Representation - Theorists

Angela McRobbie – post feminist icon theory

 

Laura Mulvey – male gaze/female gaze

 

Stuart Hall – dominant, oppositional and negotiated readings of representation (we covered at AS)

 

Richard Dyer – stereotypes legitimize inequality

 

Levi-Strauss – binary oppositions and subordinate groups (see dyer)

 

David Buckingham – representation and fragmented identity

 

David Gauntlett – “identity is complicated, everyone’s got one” (pluralism but within a  hegemonic framework)

 

Baudrillard – hyper realism

 

Tajfel and Turner – intergroup discrimination and stereotyping (also useful for youth and collective identity)

 

Andy Medhurst – stereotyping is shorthand for identification

 

Tessa Perkins – stereotyping has elements of truth

 

Judith Butler – queer theory (referenced a lot at A Level so good to look at)

 

I think this is a really interesting area of study personally. I've just looked at representations of ethnic minorities recently and I personally feel that they are Politically Incorrect, a fantastic talking heads and clips show reviewing all politically incorrect television in Britain, much of it from the 1970s. Stephen K Amos features prominently and says he'd never heard the word 'nig nog' until people started calling him it at school after Love Thy Neighbour started. He also used to get comments like "I saw your family on telly last night" after the Black and White Minstrel Show. Such shows have their defenders, Davidson included, but I myself am genuinely shocked at the casual racism with Curry and Chips perhaps being the nadir. The new Walliams and Lucas stuff was extremely surreal for myself as a student to view - I'm uncomfortable with it, personally but its an extremely fascinating and indulging project of study.

 

Angela McRobbie

 

British cultural theorist, feminist and commentator whose work combines the study of popular culture, contemporary media practices and feminism. She is a Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths College, University of London. McRobbie's academic research spans almost four decades, influenced by the work of Stuart Hall and the British sociologists of the school of Birmingham in its inception, and developed from the theoretical traditions of Feminism and Marxism. McRobbie has authored many books and scholarly articles on young women and popular culture, gender and sexuality, the British fashion industry, social and cultural theory, the changing world of work and the new creative economy, feminism and the rise of neoliberalism.

 

Her current research focuses on the 'new culture industry', particularly on the labour practices in the world of freelance, casualised creative work and micro-enterprises of creative labour such as fashion design, art-working, multi-media, curating and arts administration. McRobbie has begun to follow up to The Aftermath of Feminism titled Feminism and The Perfect: The Pathologies of Contemporary Femininity, along with work on a book about the global fashion industry titled Faster Fashion: The Sociology of Start-Ups, Mass- Luxury Brands and Supply Chains. In 2015, she will begin work on a study of the conditions which underpinned the emergence of the Black and Asian British Artists with reference to the writing of Stuart Hall.