Liesbet Van-Zoonen argues that media language encodes how male and female characters act in media products. Explore how representations position the audience in Humans and Les Revenants
Key scenes
- Brothel in Humans
- Adele scene
Key theory 8: Feminist Theory/Male Gaze Theory
Lisbet Van Zoonen
The theory is that every media product is aimed to a heterosexual male audience
- Gender is constructed through discourse, conversations, media products
- And that this gender stereotype can change over the world depending where you are.
Van Zoonen believes that women are used in media products to attract heterosexual men
Aspirational image: an image that inspires you to look like that model in the image to gain a better life style.
Sexualisation: To make something sexual
Simone, Adele and Lena Scene
- Adele's response is not logical and is not typical of the genre
- Mid-shot of Adele collapsed against the door is symbolic of her misery and her lost of sanity, along with the high angle view makes her seem isolated, exposed, alone and weak
- Preferred reading of this scene was to make her seem happy again, but Les Revenants puts us in a confused position by making her not happy to see her.
- Terror intertextuality, the diajetic knocking sound, coupled with the shot of the handle moving is highly conventional of the horror genre.
- The scene demonstrates hybrid fluidity between the genres of horror and romance
- Brighter lights on Adele's side contrasts the low-key lighting on Simone's side of the door
- Non-diajetic music creates a stereotypical horror track, instruments such as a piano can be played very creepily. An arpeggiated song, symbolises loss
- Big theme about this show is death, this means that this is final, and there is no return from death but Les revenants flips this, and for example Adele is upset because she believed she is being haunted by Simone
- We have a shot of Simone yelling "open the fucking door" with a counter shot of Adele screaming "go away'. This creates a barrier between the two and a diametric opposition.
- Extremely uncommercial scene
- Mise-en-scene of the mirror symbolises that Simone is a ghost and that he doesn't belong here
- Adele wears a white dress symbolises the fact that she is married
- Simone is wearing a suit which creates a binary opposition between Adele and Simone, Simone is giving order and being stereotypically masculine, Adele is being stereotypically feminine and being scared and isolated, this links to Lisbet Van Zoonen's theory that genders are portrayed in a certain way across all media
- Low-key lighting in Adele's house is a proairetic code suggesting something bad is going to happen to her
- This could be an intertextual reference to the gothic genre
- lighting is artificial suggesting Adele carries herself now and doesn't want Simone in her life
How is Gender constructed when Leo enters the brothel?
- Leo is aggressive to other men on the street, even pointing, glaring; he is assertive and is getting stuff done
- Leo Gesticulates aggressively and assertively
- wears lots of layers of clothing making him look ruff and tuff
- military connotations with the guys wearing green shaded jackets
- Tracking shot positions us with Leo as he enters the brothel
- Leo tries to conceal a disgusted expression as he's quite upset to be in the brothel
- Leo is acting tuff, Niska is acting sexy; she is putting on an act so she can survive otherwise she'll be found out
- Hyper-real representation of a brothel
- The soundtrack makes it sound like an uninviting place to be, we are in the same position as Leo where we feel uncomfortable. It is exploitative. Usually it would be the woman's right to choose to be a prostitute however all the prostitutes in the scene are synths, meaning they have no choice
- Tracking shot follows Leo around, it cuts to Niska which is a eye-line match shot
- Niska sexualisation, she is wearing a stereotypical sex worker costume
- During the hug they both breakout of their characters, Leo is no longer ruff and tuff
- Niska is very happy and is acting very human
- She proceeds to take out her anger at Leo by smacking him, but also continues what Leo claims that she is best as a prostitute for now
- This glare, smacking and close up shot of Niska emphasise the power she has over him; symbolically castrates/emasculates him
- women are numbered which objectifies them "yes i want number 7"
- Each prostitute is in their own chamber as if they are in a zoo, being treated like animals
- beard symbolises manliness in media
- £25 for 10 minutes can be considered
- Leo walks in a slouched way as if he has a purpose
- Backstreet which has symbolic connotations of crime, this creates binary opposition with the middle-class household that Anita is located
Sigmund Freud Madonna/Whore Complex
Woman Magazine
Audience is positioned to be uncomfortable
Allegory
Sociohistorical
Key Words
- Representation
- Stereotypical
- Mise-en-scene
- Hegemonic
- Proairetic
- Ideology
- Hermeneutic
- Symbolic
- Cultivate
- Polysemic
- Subversive
- Semiotics
- Encoded
- Binary/Diametric Opposition
- Anchorage
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Liesbet Van-Zoonen
argues that media language encodes how male and female
characters act in media products. Explore how representations of genders position the audience
in Humans(Stereotypical representation of women) and Les
Revenants(the same as Humans)
To begin, Van Zoonen believes that women are used in any
media products to appeal to the stereotypical hegemony of society that that
media product is representing. In my overall opinion, I believe that representation
of genders are portrayed stereotypically to the hegemonic norm of a patriarchal
society before everyone was treated equally.
For Humans, it’s displays women in a very stereotypical way.
Such example of this is Anita in Humans, she is being portrayed as a house-wife
or maid, doing the dishes, laundry, cooking and always says to Laura Hawkins
that she was built to serve. What makes this fit to the Zeitgeist of women in
the 1960’s is the intertextuality of Humans, such as the Women magazine. We can
associate Anita’s actions with how women were treated when society was more
patriarchal then egalitarian. For the audience, they are positioned by making
Anita the main character of the story. Examples that put her as the main character
includes marketing such as posters, and her flashback in episode 1, season 1,
when Leo loses her when she gets kidnapped. Meaning that she has a key
importance to Leo who also is portrayed as important in the plot of Humans. With the audience knowing that she is the main
character means that the producer wants the preferred reading to be that the
audience follows her story as she seems to be the spine of episode 1, season 1.
With this we can consider that the representations of the female gender in
Humans is that they are treated as a household object, as she is forced to do
all the house cleaning and cooking etc. An example of this objectification can
be when Laura Hawkins calls her ‘you’re just a stupid machine’ with Anita
replying ‘yes Laura’. For the audience, they are meant to feel sympathy for
Anita and also feel like they’re in the same position, to feel angered by how
the Hawkins family treats her such as Matty saying that she is a slave.
Concluding that for Lisbet Van Zoonen’s theory, this can be considered that
females match the hegemony of society, however this is more directed towards
the 1960’s when women were portrayed more as house-wives, this suggests that
the show Humans is an allegory, with Van Zoonen stating that women are still
portrayed to appeal to a male heterosexual audience. With Humans being Anita’s
story, the preferred reading is for the audience to associate themselves to
Anita the most as she is the one found on all the marketing for the TV show.
And with how the Hawkins family treat her, makes the audience feel bitter
towards anyone else who treats her badly.
Additionally, Les Revenants follows the same format of
following the portrayal of men and women stereotypically. To begin, the best
scene to describe how each gender is represented is the diametric opposition
between Adele in her white wedding dress, low-key lighting and being indoors,
with Simone in his black suit, dark lighting and being outside. One mid-shot of
this scene is when Adele collaspes against the front door, this is symbolic of
her misery and her lost of sanity after Simone had supposedly died ten years
before the tv show is set. The mise-en-scene of the high angle view makes her
seem isolated, exposed, alone and weak which follows the stereotypical hegemony
of society in the 1960's.
Furthermore, Humans also follows stereotypes of women but in
another fashion as well as a house-wife. Theorist Sigmund Freud suggested that
men, during his time, perceived women in one of two categories. He coined this
the Madonna/ Whore complex, stating that women can either be a virgin,
motherly, all caring, benevolent carer with great beauty or rather a whore, a
character that craves intercourse, mostly prostitutes who want money. In this
case Anita’s house-wife actions are contrasted by Niska, another synth in
Humans. She also kidnapped and becomes a robotic prostitute. In episode 1 of season
1, Niska is portrayed as a whore according to Sigmund Freud. For one the
mise-en-scene of the brothel when the character Leo enters it has high
connotations to how women are represented. For one, Niska is wearing a stereotypical
sex worker costume. Each prostitute is numbered, and not called by their real
name, Leo says to the brothel owner that he’ll ‘have number 7’, which
objectifies Niska and women as a whole yet again. Each prostitute is also in
their own chamber as if they are in a zoo, being treated like animals, aka
being treated as if they had lower status in society than men. Furthermore, the
soundtrack of the brothel scene also makes it sound like an uninviting place to
be in, the audience at this point follows Leo as he snakes around the brothel
to find Niska, making us feel uncomfortable to be in the brothel. This follows
Van Zoonen and Freud’s theories, that women are portrayed to be appealing to
the male-gaze, or rather that media sexualises women; and that with the
soundtrack making the audience feel uncomfortable with its exploitive nature
demonstrates Freud’s belief that men portray the whore of the Madonna/Whore
complex as scary and uncaringful, and the soundtrack follows this. This
diametric opposition between Anita’s house-wife attitude and the
objectification of synths in the brothel demonstrates Freud’s simple complex.
For the audience in this scene they follow Leo around the
brothel could possibly show a rather atypical response but also stereotypical response
on women. For atypical, Leo feels uncomfortable around the women, suggesting
that he is fearful and unmanly, this of course is atypical to the stereotype that
men are not afraid of anything and are brave, and with the audience being
forced to follow him around the brothel, makes them feel uncomfortable to be
around the women. This follows the stereotypical response that women that
follow the whore part of the complex can be considered untrustworthy and scary.
This can tie in to Stuart Hall’s reception theory, he states that when an
audience is given a media product, they give three response to that product.
For the producers preferred reading, he wants the audience to feel
uncomfortable around the brothel, demonstrating an allegory that women should
not be sexualised like this, following Van Zoonen’s theory but also tying in to
how Freud’s theory demonstrates how wrong the whore is. For oppositional
reading, this can be that women should be perceived to have a lower status in
society and disgusting according heterosexual men, which Van Zoonen theory
follows.
