Media Representation

What is representation? 

 

From my understanding representation is based on the way we view, perceive, and describe someone or something. For example, if I was asked to draw a picture of my sister and I drew her based on my perspective and thoughts of her that would be my representation of that person. The way we think of diverse types of people (ethnicities, culture, age, gender, nations, etc.) from what we see would also be our representation of that group of people. 

 

How accurate is representation vs reality? 

 

Following the Stuard Hall’s theory on representation, he that representation does not happen after the event in fact it becomes distorted and changes. He also stated that it's the media who gives meaning to those events. 

 

I couldn't agree more with this theory as I have witnessed how media stereotypes have left an effect on people. For instance, black women and Asian men are known as the least respected in society and I feel like a significant factor of that would be because of the way they were/are portrayed in TV and the media (Black women stereotyped as being angry and aggressive and Asian men as extremely smart and weak). These are the type of stereotypes that lead people to be unable to find work and get attacked on the streets. 

  

Does what we see in the media inspire our thoughts? 

 

The third video talks about how women in politics were oversexualized, demoralized, and judged in the media for trying to take “men's roles”. By doing this they portrayed these women as emotional, naggy, and unable to handle a crisis so as to result they were able to convince a lot of people that women should not be in leadership.  

  

Personally, speaking I think a lot of this would result in men fearing that women are gaining too much power. This brings me back to when the war started many women were called away from their traditional domestic roles to work. When their husbands returned men believed that women were taking their jobs and roles. This was due to a build-up of anxiety and fear men felt as they sensed that women were beginning to gain too much power and independence.  

 

As a result, a lot of female TV characters were written and created to discourage women from joining the workplace. (An example from movies would be Gilda, Double Indemnity, to die for). They did this by pushing the narrative that by pursuing individual ambition women would end up in an unhappy and infilling life. 

 

Why does representation matter? 

 

According to the third video after the book wife, mother, leader of the free world was released, 68% of viewers were more likely to accept a female president. This shows how we are in fact in couraged to think based on what we see. I have thought a certain way about a group of people/person because of something I heard or saw in the media.  

 

As a small child, I struggled with confidence because of the lack of representation. Therefore, I believe it is important as we humans, especially young people, and children, depend on representation. We see how children are drawn to loads of different careers and then that later changes because of how society portrayed it as being either too feminine or masculine. 

 

 Even though it is still a big problem I do feel like representation is slowly changing in a clever way. We are starting to see more diversity in tv programs, films, books, and games. Barbie has released a broad range of dolls in all diverse types of shapes, sizes, ethnicity, and colour. We are also seeing people speak more openly on representation, diversity, and inequality.  

References 

(Storyblocks, 2020, Why Representation Matters)

(TheMediaInsider, 2019, Stuart Hall's Representation Theory Explained! Media Studies revision)

(SB Ikastgym, 2015, Miss Representation Female Leadership)