the man in the shop and the man behind the bar, which shows it's the mans job to be the worker and not the woman's. However, this idea is countered at the very end when you see a glimpse of a woman working in the café.

The editing of this clip is pretty similar throughout. They don't tend to use cuts, instead they use transitions, like swipe left or swipe down (where the picture moves left or down to reveal the next shot). They also used a freeze-frame at 1:54 while playing the jaunty music of the scene in the shop as it transitioned into the scene at the shop which allowed it to look seamless and smooth.

In conclusion, I think the gender identity in this clip is represented through things like clothing, actions, emotions, camera angles etc. and I think it is used so effectively that unless you are actively searching for it, it would be hard to notice.