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.