Diet Coke and the 'Gaze'

The Male Gaze seems to be the default position of advertising - watch television for more than ten minutes and you can guarantee that a scantily clad woman will be used to sell you a car, beer or even trainers. The Reebok EasyTone advert (click here to see on youtube) is a perfect example of the way women are objectified and sexualised in the media. Although the male gaze is clearly in effect here, the advert is actually aimed at women and therefore plays on the fact that if you buy these trainers, you will become instantly attractive. It could be argued that Reebok are trying to create insecurities within women in order to sell their products. By making the viewer believe they do not fit the 'correct' body type, this perpetuates the myth that a woman is only attractive if she is a particular size. The advert says you can “discover up to 28% more of a workout for your butt…so 88% of men will be speechless, 76% of women jealous." The suggestion here is that women should work out purely to look good for men and be better than other women.

Despite this, most advertisers consider the demographics of their audience, and when the product is pointedly aimed at women, the female gaze does occasionally get a look-in. Diet Coke is one of the brands that picked up on this with their famous 'Diet Coke break' campaign which featured a series of attractive men being watched by a group of career women. In 1994 the first 'hunk' advert was broadcast and a man was viewed purely as an object. In 2007, the campaign changed but now it's back! Re-branding themselves for their 30th anniversary, Diet Coke have introduced a new 'hunk' with a trailer which features the strapline: “He’s back. 11:30 am. 28.01.13.” The teaser for the advert was posted on both the Facebook and Youtube pages for the brand and was circulated quickly, showing the power of social media.

There's no doubt that this campaign will be very successful, but what is your opinion of the 'female gaze?' Does it really exist throughout advertising and media? Or does the popularity of this single campaign suggest that the female gaze is still not widely acknowledged? As mentioned earlier, the male gaze still seems to be the 'default'. Why is this?

"It is not about the Diet Coke man being an object, it is not a voyeur thing, it is about cultural change, women being equal to men and you can see that," said Olivier Geyer, Diet Coke director for north-west Europe and the nordic region.

"We wanted to celebrate not just the brand, but also the women who have been with us for 30 years. We have tried to make sure it is not the past but a very contemporary execution. [It] showcases female empowerment and camaraderie."

What are your thoughts?*

*If you're unsure of exactly what the Male Gaze is, or who Laura Mulvey is, then have a read of this blog and it should refresh your memory!

A2 Issues and Debates: News Values - Snow!

It’s snowing!!!

How many times have you seen that on Facebook these past few weeks? While you’ve probably focused all of your energy into getting excited about the possibility of school being closed (us too), I hope you’ve taken a little time to think, like the constantly critical Media students that you are, about the media coverage of the white stuff and its trail of chaos.

When the snow became particularly heavy I arrived home to find Sky News covering the Algerian hostage story. I was shocked. It was snowing for goodness sake! Where were the live reports from gritting depots, the images of children frolicking in snow, the frozen reporters standing on the side of an airport runway shouting about ‘TRAVEL CHAOS!’ in a very serious voice?

Well, that came shortly after wards. BBC1 devoted a whole half hour news show to snow as well as large sections of The One Show all week, including a piece where adults admitted on camera that they skiving off work. 24 hour news channels pulled out all the stops, with endless footage of live reporters all over the country, looking absolutely freezing and generally disgruntled as they told us what we already knew: it’s snowing and as a result the country has, basically, broken.

Charlie Brooker, as always, has summed the coverage up nicely. Sorry about the language. Try not to laugh too much at the people falling over:

So here’s the media bit…why? Why do a few snowflakes send the media into such a frenzy? Some misinformed people who don’t do media studies might think the news is there to tell us about important things going on in the world. How wrong they are. Snow is a Godsend for any 24 hour news channel with airtime to fill. Snow provides a pretty much constant source of material – images of cars getting stuck on hills, pensioners sliding around on pavements, planes being grounded, children playing in it, as well as constant weather reports and little discussion pieces where people rant about how Britain is so useless .Most of the coverage is negative, which fits with the theory that negative stories are more likely to reported than positive ones (news value - negativity). It also has a predictability factor -  we know when snow’s coming, so the news teams can get ready. Conflict will be created – lazy teachers vs parents with childcare issues, drivers vs incompetent gritting lorries – and this always makes a good story. It doesn’t happen very often, so there’s a novelty factor (unexpectedness). 

The value of a story is shown through the order stories are reported in and the amount of time given over to coverage. Most news broadcasts did at least have the sensitivity to give the Algerian hostage situation top billing in their bulletins, but they didn’t actually spend as much time on the story. They skirted over it, and got onto the real story: it’s snowing!

This could only happen in England…

And the heading proves my point – Live Snow! There seems to be a fashion for everything going ‘live’ at the moment, from stargazing to TOWIE, and snow is obviously no different. This type of reporting is called  ‘sensationalist’ because it exaggerates. And it may seem harmless, but it’s just another lesson in how the media like to tell us what’s important through the way it reports the news. And it works – the general public became frenzied about what was, in most parts of the country, just a bit of snow after all.

MEST1 Resitters - Revision Help!

Happy new year!

It's January! Which for me means detoxing, but for you lucky people it means REVISION. And possibly also detoxing.

This post is for the Year 13s who are resitting MEST1 on January 9th (I've put it on the AS blog so we can re-use it for Year 12s in June - any Year 12s reading this, please don't panic, you don't have a Media exam to revise for yet).

If you can't read the documents on the links, you might need to send me a request! Follow the instructions.

Section A

• We know it's going to be a moving image text - so get yourself onto YouTube and practise analysing lots of TV adverts, opening sequences, trailers and general viral clips. 
• Remember you will get to watch the clip 3 times with a 5 minute note-taking interval after the first and second showing. Once the third clip ends, start writing your answer to the first question. You will be allowed to read the questions before the clip is shown.

Media Forms - 15 minutes

• Use media terminology. A revision sheet can be found by clicking this link.
•  Make sure you answer the question. You will probably be asked to explain how the media forms create a particular effect. Always explain the effect of each camera shot or use of sound you mention.

Media Institution - 15 minutes

• Here you will probably need to discuss branding or image.
• Remember to use the background information printed in the exam paper to help you answer this one.
• Make clear connections between the media language used and the institution represented.

Media Representation - 15 minutes

• Again, try to link the media language used with the resulting representation.
 

Media Audiences - 15 minutes

• Make sure you can define audiences specifically and accurately - revise the National Readership Survey classification (ABC1C2D) 
• Make connections between the media language used and the audience targeted.
• Bring in relevant audience theory if you can. 

 MEDIA LANGUAGE is key! Question 1 focuses on media language but that does not mean it isn't important in all four answers. It's just that for questions 2-4 you need to link the media language used to a specific key concept.

This Slideshare presentation has some useful revision tips.

AS MEST 1 Final Revision from Kate McCabe

SECTION B

Your answer must demonstrate lots of thorough, up to date research. It must NOT sound like something you have vaguely recalled from memory.

Remember that your research should include:

• Two institutions - suggested Radio1 and NME in the revision lesson. Make sure one of the institutions uses the print platform as you must cover all three platforms in your answer. You need to have studied a physical printed copy of a music magazine, the online version is not the same and doesn't count as a print product! Links to some of the research we did last year: Top of the Pops         Kerrang
• Two artists/bands - pick two different genres and make sure you've studied the way they are promoted across three platforms. Study their websites, videos, social media use, magazine coverage, TV and radio appearances, DVDs, YouTube, Vevo etc. Use MIGRAIN to analyse everything.
• Issues and debates - in particular debates about music piracy, representation of women in videos, sexual content of videos, commercialisation of music through X Factor etc, decline of the music press, power of major record labels vs independents...

Make very detailed notes and then reduce them down to bullet points on cue cards.

Then start to go through the past questions I gave you and make sure you've done enough to be able to answer them in detail. The topic patterns we found were:

• Synergy - use of more than one platform to promote a music product
• Change and technology - how artists and institutions are responding
• Evaluation of the success of each platform
• Uses and gratifications users get from music products
• Power of the consumer/producer - user generated content

Useful Documents
User Generated content
Should music be free?
How to get an A in Section B
MTV
Narrative Theory
Article about UK spending on digital downloads
Album Sales Slump