Recap on the concept of Mediation
To explore representation in Sunny
Key Terms:
Mediation - This is the way in which a media text is constructed in order to represent the producer of the text's vision of reality. This is constructed through selection, organisation and focus.
Black comedy - A black comedy (or dark comedy) is a comic work that employs black humor, which, in its most basicdefinition, is humor that makes light of otherwise serious subject matter.
Hegemony is the way in which those in power maintain their control. Dominant ideologies are considered hegemonic ; power in society is maintained by constructing ideologies which are usually promoted by the mass media.
VALS ("Values, Attitudes And Lifestyles") is designed to guide companies in tailoring their products and services in order to appeal to the people most likely to purchase them.
Starter task:Working in groups, make notes on what you can remember about the characters in Episode 5 series 1 of Always Sunny. 10 Minutes.
Dennis (twin brother of Dee)
Mac
Dee (twin sister of Dennis)
Dee’s Boyfriend (The thief)
Mediation - Three Things To Look For
Reflective approach - This approach suggests that representations are a direct reflection of reality.
Constructionist -This is a mixture. It accepts that representations construct meaning, but that this meaning is understood through reference to reality and the audience’s own ability to analyse, accept and reject.
Constructionists believe:
To explore representation in Sunny
Key Terms:
Mediation - This is the way in which a media text is constructed in order to represent the producer of the text's vision of reality. This is constructed through selection, organisation and focus.
Black comedy - A black comedy (or dark comedy) is a comic work that employs black humor, which, in its most basicdefinition, is humor that makes light of otherwise serious subject matter.
Hegemony is the way in which those in power maintain their control. Dominant ideologies are considered hegemonic ; power in society is maintained by constructing ideologies which are usually promoted by the mass media.
Starter task:Working in groups, make notes on what you can remember about the characters in Episode 5 series 1 of Always Sunny. 10 Minutes.
Dennis (twin brother of Dee)
Mac
Charlie
Dee (twin sister of Dennis)
Dee’s Boyfriend (The thief)
________________________________________________________________________
Mediation
Every time we encounter a media text, we are not seeing reality, but someone’s version of it.
This may seem like an obvious point, but it is something that is easily forgotten when we get caught up in enjoying a text. If you see a picture of a celebrity kissing her boyfriend, you may find it unsurprising that the picture has been altered and does not show the reality of the situation, but in fact we should bear this in mind whatever we encounter in the media.
The media place us at one remove from reality: they take something that is real, a person or an event and they change its form to produce whatever text we end up with.
This is called mediation. You should be looking for this with any media text.
Of course, most of us are aware of this — we know that what we are seeing in a TV drama isn’t real — we just allow ourselves to forget for the time that the programme is on that it is fiction.
At the same time, we all have ideas in our heads of some kinds of texts which might be somehow less mediated — it is obvious that a fictional programme isn’t real, but when we encounter something like the television news, we are more likely to believe in the straightforward nature of the “truth” we are receiving.
Mediation - Three Things To Look For
Selection - Whatever ends up on the screen or in the paper, much more will have been left out.
Any news story has been selected from hundreds of others which the producers decided for you were less interesting
Any picture has been chosen from an enormous number of alternatives
Any news story has been selected from hundreds of others which the producers decided for you were less interesting
Any picture has been chosen from an enormous number of alternatives
Organisation - The various elements will be organised carefully in ways that real life is not.
In visual media this involves mise-en-scene and the organisation of narrative.
In the recording of an album the production might involve re-mixing a track.
Any medium you can think of will have an equivalent to these.
In visual media this involves mise-en-scene and the organisation of narrative.
In the recording of an album the production might involve re-mixing a track.
Any medium you can think of will have an equivalent to these.
Focusing - Mediation always ends up with us, the audience being encouraged towards concentrating on one aspect of the text and ignoring others. If you are watching a film the camera will pan towards an important character. In a tabloid the headlines will scream, for your attention. It can be easy to ignore how different from our everyday lives this is. If you are walking through a field, you are unlikely to see a sign saying “look at this amazing tree.” You make your own decisions about what is worth our attention. The media text, through mediation, tries to do this for us.
In the riots of 2011, the news of events came from different sources and then appeared on the front page of newspapers. With a story like this, the audience at home have to rely on how the event is represented and mediated as they cannot witness it first hand.
Task: In groups, discuss the newspaper front page shown above.
Consider
Selection - what has been shown, what has been left out?
Organisation - how have the various elements on the page been organised to create a kind of narrative for the reader?
Focusing - what aspects of the London riots does the text want us to concentrate on?
Make bullet points. 10 Minutes.
__________________________________________________________________________
In the riots of 2011, the news of events came from different sources and then appeared on the front page of newspapers. With a story like this, the audience at home have to rely on how the event is represented and mediated as they cannot witness it first hand.
Task: In groups, discuss the newspaper front page shown above.
Consider
Selection - what has been shown, what has been left out?
Organisation - how have the various elements on the page been organised to create a kind of narrative for the reader?
Focusing - what aspects of the London riots does the text want us to concentrate on?
Make bullet points. 10 Minutes.
______________________________________________________________________
Representation
The result of this process of mediation is that we are given a version of reality which is altered:
A RE-Presesntation.
Those are never the real people that we are seeing but representations of them which have somehow been created
Reflective approach - This approach suggests that representations are a direct reflection of reality.
According to this view, when we represent something, we are taking its true meaning and trying to create a replica of it in the mind of our audience. Like a reflection.
This is the view that many people have of how the news works.
That the news producers take the truth of the news events and simply present it to us as accurately as possible.
Intentional approach - This suggests that producers shape reality through representation and suggests an audience’s understanding of the world is directed by those representations.
Intentional approach - This suggests that producers shape reality through representation and suggests an audience’s understanding of the world is directed by those representations.
This is the opposite of the reflective approach.
According to intentional approach, if you see a picture of an attractive person drinking a can of coke in an advert, it will have the same meaning to you as the advertiser intended, go away and buy some!
According to intentional approach, if you see a picture of an attractive person drinking a can of coke in an advert, it will have the same meaning to you as the advertiser intended, go away and buy some!
Constructionist -This is a mixture. It accepts that representations construct meaning, but that this meaning is understood through reference to reality and the audience’s own ability to analyse, accept and reject.
Constructionists believe:
Representation is a mixture of the actual thing being represented
The VALs ("Values, Attitudes And Lifestyles") of the people/institutions constructing the representation
The reaction of the individual member of the audience (and their VALs)
The context of the society in which the representation is taking place.
Task:
Create a report of the events surrounding the robbery Paddy's Bar in 'Gun Fever'. Bullet points.
Take a reflective approach, an intentional approach and a constructionist approach.
Individual.
Consider the gun laws in Philadelphia compared to the gun laws in the UK.
Always Sunny is described as a black comedy.
A black comedy (or dark comedy) is a comic work that employs black humour, which, in its most basic definition, is humour that makes light of otherwise serious subject matter.
What serious subject matter actually is can be categorised by the values of society. Hegemonic values.
Examples of hegemonic values
Task:
Create a report of the events surrounding the robbery Paddy's Bar in 'Gun Fever'. Bullet points.
Take a reflective approach, an intentional approach and a constructionist approach.
Individual.
Consider the gun laws in Philadelphia compared to the gun laws in the UK.
__________________________________________________________________
Always Sunny is described as a black comedy.
A black comedy (or dark comedy) is a comic work that employs black humour, which, in its most basic definition, is humour that makes light of otherwise serious subject matter.
What serious subject matter actually is can be categorised by the values of society. Hegemonic values.
Examples of hegemonic values
The police are always right
It is important to be slim
A credit card is a desirable status symbol
Mass immigration is undesirable
The poor are lazy and deserve their hardship
Men are better drivers than women
It is important to wear fashionable clothes
Homework:
Write a paragraph about how life in Philadelphia has been represented. ???
Consider:
How the cameras have been positioned.
What characters have the creators focused on? Why focus on these types of characters?
To what extent are we seeing a reality?
To what extent are we seeing a re-presentation?
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
Task:
In groups, discuss and note the issues that are dealt with in 'Gun Fever'.
How are these issues dealt with in the show categorising it as black comedy?
______________________________________________________________________________
Homework:
Write a paragraph about how life in Philadelphia has been represented. ???
Consider:
How the cameras have been positioned.
What characters have the creators focused on? Why focus on these types of characters?
To what extent are we seeing a reality?
To what extent are we seeing a re-presentation?
___________________________________________________________________________
Mac (Rob – created the show)
Mac believes he is very macho and loves karate however there are many indications that he is gay (despite his aggressive denial) including having a relationship with a pre-op woman (he does eventually come out in the latest season (11) In Gun Fever, it is Mac’s idea to get a gun for the bar since they were robbed. Throughout the episode we see Mac and Dennis buy a gun and enjoy using it- consistently waving it around and taking it to shoot a log in the back of the pub believing that a gun is cool.
Mac believes he is very macho and loves karate however there are many indications that he is gay (despite his aggressive denial) including having a relationship with a pre-op woman (he does eventually come out in the latest season (11) In Gun Fever, it is Mac’s idea to get a gun for the bar since they were robbed. Throughout the episode we see Mac and Dennis buy a gun and enjoy using it- consistently waving it around and taking it to shoot a log in the back of the pub believing that a gun is cool.
Dennis (twin brother of Dee)
Metrosexual- very much driven by his appearance and succeeding with women. Very sexist and manipulative to sleep with women. In Gun Fever, the episode opens with a discussion between Mac and Dennis whereby Mac is mocking Dennis for his healthy juice drink and Dennis retaliates by mocking Mac for sleeping with ‘an elephant’ the night before. Later in the episode Dennis’ metrosexuality is evident again when he and Mac are discussing ‘The Hardy Boys’- Dennis believes he should be Frank and not Joe because of his appearance and hair.
Metrosexual- very much driven by his appearance and succeeding with women. Very sexist and manipulative to sleep with women. In Gun Fever, the episode opens with a discussion between Mac and Dennis whereby Mac is mocking Dennis for his healthy juice drink and Dennis retaliates by mocking Mac for sleeping with ‘an elephant’ the night before. Later in the episode Dennis’ metrosexuality is evident again when he and Mac are discussing ‘The Hardy Boys’- Dennis believes he should be Frank and not Joe because of his appearance and hair.
Dee (twin sister of Dennis)
Tokenism- heavily ridiculed and stereotyped. She is the butt of their jokes and is certainly seen as inferior to the men. She is blamed for the robbery at the beginning of the episode because she locked up the night before despite no locks being tampered with. The men do not listen to her or value her opinion and this is seen plenty of times in the episode- she is cut off when talking and put down (even by her current boyfriend- who turns out to be the thief.) She is humiliated by him (seeds in her teeth) and sexualised often- and she changes her opinion on guns in the episode when she finds out that her boyfriend thinks they are great because she thinks this will please him.
Tokenism- heavily ridiculed and stereotyped. She is the butt of their jokes and is certainly seen as inferior to the men. She is blamed for the robbery at the beginning of the episode because she locked up the night before despite no locks being tampered with. The men do not listen to her or value her opinion and this is seen plenty of times in the episode- she is cut off when talking and put down (even by her current boyfriend- who turns out to be the thief.) She is humiliated by him (seeds in her teeth) and sexualised often- and she changes her opinion on guns in the episode when she finds out that her boyfriend thinks they are great because she thinks this will please him.
Charlie
Is dyslexic and the group mock him for it. He lives in squalor compared to others but he doesn’t mind. He does the labour in the bar including cleaning and killing rats. He doesn’t initially like the idea of buying a gun however, after using it to shoot the log he gets what Mac calls ‘gun fever’ and expresses that having a gun makes him feel like a ‘badass’. He later uses the gun to scare his landlord whom he hasn’t paid rent to. Even after he is shot in the head by Dennis he still wants to keep the gun.
Is dyslexic and the group mock him for it. He lives in squalor compared to others but he doesn’t mind. He does the labour in the bar including cleaning and killing rats. He doesn’t initially like the idea of buying a gun however, after using it to shoot the log he gets what Mac calls ‘gun fever’ and expresses that having a gun makes him feel like a ‘badass’. He later uses the gun to scare his landlord whom he hasn’t paid rent to. Even after he is shot in the head by Dennis he still wants to keep the gun.
Dee’s Boyfriend (The thief)
Though he isn’t a regular character- in this episode he does make comments with regard to the issue of guns. The men think that he is the embodiment of an ‘80’s stereotype and a player’. He believes that ‘guns make America great’ and carries one with him at all times. He tells Dee that he thinks women who use guns are sexy which changes her mind on the matter. Aside from this, he is also (much like Dennis) very sexist and derogatory and sleeps with the waitresses from all of the bars in town to gain access to their safes.
Though he isn’t a regular character- in this episode he does make comments with regard to the issue of guns. The men think that he is the embodiment of an ‘80’s stereotype and a player’. He believes that ‘guns make America great’ and carries one with him at all times. He tells Dee that he thinks women who use guns are sexy which changes her mind on the matter. Aside from this, he is also (much like Dennis) very sexist and derogatory and sleeps with the waitresses from all of the bars in town to gain access to their safes.
All of them drink a lot and one episode alludes to them
being alcoholics as they all get sick and think it’s the flu but it turns out
they hadn’t drank in a while.
They are also solvent abusers and often sniff gasoline in episodes and other episodes revolve specifically around drug use.
They are also solvent abusers and often sniff gasoline in episodes and other episodes revolve specifically around drug use.
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