"Representation is how media texts deal with and present gender, age, ethnicity, national and regional identity, social issues, and events to an audience. Media texts have the power to shape an audience's knowledge and understanding of these important topics." GCSE Media Studies Revision - BBC
Basically, representation is the way that media creators CHOOSE to portray reality or aspects of reality. It usually includes: race (biology/ethnicity), communities, gender, sexuality, and events (representing society in a "prettier" way.)
What impacts these choices?
-Ownership: companies have a lot of power when choosing what they want to be portrayed in media, and each company will represent different topics in different ways.
-Creator bias: anyone creating any content will be biased towards it because they have their own opinions on the subject, and that is what happens to many media produced by these companies.
-Governing factions: the government of different countries has different laws that enable them to restrict media from being allowed in their territory. For example, Russia has laws against expressing sexuality and restricts every form of media that portrays the LGBTQ+ community.
-Majority rule: at the end of the day, these companies will produce and distribute media that they know will attract the audience, they want success as a lot of these companies care more about money and company growth, unfortunately.
Historically, many groups have been underrepresented in western media, and those are LBGTQ+, people of color, range of body sizes/types, people with disabilities (big one!!!), people with mental illness (my topic!!!), and the elderly.
Additionally, more so in the past than now, a lot of media makes use of stereotypical roles for characters in their pieces.
"These are a simplified representation of a person, groups of people, or a place, through basic or obvious characteristics - which are often exaggerated. They can be used to describe characters quickly, relying on existing audience recognition. Stereotypes are dangerous as they can lead audiences to generalize about people or places."
"Stereotypes in media are often inaccurate and portray underrepresented groups in a negative light."
"Common stereotypes of Arabs in Western media include the Arab man as a terrorist or an oil-hungry sheikh." -Arab Film & Media Institute
Stereotyping is not something I will rely on, as it can be very harmful and have people feel extremely unrepresented, which is the opposite of what I intend to do. I want people to relate to my piece not feel like they are being made fun of. It is very unfortunate that various coming-of-age movies tend to do this to attract their audience with "comedy characters," with roles such as the bully, the queen bee, the nerd, etc.
Typecasting is another problem encountered in many media forums and happens specifically with actors.
"Typecasting, which generally refers specifically to actors, is when a person is repeatedly assigned the same type of role due to success with that role in the past or because they “look like” a specific stereotype. "
This can be extremely harmful to society and actors who think they can never play roles they want because they will always be cast to roles of their ethnicity, race, or similar.
"Actor and comedian Aziz Ansari wrote a piece in the New York Times about the struggles he’s experienced as an Indian actor, and he touched specifically on typecasting. He wrote, 'Even though I’ve sold out Madison Square Garden as a standup comedian and have appeared in several films and TV series, when my phone rings, the roles I’m offered are often defined by ethnicity and often require accents.'"
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