Theoretical Research

JEAN BAUDRILLARD

Jean Baudrillard is a media theorist that looks at the narratives of a story and how a media text can imitate the style or content of another media text. Postmodernists have also argued that there is no originality in media texts; that the same ideas and techniques are re-hashed and re-used to create new meanings. He also looks at the way that one media text will reference another media text.

These two magazines, that are both regional magazines, apply to Jean Baudrillards' theory of how media texts imitate others showing that there isn't a lot of originality in the media anymore. From looking at the two magazines above, you can see that they both have an animal on the cover with similar font and layout of text. Going down the page you can see that they also follow a color scheme and then have the addition of a white border at the bottom to split up the cover and show extra information.

RICK ALTMAN

Rick Altman is a media theorist that looks at audience expectations and why it is hard to break generic conventions.

• Emotional Pleasures: Audiences receive emotional pleasures from certain genres, i.e., a certain text might make somebody cry, laugh, ect.
• Visceral Pleasures: These are gut responses and it means that certain media texts might give audiences some form of physical effect - such as the feeling of physical revulsion, being on a 'roller-coaster ride'.

The two pictures help prove Rick Altmans' theory of how an image can encourage different emotion. For example of I had a picture of a sunset as my cover, I think I would make people feel happy, warm and possibly nostalgic. Whereas if I had the picture of the view of the city streets from a high rise building, I think I would make people feel more uncomfortable from either fear of heights or give them a physical effect like a head ache.

RICHARD DYER

Richard Dyer is a theorist who looks at the different stereotypes that are shown in media texts. He argues that stereotypes have become a negative form of representation.

• He says that the first problem is that stereotypes divide people between 'us' and 'them', i.e. we are not part of that group.
• Secondarily, stereotypes make it appear that everyone in that group are the same, i.e all hoodies are thugs.

Next looking at these two photos that show the different stereotypes and representations that are present in the media. First is a picture of a model in her underwear posing on the cover of a beauty magazine. Women are constantly sexualised in the media as objects and sometimes shown to be the untouchables that others could not reach. This is a good representation of when Richard Dyer talks about the 'us' and 'them' groups and how we are different from her. Then the picture on the left shows a boy in a hoodie which is a negative representation that is constantly in the media also and talked about in Richard Dyers theory.