Archive
72-Hour University Lib Dub Challenge (Group A)
Vulnerable Audiences?
.
Using my Cabinet of Curiosity, I was asked to consider the following propositions:
- In what ways could More! magazine ‘influence’ the minds of a vulnerable audience?
- What possible negative ‘effect’ does More! magazine have on the audience and society?
Within the Media, magazines have had a huge stigma about influencing young women for a while now, and there is heavy criticism about even children reading them. Whether it is down to these magazines or not, the sexualisation of our culture is increasing, especially where young girls are concerned. Children want to be older so dress and read magazines aimed at older women (such as More!) and older women want to be younger so dress accordingly, which only further influences these children’s minds. Magazine companies know they receive a secondary audience of younger girls and young teenagers, but they’re not going to respond as at the end of the day themselves as well as the companies they advertise are gaining more profit.
Magazines such as More! help to perpetuate the obsession society seems to have with Celebrity Culture, which is becoming increasingly prominent in younger generations. Arguably, this isn’t the worst example compared to similar magazines, but they all show airbrushed and size zero images on most pages; be it a fashion shoot, article or advertisement. The main problem with images of this nature is that the audience, in this case young girls, possess a sense of verisimilitude when viewing these simulacra’s – hence the constant association and reputation surrounding magazines and eating disorders. I feel the objectification of women is more apparent in other Media forms (namely the music industry), but these magazines don’t help and only seem to accelerate body image issues – for vulnerable audiences male and female.
Another side of the argument is that it is used as explained in the Uses and Gratification Theory, for personal identity in particular. Young girls may read these magazines to gain knowledge about fashion, make-up and men only because they feel lost and have the need to fit in with their peers and society in general – they feel the need to conform. Some people may not see it this way however and believe in individuality and the Pluralist view, but I seem to of acquired a more Marxist view on the Media. I understand it may appear that due to new hybrids and divergence has led to the concept of fragmented audiences, but I fear this is a façade in itself to make individuals feel like individuals. Magazines create False Consciousness by filling their pages of the ‘latest’ fashion crazes and how to wear them to suit particular figures or at particular events. It makes the audience feel as if they are individual, when in reality they’re being subliminally influenced to buy all the same ‘fashionable’ products that are probably only there in the first place because the magazine got paid by the companies selling the product. Maybe this is a negative view, but nothing within the Media is straight-forward anymore; it’s very contrived.
Audience Research and Hegemonic Ideologies
.
Within my A3 Key Concepts group, we were asked to create a provocative statement publicly and then assess the response we received. We chose to create a Facebook group with the title ‘I hate Soaps… Do you?’. We chose this title after discussing many other ideas, however in hindsight I feel it was too broad as it became problematic when people’s answers didn’t give a clear ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Because of this, we had to have an option of liking ‘Some’ Soaps or as some people said they don’t hate Soaps they just ‘Dislike’ them. We also had the issue of not receiving as many responses as we wanted (10 male and 10 female), however with the time we had this was difficult, as well as the approach we chose. I feel that just using a Facebook group was a bad idea, for one we all ended up inviting the same age groups and most didn’t co-operate and take part, which both helped limit our research and analysis. If we were to do this again, I would have us change the title to make it more specific, as well as giving a set of standard questions that they had to answer. I feel this would’ve made it more interesting and gave us more to compare and contrast, making our findings more significant and applicable. To make the results clearer to understand, we created separate Pie Charts for Male and Female. Even though we only got 20 results and this isn’t a very good representation, the results we got seemed to back-up the stereotype that women watch more Soaps than men. However more men than we expected said they didn’t hate Soaps or that they watched some. From this, I looked at the advertising put on in the Breaks for all Soaps (bar Eastenders) and they’re predictably, mostly aimed at women.
Soaps appeal to people so much as it (and every other Media product) adheres to the Cultivation Theory, using simple techniques such as Mise en Scene with more complex and subliminal methods like projecting Hegemonic Ideologies. A recent example of this is in Eastenders, where they breeched the taboo of having a homosexual Muslim (Syed) involved in a love affair. But, as with all gay characters in the Media, they are portrayed badly to some extent. In this case he is shown to be promiscuous (love affair), in the wrong (gay Muslim) and a liar (in a relationship with a woman). Around the time this happened, there was a lot of controversy, but a lot of people were impressed which the BBC approaching this topic. It was a gamble, but unlike every other channel, they need to have fair representation as they need to keep the British viewers content. Even so, the storyline as with every other gay storyline, ended badly. He has to move house and at some point get’s knocked to the floor and trampled on when there’s a fire at the pub (The Queen Victoria). So it appears that it’s good the representation exists, but similarly in other Media forms like films such as Brokeback Mountain and Philadelphia, it always ends badly somehow for the homosexual characters. This is the Hegemonic Ideology shining through, with the Media saying it’s fine to be gay, but life will be worse somehow because of it – e.g. The Nuclear Family and ideal lifestyle they like to portray will not be achieved.
Target Audiences
.
As my Cabinet of Curiosities differed from most and came from one source (More! Magazine), I ended up only having one target audience to analyse. However I feel even just looking at this singular audience, a lot of information can be deduced from the product itself about the type of consumers the target audience is.
Prior to this task I had heard of the categories A, B, C1, C2, D, E but was unaware of the particular traits of each. Using the website in this post’s bibliography as my guide, I was able to learn and develop my knowledge of these ‘Occupation Groupings’. I feel that the consensus for fashion/celebrity magazines, like More!, is that the consumers are of the grouping D or E. However, I think this has come about by the association of magazines with ‘Low Culture’. This has an ever-growing stigma attached to it which leads to perpetuating the portrayal of gaining status with knowledge and interest of High Culture as oppose to Low Culture. In order for the latter to exist, society must have the former – as with all opposites. From this, companies such as More! (established in 1988) have always had the opportunity to almost play up to the stereotyped ‘Low-Cultured’ market they already had been perceived to have and adjust accordingly to generate the biggest profit. After being around for a good 20 years, the target audience has been achieved as well as the possible and probable secondary audience of C2.
Within these ‘Occupation Groupings’, this magazine has polysemic age groups. According to Wikipedia (see bibliography) More!’s target audience was initially older teenage girls, but I feel that the target age range has definitely expanded into early 20’s and potentially late 20’s too. It is definitely aimed at women, however I know that it gains a secondary male audience as well (they read they friend’s/girlfriend’s). This magazine is more orientated around fashion as opposed to Celebrity Culture like similar publications, but it is still very much an integral part of this magazine genre and will continue to be with the constant demotic turn of stardom. Obviously income will be different for every Occupation Group, but it’s aimed at women who aren’t necessarily worried financially, as the magazine is £1.50 a week with typically committed readers, adding up to £72 a year.
Bibliography
Futurism and Street Art
.
After attending Coventry’s recent Street Art Exibition, we were asked to look into the topic of Futurism. Using, in part, the former website in the bibliography as our inspiration, we had to create our own group Art Manifesto (see Blogroll titled ‘A3 Key Concepts’). In producing this, we discussed the Exibition in a lot of detail, constantly realising there is always more to a style or piece of art than first glance.
While reading through the existing Futuristic’s Manifesto, we opted to write notes on each of the particular topics that came up. A lot of it appeared to be about Culture in general, however when we read more into it and gradually began to interpret deeper meanings, we realised there was a lot more to it than just poetic writing. One of the main points in our Manifesto was about artists having to be brave about presenting their artwork without fear of judgement, this in turn brought on controversy – which is what the artists involved with the Futurism movement thrived on.
With this new found knowledge of ‘Street Art’ and our group Manifesto, we were asked to produce our own piece of ‘Street Art’. Initially I was sceptical as I’m not a very good artist when it comes to drawing; however when thinking back to the ‘Street Art’ Exibition, some of the pieces were in fact photos and short animations. From this I chose to use the medium of photography in order to illustrate my interpretation of ‘Street Art’. As well as drawing heavily on our group Manifesto, I decided to focus on the idea of intertextuality as I had seen in the other pieces of ‘Street Art’. The idea I had at first was to do with the film V for Vendetta. I wanted my work to be controversial and like Banksy, have some Cultural relevance – like the story behind V for Vendetta. From all the the art work I saw at the Exibition, I was particularly inspired by the juxtapositioning of certain ideas/concepts to create and portray a new slant or meaning. For example, there were a lot of art pieces where an image with stereotypical/tyical connotations had something diferent and unexpected about it, which I think worked well on an unconscience level for the audience. An example of this is Banksy’s piece ‘Virgin Mary’, where not only does it contain the debate over bottle-feeding children, but the poison symbol adds even more controversy to the image. With all this in mind, this is my final collection of images for this project:
Keeping with the film intertexuality, I decided to choose another film with a similar genre that I had seen. After looking for inspiration in a Fancy Dress shop, I came across claws that imitated those of the character Freddie Krueger from The Nightmare On Elm Street films. I had a feeling that I could make something quite controversial with the ‘claws’, so first I researched the films as thoroughly as I could. As with all types of Media, I find underlying themes very interesting but in particular the contents of films that aren’t obvious to their stereotypical audience. In most, ideologies are subliminally portrayed and this is no different. There are many rumours about the underlying meaning to this film, one of which (as it seems with most horror films) is that if teenage women are sexually promiscuous, they will invariably be gruesomely murdered – sometimes known as morality play. Another reading is that it shows the growing trend of families moving to American suburbs as they’re percieved as the most innocent ‘ideal’. This shows in the film where the parent’s burn Krueger alive and try to hide his existence from their children to keep them safe. However, despite them trying to protect their children in whatever way they can, it shows that no matter what children can not be sheltered/shielded from everything even if you go to these extremes. From this, I thought I could use the character of Freddie Krueger (represented by the claws) to portray all of these signified connotations. I knew that however I did this, not everyone who saw it would understand. However a lot of the Street Art in the Exibition was either ambiguous or a meaning that would only be understood if the audience knew the references or the Artists beliefs. With this in mind, I continued to create my image. As other Artists did/do, I chose a ‘normal’ location (bus stop) and wanted a variety of characters in the image – like at a typical bus stop. I then thought about linking back to the potential underlying readings of Nightmare on Elmstreet and how children (in particular girls) cannot get away from the ‘bad things’ in the world. From this I decided that putting a Prostitute and a School Girl together, who are (supposedly) opposite ends of the spectrum, would cause (if not controversy) a thought-provoking image. After taking the images, I felt Photoshop would help make it look more interesting for audiences at an Art Exibition. I then used a lot of effects, but couldn’t decide which looked better, but with my knowledge of Andy Warhol I thought I could use more than one in my own interpretation of Pop Art.
Bibliography
http://www.unknown.nu/futurism/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0b90YppquE
Media Diary
.
Throughout daily life, I know I use/view a lot more media than I would be able to recollect. In this technological climate it just seems like second nature now, and we all take it for granted to the point where we don’t even realise how much we do use. We were asked to keep a Diary for 3 days, highlighting all the media we use. To do so, I represented my findings in a table.
From looking at my media consumption over the past three days, I feel it is a fair representation and there isn’t anything in particular that surprises me. I know I use my phone a lot more than shown, but I wasn’t sure how to show it because I use it so much I completely forgot to actually keep track of texts/phonecalls I was making. This, I feel, may be the same for other people though, as mobile phones seem more of a necessity than ever before. I know that since I have moved away from home and now have no television, I’ve gone from watching some programmes to none at all. As well as this, I use to read a lot more in the way of newspapers when I had more free time in the summer holidays earlier this year. However, as my week is more full I now seem to spend this time going out or just working. Looking at my Media Diary, I don’t feel it shows me to be a very cultured or generally interesting person. Earlier on in the week I could’ve put that I read a magazine, but still, it doesn’t seem like I have much of a variety in the media I use. On the other hand, using less media may be a better thing as I’m less dependant on it than others.
Observing my findings, it is obvious that when using these media products daily, media consumers are rarely aware of it. If people were asked to perform a Media Diary, I think most would be surprised with the sheer amount of media that is and still continues to seep into everyday life. With the constant technological advances, media consumer’s have so many ways to interact with all types of media, as well as the advances giving the media more ways to reach the consumer’s. In particular, I think mobile phones are the most likely to go un-noticed, as practically everyone seems to have one yet no-one questions why. Of course people want to contact other people somehow, but then why don’t we all have the same basic phone? Just like the advertising is subliminal, us as media consumer’s have a very low awareness about the extent of how much media we use everyday. Advertisers create false needs for their audience, for products we have been and could easily live without. Maybe all these products initiated as an aid to an everyday task, however it seems the media have relentlessly continued to make our wants become needs so we see all these products as necessities rather than luxuries. However, due to the nature of ‘Perceived Obsolescene’ that practically every company use, consumer’s will keep buying into every ‘latest’ and ‘best’ product on the market until… until the next best product is advertised.
Jocelyn's Blog 