Media Evaluation on Prezi

Evaluation of Media Studies A2 Coursework

This is my evaluation of my Media Studies A2 portfolio coursework. In this Prezi Presentation I will cover the following areas:
- Audience Feedback
- Music Video and Ancillary Products
- Use, Develop and Challenge of Real Media Products
- Use of New Media Technologies


Please click on the link to view my Evaluation


http://prezi.com/xldxyb1o0rn2/media-evaluation/ 

Ancillary Product Research - Queens of the Stone Age - Promotional Poster

This tour poster for the Queens of the Stone age is particularly striking and evidently well thought out poster. The title, “Queens of the Stone age” is in a block bold comic effect font which makes it stand out and links into the cartoon feel of the poster. The main image of of a skull which is on fire, being struck with lighting and two sexual images of women either side. Firstly the skull in the middle of the poster represents death and heavy rock which links into the bands style of music. Their genre of music is heavy rock, for example one of their albums is entitled, “Songs for the deaf”, implying that there songs will be particularly loud and heavy as this is what deaf people will be able to hear. The skull also has red/orange eyes which links into the skull being tired or on drugs. These are two stereotypical associated when concerned with the heavy rock genre, that the rock stars and their fans never sleep all day and night and are heavy takers of popular social drugs. This is linking into the genre and to the type of music which the band likes to live up to. The biker hat on the skull also represents rebellion and rock genre as this links into the biker rebellion which happened in the 1980's where people who wore leather and rode bikes were considered as rebels at the fridge of society. The goggles on the top of the hat also reinforce and stereotypically exaggerate the rebellion which the skull symbolises. The lighting which is striking the biker cap all around in a semi-circle represent the power and dominance of the band over their fans and over music in general, as an established band in the music industry, the queens of the stone age can empower themselves with images of power and subliminal messages of Zeus a powerful Greek god. The two women either side of the skull are sexualised images of tainted women. The women are wearing black underwear and long black boots which symbolise evil and sinful women which appeal to men as they are stereotypically more sexually active and adventurous. The women would appeal to their fans as stereotypically the will bre male and sexually active. Also like with the Coldplay album poster the Queens of the Stone Age has the same layout. The name of the band or artist is at the top of the poster which is enough to appeal to an audience as they have already both being established and recognised as mature music producers in the music industry that there name and an obscure image which has little or no link with the band in anyway is not a problem as they do not need to show themselves to the audience for the first time. However with the Katy Perry 'One of the Boys' album, as that was her first album she needed an image of herself as a sexual icon to sell herself rather than her music. With Coldplay the idea of revolution and an uprising sold their poster and in this Queens of the Stone Age poster the idea of sex, death, power and drugs, (basically the rock and roll lifestyle, many idolise), is sold as an affordable lifestyle with the buying of this CD.

Discuss Adorno and Fiske’s view on popular culture

Discuss Adorno and Fiske’s view on popular culture

Adorno (1903 – 1969), is a cultural theorist who analysed the media and our society. He stated that the power of the mass media over the population was enormous and damaging to our society. He stated that culture is a social creation to serve a capitalist regime, where an audience consume the media to gain cultural capital. There are two types of culture, high and low culture. High culture is intellectually stimulating to active audience, whereas low culture is stimulating to a passive audience. Cultural theorists study and analyse the popular culture ingrained into the society in which we live in.

            Theodor Adorno was a member of the Frankfurt School of German academics working in the 1920’s and 30’s. Their hostility to the mass media was due to the rise of Hitler throughout the Second World War, where the dictator used the mass media to dehumanise and turn a whole nation against the Jewish population through the use of media outlets for example advertising and propaganda. This was the main tool in Hitler’s success to try to exterminate a whole religious race in order to create an Arian race. Adorno describes the mass media as the culture industry to emphasise that the true and only purpose of the media and the media outlets is to make profit and money. He also argued that the products created from the culture industry, both low and high culture items, are all the same, as they all reflect the ruling class ideology of the established order in our modern day society. Each product may give the impression of being their own individual product with their own USP, (unique selling point), but in actual fact this is an illusion which the ruling class oppress on the masses as the purpose of the popular culture is to maintain the established order at the top of the social tower, where they control the power and wealth in the country, and oppress the proletariats, (working class), with falsification of the capitalist hope which states that if people work hard they can be successful and wealthy. However this is just a false promise and it actually oppresses the people as, they think to be successful in life you have to work hard, but actually all they are doing, is working hard to keep the rich owners rich and the poor people poor. This is a similar idea to the hypodermic needle theory, a communications theory in the media, which suggests that an intended message in the media product, e.g. a television advert, is directly received and wholly accepted and affirmed by the receiver and reader of the media text. The norms and values of the ruling class and established order are encoded into the media text by the media institution, and are then directly decoded by the audience with the preferred reading intended by the media institutions. Overall Adorno’s is basically stating in his theory of culture and the media that the products from popular culture create false needs and products which are presented to an audience as a need in our modern day society but are in actual fact, just an way of presenting the ruling class ideology. He also states that popular culture pacifies an audience as the audience absorb the norms and values which is justification of the oppression of the working class, and finally the culture industry’s sole purpose is to make a profit for media industries and to take control of an audience by establishing false needs for a passive audience. 

            Fiske is another cultural theorist. Unlike Adorno’s theory whereby the power lies with the media institutions and producers and the audience are passive to the media, Fiske argues that the power is held by the audience themselves. He states that popular culture is made by the people not produced by the culture industry. All the culture industries can do is produce a repertoire of texts or cultural resources or the various formations of the people to use or reject in the on-going process of producing their popular culture. The power of the audience to interpret texts and determine their popularity in our society and culture is a much greater power and force than that of the media institutions to send a particular message or ideology within their med texts. Fiske also points out that we cannot talk about, ‘the audience’ as one mass of people who are all passive to the media texts and have little or no individuality and which all people have to same norms and values suggested and imposed by the media institutions, namely the ruling class ideology which is passed down through the media texts. A singular mass of consumers in our post-modern society of choice, fluidity and uncertainty, does not exist. This contrasts with Adorno’s theory as he suggests that in our society there is not individuality and we are all like robots, absorbing the ruling class ideology through the products made by the culture industry. However Fiske argues against Adorno stating that the range of individuals with their own changing tastes and beliefs are in control of the culture industry. Finally Fiske states that the, “Culture is a living, active process: it can be developed only from within, it cannot be imposed from without or above”. Culture is created in the act of the interpretation by the audience and only from the audience can a culture society be established. Through the gained choice and individuality in our postmodern era, we can choose or reject or accept products of culture according. Encoding and decoding, theorised by Stuart Hall is similar to Fiske’s theory of the culture industry. Encoding and decoding lies the power with the audience instead of the culture industry, which is the same as Fiske’s theory. It suggests that a media institution encode a media text with norms and values of the ruling class and insert them into the media text. The text is then shown to an audience who interpret the text in their own way, and ‘decode’ the text. The way the audience member interprets the texts can be dependant of a number of factors including their life experience, religious position, political stance or gender/age.

This is a album cover analysis of the album, 'Ok Computer', by the popular rock band Radiohead. The cover shows ideas of post modernism, identity and our modern culture. Firstly the motorway running up the bottom of the page is symbolic of the journey of life, which begins clear but as the road goes up it becomes blurred on the poster meaning that the path is not clear and easy. The blurred element of the album art also refers to the identity wihch people hold in a post modern society is not clear anymore and cannot be clearly defined. This is refering to the post modern society which people say we now live in, an age of uncertainty and anomie for the popular masses. The fragmented world which we now live in makes people's lives complex and difficult and this is represented with the motorway in this album art. Framed to the right of the album cover is a bold 'X' in a box. This refers to the rejection of modern culture and the subordinated position of people. The art rejects the popular culture and does not participate. The title of the album however conflicts with the message on the art, with the slogan, "Ok Computer", refering to our society accepting the digital age of technolgoical advancement.

Ancillary Product Magazine Album Advertisement Final Idea

This is our final and finished magazine album advertisement. The inspiration for this album cover is closely linked with the theoretical understanding of Marxism and the teachings of Karl Marx who is a revolutionary socialist. The main central image of the raised clenched fist rising up out of the skyline is the central focus of the advertisement. The red fist itself is a representation of rebellious, war-like behaviour and which has wider symbolic and cultural representations of uprising and revolution. This representation of the fist is coupled with the cracks and dirt spread across the hand which represent our modern fragile society with the dirt having wider symbolic connotations to the tainted society of suppression and corruption which we now accept. which links into our music video having a focus of uprising and rebellion. The inspiration for the raised fist image was this particular image (on the right hand side) I found which inspired me to create the idea of the fist. The second most notable feature of this advertising poster is the skyline running at the bottom half of the advertisement. The skyline is a typical urbanised environment containing large industrialised buildings which has connotations of our post-modern culture. The urbanised industrial city is the stereotypical location of ordinary workers which encompasses the suppressive life which people live in a capitalist regime,  and that these people who live in these urbanised environments can relate to there own lives through this symbolisation on the poster as they are the embodiment of the working class revolution. The dark brick background continues the representation of urbanisation as it represents a typical brick house which these revolutionaries will live in. The symbolic representation of the brick wall background is symbolic submissive and restrictive nature of our modern society. The mist covering the brick wall background is representative of the mystery and uncertain flexibly of the future. It represents that the future is literally unclear and that revolution is no certain. The slogan at the bottom of the advertisement: 'Join the Revolution...', is a direct address to audience, challenging them to be join the uprising and rebellion. It is command to uprise against the current oppressing system implemented and to rise up.  

Ancillary Product Magazine Album Advertisement First Idea

This is one of our first idea's for the Magazine Album Advertisement for the new album, 'The Resistance'. The inspiration for this adverstiment came from an assortment of different ideas. Firstly the picture in the centre is a idea from the the official advertisement for Muse and is to represent the space age and the technological development of our modern era. The magnifying glass layered on top of the central image is to represent the media, focusing the audience onto the central image of the future and further development of humankind. This idea was inspired by the theory of Adorno, who suggested that the audience is passive and the media institutions create readerly texts for the audience to take the preferred reading. The magnifying glass represents the media as they focus are attention and draw us into the mediated future. The British flag making up the majority of the background represents the patriotic nature of the band, and there focus is for the future of Britain.