15th September An introduction to representation

Representation refers to the construction in any medium (especially the mass media) of aspects of ‘reality’ such as people, places, objects, events, cultural identities and other abstract concepts. Such representations may be in speech or writing as well as still or moving pictures.

The term refers to the processes involved as well as to its products. For instance, in relation to the key markers of identity - Class, Age, Gender and Ethnicity (the 'cage' of identity) - representation involves not only how identities are represented (or rather constructed) within the text but also how they are constructed in the processes of production and reception by people whose identities are also differentially marked in relation to such demographic factors. How do men look at images of women, women at men, men at men and women at women?

Key Questions about Specific Representations

What is being represented?
How is it represented? Using what codes? Within what genre?
How is the representation made to seem 'true', 'commonsense' or 'natural'?
What is foregrounded and what is backgrounded? Are there any notable absences?
Whose representation is it? Whose interests does it reflect? How do you know?
At whom is this representation targeted? How do you know?
What does the representation mean to you? What does the representation mean to others? How do you account for the differences?
How do people make sense of it? According to what codes?
With what alternative representations could it be compared? How does it differ?

Task

Spend 5 mins on the internet looking for a picture which contains an image of a man and a woman, you might want to look for a still image from a film/TV drama. Copy this into a word document and print it off, allowing for space to annotate. In pairs, work through the questions above. Finally write a brief paragraph explaining how each gender is represented in your image.