Females

THE RING

The text I chose to compare Flight Plan with is The Ring.

Traditionally horror movies don't have a post-feminist representation of females, with women in horror movies vulnerable and "feminine". However, similar to Flight Plan, the Ring has post-feminist representations. The mother is going taking a more "masculine" approach by going through her way to save her daughter imposed to the stereotypical narrative of a killer chasing the main heroine.

This is similar to Flight Plan which bears a similar narrative; while completely different genres, both show the representation of mothers in movies.

In both movies the protagonists are both mothers, however during the film both actresses take more masculine roles; a gender swap where they are taking the roles of what the father should be (going against patriarchal ideologies). They are both represented as lone-parents, where they don't need any male help to achieve their goals. In our society (which has gone through drastic social change) this has become more appealing to female audiences; Uses and Gratification theory. The audiences want to be like these actresses (a new type of action hero).

This has come alight in our society through how both sexes have swapped gender roles, in some cases men have become more feminine (feminists argue the idea of the "new man" who takes on roles that women take) and vice versa.


With the growth of feminism and the gay movement, the media has created this post-feminism trend of gender swaps. Now in the media powerful male role-models are represented as having a feminine side, e.g. Bruce Willis Die Hard 4.0 (caring father and action hero).

Both movies have similar narrative plots; while different genres the main focus of both is the mother trying to save her daughter. However both movies you can argue that there are some stereotypical values, with both roles being mothers. In the film industry, the only strong representations of females are being mothers. While it does glorify rise of feminism there are hardly any representations of women being more than just mothers.


It connotes that while in our society we can accept a strong mother we can't accept a woman saving a man, and in cases where it has happened films that do these tend to do badly in box office. While it can be argued Kill Bill was a success, in reality she was getting revenge for her daughter.

In conclusion, both movies do show post-feminist representations, through the roles they have, saving their families, are lone parents, don't seek male advice etc. However both movies, and others, that have post-feminist representations are about mothers and therefore to a certain extent still patriarchal. There's still a glass ceiling between that big step to achieve equal roles with men.



Estelle questions
1)
The first text is her acceptation speech from winning the MOB. Her portrayal, while the award is for ‘best female artist and it would see that women have a strong role in the industry. However, many key things within the text that shows there is a hierarchy within the industry. The first is how each of the female nominees all have just have one name such as Beyonce and Duffy compared to males artist such as Michael Jackson or John Legend. The reason that females have one name is that for males it tend to be more sexually appealing, and would encourage males to buy there records. Also in Estelle’s acceptant speech the people she acknowledges are mainly if all men. From John Legend (male artist) and Atlantic records which a male owned company is. These show that there is a hierarchy in the music industry, where males own and most likely make most decisions, and at top of the hierarchy structure.

The second text is her website. The website has one dominant image which is of Estelle. The image is of her in a quite moderate pose, which could mean she trying to say she’s the same us everyone else. There also a bit of cleavage shown and this is mainly for the male gaze, which shows that she has changed over the years. Before she was an independent artist that sang grime music, and didn’t need mean. But her industry has changed her and she has become male dependent to make her sell her albums and males to buy her records.

2)
Programmes such as the MOBO awards are aimed at the young/older teens. The MOBO awards air on BB3 which is aimed at teenagers and young adults. The MOBO awards air lives on BB3 and a prime time audience, this is when most people would be watching the channel and this increases the MOBO popularity. But the problem is that the people who tend to watch the MOBO is a niche audience and this means mainly one target group would watch the awards.

The media awards repeat once on BBC 1 and this should be good for the channel as it is a big TV channel, and you would think it would increase the popularity of the MOBO. But the problem with this is that the show airs past midnight and this is when nobody would watch the show. The rating at this time decreases dramatically as no one tends to watch BBC 1 at this time, and the main reason they put the MOBO at this time is mainly to waste time as they don’t have that many shows to show at this time. Also by BBC showing it at BBC 1 they can show that they give every audience and culture group a fair time to show themselves that there multi-culture channel.

The final reason that BBC shows these awards are to give a good representation towards teenagers and knife crime, but mainly black teenagers. Recently teenagers have not got a good reputation as these increased involvement with knife crime, and by BBC showing these awards It hopefully shows the other side towards black teenagers, and how music is a way of life for black people and could change there life forever.
3)
There are many advantages and disadvantages for using the internet as a marketing tool. Internet is fast becoming the biggest media platform and it runs on advertising as people tend to be influenced by advertising on the net. Websites such as YouTube and MySpace is a place where you can go to listen to much artist music illegally, and this could cost artist a lot of money as if there song stays on websites people can listen to it for free. But sometimes companies do this as an advertising method, if people listen to the song they may enjoy it and this could encourage the audience to buy the song, but this only happens on the artist websites. The artist website is good for people to communicate with each other as they could discuss there views about the artist with each other, and download many things linked with the artist on there site.

Other sites such as Wikipedia, artists are getting more awareness for their work. The internet has bought in the information about artists, such as age, lifestyle, life before there were celebrities so you can find out many things about artists, the main information comes from Digg or Wikipedia.

Guardian 100 work
What is the Guardian 100 and who are the panellists who create it?

Peter Barron –male
Peter Bennett-Jones – male
Brent Hoberman – male
Tessa Jowell – female
Siobhan Kenny – female
Andrew Neil -male
Trevor Phillips –Male
Chris Powell-male
Janine Gibson-female
Jane Martinson –Female

How many women are in the top 100?
26

What companies do these work for?

Jane Tranter
Jay Hunt
Lesley Douglas
Jana Bennett
Helen Boaden
Ruth Jones
Marjorie Scardino
Elisabeth Murdoch
Ashley Highfield
Rebekah Wade
Julian Bellamy
Nicholas Hytner
Carolyn McCall
Gail Rebuck
Sly Bailey
Arianna Huffington
Dawn Airey
Veronica Wadley
Jane Bruton
Lucian Grainge
Joanna Shields
Caroline Michel
Katie Price
Eileen Gallagher
Emily Bell


What percentage of the list are women?
26%

How would you assess the balance of power in this list and why do you think it is this way?

Males clearly dominate the list, and 74% of the list is males, also in the top 10 only one person I female and she is at number 10. one reason that males could be higher then females is that most males are bought into money and power, more then few people on the list have family that have are wealthy and they were lucky enough to inherit that money and with that money they invested in other businesses. Also as most business are males based this makes it easier for males to invest in the business. Also most channels are mostly aimed at males and because of this it would be easier for a male to own the business and get the right material to appeal to other males.

Capitalism –An economic system in which the production of distribution of goods and services in society is organised via a free market for the purpose of maximising profit.

Hegemony-the total cultural, economic and political dominance achieved by the ruling elite in a society.

Feudal system- this is different social groups and was invented in the middle ages,
with the king being highest peasants at the bottom. Now it’s known as upper, middle or lower class.

Marxism – ideology derived from the writings of the sociologist Karl Marx (1818-83) which sees society as a dominated by capitalist structures which maintain the hegemony of the ruling class and lead to the exploitation of workers.

Pluralism – The view that where a society is comprised of a wide range of social and ethnic groups with different values, political and ideological beliefs, representations by the media will naturally reflect this diversity.

High concept films- a film with a big budget and state-of-the-art special effects, usually associated with US productions.