Media and Collective Identity

"Identity is complicated. Everyone thinks they've got one." - Gauntlett

"We see characters 'as is' - they are 'ordinary' and 'extraordinary' and we are forced to wonder what we would do in their situation. The drama comes from the situation and the way the characters struggle to respond to it. This is the classic neorealist approach - the opposite of a story 'imposed' on the real world." - Stafford

Identity

"A focus on identity requires us to pay close attention to the diverse ways in which media and technologies are used in everyday life, and their consequences both for individuals and for social groups." - Buckingham

• We can construct an alternative identity for ourselves online if we want to.
• We also employ identity into our everyday life (e.g. semiotic ideas like the clothes we wear, the media we consume, the people we like etc.)
• Combination of these amounts to "the presentation of the self" - Goffman
• Accents take us into the realm of collective identity.

Newspapers

• The target audience relates to how editors, writers, photographers and publishers combine to create a sense of belonging.
• The Marxist idea developed by Althusser's (1971) notion of interpellation.
• Interpellation - taken from Lacan's 'mirror phase' where an externalised image is perceived as both a self and an 'other'; your true self is defined by the 'other' and thus are trapped in it's ideology. The flaw of this is the 'other ' is supposedly created out of no where.
• Cause anxiety and intend to (also known as moral panic).
• 'False consciousness' - we are distracted from the inequality in society, ignore the good and focus purely on the bad.
• "In post-traditional cultures, where identities are not 'given' but need to be constructed and negotiated..." - Gauntlett

British Cinema

• Britain's representation on screen is hugely influenced by economic and political contexts, such as funding, the relationship of British film to the USA and the rest of Europe, dilemmas for producers, audience shifts, government agendas and the relationship of culture to commerce.
• British films are cultural products and look at a range of commercially successful and critically acclaimed films on release, with regard to directors, styles and audience responses.
• British cinema has always suffered, and still does, from a 'burden of representation.'

Film Categories

• Category A - an entirely British film, funded by UK finance, and staffed by a majority of British personnel.
• Category B - majority UK funded
• Category C - more common co-funded scenario
• Category D - US films with some UK creative input

"Every memorable achievement to come out of UK cinema since the war has come out of someone's desire to say something, not to sell it." -Roddick

The Burden of Representation

• Describes the way that the history of social realist British film can weigh on the shoulders of new film-makers and producers.
• The UK has a strong legacy of fiction that attempts to portray issues facing ordinary people in their social situations (social realist films).
• Social realist film should not be thought of as a genre or as a type of film, but as an approach.
• Distinguish between films that lead to serious debate about the 'real world' and real current social issues that affect people at the margins of society, and films that do not make this attempt.
• Social realism seeks to make explicit connections to matters of public debate - the economic system, social relations, relationships between ethnic groups, various forms of exploitation.
• "The work of film-makers today who may be creative, but are always grounded in the actuality of the events within their social contexts... Our experience as audiences is a constant frisson of recognition." - Murray
• Frisson - social realism is often uncomfortable when set against 'escapist' cinema.
• "Their Britishness is in their culturally specific address to audiences at home." - Murray

Source: OCR Media Studies for A2