Media Studies Induction

In Pink's music video, Stupid Girls, she presents various personas of women today, however, all of the women are very similar in that the main goal is to get the attention of a man and to get the gratification of the male gaze. Levi Strauss' theory of binary opposites is presented at the beginning of the music video through the "Angel" and the "Devil" on either side of the little girl's shoulders. The Devil wants the little girl to follow the media representations shown on TV and any other media platform and the Angel wants the little girl to be herself and choose to be or do whatever she wants to do.  They introduce the classic "blonde bimbo" and this character is used throughout the video to represent the stereotyped women who change their body due to different influences of the media, celebrities or even due to their own personal influences. Pink mocks the 'usual' representation of women in media by overexaggerating various stereoty...

Propp was a literary critic and founded that the idea a certain type of character was. used in every narrative structure. His theory influenced many filmmakers to producing and writing successful narratives. He also said that all fairy tales follow a specific narrative structure. He suggested that every narrative has 8 different character types, these are: 1. THE HERO - Main character in the story and is the one who goes on a quest, reacts to Donor, fights against the villain and gets the Princess. 2. THE FALSE HERO - takes credit for hero's actions and tries to marry the princess  3. THE VILLAIN -  Fights the hero in some way (and struggles) 4. THE HELPER - Helps the hero on their quest. 5. THE PRINCESS OR PRIZE - The hero deserves her throughout the story, but is unable to be married to her due to evil (villain). Heroes journey often ends with him saving the princess and living happily ever after. 6. THE DISPATCHER - Character who makes the villain's evil known an...

The Todorovian Structure was created by Tzvetan Todorov, a Bulgarian-French Historian, and he had the theory which states that most stories or plot lines follow the same pattern or path. There are 5 steps to this plan: 1.THE EQUILIBRIUM This is the first part of any movie plot, which usually displays a happy start, where a majority of the characters are content and everything is as it should be. 2.THE DISRUPTION This is the second part of the story which will feature a problem or something will disrupt the happiness. 3.REALISATION This is where the characters realise the problem and its chaos. The audience is almost relieved of 'dramatic irony' at this point of the plot. 4.RESTORED ORDER At this point, the characters are attempting to repair the damage and 'restore' the problem. 5.EQUILIBRIUM AGAIN Of any storyline, this is the final part where the problem is resolved and everything is restored back to order. (Happy)

Definition of Semiotics: The study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation. Saussure's idea was that their is a "signifier" and the "signified" and these are what a sign is composed of. The signifier is known as the form that a sign can take and the signified is the concept. He believed and explains that a sign was not only a sound-image but a concept. The two, signified and signifier, were purely psychological for Saussure. 

Berger's Statement - Ways of Seeing: “A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another...One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and wo...