April 2009 - Guernsey Grammar School

Transcription

APRIL 2009: THE FREEDOM ISSUE
MM MediaMagazine
MM
edia
agazine
english and media centre issue 28 | april 2009
english and media centre | issue 28 | april 2009
Freedom from
Hollywood
Diploma students
on freedom
Sexual freedom
TV drama –
institutions and
audiences
Skins
Cross-media
platforms
Dead Set
MM
MM
MediaMagazine is published by
the English and Media Centre, a
non-profit making organisation.
The Centre publishes a wide range
of classroom materials and runs
courses for teachers. If you’re
studying English at A Level, look out
for emagazine, also published by
the Centre.
The English and Media Centre
18 Compton Terrace
London N1 2UN
Telephone: 020 7359 8080
Fax: 020 7354 0133
Email for subscription enquiries:
[email protected]
Managing Editor: Michael Simons
Editor: Jenny Grahame
Editorial assistant/admin:
Rebecca Scambler
Design: Sam Sullivan (edition.co.uk)
Printed by S&G Group
ISSN: 1478-8616
Cover image: from Slumdog Millionaire,
courtesy of image.net
How to subscribe
Four issues a year, published
September, December, late February
and late April.
Centre print-only subscription:
£29.95
2 year option: £49.90
Centre website package: £79.95
includes print magazine, full website
access and an online PDF version of
the current issue.
2 year option: £139.90
editorial
It’s that time of year again: it’s our last issue of the school year
and the exams are looming. We hope you’ll find plenty of support
for your revision here. If you’re preparing for the OCR AS G322
paper, crack it with our essential planning tips and guidance from
a principal examiner; Steph Hendry’s helpful summaries and wellfocused examples of multiplatform media and the concepts which
underpin them will also be useful, particularly for AQA AS students.
You can read two contrasting approaches to the textual analysis of TV drama
which targets and represents young people, drawing on Skins and Sugar Rush;
and AS Film students must read Mark Ramey’s a powerful case study comparison
of two thematically linked films, which should provide inspiring ammunition for
FM2. And given that examiners across all specifications continually remind us of
the importance of using contemporary examples and references, Austin McHale’s
analysis of Slumdog Millionaire could hardly be more topical or user-friendly.
Many of these articles also touch on the ‘Freedom’ theme of this issue, which
our contributors have interpreted in diverse and interesting ways, from freedom
from Hollywood (Slumdog) to the limits of freedom represented in One Flew Over
the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Shawshank Redemption. Sara Mills debates the ‘free
knowledge’ offered by Wikipedia, while Sean Kaye-Smith explores the dangerous
freedoms of childhood in film, and Jerome Monahan compares two iconic
photographs which represent the lack of freedom from very different perspectives.
And if you’re already considering your UCAS choices, do read Owen Davey’s thoughtprovoking reflections on his personal experiences of academic freedom and its
limitations; styles of teaching and learning may not be at the forefront of your mind
right now, but may make quite a bit of difference once you’re balancing workload,
social life and pleasure as a first-year undergraduate…
The other special feature of this issue is our selection of articles from Creative
and Media Diploma students from Long Road, Cambridge. They came to visit us at
MediaMag to see how the magazine is put together, and we gave them a free hand
to come up with their own ‘Freedom’ articles, which range from online gaming to
censorship, free running to music. Which is, of course, your cue: we really want to
publish more of your work! Turn to the back page to see the MediaMag themes
for next year’s editions, with some ideas of the sorts of things you might be able to
contribute – or come up with your own interpretations. And bearing in mind the
long summer of freedom ahead of you (once you’ve dealt with those pesky exams,
that is) we hope to hear from you!
And finally…good wishes for your exams.
Additional subscriptions for
students, teachers or the library can
be added to either the print-only
subscription or the website package
for £10 a year.
MediaMagazine website
MediaMagArchive on the MediaMagazine
website (www.mediamagazine.org.uk) gives
you access to all past articles published in
MediaMagazine. There are two ways of getting
access to the MediaMagazine website:
1. Centre plus 10 or more student subs.
2. Centre website package: £79.95
2 MediaMagazine | April 2009 | english and media centre
This magazine is not photocopiable. Why not subscribe
to our web package which includes a downloadable and
printable pdf of the current issue or encourage your
students to take out their own £10 subscription?
(For full details, see www.MediaMagazine.org.uk)
MM
contents
04
06
10
14
61
62
Front Page News
The latest news, reviews
and previews.
65
BEYOND FREEDOM
TV drama –
institutions and
audiences The
essential guide to
cracking your G322
summer exam paper –
straight from the mouth
of Principal Examiner
Jason Mazzocchi.
Cross-media
platforms – an
overview Senior
Examiner Steph Hendry
talks you through what
you need to know about
media platforms, key
concepts, and how to
approach them.
Cartoon Need to know
about Depth of Field
for your unseen textual
analysis? See it here – in
pictures!
Skins – textual
analysis in action
A2 Media student
Kirsty Leslie analyses a
sequence from Skins to
explore its representation
of disability issues.
describes a unique
training scheme, and
some inspiring success
stories.
57
FREEDOM SPECIAL
Tank man and the
gold mine of Serra
Pelada Jerome Monahan
evaluates the construction,
impact and influence of
two iconic photographs
representing the antithesis
of freedom.
19
Free culture –
e-media comes
of age Wikipedia –
21
FREEDOM – THE DIPLOMA SECTION:
Freedom from
a selection of freedom-themed articles
Hollywood –
from Level 3 Creative and Media
Slumdog Millionaire Diploma students
Dead Set James Rose
on Charlie Brooker’s
gruesomely satirical take
on reality television.
GMTV Maria Brannigan
26
31
freedom of knowledge,
democratisation of
information, or just a
dodgy, second-rate
encyclopaedia? Sara Mills
investigates.
Tiny budget, unknown
cast, no Americans –
and massive critical,
commercial and Oscar
success. Austin McHale
explains how Slumdog
Millionaire thrived on its
freedom from Hollywood.
The limits of
freedom Mark
Ramey finds powerful
connections in this FM2
case study comparing
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s
Nest and The Shawshank
Redemption.
The freedom trap
Regular contributor Owen
Davey reflects ruefully on
the limitations of a ‘free’
university curriculum in
Digital Screen Arts.
34
The freedom of
childhood Sean Kaye-
52
Sugar Rush – sexual
freedom Andrea
Smith explores a range
of powerful films seen
through the innocent
eyes of children.
41
43
46
48
49
Freedom of
movement Laurence
Smith on the delights of
free running.
The freedom of
music The power of music
to debate, critique and
change minds, from Sam
Chappell-Winnington.
Freeform music
Alexander Whitcomb
explores the diversity and
hybridity of a remarkable
band.
Freedom to play –
is online gaming
hazardous to health?
David Pinchen debates the
pros and cons.
The c-word –
censoring the
media? It’s a tricky one.
Tim Hodson explores the
effectiveness of different
forms of media regulation.
Joyce celebrates the
representation of teenage
sexuality in Channel 4’s
Sugar Rush, and explores
its construction through
close textual analysis.
english and media centre | April 2009 | MediaMagazine
3
front page news
Coming to a
screen near you
As usual, this summer
will be blockbuster time,
with the studios hoping to
make huge bucks out of
major ‘properties’ which will
help bankroll everything
else they do for the rest of
the year. That said, there are
always quirky releases to
look out for too.
May 18th: Star Trek
We’re boldly backtracking
to catch a glimpse of
Captain Kirk and his crew
in their youth. It’s a good
means of keeping some
favourite characters alive
and launching a new crop
of younger actors to play
them. (http://www.imdb.
com/title/tt0796366/)
May 29th: Fermat’s
Room (Habitacion de
Fermat)
The Saw franchise has
taken the idea of a group
of apparent strangers
locked in a room and
facing death unless they
can find a ‘solution’ to their
predicament in a very
bloody direction. Piedrahita
4
and Sopena’s film sounds an
altogether more intelligent
treatment of the subject. A
group of mathematicians
has to club together to
solve problems set them by
an adversary as the walls
close in, finding out what
links them all in the process.
(http://www.imdb.com/
title/tt1016301/)
June 5th: Terminator:
Salvation
The trailer is portentous,
the soundtrack percussive,
the director is Joseph
McGinty Nichol aka McG,
and big bucks have been
thrown at it – not least
the acting talent which
includes Christian Bale
as John Connor. Now it
is the people’s part to
queue up and take the
futureshock medicine in
their millions – at least
that’s what Warner Bros are
hoping they will do. (http://
terminatorsalvation.
warnerbros.com/)
June 19th: Katyn
A new film from
legendary Polish director
Andrjez Wajda is an event;
MediaMagazine | April 2009 | english and media centre
his account of Stalin’s
murder of Polish army
officers in the forest of
Katyn in 1939 – an atrocity,
uncovered and exploited
by the Nazis when they
invaded Poland – has
attracted some excellent
reviews. To date it’s made
$13 million in worldwide
box-office sales, but only
$39,000 in America –
MediaMag wonders why...
Credit crunch
media
Ads in a recession
A recent Channel 4 News
report focused on the state
of the advertising industry
during this deep, dark hole
of a recession. Advertising
legend Sir Frank Lowe has
survived previous economic
downturns, and gave his
views about the kinds of
trends we should expect
July 17th: Harry Potter in such troubled times.
He suggested we won’t
and the Half-Blood
be seeing many glossy,
Prince
triumphant bank ads;
Given the importance
instead, financial advertising
to the profitability of UK
will be much more modest
films in 2007 of the last
in tone: ‘come to us because
Harry Potter movie (and
we are safe and reliable’.
that’s based upon the
There will be a big hike in
UK Film Council’s pretty
ads that seek to amuse us –
loose definition of a UK
the news ‘package’ carried
film), you can imagine the
extracts from witty Hamlet
collective intake of breath
in July when this movie hits cigar and John Smith Bitter
commercials from the early
the screens. It’s Year 6 at
1990s; there will be space
Hogwarts and Voldemort’s
for luxury and fantasy too,
power is on the increase!
but attached to surprising
(http://www.imdb.com/
title/tt0417741/synopsis) products, rather than truly
expensive brands no one
can afford – witness Haagen
Daz’s brilliant sexing-up of
ice-cream-eating during
the last recession. It will be
interesting to see whether
his forecasting is accurate
over the next few months.
ITV’s troubles
ITV are facing big
troubles in the downturn;
it’s just announced a £2.7
billion loss in 2008 and its
director Sir Michael Grade
was recently spinning the
line that ‘sure things are bad
now, but come the return
of better economic times,
ITN will be well placed to
benefit’. Now is the time
to monitor the impact of
the company’s problems,
caused mainly by the
migration of advertising
away from terrestrial
channels. Three predictions:
• a steady drop in the
company’s drama output
– always the first thing to
go when money is scarce;
future series of Heartbeat
and The Royal have been
shelved
• the sale of assets
inessential to the
company’s main
broadcasting activities –
so it’s ‘bye-bye’ to Friends
Reunited
• a steady amalgamation
of regional news
coverage as ITV’s local
news companies are
compressed and made
to cover bigger slices
of the country. (http://
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/
business/7922770.stm)
Newspaper woes
These are troubled times
for British newspapers. In
the last 10 years, the UK’s
dailies have lost some
2.25 million readers, and
ad revenues have fallen
by about 20% – a very
unhealthy situation. It’s
predicted that two daily
Mags moving online
One response to difficult newspapers will go bust
times is to go online. Recent this year. And ‘real’ paid-for
newspapers are losing out
web-based publishing
to their online equivalents,
ventures to watch include:
which we can access for
• 10 Magazine – a new
free (mostly). In the past
online fashion title
news content was ‘pushed’
with lots of information
at us for our consumption;
about the marketplace
now we live in a ‘pull’
and its business model
environment where we can
in downloadable form:
http://www.10magazine. be far more selective – and
it’s taking the newspapers
com/info.html
time to adjust. (http://
• Muso’s Guide – an
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/
online guide to music
business/7872154.stm)
and festivals: www.
musosguide.com
But the good news is
• Chimp – a local
...on radio and online!
Manchester publication
One institution that
providing arts,
will weather the storm
entertainment and social
will be BBC Radio 4’s
commentary. The Big
Today programme, which
Issue started in London
seems to be increasing
and spread, so perhaps
listener figures for the
there’s a (virtual) Chimp
station. RAJAR (Radio
coming to your neck of
Joint Audience Research
the woods. And if you live Ltd) reports that Radio 4
in Manchester, you could
has added half-a-million
contribute too: www.
listeners and recorded its
chimpmagazine.co.uk
highest share; it now has
9.81 million listeners – up
from 9.29 million last year,
9.45 million last quarter –
and its highest reach since
the start of 2003.
Our consumption
of online clips is going
through the roof. According
to internet-monitor
comScore, 30 million
watched cached content
over four billion times last
December. YouTube was
the big winner, pulling in
almost 24 million unique
users, reaching 77% of
those who watched videos
online. Coming in a distant
second were various BBC
websites, with almost 7
million unique users, then
Microsoft and then eBay.
An increase of 13% from
December 2007. (http://
news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/
hi/technology/newsid_
7874000/7874601.stm)
and hence the film gets
pulled. As one teacher
points out:
the only definite way
round it is to use music
tracks that you can get
the copyright holders’
permission for – such
as your own students’
and ex-students’
bands. I have asked
my students to get
signed disclaimers
from the songwriters,
saying exactly what
they are granting them
permission to do. Most
local bands are pleased
to get a free video.
Go on, go on,
go on...a Villiers
Park G&T course
Places are still available
on a week-long residential
media course at Villiers
Copyright – do
Park Educational Trust
the right thing! near Cambridge in July.
The Media teachers’
The course is called
grapevine is worried that
‘Contemporary British Film’
YouTube et al are getting
and it’s a chance to work
much hotter about chasing with a group of 24 6th
copyright violations and
form media enthusiasts
deleting films that break
from across the UK, in
their rules. This is affecting
a completely different
student output, especially
environment, enhancing
music videos posted on
your media skills and
social networking sites
building new contacts.
in the hope of getting
It will be run by two
feedback; while the pictures tutors, with visiting media
may be the student’s, the
specialists making guest
soundtracks often are not,
teaching appearances.
During the week you’ll also
be creating a pitch for a
new British film, including
a poster and trailer. Your
school or college will
need to support your
application – visit http://
www.villierspark.org.uk/
and contact them for more
details (sb@villierspark.
org.uk). Online Media
Studies extension activities
are also available (http://
www.ygtactivities.org.
uk/) on topics ranging from
Barbie to radio-generated
panics to film noir trailers…
and they’re updated each
half-term.
Jerome Monahan is a freelance
writer who contributes to
MediaMagazine and the
Guardian.
5
MM
exam tips for OCR AS
media studies
Not long to go now – this is your
chance to hone your analytic skills
with our essential guide to cracking
your G322 summer exam paper –
straight from the mouth of Principal
Examiner Jason Mazzocchi. And
the keywords are…practise, focus,
examples and PEE.
Introduction
The exam for OCR AS Media Studies this
summer is on Key Concepts in Media (G322).
Here I would like to offer advice to students
on how to answer the questions on ‘Television
Drama’ and ‘Institutions and Audiences’. This
article has been written with AS students in
mind, and addresses the needs of the summer’s
examination. I hope this will enable you
successfully to fulfil the paper’s requirements:
Question 1 tests your knowledge and analysis
of television drama in relation to the concept
of representation; Question 2 tests your
knowledge and understanding of media
institutions and audiences. I write with the
knowledge not only of an experienced Media
Studies teacher and writer, but also as the
Principal Examiner who has just completed the
marking of G322 exam scripts for January 2009.
My apologies to those students who are taking
the paper on G323 ‘Radio Drama’; sadly, time and
space is too short here for a discussion of the
question on radio drama; this will be tackled in a
subsequent article.
The structure of the exam
The summer’s exam addresses two questions:
The analysis of an unseen television drama
extract and the ways it has constructed
particular aspects of representation.
2. A response to a single set question on
Institutions and Audiences, using the
media industry case studies you have been
prepared for in class.
1.
MM
The exam is two hours long; an equal amount
of time should be spend on each question.
However, the first 30 minutes of the exam is
allocated to viewing and making notes on an
unseen extract from a British television drama.
This leaves you with 45 minutes to complete
a textual analysis of the extract in relation to a
key aspect of representation, from one of the
following: age, gender, ethnicity, social class and
status, sexuality, physical ability/disability and
regional identity.
In the January 2009 unseen exam session the
text was from Monarch of the Glen (pictured
throughout this article) and the key issue of
representation was age. Candidates focused their
responses on the ways the key technical features
of camera shot, angle and composition, miseen-scène, sound and editing constructed the
representation of age. Stronger candidates
were able to discuss all of the technical
features of the extract, and write in detail on
the construction of the representation of age;
candidates who did less well were often limited
by basic and descriptive responses.
For Question 2, you will have 45 minutes to
answer a question from a media area that you’ve
studied. You will have been taught quite specific
‘case studies’ (that is, the use of detailed examples
of media practice) from one of the following
media areas: film, music, newspaper, radio or
video games. In January, students were asked:
Discuss the ways in which media product(s)
are produced and distributed to audiences,
within a media area, which you have studied.
This required them to write an essay which
examined the key concepts of media institutions
and audiences.
Preparing for the exam
By this time of year, OCR Media students across
the country will be preparing themselves to
answer this examination paper. By now, most, if
not all, teaching in schools and colleges will be
finished, and your Media teachers will be revising
the key issues for the exam. Listen carefully to
what your teachers are revising with you. They
are the professionals who have taught you the
course and the case studies you need to pass the
exam. My advice here is in addition to what your
teachers are offering.
Preparation for Question 1:
key concepts in television
drama
x Do practise the key skill of textual analysis.
You can do this at home by using drama
extracts recorded from television, the BBC
iPlayer, 4 on Demand and the ITV website.
x Do analyse short five-minute extracts and
no more because this is how long the extract in
the exam will be.
x Do watch the extract four times – this again
follows the rubric of the exam paper. You
cannot take notes during the first screening of
the drama, but you may do so after this; after
the second screening, there is a five-minute
pause in the screening for you to take notes.
Exemplar instructions found on the
OCR specimen exam paper
• The extract will be screened four times.
• First screening: watch the extract; no notes
are to be made this time.
• Second screening: watch the extract and
make notes.
• There will be a brief break for note-making.
• Third and fourth screening: watch the
extract and make notes.
x Use your study revision time. Do practise your
note-making routine so you can record your
observations at speed in the exam. You’ll be
asked to focus on the way a particular aspect of
representation is constructed via four technical
features as listed in the following question:
The question
Answer the question below, with detailed
reference to specific examples from the
extract only:
Discuss the ways in which the extract
constructs representations of age using
the following:
• Camera shots, angles, movement and
composition
• Editing
• Sound
• Mise-en-scène
x Don’t just describe – analyse! The skill of
textual analysis is the main requirement
for Question 1. This involves not simply
identification and description, but also analysis
of the technical features of television drama.
Each point you make requires Explanation,
Analysis and Argument. You need to move
beyond simply identifying the key technical
aspects to applying and analysing them.
To spell it out:
• identify the technical convention being used
• explain why this is so
• consider what is being signified by a shot or
sequence from the drama
• link the technical analysis of the drama with
the key concept of representation that is
being tested.
7
MM
x Practise analysing representations. The
issue of representation needs to be clearly
addressed in your response. This should be
quite obvious from the viewing of the extract.
To prepare for this do ensure that you have
practised analysing a range of examples of
representation: age, gender, ethnicity, social
class and status, sexuality, physical ability/
disability and regional identity. Any one of
these could appear in the summer’s exam. Most
candidates in the January 2009 session coped
well with linking the technical construction of
the extract to the representation of age.
x Cover all features. You do also need to address
all of the technical features of the extract. In
the January exam session students felt really
comfortable addressing the technical features
of camera, shot angle and composition and
mise-en-scène, but were less confident in
discussing sound and editing. This meant
that responses were not as balanced or
comprehensive in analysis as they could have
been. By dealing with only camera shot and
composition and mise-en-scène, many student
responses failed to cover all the technical
features and so were not able to gain marks in
the higher bands.
x There are up to twenty marks available for the
use of examples so use them!
x Sound and editing. You must ensure that
you analyse the use of sound and editing.
In preparation for the exam do consider, for
example, the use of music as mood setting,
what technical aspects of sound are used and
why. For the technical aspect of editing, move
beyond simply identifying the use of transitions;
do consider pace, match-on-action, the use of
ellipsis and sound bridges in the construction
of meaning.
x Plan your structure carefully. You
could choose to organise your answer
chronologically, by analysing the extract as
it progresses. Alternatively, you could address
each of the technical features in turn,
selecting appropriate examples to illustrate
the points that you want to make. By using the
latter structure you do ensure that you cover all
of the technical aspects, including a discussion
of representation.
x Mind your language – use the right terms!
There are up to ten marks available for the
use of media terminology in Question 1 so
please ensure that you use the correct terms!
One of the most common errors in the January
exam was reference to an ‘insert shot’ – not
used in the sequence at all. For a detailed
list of vocabulary, use what your teacher has
provided. There is an extensive list available in
the OCR specification, downloadable at http://
www.ocr.org.uk/Data/publications/key_
documents/AS_ALevel_GCE_Media_Studies_
Specification.pdf
Preparation for Question 2 on
institutions and audiences
This is an open-ended response question,
which requires you to address the question set in
relation to the media area that you have studied.
The following issues are really important:
x Address the question that has been set! A
common misunderstanding in January was
that students tended to write everything they
knew about an industry, rather than focus on
the question set on production and distribution
practices.
x Make use of key media concepts for this
question: for example cross-media, synergy,
digital initiatives and convergence. These
concepts are central to the practices of media
institutions and you should have detailed
exemplification of each in relation to the
industry that you have studied. Do ensure in
your revision notes that you have reference to
these concepts with appropriate examples, and
an evaluation of the media issues surrounding
them, often posed in terms of advantages and
disadvantages.
x Be contemporary with your use of examples.
If you use an historical example to help
illustrate a trend or point then make this
explicit in your argument. By contemporary, I
mean in the last five years. Media institutions
practices and audiences are in a constant state
of change and development, in particular with
the continuing development of media digital
technology.
x Get your facts right for the industry that
you have studied and avoid guesswork. Do
make sure that these facts are applied and are
relevant to the media issues that you debate.
There is no need to use theory that is not
MM
relevant; it is far better to apply key concepts
with the use of detailed examples. For example:
• in relation to the film industry, Slumdog
Millionaire not only highlighted the success
of Film Four, but also revealed the financial
stability/instability facing the UK film-making
industry during the current economic
recession
• in 2006 the UK music industry was dominated
by four major record companies, who owned a
76% share of the market.
x Do allow enough time to answer Question
2. Work that is less than one and a half sides in
length is generally too short. Often students
do not fully use the time allowed in an exam
to complete an answer, resulting in incomplete
answers that cannot be fully rewarded. Include
an evaluation of the argument that you
make; and try not to make this too brief or
cursory a statement at the end of the essay. Do
give an accurate summing up of your argument.
x Practise the structuring of your essay
response. The key to this is to:
• avoid lengthy introductions about what you
intend to say
• steer away from offering an historical
overview or context to the question – this is
not necessary
• start by using a statement which addresses
the question
• keep the opening paragraph clear and
engaging, focusing on the question set
• attempt to link the points that you want to
make in terms of the question set
• signpost the points that you want to make at
the beginning of each paragraph. Try adopting
a 3-point PEE structure:
1. make a point
2. support it with evidence
3. analyse and evaluate the point you make. This
structure can help you provide details to your
exam response.
x Be selective – focus on the key issues. You
will need to identify the key issues in the
question. These are listed right in no particular
order; one of the areas will be the focus of the
question set by the exam paper.
• The issues raised by media ownership
and distribution in contemporary media
practice.
• The importance of cross-media
convergence and synergy.
• The digital technologies that have been
introduced in recent years.
• The issues raised in the targeting of
British national and local audiences by
international and global institutions.
• The ways in which the candidates’ own
experiences of media consumption illustrate
wider patterns and trends of audience
behaviour.
Cover these points well in your revision but do
be selective in addressing the question set in the
exam.
x Examples are essential – again! Provide
plenty of detailed examples from your case
studies. In my school in North London, we
look at the music industry and focus on the
role of conglomerate music companies such
as Sony/BMG, compared to EMI, a British
national record company, and Essential Direct,
an independent record label and distributor
located in the East End of London. From a study
of their institutional practices and audiences,
my students have three detailed case studies
to address the question – and of course they
are also advised to add their own researched
and independent examples. As with Question
1, it is also very important to use the correct
media terminology (remember: up to 10 marks
available). This does need revision, but you
don’t need to define terms in the exam, just
apply and debate them.
And finally…top ten tips for
the exam
1. Answer the question set.
2. Use plenty of selected examples for analysis
in Question 1 and for Question 2 use
contemporary examples.
3. For Question 1 do link analysis of the technical
features of the extract to the key concept of
representation.
4. Use the correct media terminology.
5. Time management of your essay responses
is very important – incomplete answers are
rarely awarded high marks.
6. Avoid lengthy contextual introductions.
7. Get the facts right for Question 2.
8. Ensure that points you make are explained
and argued through.
9. Allow plenty of time for exam practice – you
can do this at home.
10. Keep a key vocabulary list.
And finally: good luck for the summer’s OCR
AS exam!
Jason Mazzocchi is Head of Media at Acland Burghley
School, North West London, and the Principal Examiner for
OCR’s AS G322 unit.
9
MM
If you’re preparing for AQA’s Mest
1 and 2, you’ll know it’s all about
media platforms and concepts. Senior
Examiner Steph Hendry gives you
the lowdown on what you need to
know, and some useful examples to
demonstrate it.
Over the past few years the mass media has
undergone many dramatic changes. Media
Studies examinations have recently altered to
reflect the way modern media texts are produced,
marketed and accessed by audiences including
technological innovations which are still
developing. As ever, Media Studies is a subject
that is constantly adapting to stay up-to-date.
Current issues and debates are often centred on
the way modern media institutions are using
developing technologies and the subsequent
alterations in audience behaviours and needs.
In the past, media texts were often dealt with as
individual products but it is now more relevant to
consider ‘media platforms’ rather than individual
‘media texts’. This approach is applicable to all
Awarding Bodies’ specifications but is specifically
related to AQA’s AS modules: Mest1 ‘Investigating
Media’ and Mest2 ‘Creating Media’.
Media platforms
These are the different technologies and
formats used to present and distribute media
products.
Platform
Forms include
Broadcasting
Film, television, radio
Print
Newspapers, magazines,
posters
e-media
Web content, podcasts,
streaming/downloadable
video, mobile phone content,
gaming
Many media texts that are created by the
major institutions now appear across the three
platforms. Institutions use the platforms to
reach broad audiences, to offer texts in different
formats and so provide a range of different
potential gratifications for audiences.
MM
Media concepts
In your first year of study you will also be
introduced to the media concepts. These are
the ideas that will enable you to engage formally
with the way media texts are constructed.
The main concepts are:
• Media Language
• Audience
• Representation
• Institution
… and also
• Narrative
• Genre
• Ideology
Media texts need to be considered across the
media platforms using the media concepts to
identify how and why institutions use a mixture
of broadcast media, print media and e-media to
construct related texts.
Issues to consider include:
• how the texts interrelate to create a
multiplatform text
• how each text is constructed (in terms of Media
Language, Narrative, use of Genre codes and
Representations)
• how the texts communicate ideas and values
(ideologies)
• how the texts benefit the producing institutions
• how institutions use different platforms to
increase the potential target market/audience
for a text
• how different platforms provide different
audience experiences, activities and
pleasures.
Platforms and media concepts
Media language
Each different platform and form uses its
own media language codes which are chosen
specifically to appeal to the audience, meet
the specified intentions of the text, identify the
genre and construct a narrative. Media language
choices take the expectations of the audience
into account and the way that people/places/
ideas etc. are to be represented.
e-media tends to use a combination of print,
moving-image and sound-based media language
depending on the technology used and the
function of the text.
The Sun online shares many media language
codes with its paper counterpart. Both use
the same type of language in terms of simple
lexis, short punchy sentences and a tendency
to use word play. Both have the same news
values as they prioritise entertainment. They
cover hard news stories but with limited detail
and tend to focus on human interest stories,
scandal and celebrity gossip. The tone of the
writing and the types of stories covered are part
of the codes and conventions expected by The
Sun’s readership and it is important that these
expectations are met within each platform. The
Sun’s online edition has the capacity to use
video to provide additional information and
can include reader comments, allowing more
interactivity than The Sun in its traditional
format. The online edition is, therefore,
more dynamic, more up to date and can be
seen to offer its audience more in terms of
entertainment and information than the paperbased version. Of course, being online it’s not
as portable as the newspaper itself. Although
the increase in mobile technologies does mean
more people are able to access The Sun online
whilst out and about, mobile internet hardware
is expensive when compared to the cover price
of the paper itself.
Institution
When looking at multiplatform texts it is
important to consider the function of the texts
constructed. Multiplatform texts often act as
promotional material for each other and so
you should try to work out how the texts work
together to generate income.
Print is still the primary platform for The
Sun but the online edition is becoming
increasingly important in terms of generating
advertising revenue, alternative sources of
income and developing reader/browser
loyalty. Some online editions of print-based
media offers ‘tasters’ of stories and features
which can only be accessed by buying the
paper-based edition. In this way, web editions
act as marketing for the paper-based versions
and, whilst being accessible and entertaining,
encourage the audience to purchase the
primary platform version.
Recently film and television production
companies have seen the potential in creating
massive online marketing campaigns which act
to:
• spread the word about the primary platform,
generate interest by selective revealing of
images and information
• encourage audience loyalty through long term
involvement in online activities which include
games, chat rooms and competitions
• provide additional narrative information about
characters and related events.
11
MM
Some institutional concepts
Horizontal integration
A term used to describe the business
practice of drawing together different
production processes to produce related texts.
For example: Sony create a game, publish
a magazine which reviews the game, retails
a special price package which ships the
game with new PS3s, uses a Sony recording
company artist to provide the soundtrack
to the game (which is released for sale)
and release a related film via Sony Pictures
Entertainment.
Here Sony maximises the potential profit
from one media text and many parts of the
company benefit. In addition, the potential
audience base is increased. Whilst the game
may have a large market, other audiences can
be created who may not like the game but
who like the music that is used or who want to
see the film.
Vertical integration
Large media corporations benefit
enormously if they own all the businesses
involved in the production process of their
products from creation to construction,
distribution and retail. This is called vertical
integration. (If you look up Sony on
Wikipedia you will get an idea of the extent of
their business interests.)
Symbiosis
A term used to describe the way different
institutions/businesses work together to
promote a range of related products.
For example: Total Film buys the exclusive
rights to a ‘behind the scenes’ look at the
making of the film (of the game above) and
creates a feature article; Hasbro buys the
licence for action figures based on the film or
game’s characters, W.H. Smith buys the rights
to sell stationery using the product’s logo,
and Burger King has a special burger named
after the Sony product. Each company acts to
promote not only the media product but the
other companies too.
Horizontal integration and viral
marketing
Multiplatform texts add to the possibilities
for business to get involved in horizontal
integration as websites can be created by a
marketing team to raise more awareness of the
product. Similarly more outlets for symbiotic
marketing and conventional advertising are
available through advertising placement on
the web and with tie-ins to other companies’
websites. Good promotion will create interest
which may be translated into web chatter and
a process of viral marketing may begin where
the audiences spread the word about the
product and create more interest in the text or
its offshoots.
Audience
In this cross-platform approach, audiences
need to be considered in a number of ways:
• How do the texts create different audience
gratifications?
• What different types of audience activity are
enabled by the range of texts available?
• How do the audiences access the texts? Does
this alter the way they interact with them?
• Are different audiences targeted across the
platforms?
• Are audiences involved in the construction of
texts?
• What type of audience feedback is possible in
the different platforms?
• How are the audience members encouraged to
interact with each other?
Audiences are not all the same; as with any
other media text, the reasons why people
access texts and the way they make use of them
vary. Some texts provide information, others
entertainment and in some cases they are simply
promotional. Most texts will probably offer a
combination of all these elements, but some
parts of a multiplatform text may target specific
audience groups with particular gratification
needs.
Institution as audience/
audience as institution
Some multiplatform texts include material
constructed by audience members (UGC or
User Generated Content). This leads to an
interesting debate on the way new media are
being used by audiences, and the position of
traditional media institutions in all this. Debates
are already underway with some commentators
seeing e-media as having a democratising
effect where audiences have some control over
media production and, therefore, the large media
industries have less. You may want to consider
how much control you feel audiences may or may
not have. Given the fact that these are early days
in multiplatform media, there are no ‘right’ ways
to think about this. You should evaluate the texts
you access and consider these issues for yourself.
For example: audiences have always been
able to communicate with newspapers. For
many years The Sun has taken letters from
readers and the audience’s responses and
opinions have been printed in ‘letters to the
editor’ features. However, with the older
technologies this communication from and
between readers was slow. The Sun online
offers readers the chance to comment on a
story immediately. The readers’ comments are
published online below the story itself or in
forums which the paper sets up to encourage
discussion and debate. Audiences find it easy
to interact with the paper and each other in
this way and the newspaper is able quickly to
judge audience responses to a particular story
or issue.
MM
Genre, narrative and ideology
Each individual product within a
multiplatform text can be analysed for the way
it follows or subverts genre conventions, how
representations are created and used, how
narrative is used to engage the audience and
the ideological perspectives it communicates. It
is worth thinking about how the combination of
individual texts creates larger narratives and how
the repetition of representations and ideologies
across texts and platforms acts to reinforce and
naturalise certain ideas.
Ongoing and future debates
The rise in e-media and other technologies
has led to questions about how we define what
a media text is. Traditionally, a media text is
considered to be a text that is created by a media
institution and distributed to a wide audience
using broadcast or print technologies. In the
past the production of media texts needed the
support of media industries as accessing the
technologies required to create and distribute
it to a large audience relied on huge financial
backing. In the modern media age you are able to
create media texts which can be distributed to a
wide audience using e-media technologies. Using
this definition, your Facebook or MySpace page
could be defined as a media text. Social network
sites, Twitter, YouTube videos, blogs, podcasts
etc. are used both by individuals and institutions
to communicate to a potentially large audience.
Audiences can read about a current news story
in a mass media online ‘publication’ such as the
Guardian online or Sky News, but they can
also read a blog on the same topic and watch
videos from different sources, both amateur and
professional, which provide different perspectives
on the story.
Currently the impact of all these media sources
is being researched and analysed. Traditional
media industries are working hard to integrate
e-media into their business models and more
and more people are involved online in either
creating media texts or accessing non-traditional
types of media. The long term impact is still to be
seen. For example:
• there is currently talk of some of the major
media groups creating subscription type
services which will act as ‘channels’ on the web,
similar to those on television
• YouTube and other e-media facilities have
been credited with generating and maintaining
high interest in the 2008 American election as
interested audience members found they could
access more information about candidates and
debates than through traditional media sources
• print-based newspapers are losing readers to
free internet news providers which is altering
the way newspapers do business; some analysts
think that newspapers will soon be a dying
format
• television broadcasters are investing in On
Demand technology as television audiences no
longer watch scheduled television in the way
they did just a few years ago.
This all makes it a very interesting time for
students of the media and your cross-platform
case study will enable you to look closely at the
way the modern media is responding to these
changes. You will need to consider for yourself
whether you feel these changes are positive
or negative. One thing is for sure, the days of
thinking about a text as an individual cultural
artefact are passing, and an understanding of
the cross-platform nature of the media is now
essential.
Steph Hendry is a Lecturer in Media Studies at Runshaw
College, Lancashire. She is a Senior Examiner, freelance
writer and trainer.
13
MM
Zombies in the Big Brother house?
Who are the mindless undead and
who are the housemates? And why is
Davina eating one of the contestants?
James Rose investigates Charlie
Brooker’s satirical take on Reality
Television, Dead Set.
MM
Written by regular Guardian columnist Charlie
Brooker, Dead Set is a five-part horror serial aired
over consecutive nights on E4 (the last episode
being broadcast on Halloween) during 2008.
Set in contemporary Britain, the narrative
concerns a zombie invasion which traps the
housemates of Big Brother and some of the
production crew in the Big Brother house. As
a secure location – high perimeter fence, barbed
wire and CCTV monitoring – the house offers the
characters relative safety from the cannibalistic
undead. But, as with all zombie narratives,
arguments break out and the lack of trust soon
allows the undead the opportunity to break in
and devour those who cross their path.
Unsurprisingly, Brooker is a self-confessed
zombie fanatic. Such is the extent of this that
Dead Set functions like a feature-length film (a
quality enhanced by the high production values)
and features all the prerequisite moments from
zombie cinema – mainly the undead getting
their heads either shot or smashed open in
grotesquely gory detail. Integrated into this are
Brooker’s signature sense of satirical humour
and a series of verbal and visual homages to
the grandfather of zombie cinema, George A.
Romero.
George A. Romero
Born in 1940 in the Bronx, New York City,
George Andrew Romero is the director of the
seminal Night of the Living Dead (1968). As the
keystone film of modern horror cinema, Night of
the Living Dead defined the parameters for what
the horror film could both be and do in terms of
entertainment and critical content. The film was
a success upon its initial release and its sustained
popularity with audiences and critics would
encourage Romero to make a sequel, Dawn of
the Dead (1978) as well as three other Dead films
(Day of the Dead [1985], Land of the Dead [2005]
and Diary of the Dead [2007]). Whilst the amount
of explicit gore increased with each film, so too
did the social and political subtexts creating a
small body of work that positions Romero as one
of the most influential and critically respected
directors of contemporary American cinema.
As groundbreaking as Night of the Living
Dead was in terms of content, Romero also
defined the narrative template, tropes and
mythology for zombie films for subsequent
generations of film-makers. For some reason
the dead are returning to life. They appear as
shambling beings whose sole desire is the pursuit
of warm flesh. Their vast numbers make escape
impossible. Being already dead, the zombie is
difficult to kill, the only way being to destroy their
brain. Whilst the number of zombies increases,
the few remaining survivors gather together
and barricade themselves in what they believe
will be a secure location. As the zombies gather
outside, the survivors soon begin to bicker and
argue, becoming just as much a threat to each
other as the undead. Romero usually concluded
his films with a depressing stalemate in which
the zombies break into the fortified space
and consume most of the survivors. Those that
survive barely escape and end the film running
from the undead in a desperate attempt to find
somewhere safe.
Romero’s template is basically a siege
narrative: trapped within a claustrophobic
environment, the disparate characters provide
the opportunity for social critique to take
place, an element that effectively turns the
small group of survivors into a microcosm
of contemporary society. Throughout the
Dead films Romero has commented upon
feminism, racism, the role of the family and,
more recently, the War on Terror and the
questionable role the media plays in our
understanding of global events.
The (dead) set
Charlie Brooker’s Dead Set (2008) takes
the generic template defined by Romero and
applies it to what is becoming a British televisual
institution, Big Brother. An Eviction Night
broadcast is interrupted by a national emergency
transmission – the dead are coming back to life
and are attacking and eating the living. As the
population struggles to defend itself against
the undead, the Big Brother contestants are
oblivious to the events that are taking place
outside their secure and protected ‘home’. As
the series unfolds, the reality of the situation is
revealed to the contestants through Kelly (Jamie
Winstone), the production company’s runner
who has managed to survive and has gained
access to the house. Not quite believing her,
one of the contestants unwittingly lets a zombie
into the house which then bites one of the
contestants, Angel (Chizzy Akudolu). From there
on the already fraying relationships amongst
the housemates are put under further pressure
as they argue and bicker their way through the
increasingly apocalyptic situation.
15
MM
Brooker takes advantage of this scenario and
gleefully delves into the gory potential zombies
offer as characters are wounded, shot dead or
eaten alive, while others have their throats torn
out or have their heads crushed, repeatedly
stabbed or chopped off in brutal and bloody
detail. While these images are shocking, they are
balanced by the critical and satirical potential
the scenario also offers. As a consequence,
Dead Set can be viewed as a well-written,
violent and bloody satire on reality television
and the voyeuristic public that validates it.
Satire
Big Brother’s central premise is to lock a group
of strangers in a confined space and watch their
lives unfold. Without the distractions of work,
television and computers, the contestants are
forced into conversation. Under such pressures
arguments quickly develop. It is not difficult to
see the connection Brooker makes between Big
Brother and Romero’s zombie film template: a
group of strangers trapped in an enclosed space
turn on each other instead of working together
to survive.
To amplify this quality, Brooker populates
his Big Brother house with a collection of
stereotypical contestants: Joplin (Kevin Eldon),
the middle-aged intellectual, Pippa (Kathleen
McDermott), a young woman who does not
know whether toes have bones in them or
not, the handsome Northerner Mark (Warren
Brown) who is, predictably, sleeping with his
female counterpart, the beautiful Veronica
(Beth Cordingly), loud-mouthed Angel and the
transvestite Grayson (Raj Ghatak). Finally there
is Space (Adam Deacon), a young South London
geezer. The inevitability of the arguments (and
their inevitable content) is already implied in
these brief descriptions: the intellectual will
be astounded by the others’ stupidity, and
homophobia and racism will more than likely
manifest itself.
Thrown into the Big Brother house alongside
the bickering contestants are two of the
programme’s staff, Kelly and Patrick (Andy
Nyman), and an extended cameo by Davina
McCall. Whilst McCall simply plays herself, the
fictional characters are given specific roles to
play in the unfolding attempt to survive: Kelly is
level-headed and so not only emerges as the
leader of the group but also acts as the voice
of reason throughout whilst Patrick is ruthless,
selfish and arrogant. His approach to leadership
is simply to use the others to save himself while
Kelly strives to save the group as much as herself.
As the narrative unfolds, Brooker satirises Big
Brother and the stereotypes it has seemingly
generated for itself: the contestants, in their
thirst for fame, mistakenly interpret the screams
of the dying public as screams of adoration;
Davina, the mouthpiece for the show, has her
throat torn out, successfully silencing her. When
Kelly has finally convinced the contestants of the
zombie outbreak, they go up onto the house
roof and look at the carnage: all Veronica can
manage is ‘Does this mean we are not on telly
anymore?’ Later, when Kelly, Mark and Space go
out of the compound to look for medicine and
supplies, Mark finds a copy of Heat magazine:
No way! Check it out! I’m on the cover!
His excitement is soon quelled when he reads
the strap lines:
Marky: The Truth. Rubbish in bed, not as
funny as he thinks and his mates don’t even
like him
While Mark complains about these apparent
lies, Space is being confronted by two policemen
who are trying to arrest him for looting.
Whilst pointing their guns at him one of them
recognises him and tells him ‘do you know you’re
shorter in real life?’. The allure of celebrity,
it would seem, can even endure a zombie
apocalypse.
MM
While it would seem that Brooker is being
critical of Big Brother and its contestants, he
also inverts the criticism and uses the characters’
stereotypes to aid in the survival plan: Grayson
reveals himself to be a trained charge-nurse,
effectively acting as the doctor for those that
are injured, Space continually uses his common
sense to help work out a survival plan and Mark,
the typical white male hero, takes up a gun and
defends his fellow contestants. It would seem, if
they just stopped arguing, they would actually
have a strong chance of surviving this apocalypse.
Reality television
Given Dead Set is based upon the current
trend of reality television, it is not surprising
that Brooker has invested his narrative with an
immense sense of realism. The most obvious
manifestation of the real is the appearance of
Davina McCall and the presence of previous
Big Brother contestants (including Eugene Sully,
Kinga Karolczak, Ziggy Lichman, Brian Belo and
Makosi Musambasi). This use of recognisable,
real-world elements extended into the filming
itself: Brooker has stated that ‘we filmed outside
the [Big Brother] house on the night Belinda was
evicted…So before she came out, we ‘evicted’
a member of our cast.’ Although the exterior of
the house and the crowds that gather outside
it were real, the interiors were not. As Brooker
has commented, this was partly because the
house was being fitted for Big Brother 9 and
partly because the House itself needed to
be bigger in order to fit the production crew
inside whilst filming. Regardless of this shift
from reality to the Dead Set production set,
the use of recognisable people and exterior
locations creates an intertextual link between
the real Big Brother and Dead Set’s fictional
counterpart, creating a heightened sense of
verisimilitude for the series.
While most zombie films are preoccupied with
depicting violence, gore and cannibalistic acts
to a shocking degree, Brooker’s sense of realism
lends itself to both the violent and mundane
aspects of survival: having killed a zombie by
smashing open its head with a fire extinguisher,
Kelly proceeds to move the body out of the Big
Brother house and returns with a dustpan and
brush so she can clean up the remaining bits of
pulped brain and shattered skull. It is a bizarre
moment, functioning as if Kelly is merely cleaning
up an accidentally spilt glass of wine before it
stains the carpet, a quality emphasised by the
fact that they are in the Big Brother house, that
parody of the domestic living space. Other violent
instances occur, most notably when Veronica
repeatedly stabs the undead Grayson in the head;
the rage with which she does this expresses
the anger she felt for him when he was alive.
Contrasting these moments of sheer brutality
are the mundane instances typified by the scene
in which Patrick, trapped in an ante-room by
the zombified Davina, uses a wastepaper basket
as a toilet. Like Kelly cleaning up the splattered
brains, this is another moment of the domestic
intruding into the horror of the situation. Later
on, as the series draws to a close, it is Patrick’s
cynical sense of reality that allows him to devise
an escape plan, one which involves butchering
17
MM
the bodies of the dead to feed to the zombie
horde. In a brief and graphic scene, Patrick
carves away at the bodies of Angel and Grayson,
slicing away lumps of flesh and dropping them
into a bucket and so merging the sometimes
extreme needs of survival with barbarity. Such
a combination is a familiar trope within zombie
cinema, its occurrence raising questions about
the characters and their ethics, suggesting
that in order to survive extreme situations
one has to take extreme action.
The dead (set)
Brooker ends Dead Set in true Romero
fashion: the zombies break into the compound
through the stupidity of one of the group and
quickly attack the contestants. Patrick, in typical
fashion, screams offensive abuse at the zombies
as they rip open his stomach and tear out his
intestines. Mark, Pippa, Veronica and Space all
end up bitten. Only Kelly remains unharmed and
locked in the relative safety of the Diary Room.
In a last attempt to escape, Kelly charges out and
into the mass of zombies. The series concludes
with all the contestants as zombies. Inside, Kelly,
her eyes blank with infection, stares blankly
up at one of the CCTV cameras. Her image
is transmitted to all the other televisions
in the complex, attracting the attention of
the other zombies. They stumble over to the
screens and stare at Kelly. The closing image is
that of zombies watching zombies, the dead
watching the dead. The potential meaning of
this final image is hardly subtle: the lifeless,
Who is Charlie Brooker?
Born on 3rd March 1971, Charlie Brooker
is well-established writer, columnist and
broadcaster. He is known for his sarcastic and
satirical humour, one that is skewered with
expletives and a healthy amount of pessimism.
Alongside his work as a writer he is also one
of the four creative directors of Zeppotron,
a production company that specialises in
comedy programmes (including 8 Out of
10 Cats, Nathan Barley, The Law of the
Playground and Dead Set). His work regularly
appears in the Guardian Guide, where he
writes the Screen Burn column, a one-page
tirade in which Brooker critiques the past or
forthcoming week’s television. Before writing
Dead Set, Brooker worked on various comedy
programmes including Chris Morris’s Brass Eye
and Nathan Barley.
soulless zombies transfixed by the television
are us. We, the viewing public, are the zombies
who sit mesmerised in front of our television sets
every night, quietly and passively transfixed by
the broadcast image. As one of the characters
in Romero’s Dawn of the Dead says as he looks
down at the zombie masses:
They are us, that’s all.
James Rose is a freelance writer in Film and Media Studies,
specialising in Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Follow it up
Dead Set website: http://www.e4/deadset/
Brooker, Charlie: Screen Burn (Faber and Faber,
2004)
Brooker, Charlie: Dawn of the Dumb:
Dispatches from the Idiotic Frontline (Faber and
Faber, 2007)
Editor’s note
Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe series, screened
on BBC3 and later repeated on BBC2, are
amongst the best critiques of TV culture you will
ever see. As one blogger comments:
I’d do away with Media Studies altogether.
Screenwipe may not cover the entire
curriculum – but it tells you everything you
need to know.
Andrew Goldie, London
Images from Dead Set courtesy of C4 extra.net press site.
free culture:
e-media comes of age
The internet was
one of the most
important innovations
of the 20th century,
and now in the 21st
century it will take
interactivity to new
levels. Forget about
TV on-demand and
MSN – it’s UGC, blogs
and wikis that the
internet was made
for…
Just a glorified TV
channel?
of information were also
the producers of that
information. On social
In 1999, Sir Tim Bernersnetworking sites, on YouTube
Lee, the inventor of the
World Wide Web looked back and other sites which rely on
UGC and on wikis this vision
on the previous decade and
is finally coming true. Here,
complained:
the divide between institution
I wanted the Web to be
and audience is slowly being
what I call an interactive
broken down.
space where everybody
can edit. And I started
saying ‘interactive,’
and then I read in the
media that the Web was
great because it was
‘interactive,’ meaning
you could click. This was
not what I meant by
interactivity.
An encyclopaedia,
not an experiment in
democracy
Of all the wikis, Wikipedia
is the best known, but the
ideas behind it are true
for all wikis. James Wales,
the founder of Wikipedia,
often emphasises that it is
‘an encyclopaedia, not an
Watching re-runs of TV
experiment in democracy’.
programmes, downloading
films and music, reading news Wikipedia may, however,
represent a change in the
and looking up information
way culture is produced and
on static websites is only the
accessed.
start of e-media’s journey.
Wikipedia aims to:
What Berners-Lee really
create and distribute
wanted was the internet
a multilingual free
to be the place where
encyclopaedia of the
readers were also writers
highest possible quality
and where the consumers
to every single person on
the planet in their own
language.
Its content is written
and edited entirely by
volunteers, working
collaboratively. Therefore
there are no ‘experts’ and
no centralised control over
what is published in the
encyclopaedia. The role of the
institutional gatekeeper,
who can privilege some
knowledge, and some points
of view – the role that has
typically worked in favour of
the wealthy and thus aided
hegemony – may finally be
open to challenge.
Of course, this may just
mean that another set of
viewpoints is privileged
instead – the institution
becomes dominated by
young techy types:
One of the running jokes
is that there are better
articles on Pokémon
than on certain kinds of
science.
Alex Schenck, 19, volunteer
site administrator, New
York Times, 2006
Vandalism and
misinformation
Robbie Williams eats
hamsters; Beckham is a
Chinese goalkeeper from
the 18th century. One of the
downsides of open editing
is the regular vandalism or
deliberate misinformation
that occurs. Above are just
two recent instances of
vandalism. In fact some
people see it as the pleasure
of the site regularly to amend
entries. More amusing
changes can be found in
Chittenden’s article (Sunday
Times, 2006). Such ‘vandalism’
is usually discovered and
changed within a few hours.
As wikis retain a copy of all
previous versions, reverting
or rolling back to a previous,
un-‘vandalised’ entry is
relatively straightforward.
Is Wikipedia valid?
Does the institution lose its
credibility if it has amateurs
rather than experts producing
it? In her article ‘The Neutrality
of this Article is Disputed
– Inside Wikimania 2006’
(August 2006), Katherine
Mangu-Ward quotes
Weinberger as saying:
If you open up a copy
of Britannica you
are right to believe
that what you read is
credible. Something
gets credibility simply
by being in Britannica,
though it is not
necessarily true. If you
open up Wikipedia
randomly, what you see
is not credible. Simply
being there doesn’t
give you some sort of
probabilistic credibility.
However, Weinberger
continues by suggesting
that because ‘Wikipedia
is not shy about putting
up notices about its own
fallibility’ it paradoxically
becomes more credible. The
credibility of the institution
19
lies in its acceptance that not
all knowledge is necessarily
true, and in the reduction of
barriers between audience
and institution.
Free culture
The ‘free culture’
movement seeks to distribute
knowledge more freely and
widely, and overlaps with
wikis’ anti-centralisation
ethos wherein we can all be
experts. In a small way, all
UGC is part of this. The home
videos that make it onto the
news privilege proximity
and immediacy over skill
and professionalism in
recording news images, even
though the news providers
still act as gatekeepers and
controllers.
Blogs are another aspect of
‘free culture’ or ‘open source’
culture. While corporations,
political campaigns and
other formal institutions have
begun using these tools to
distribute information, many
blogs are used by individuals
for personal expression,
political organising, and
socialising. Blogs allow other
voices to be widely heard and
even to become as influential
as those of the ‘experts.’ In
the recent US election, noncorporate blogs played an
increasingly important role in
shaping mainstream public
opinion.
20
On the downside,
whatever its potential for a
revolutionary change in the
distribution of, and access to,
cultural capital, wikis are still
dominated by those with
established and easy access
to technology – currently
still America, Europe and
parts of Asia, and often the
people within those societies
for whom education and
technology is most easily
available. Jimmy Wales,
the founder of Wikipedia,
suggests:
Wikipedia versions are
currently available for
only 250 of the world’s
7,000 languages.
Establishing Wikipedias
in more African
languages will enable
speakers of those
languages to more
actively participate in
the global exchange of
knowledge. Additionally,
it may, in a small way,
help to preserve those
languages.
Connecting us to the
outside
Imagine a world in which
every single person on
the planet is given free
access to the sum of all
human knowledge. That’s
what we’re doing.
Wales, 2004 interview
While this is likely
to perpetuate existing
privileges and biases, there
is certainly a shift in terms
of the generational bias,
with knowledge lying in
the hands of the younger
generation, and increasingly
accessible to those for
whom the great libraries and
built infrastructure are not
available, or are culturally
unapproachable. Noam
Cohen, writing in The New
York Times, says:
In Egypt, Wikipedia is
more than a hobby.
Cohen quotes Ahmad
Belal, a 23-year-old medical
student who came from Cairo
to attend the ‘Wikimania’
conference, saying:
For Egyptians the visa
procedure for any country
is very difficult. You need
a visa to visit any country
in the world. Facebook
and Wikipedia connect us
to the outside.
So, more than just a dodgy,
second-rate encyclopaedia,
Wikipedia could be the first
step on the long road to
equality and freedom.
Sara Mills teaches Media at
Helston Community College,
Cornwall and is an AQA
examiner.
References
Follow it up
Katherine Mangu-Ward’s
web article ‘The Neutrality
of this Article is Disputed
– Inside Wikimania 2006’
(August 2006. See: http://
www.reason.com/news/
show/36969.html)
Bourdieu’s ideas of cultural
capital; and issues around
‘free culture’ and ‘open
source culture.’ Not sure
what these are? Look in
Wikipedia!
Noam Cohen’s article in The
New York Times, ‘In Egypt,
a Thirst for Technology and
Progress’ (July 2008. See:
http://www.nytimes.
com/ 2008/07/21/
business/media/21link.
html)
Maurice Chittenden’s The
Sunday Times article
‘Comedy of errors hits
the world of Wikipedia’
(February 2006. See: http://
www.timesonline.
co.uk/tol/news/uk/
article730025.ece)
Robert Levine’s article
in The New York Times
‘The Many Voices of
Wikipedia, Heard in One
Place’ (August 2006. See:
http://www.nytimes.
com/2006/08/07/
technology/07wiki.html)
Cartoon: © Neil Paddison, 2009.
MM
Tiny budget, unknown cast, no
Americans – and massive critical,
commercial and Oscar success.
Austin McHale explains how
Slumdog Millionaire thrived on its
freedom from Hollywood.
London. February. Slumdog Millionaire has
just swooped through the grey slush of the West
End in a blaze of colour and sound to scoop
seven BAFTA awards, including Best Film and Best
Director and an extraordinary eight Oscars. Yet
this film does not fit the template of Hollywood
success. There are no American accents, few
special effects and no big stars. It is the antithesis
of glamour – a climactic sequence involves the
hero, a Mumbai slum kid, diving through a cesspit
aand emerging covered in very realistic excrement
(i
(in fact peanut butter and chocolate), all to get
a signed photograph of a Bollywood actor. Yet
it has achieved the Holy Grail of cinema – made
cheaply, it appeals to many different audiences,
has become a critical and popular success and is
set to make huge profits. How has a low budget
British film reconciled these opposites without
selling its soul? Perhaps our old friend MIGRAIN,
inducer of headaches to generations of Media
Students, can offer us a way in.
Media language
The media language of the film is indicated in
the poster, a kaleidoscope of energy and colour.
Against an impressionistic cityscape of blurred
neon lighting, a boy and a girl burst through the
darkness, both in motion but facing opposite
ways. Anxiety but also hope is clear in their tense
expressions. The lettering of the title is ragged,
uneven, lowercase, progressing from the red of
danger to the yellow of hope. In the foreground
is the familiar graphic design of a question from
the quiz show Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
doubling as the tag line, ‘What does it take to find
a lost love?’. The theme and narrative are outlined,
the fragmented urban, visual style powerfully
established.
The cinematography of the film is unusual for
an Oscar contender. The Mumbai street scenes
are filmed with a kinetic energy and a gritty
realism which recalls documentary rather than
Hollywood – or Bollywood – studio glamour.
21
MM
MM
This look is achieved through the use of small,
very manoeuvrable digital video cameras
and on occasion the stuttering images of still
cameras at 11 frames per second, far slower
than normal film camera speed. This key artistic
decision was to some extent forced on the film
crew. The influence of mainstream Indian cinema
is so pervasive in Mumbai that filming in the
slums with traditional large cameras would have
encouraged stylised Bollywood moves rather
than realistic behaviour, so the film-makers
had to disguise themselves as tourists and film
unobserved to achieve the naturalism that they
wanted.
stage, because Mumbai streets are so loud.
However, to Danny Boyle Mumbai street sounds
were essential signifiers of the slums, so
the diegetic sounds stayed. The non-diegetic
musical score was just as important, aiming at
a fusion of styles to engage Western as well
as Indian audiences. The basic soundtrack was
composed by the famous Bollywood musician
A.R. Rahman, but it was overlaid by an urban
Hip-Hop and Rap track prominently featuring
the British Sri-Lankan MIA, reflecting the eclectic
‘masala’ mixture both of Mumbai and of
Western cities.
Sound – non-Bollywood style
Institutionally Slumdog Millionaire is a
fascinating case study. It was made for 13 million
dollars, a tiny sum compared with the 167
million dollars of Oscar rival The Curious Case of
Benjamin Button, largely raised via the French
and British production companies Pathé and
Film4. For a film with an almost entirely Indian
cast and no stars apart from the Bollywood
Indian actor Anil Kapoor, even this budget
would have been a challenge to raise without
Boyle’s track record as the director of a series of
low budget, profitable and critically successful
films such as Trainspotting, 28 Days Later and
Millions. Casting threw up an unusual problem.
Boyle was committed to casting locally, but every
actor with Bollywood ambitions was implausibly
‘buff’ for a slumdog, having worked out every
day in the approved Bollywood manner. Boyle
discussed this with his 17-year-old daughter
one evening and received the following piece
of succinct advice, ‘If you want a loser, have a
look at Skins!’ Hence the inspired casting of Dev
Patel, who can project vulnerability as well as
determination, and whose slow, shy smile is one
of the delights of the film.
Slumdog Millionaire, like all Danny Boyle’s
films, is difficult to pigeonhole in generic terms.
It is a hybrid of gritty realism and aspiration, of
drama documentary and love story. ‘Feelgood’,
with its connotations of cliché and stereotype, is
a description understandably resisted by Boyle,
but despite the poverty, the child torture and the
prostitution, it is indisputably an uplifting film.
Another significant aspect of media language
is sound, 70% of the impact of a film according to
director Danny Boyle. As with visual language,
creative decisions in this area involved a radical
departure from the Bollywood norm. Bollywood
films are made largely on sound stages, with
music and ambient noise dubbed on at a later
Institutional perspectives
23
MM
Genre connections
Slumdog Millionaire’s representation of
Mumbai is starkly different from two familiar
though opposite stereotypes. One is the
glamorous dreamworld of Bollywood, in which
no-one is poor (for long, at least) and in which
characters more likely to be seen dancing on
a Swiss mountain or a Scottish glen than in a
Mumbai railway station. The other is the English
tabloid newspaper nightmare of teeming,
unsanitary ghettoes populated by passive
recipients of Western charity, where the only
growth industries are begging, prostitution and
terrorism. By contrast the slumdogs of the film
are resourceful, energetic and independent
citizens of one of the world’s great cities – 20
million and growing. This positive ideology,
that poverty and apathy can be conquered by
communal celebration, is exemplified in the film’s
final sequence. As the credits roll, Dev Patel and
co-star Frieda Pinto are joined by what appears
to be the whole of Mumbai in an exuberant
dance number. The location is the city’s main
railway station, the Chapatri Shivaji Terminus,
host to a thriving sub-culture of recent rural
immigrants, the main artery of Mumbai. It was
also one of the sites of a murderous terrorist
attack last November which made headlines
internationally. Despite the film sequence being
shot many months before, it is being seen in India
as a positive counterbalance to the images of a
burning, blood-soaked Mumbai which led the TV
news bulletins worldwide.
Audience and ideology
This iconic sequence appeals to many different
audiences. It can be seen as the film’s one
major concession to Bollywood, an explosion
of sound and spectacle which is likely to attract
a mainstream Indian audience. The energy of
the youthful dancers, the frequent close-ups of
the familiar face of Dev Patel and the Hip-Hop/
Bollywood fusion of the soundtrack will hold
a Western audience, particularly the soughtafter demographic of 16-25 with its high level
of disposable income. Finally the aspirational
ideology, the community’s refusal to be defined
by the squalor of the slums, their commitment
MM
to celebration, growth and change, intersects
with the narrative arc of classic Hollywood
cinema, in which seemingly impossible obstacles
are overcome in order to fulfil a dream. This is
attractive to mainstream Western media outlets.
Narrative structure
This dream, however, is not the traditional
American Dream. Comfort and wealth are
apparently promised by the film’s narrative
structure, cleverly built around the cumulative
questions of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
which, remarkably, all relate to incidents in Jamal
Malik’s (Dev Patel’s) life. However, this apparent
endorsement of a crudely materialist ideology is
skilfully undercut, both by the corruption of Anil
Kapoor’s quizmaster and by Jamal’s motivation
for success, which it would be unfair to reveal.
It can in fact be read as a sly critique of the
system of values in our status-obsessed
society, which prioritises uncontextualised
academic knowledge over the real human
experience acquired painfully by Jamal in the
slums of Mumbai.
Much publicity has recently been given to
more negative views of the film. It has been
accused of poverty porn, implying that the
harsh life of the slums is merely a picturesque
travelogue catering for Western audiences, who
remain distanced from and uninvolved in the
events they see. The slum dwellers, it is said,
are patronised and stereotyped. Most bizarrely,
Slumdog Millionaire is said to be a derogatory
term implying that Mumbai citizens are less than
human, when Danny Boyle’s preferred meaning
is clearly intended to be an echo of ‘underdog’,
evoking connotations of bravery, resilience
and moral justification. To me, these spectacular
misreadings are travesties of the film’s ideological
standpoints. Indeed, cynical observers have seen
them as evidence of a ‘dirty tricks’ campaign,
orchestrated by unscrupulous publicists of rival
films in the run-up to the Oscars. Large amounts
of money have been invested, for example, in the
effects-laden Brangelina vehicle The Curious Case
of Benjamin Button (five years in the making and
13 times the cost of Slumdog Millionaire), and of
course the best short-cut to recouping costs and
making a sizeable profit is via Oscar success. Why
should a cheap British film, entirely shot in India
without one American star, win a competition
devised by Hollywood studios for Hollywood
studios? Perhaps for the same reason that a
Mumbai ‘charwallah’ (teaboy) from the slums
should win a competition devised by the Indian
elite for the Indian elite – to expose prejudice
and celebrate our common humanity. After the
film’s spectacular success at the Oscars, we now
know that the slumdog can become a millionaire
twice over.
Austin McHale is Head of Media Studies at Ellen Wilkinson
School, Ealing.
Images from Slumdog Millionaire courtesy of image.net.
25
MM
MM
the cuckoo’s
redemption
Mark Ramey shows how two
contrasting films exploring themes of
institutional constraint can construct
powerful ideas about freedom and
liberation – and provide a brilliant
comparative case study for Film
Studies FM2.
The FM2 exam in the new Film Studies AS
requires you to compare two film texts linked by
genre and/or theme. The bewildering possibilities
for paired texts means that this could pose
problems for students and teachers. This article
aims to illustrate a possible route towards the
exam by comparing two thematically linked
films: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Forman,
USA, 1975) and The Shawshank Redemption
(Darabont, USA, 1994).
Cinematic narrative is shaped by many forces
but our focus here will be representation, as
the Awarding Body suggests. How then do
these films, despite their different production
contexts, tackle their themes? I will argue that
the dominant theme they both explore is the
quest for personal liberation: liberation of both a
physical and emotional nature.
Ten comparisons and
contrasts
1.
Both films are set in the mid-to-late 20th
century USA: The Shawshank Redemption
starts in 1947 and ends up in 1966, a fact
brilliantly suggested by the changing
posters in Andy’s cell. The film One Flew
Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is set in the early
1970s although Ken Kesey based it on his
experiences as a hospital orderly in the late
1950s.
2.
They both focus on white male
protagonists of approximately 30 years
in age. A contrast can be found here in that
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest has an
Oscar-winning performance from Louise
27
MM
Fletcher (Nurse Ratched) and there are
also minor but important roles for two of
McMurphy’s female friends. The Shawshank
Redemption is wholly male, although the
presence of the Hollywood poster girls is of
interest.
3.
4.
The narratives are largely linear: The
Shawshank Redemption condenses time
over many years through slow dissolves
and montage sequences and does have a
narrated flashback sequence; One Flew Over
the Cuckoo’s Nest depicts an approximate
period of a few months and was shot in a
linear method, scene by scene, explicitly to
maintain its high degree of realism.
They are both Hollywood films – one
studio financed, one an independent.
Jack Nicholson was fast becoming an
international star in 1975 but is the only
‘name’ in what was otherwise a low budget
picture. He worked on a share of the profits
which was a smart move since the film cost
$4.4 million to make but took $112 million at
the box office. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s
Nest’s Hollywood pedigree harks back to
the golden era of Hollywood as the original
screen rights were optioned by screen idol
Kirk Douglas in 1962. He later passed them
on to his son Michael, who co-produced
the film. (Add Catherine Zeta Jones in to
the mix and you have the nearest thing to
contemporary Hollywood royalty.) As for
The Shawshank Redemption, Tim Robbins
and his co-star Morgan Freeman were, and
still are, major stars and the Stephen King
material and $25 million studio-financing
(Columbia) budget ensured a big screen
treatment. Its initial failure at the box office
(barely recouping its budget) has been
subsequently linked to a poor publicity
campaign; a strange title; the apparently
depressing subject matter and, perhaps
most importantly, strong competition from
the likes of Pulp Fiction, Speed and Forrest
Gump.
5.
Both are critical and financial successes:
The Shawshank Redemption was
nominated for seven Academy Awards
including Best Picture and Actor. Despite a
poor performance at the box office it has
become one of the top grossing DVDs of all
time. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest won
five Oscars, including Best Picture, Actor and
Actress and was a storming box office hit.
6.
They are both literary adaptations: The
Shawshank Redemption is based on a
Stephen King short story (‘Rita Hayworth
and Shawshank Redemption’), a $1 screen
adaptation deal with the director and screen
writer Frank Darabont. Darabont later went
on to direct another King prison story, The
Green Mile. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s
Nest is based on Ken Kesey’s eponymous
counter-culture bestseller and directed
by Hollywood new boy, Czech émigré,
Milos Foreman who later went on to direct
Amadeus.
MM
7.
Both films concern the nature and effects
of institutional confinement and both were
filmed in real locations – an abandoned
prison, Mansfield State Reformatory, Ohio
and a practising asylum, Oregon State
Mental Hospital.
10. They both explore the liberating effect of
courageous individuals in their search for
personal freedom: McMurphy and Andy
Defresne change the people they meet.
8.
They both show how corrupt and
corrupting institutional life can be. The
authority figures who officially dominate
the institutions are terrifying depictions of
egotism and hypocrisy.
9.
They both deal with terrible injustice
and the human quest for retribution:
McMurphy is lobotomised but Chief frees
his spirit before freeing himself and literally
running off in to the wilderness. The system
Andy Defresne finds himself imprisoned
within is literally so corrupt and hellish that
he must escape through the metaphorical
and literal reality of Hollywood feminised
fantasy (the poster) and four hundred yards
of human shit (the sewer).
A first point of deeper comparison and
contrast should be with our two main characters:
Andy Defresne in The Shawshank Redemption
and McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s
Nest. Andy is cool, methodical and enigmatic;
a key factor in the casting of Tim Robbins.
McMurphy is conversely impish and emotive; a
gremlin in Nurse Ratchet’s tightly wound bun.
Andy is tidy, polite and measured. McMurphy
is surly, scruffy and impulsive. Andy is ‘rational
man’; McMurphy is ‘the beast’. Andy moulds chess
pieces from stones he finds in the prison yard;
McMurphy carries a pack of pornographic cards
and gambles; Andy is a middle-class banker;
McMurphy a working-class rebel. Andy is the
gunpowder; McMurphy the match. Andy made
thousands of dollars and was avenged. Murphy
The central characters
stumbles into a psychiatric institution and they
literally cut his brains out.
A need for friendship, an understanding
of humanity and defiance in the face of
injustice is what fundamentally links these
two men despite their different characteristics
and backgrounds. Perhaps even their choice
of friends is significant – the Chief and Red are
both outcasts within racially-charged systems
and yet both are redeemed by the sacrifice of
their friends. Red learns to hope again and Chief
discovers the inner strength he had lost.
These films also share key plot points which
I sum up as: institutions; epiphany; secrets;
death; escape.
Institutions
Both films very swiftly depict their respective
institutions as corrupt and corrupting.
Shawshank is a cramped, violent place: ‘the
sisters’ (a homosexual gang) systematically beat
and rape Andy and old prisoners bet on the
survival rate of new prisoners. One new guy is
29
MM
secret revelation is the realisation that Chief isn’t
mute but also a smart guy ‘playing the system’.
McMurphy has an ally and a friend and, it seems,
the institution can be beaten.
Death
so badly beaten by a prison guard that he later
dies. Shawshank is brutalising. The asylum that
McMurphy finds himself in is equally brutalising
but in a more subtle way. Nurse Ratched is as
much a tyrant as Warden Norton but she thinks
she is caring. As for the male guards, whether in a
hospital or a prison, they are bullies at best.
Epiphany
The human spirit can not be quashed. We are
irrepressible. Yes, we can be terrifying and bestial,
but we also have the ability to love and hope and
make sacrifices. And it is in part our love which
empowers us to seek liberation. Murphy’s
sacrifice gives Chief the energy to break out of
the mental institution. And what better way to
celebrate love in a loveless place than with music:
Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro in prison; the
riot of sex, drugs and rock and roll in the asylum.
Both scenes illustrate the fulfilment that selfless
sacrifice can give to others. As the beautiful opera
music in The Shawshank Redemption echoes
out over the prison Tannoy system and transfixes
its brutalised occupants, Morgan Freeman’s
narration encompasses the essence of the film
and presents us with an obvious link to One Flew
Over the Cuckoo’s Nest:
It was like some beautiful bird flapped
into our drab little cage and made the
walls dissolve away. And for the briefest of
moments every last man at Shawshank felt
free.
Secrets (spoiler alert!)
Two very well disguised plot lines deliver
wicked twists. Firstly we discover that in The
Shawshank Redemption Andy has been
concealing his escape tunnel behind a variety
of posters of cinematic starlets: Rita Hayworth
(40s); Marilyn Monroe (50s); Raquel Welch (60s).
Further twists show us how meticulously Andy
has planned his escape and his retribution – such
as concealing his ‘rock hammer’ in the Bible: the
irony of ‘salvation lying within’ is not lost on the
religious hypocrite Warden Norton.
In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest the
In one film we have a murder which is a gift
of calculated love and in the other a murder
which is a judgement, coldly orchestrated.
In The Shawshank Redemption we see a
new prisoner accidentally beaten to death by
the guards, but the assassination of Andy’s
surrogate-son, Tommy, at the Warden’s request,
is particularly chilling. This is not just because it
is a cold murder of an innocent man but rather
because it is undertaken to further hinder Andy’s
claim of wrongful imprisonment. That the warden
takes his own life is fitting but his suicide lacks
the emotional intensity of poor Billy’s in One
Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Although Billy kills
himself one can argue that it was murder by the
cruel Nurse Ratched as it was she who had turned
his sexual triumph into guilt-ridden disaster.
Indeed McMurphy’s eventual insight into Nurse
Ratched’s icy, controlling nature leads him to
attack her. For this act, he is lobotomised; when
Chief murders him it is an act of liberation, not
destruction – ‘Let’s go!’ he whispers clamping the
pillow to McMurphy’s blank face.
Freedom
Both films deal with the courage to break out
and the idea that rule breaking is not always a
bad thing. In both films metaphoric liberation
goes beyond its mere physicality: a tropical
paradise in The Shawshank Redemption or
the dark wilderness in One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest. These are merely the ‘escape film
money shots’ and irrelevant to the spectacle
and wonder of the emotional escape. Chief is a
totemic representative of a persecuted race; he
vanishes into the existential dark leaving only
McMurphy truly free. Andy, on the other hand,
defeats an entire punitive system; reveals its
abject hypocrisy; its inhumanity and corruption
and finds freedom in life and love. One can’t help
feeling that the Chief will have a lonely life even
after escaping the institution within which he
had elected to play mute. And of course that’s
the anthem of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
– you too can escape. If the lunatics have really
taken over the asylum, then get out!
The Shawshank Redemption has a redemptive
side for all of us – the tag line for the publicity is
revealing:
Fear can hold you prisoner – hope can set you
free.
It is no wonder Christians have read so much
into it. The Shawshank Redemption is about faith
and endurance and friendship. It is a film imbued
with hope. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is
about revolution and fear. In The Shawshank
Redemption, Andy’s quiet, noble humanity saves
him and damns the system. In the One Flew
Over the Cuckoo’s Nest the system triumphs and
disruptive, critical McMurphy pays with his head.
Only the Chief, of all the ward’s inmates, finds
McMurphy’s unintentional martyrdom energising
enough to make a run for it. Only the Chief
really changes – the system and its hierarchy
remain intact. The hope that The Shawshank
Redemption gives us is that systems can change
too – individuals can change the world as well as
themselves. Perhaps it is salutary to recall Red’s
description of Andy which could just as easily
apply to Chief:
He strolled like a man with an invisible coat
to shield him.
That’s the point: Chief and Andy were buried
deep down and that was what kept them safe.
When they finally escape their respective systems
they have both achieved something different
to protect them: Chief his ancestral power and
Andy both revenge and his dream of reaching
the memory-erasing Pacific coast. McMurphy, on
the other hand, had too much life, he was just too
grounded, to truly fly over the cuckoo’s nest.
Mark Ramey teaches Media Studies at Collyers College,
West Sussex.
Follow it up
Do you agree with this reading of One
Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest as an essentially
pessimistic film with little hope for change?
What other interpretations might you make of
McMurphy’s death and Chief’s escape?
Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption, d.
Frank Darabont (1994) Credit: Castle Rock Entertainment/The Kobal
Collection/Weinstein, Michael
Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, d. Milos Forman
(1975) Credit: United Artists/Fantasy Films / The Kobal Collection
the freedom trap
What kind of teaching
and learning would
you want from your
university course?
Will you thrive on
deadlines, guidance
and boundaries?
Or complete
independence?
Owen Davey
reflects ruefully on
his undergraduate
experiences on a
Digital Screen Arts
degree course, and
wonders whether
creative freedom is
really preferable to a
coherent disciplined
course structure.
I was always an arrogant
child to teach. With my
pencil, I would stab at
the slightest glimpse of
vulnerability in a teacher’s
armour; a metaphor, of
course, for the initial test of
teacher character: response
to pencillessness.
Over the following year
spent ‘under’ them, teachers
who had earned my
respect were subjected to
a near-subconscious crossexamination and resulting
manipulation which,
thanks to my routinely (and
unjustly awarded) high
grades, eventually granted
me classroom immunity.
School was a system in
which teachers were
players, like some incredibly
mundane and complicated
RP game:
For some reason, you
must meet with a
wizard outside the
Science Block before
the lesson’s end. Should
you:
a) Use your Grade Skill
to charm a corridor-pass
from Mrs Smith?
b) Use your Feign Skill
to gain permission to
see the nurse?
c) Throw your Magic
Conkers to create a
diversion?
Despite my inconsistent
attitude towards teachers
and game-like pleasures
of responsibility-dodging
within school’s strict
boundaries, my early
academic career was spent
vocally yearning – nay,
demanding – my right to
curricular freedom and the
respect and responsibility
that comes with it. So here
I am, nearing the end of a
‘self-directed’ and examless
three-year degree at the
Farnham University for the
Creative Arts (note that
in the official acronym,
‘Farnham’ comes last). I have
been granted the demands
of my schoolboy self, and
have lived thus far to tell
the tale. But has creative
and academic freedom
been all I anticipated?
I had experienced some
freedom during 6th form,
having been lucky to attend
Cambridge’s Long Road
College, an institution that
isn’t afraid to accommodate
the entire spectrum of
student personality and
working practice without
lowering its standards. I was
still fairly arrogant, choosing
when I would attend the
lessons, but I did work hard
at home. The previously
untaught curriculum of
fine art, media, film and
photography that I had
always yearned for was
available via skilled and
committed tutors, if and
when I chose to exploit
it. But forever there in my
mind was a land of milk
and honey, of greener grass
and better prospects; it
was called university, and
it was where I imagined I
would finally begin to make
my name, whatever that
was. Film-maker, I suppose.
And so I scoured
through the UCAS
handbook until finally I
came up with a list dictated
less by practicality than by
name dropping. Institutions
lucky enough to claim even
the most tenuous of links
to a now successful filmmaker made the list. In the
end it became not a list of
universities, as such, but a
list of people with whom
I could associate in my
fantasies. Even if I did not
know or respect their work,
they were people who
had made it, who could
claim to be, by others if not
themselves, film-makers,
regardless of their actual
position in an industry I had
always chosen to ignore.
I came to recognise
this paradoxical clash of
ideals whilst visiting my
UCAS choices. Having been
inspired by the output of
the industry to seek the
title ‘film-maker’, it became
obvious that the industry
itself required a curtailing of
creative freedom. Courses
demanded that you choose
a specific role other than
the blanket film-maker; that
you learn and use certain
techniques and equipment;
and that you prepare
yourself for the tradition
of shop floor entrance in
the faith that three years of
such skills will guarantee
a steady if submissive rise
through the gears. The act
of joining such courses
seemed to imply the need
to relinquish creative
control in order, one very
far off day, to get it back.
Opportunity to combine
both creative freedom and
a clear trajectory came
in the form of a botched
application. On turning
up at the UCA Farnham
campus open-day, I was
told that, as I had not
put their Film and Video
course as the first choice
on my UCAS form, I would
perhaps be best suited to
their Digital Screen Arts
course instead. This option
was initially unappealing;
but as I was shown around
with one other teenager by
some kind of artist, judging
by the opinionated, scruffy
and haphazard demeanour
of the man, the variety,
opportunity and general
open-mindedness of the
course (not to mention
its intimate head-count)
seemed to become
increasingly relevant to the
boundary-less direction
that I had envisaged. And
so, at the beginning of the
next academic year, I began
the attempted making of
my name, onwards and
downwards.
Problem 1: the
first year
First of all, let me
address the immediate
significant shortcoming of
this and almost all other
three year degree courses:
the first year. As a result
of the ‘communication
chasm’ that exists between
educational policy makers,
academic constructors and
the appliers of such rules,
university tutors seem
content to allow their first
year students to wallow
in the irresponsibility of
an entire year without
significant exams. Yes,
you have to pass but,
believe me, it’s incredibly
hard to fail. This lack of
consequence, coupled
with the usual pitfalls of
indulgence associated with
higher education, can – and
usually will – turn the most
passionate and dedicated
of young people into
disillusioned passengers,
unsafe in the knowledge
that whatever they do
means nothing as they
wait yet another year for
the chance to prove their
worth. This is not simply
about grades but about
mentalities. The entire
degree system is top-heavy,
with equipment, time and
the attention of tutors
increasing the closer you
get to the end. Fair enough,
you might say, but in
practice this can allow new
students to stagnate, often
causing crippling setbacks
to what would otherwise
31
32
be hungry young minds,
ripe for steering towards
ambitious direction.
Two friends of mine are
taking a two year fast-track
degree course at Guildford’s
Academy for Contemporary
Music. The combination of
a heavy workload (in part
the result of the course’s
foreshortened format) and
high expectations instils
a feeling of achievement
and worth in what they
are doing. It also speeds
up the process of deciding
whether this is right
for them; an important
role of the university
experience. Although ACM
is a commercially-funded
institution, I see no reason
why more degree courses,
and particularly those in
the creative field, could
not adopt this healthy two
year format. Instead, I have
experienced a system of
education that, despite its
claims to nurture creativity,
mirrors the hierarchy of
the creative industries. It
has fallen into the routine
of using the first year as a
shop-floor, a test of staying
power rather than an
opportunity to develop.
Some would argue that this
in itself prepares students
for ‘the real world’; but
they are wrong. Education
is meant to be about
bettering society, not
conforming to it. It is also
important, however, to
remember that the majority
of tutors working within
this system are committed
to such betterment and
that they may feel as held
back by the current system
as I have done as a student.
Year two
Yes, I did pass, but as I
entered the second year
I was confused. My early
desire to become a filmmaker – whatever that
was – had been smeared
and distorted in the
cross-contamination of
my (metaphorical) fingers
with what seemed like an
unhelpfully varied and
superficially introduced
array of pies, leaving me
with a kind of cat-foodgoo of half-baked webdesign, misunderstood
semiotic theory, videoart bombardment and
memories of torturous
teamwork. I attempted to
switch to Fine Art, hoping
simply to be left alone with
a blank, zen-like bit of wall
space, but was convinced
at the last minute to
remain a Digital Screen
Artist with the promise of
near-complete individual
creative autonomy by my
concerned Head of Year –
which is what I had always
wanted. Wasn’t it?
Maybe so. But I did not
make the narrative fiction
that had always seemed
so inevitable – as it does in
the Hollywood-influenced
minds of most would-be
film-makers. A strange
thing happened: I got
angry – very angry – at
what seemed like the now
pointless commitment
of time and money to an
institution that was literally
teaching me nothing. I
was not even going to
campus, save for one-off
workshops by outside
professionals, and spent
all of my time working
from home on what could
well have been achieved
by making video-art. The
reason they worked was
the same reason why a
conventional narrative
fiction might have
worked in the context of a
conventional narrative film
course: they depicted, in
their absurdity, the reality
of my experience at that
current time. Don’t all good
film-makers advise you to
stick to what you know?
Well, due to having learnt
very little, I knew nothing
without enrolment at all
except my determination
(or so I thought). I now
to ‘prove myself’ and
pined after the boundaries
so depicted that blind
and strict guidance of
struggle.
my earlier education;
More important,
at least it gave some
however, is the question of
tangible evidence, some
why my fellow students and
measurable achievement
I had found ourselves in
in time and on paper, as
such a position; unlearned
opposed to relentless
and, for our money’s worth,
hours of experimentation
almost entirely untaught?
desperately performed
The answer could be that
alone in my bedroom in a
many artistic courses
futile attempt to impose
are run by artists and
a little self-discipline and
academics, proven in their
salvage my ambition. But
respective fields but clearly
without a strict curriculum
lacking the managerial
I simply hadn’t had the
and communicative skills
training (or, at least, hadn’t
they need in order to teach
chosen to exploit what had well. It could be that I just
been available), despite
happened to find myself
my belief that at university
on a dodgy course; but I
I would work fantastically
know from talking to Fine
hard. In frustration at my
Artists without life-drawing
own lack of knowledge, the classes, and Animators
bewildering way in which
without theory tutors, that
the university dispensed
this is a wider problem. It
knowledge and in
could simply be that the
desperation at the film I felt only way artistry can be
slipping further and further learned is to allow freedom
away from me, I made two
for such chance ‘successes’
short films that I am now, I
as my own to develop
think, relatively proud of.
spontaneously, supported
The first was a comical
by dabbles of guidance
depiction of my own
and knowledge for the
struggle to fit the alienating choosing. I now find this
video-artist mould that had mentality as complacent
suddenly felt expected of
as I do the neglect of first
me. With the unexpected
years.
high praise this film
The most obvious
brought me within my
answer in my case is that I
university, came the second: actively rejected guidance
a parody of the first, and
and through my own
its counter-intuitive model
immaturity would have
for ‘success’ within the
cried ‘fascist’ had this
institutionalised minds of
excessive freedom been
an art school.
replaced by a more formal
That may make them
curriculum. But I’m running
sound over complicated.
out of arrogance now, and,
Really, they were a series of despite the protests that
viralesque comedy videomy younger self would
sketches on the absurd
have made, I believe it is
nature of attempting to
the responsibility of the
please video-artist tutors
teacher, the institution and
the system to provide a
coherent and consistent
vehicle for learning,
whether the student
chooses to take advantage
of that or not. I find myself
respecting the moderate
principles of the Sixth Form
College more and more.
I wonder if some of the
relative freedom filtered
down into the school
system and some of the
school structure filtered up
into the university system,
whether we would have
a more responsible breed
of young person in our
society, climbing a more
coherent, progressive and
encouraging ladder.
It must be said that the
theory side to my course
was of a consistently high
quality and, although
previously not very high
on my list of priorities,
is a pivotal reason for
my nearing the end of
my degree. My advice to
anybody about to leap
into university, and art
school in particular is:
never make excuses for
yourself. If you want to
learn something, make sure
it gets taught to you – if
not by your teachers, then
by a book or a friend or
the internet or through
sheer determination. Oh,
and keep an open mind:
I’ve decided to become a
musician.
Owen Davey is in his final year
of a Digital Screen Arts degree
at the Surrey Institute for Art
and Design, Farnham.
Image: Rebecca Scambler, using
Owen Davey’s digital media work.
33
Many of the acknowledged classics
of cinema history depict children in
various states of peril. Sean KayeSmith wonders why.
People have a need for mythical forms,
mysterious images, atavistic fairy tales, and
magical symbols that take them back to the
hidden memories of childhood and their
culture.
Daniel Schmid (1941-2006)
PPan’s’ Labyrinth,
L b i h 2006,
2006
The most important thing about the cinema
is that it allows everyone to dream the same
dream.
John Boorman
Fear is only a dream,
So dream little one dream.
From the soundtrack of ‘The Night of the
Hunter’ (1955)
Tideland, 2005
MM
MM
Pan’s Labyrinth, 2006
When, early in 2008, Jonathan Ross and his
BBC4 panel of judges adjudicated over the
choice of Guillermo del Toro’s remarkable Pan’s
Labyrinth as the best foreign film of 2007, it was
a timely reminder that a high proportion of the
classics, great and modern, of cinema history are
not in English. It was also a reminder that some
of the most imaginative, powerful and haunting
films in any historical period have explored
childhood and, in particular, children in peril.
Films about childhood do not constitute a
genre as such, and, inevitably, straddle many
different genres: from the extremities of The
Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973) which Linda
Blair, the star of the film, was not legally allowed
to watch, to the drama of Whistle Down the
Wind (Bryan Forbes, 1961) in which some
Lancastrian children mistake a criminal on the
run for Jesus returning to Earth, and on to the
mischievous mayhem on the bombsites of South
London in Hope and Glory (John Boorman
1987). The list is rich and vast, but a particular
favourite for many which is, in many ways, the
ultimate ‘childhood’ film, is another story, like
Pan’s Labyrinth, set during the Spanish Civil War:
Victor Enrice’s Spirit of the Beehive (1973). In one
of the most remarkable performances captured
on film, the six-year-old Ana Torrent plays a girl
who is profoundly affected by a travelling cinema
showing of the Boris Karloff Frankenstein in
her remote village. Anyone interested in how
film can capture the wonder and mystery of
childhood should seek the film out.
In addition to the imaginative riches of
World Cinema, Hollywood has produced some
fascinating and unusual examples of the ‘children
in peril’ film and a close look at two of them
will set up an examination of two modern films,
one of which is one of the most stunning visual
achievements in British cinema history.
The career of the producer Val Lewton
(1904-51) at RKO Studies in the 1940s has been
understandably well documented and is an
essential chapter in any worthwhile history of
the horror film. Lewton’s work at RKO is enduring
proof that film budgets seldom correspond
directly with film quality. Between 1941 and
1946 he produced a sequence of low budget
horror movies for the studio, most notably with
the director Jacques Tourneur, all of which are
interesting and some of which, such as Cat
People (1942) and the superbly titled I Walked
With a Zombie (1943), are acknowledged
landmarks of the genre. Lewton, who was a
highly literate and creative man, was forced to
work to titles supplied by RKO’s executives – in
a bid to challenge the supremacy of Universal
Studios’ classic horror catalogue of the 1930s
– and he clearly enjoyed outwitting his bosses;
for example, the aforementioned I Walked
With a Zombie is a clever reworking of Jane
Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. However, he took
this subversion to greater extremes when RKO
insisted that he produce a sequel to his highly
successful feature Cat People under the title The
Curse of the Cat People.
35
Curse of the Cat People, 1944
Curse of the Cat People, 1944
MM
The Curse of the Cat People
What Lewton actually made is a film (which
he privately called ‘Amy’s Friend’) which takes us
into the rather frightening world of a small girl,
the daughter of two of the leading characters of
Cat People. The film is superbly photographed
in haunting black and white by the great
cinematographer Nicholas Musucara and we
first see Amy, played convincingly by the sevenyear-old Ann Carter, on an atmosphericallystaged school trip to Sleepy Hollow (which
suggests that the film has been an influence on
modern cult director Tim Burton). Surrounded
by classmates, she is nevertheless clearly lonely
and misunderstood. Her troubles begin when she
slaps a boy who has wilfully crushed a butterfly
in his hand, and, following a disastrous birthday
party which no other children attend as Amy
has posted the invitations in a hollow place in
a tree in the garden (taking a poetic comment
by her father too literally), she begins to take
dubious refuge in an old house down the road.
The building is a classic childhood fantasy of a
haunted house and is inhabited by an eccentric
old woman and her menacing, embittered
daughter. The finished film, partly inspired by
Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘An Unseen Friend’ from
A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885), is a subtle
study of the fears and insecurities of childhood,
in particular the fear of being unable to fit in with
other children and be accepted.
‘Amy’s a nice girl, only a little
different,’ says her teacher, a
remark echoed in her father’s
later comment: ‘Amy has too
many fancies and too few
friends.’
Inevitably the RKO bosses
were so alarmed when they
saw that their film The Curse
of the Cat People had no cat
people in it that they forced
Lewton to include some boys
encountering a black cat in
the opening sequence. But in actual fact Lewton
had linked the film much more subtly with its
highly-acclaimed predecessor: Irena, the principal
cat person from the first film – again played
by the French actress Simone Simon – returns
as a kind of fairy godmother figure, or ‘unseen
friend’, who befriends Amy in the magical setting
of the family garden. Irena becomes a vital
‘presence’ at the end of the film in the old house
when the old lady dies and Amy is left alone
with the potentially murderous daughter. Her
confused identification of the daughter with the
benevolent spirit of Irena defuses the situation
and arguably saves Amy’s life. And in a genuinely
moving closing scene, the smiling, ghostly image
of Irena in the garden is finally acknowledged
by Amy’s father, bringing about a spiritual and
emotional reconciliation between father and
daughter.
Amy’s journey in the film from misunderstood
loner to threatened innocent to reconciliation
and love is a very positive representation of
childhood. The strangeness of the film, and Amy’s
indomitable spirit, both recall Lewis Carroll’s
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), a text
which seems to reverberate through cinema
history as well as children’s literature.
The Night of the Hunter, 1955, Courtesy of the BFI Picture Library
MM
The Night of the Hunter
This notion of the fearful strangeness of
childhood and the theme of children in peril
reached a high point in Hollywood in 1955 with
the release of The Night of the Hunter, the only
film to have been directed by the British actor
Charles Laughton (1899-1962). Laughton had
gone to Hollywood in the 1930s where he had
become an unlikely box office hit playing bizarre
characters such as Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the
Bounty and the grotesquely deformed bell ringer
Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame
(1955; see MM27). Encouraged to direct by other
actors, Laughton eventually chose Davis Grubb’s
haunting novel The Night of the Hunter (1953)
for what is his only directorial credit.
The film sticks faithfully to the novel in which a
young brother and sister go on the run to escape
a psychopathic preacher who has spent time
in jail with their doomed father and goes on to
marry and murder their mother. The preacher
played by louche, tough guy actor Robert
Mitcham in a career best performance, is the
ultimate wicked stepfather who pursues the
children downriver through the American South
before the dénouement on a farm where the
children have been sheltered by a resilient old
woman, played by the iconic silent screen star
Lillian Gish.
Whilst it is clear that Laughton was ‘trying
things out’ – often the case with first films –
the presence of a strong cast, who were very
loyal and supportive of their fellow actor’s first
step into film directing, and the outstanding
cinematographer Stanley Cortez, meant that he
could experiment in style. As a result The Night
of the Hunter, which was a box office failure
on first release, is now regarded as one of the
greatest and strangest of all American films.
Here are children, John and Pearl, in great peril in
their own house. Their mother, played by Shelley
Winters, is completely swamped by the preacher’s
bogus evangelism so that the young boy has
to defend not only himself and his infant sister
against the murderous intruder, but also the
legacy of his dead father who stored his loot in
Pearl’s doll before being taken by the police. This
enormous responsibility is compounded horribly
when the preacher Powell murders their mother
and the children are forced to flee in the night.
Significantly all the adults to whom they could
have turned for help prove to be useless. The
children’s flight downriver is a truly extraordinary
sequence, filmed in a variety of styles – including
helicopter shots – at times suggesting in near
silhouette what a horror film might have looked
like had it been shot by Disney Studios during
their classic era.
The Night of the Hunter is a stunning
verification of Alfred Hitchcock’s claim that
‘in a film the camera tells the story and the
dialogue is just part of the atmosphere’,
as image after image attests to the children’s
courage and resilience. Interestingly the film
displays similar traits in its representation of the
elderly as, at the end of their river journey, the
children become part of a young community
cared for and protected by an old woman (Lillian
Gish). She not only defends them, rifle in hand,
against the preacher’s threatening advances but
restarts their moral and social education after all
the lawlessness they have been subjected to. In
one of the stranger stylistic devices in the film,
Gish talks directly to camera about her mission
with the children.
The film actually begins and ends with her
speaking directly to us, her final words in praise
of all children being:
They abide and they endure.
37
Mirrormask, 2005
MM
Tideland and Mirrormask
Director Terry Gilliam also addresses the
camera directly with similar sentiments at the
start of his 2005 film Tideland. In noirish black
and white Gilliam looks straight at his audience
and declares:
Children are strong, they’re resilient, they’re
designed to survive. When you drop them
they tend to bounce.
Tideland is one of two remarkable films, made
around the same time, which take the Alice in
Wonderland motif of propelling a young girl
into an unsettling world of nightmares and
danger as a test of her mettle; the other is Dave
McKean’s remarkable Mirrormask. Both films are
visually stunning in very different ways, placing
each child in an almost overwhelmingly visually
dense world teaming with extraordinary images
and décor and bizarre characters. In Tideland
a child (played with exceptional assurance by
Jodelle Ferland), survives the deaths of both
of her irresponsible drug-soaked parents and
the threatening attentions of a number of
menacing adults to take her place in the world.
As with Mirrormask, the plot seems almost
immaterial; both films unfold as imaginative
visual meditations on the sheer strangeness
of childhood and the protagonist’s ability to
negotiate her way through the phantasmagoria.
Gilliam, like Lewis Carroll, unashamedly celebrates
the wonder and sheer toughness of little girls;
he has inevitably, if unfairly, been criticised for
showing the child dealing with the inappropriate
romantic attentions of a mentally disabled man.
Other scenes in which she is harassed by a tall
black-cloaked witch-like figure, played by the
statuesque British actress Janet McTeer, recall
Amy’s experiences in the old house in Curse of
the Cat People. Tideland is Terry Gilliam at his
most challenging and thought-provoking and
its 15 certificate is entirely justified. It is also very
interesting that Gilliam was J.K. Rowling’s own
first choice for director of Harry Potter and the
Philosopher’s Stone.
The leading character in Mirrormask is older at
fifteen. She is the disillusioned daughter of circus
owners and performers, allowing the film-makers
to explore the wonderfully subversive notion of
a child who wants to run away from, not to, the
circus. When her mother is hospitalised, she is
pulled into an amazing fantasy world which, from
the very beginning, seems to be a visualisation
of her dreams and anxieties. This adds weight to
screenwriter Paul Mayerberg’s remarks that:
Images are the clues not to the story so much
as the characters, their inner lives.
As the Bristol Venue magazine said, if the
film ‘looks as though every frame has been
composed with loving care by an illustrator’
MM
reasons for this, some of which have been
explored above, but the words of British director
John Boorman who gave us a child’s view of
the London Blitz in Hope and Glory, make a
particularly resonant conclusion:
Sean Kaye-Smith teaches Media
Studies and English at Ashton Park
School in Bristol.
Mirrormask, 2005
The eye of a child is very close to the eye of
the camera – the innocent eye. A child sees
exactly what is there, as does the camera,
whereas the adult eye is filtering things
out, it’s seeing what it wants to see. Films
that are made about childhood are always
fascinating…
Tideland, 2005
Tideland, 2005
that is precisely because it has been. Director
Dave McKean is a multiple award-winning artist,
and for Mirrormask he teamed up once again
with writer Neil Gaiman to produce a work for
children; their previous collaborations include the
novel Coraline – which at the time of writing is in
production with director Henry Selick and due for
2009 release – and two remarkable picture books,
The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish
and The Wolves in the Walls. The latter has been
turned into a brilliant ‘musical pandemonium’
by the Improbable Theatre Company and the
National Theatre of Scotland.
Mirrormask is unlike anything else so far in
British cinema and has to be literally seen to be
believed. The sheer imaginative density of the
mise-en-scène would make the film a wonder
even without the soundtrack. The presence of
the popular Welsh comedy actor Rob Brydon in
two serious roles adds to the subversive magic.
We also see the self-confessed ‘national treasure’
Stephen Fry, but only his mouth is visible as he
gives voice to one of the innumerable bizarre
creatures in the film. And ironically the relatively
small budget of £2,500,000 proved to be an
unlikely godsend; because the budget was such
a comparatively small sum McKean and his
colleagues could work on the film undisturbed by
anxious producers and financiers – safely tucked
under the radar they could get on with making
the film in the way they wanted to. The results are
extraordinary.
All of the children in the films explored here
are survivors and each film celebrates that.
The cinema and childhood does seem to be
a particularly fruitful union. There are many
39
MM
te
ou
a, which star
d colleges ar
of schools an
Media diplom
d
tia
an
or
e
ns
tiv
co
ea
to
around 60
The new Cr
9 diplomas;
opportunity
t’s new 14-1
t also lots of
bu
g
ity
in
tiv
tt
ac
governmen
ge
.
year
azine and
of hands-on
set it up this
g MediaMag
se with lots
ur
tin
si
co
vi
d
were able to
as
se
ba
ch
sroom, su
mpanies.
is a projectt of the clas
for small co
The diploma
d have
at extend ou
ional videos
th
ot
ts
om
ec
m projects an
pr
oj
fil
g
pr
t
in
participate in
akers on shor
for it, or mak
s
-m
le
m
tic
fil
ar
e
ith
ed to writ
worked w
commission
urse
course have
about our co
e Long Road
th
work.
on
r
ts
ei
en
th
d out more
se
fin
Stud
ca
To
which
.
,
ow
fe
te
sh
Li
si
to
in Second
and Flickr
stival events
e collection
g on a show
in
ub
tt
organised fe
uT
pu
Yo
r
be
ou
ill
ar, they w
ent blogs,
Later this ye
a look at stud
activities.
m and have
co
a.
projects and
r
m
ei
lo
th
p
l
al
on
ts
visit cmdi
en
stud
of photos of
contains lots
A photo from the Magnolia Pictures release “District B13”, directed by Pierre Morel and starring Cyrial Raffaelli, David Belle, Tony D’Amario.
f media
ifferent kind o
d
a
s
ce
u
d
o
tr
dents
th Form in
written by stu
Long Road Six
ll
a
f
o
re
r
a
s
se
e
g
ra
a
F
Pete
wing 11 p
s on the follo
le
ic
rt
a
e
Th
.
e
loma.
cours
nd Media Dip
a
e
v
ti
a
re
C
e
e first of the
r, is one of th
be
try
em
studying for th
pt
Se
nd the coun
d last
MM
It’s free, fast, a media-friendly
phenomenon – and fun (if not a little
dangerous). Laurence Smith on the
delights of free running
Just to set the record straight free running is
often confused with parkour but they are two
different things. Free running is freedom of
movement, moving around your surroundings
in the smoothest and most stylish way possible.
Parkour is a frame of mind and a way of life,
aiming to reach your destination in the quickest
way possible, overcoming any obstacle that may
be in your path, physically or mentally. This article
is about how free running has grown in the past
few years and how the media has promoted it to
the public.
A quick history round up
Free running developed from parkour which
started in France and was used in the military.
Everyday life
Since the early 1980s it has become more popular
Free running can be known as an extreme
with the general public as a way to keep fit.
sport, which teenagers love! It is cheap and
all it requires is time, physical strength and
How it jumped Britain
determination to overcome challenges in new
Free running hit Britain in late summer 2003 in and interesting ways. Anyone can do free running
the Channel 4 documentary Jump London, which like jumping over wall or climbing trees. It is
showed professional free runners wandering
just about how far you are willing to go. You can
around London’s landmarks demonstrating their
learn certain moves like ‘cat grab’ or ‘Kong’. Even
skills to the public. Two years later came Jump
though free running can become very dangerous,
Britain, which involved more professional free
it is good for people to test their limits. But be
runners showing their skill all over England,
sure not to be stupid and go for the hardest thing
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (http://
straight away. You need to train your body, which
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LzvAm3SRbtg).
then makes you fitter – a good thing and far
Since then free running has become increasingly better then being fat!
popular.
41
MM
The big screen
As well as being big in the street, free
running is growing at the cinema too. Casino
Royale has a free running chase scene with one
of the free running founders Sébastien Foucan
(even though Craig used a stunt double in some
of the first part of the chase scene). Face it: there
is no way Daniel Craig could have actually kept
up with Sébastien Foucan even if he is James
Bond!
The gaming scene
Free running is also growing in gaming.
Some of the first free running in games was
from Lara Croft’s Tomb Raider, where Lara
jumped and swung around tombs avoiding
bad guys, deadly animals and traps. Another
big character who is a master in free running
is Altair from 2007 Assassins Creed; Prince of
Persia is another free running master in the
gaming world.
Jump to the music
New music videos have featured free
runners: Madonna’s ‘Jump’ has three free
runners running around the streets and roofs
of Tokyo, while the video for the band 3 Doors
Down’s ‘it’s not my time’ has a free runner
trying to rescue a mother and a child about to
get hit by a truck. Free running is appearing
more and more in music video, and it will
become more popular as people achieve
unbelievable stunts with no special effects.
Jumping in to the screens at
home
Free running is something that is showing
up more and more on television. It has appeared
on trailers for the BBC featuring David Belle; Top
Gear featured two free runners racing against a
Peugeot 207 in Liverpool where the free runners
won (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_
d4FFPVydLE). It has also appeared in Britain’s
Got Talent, Friday Night Project, Modern
Marvels, Heroes, and Taurus. Harry Hill’s TV
Burp involved a spoof of a scene from The Bill
when the police are chasing a free runner.
Jumping the interweb
YouTube is a popular place to show home
videos displaying your free running skills to
the world. There are some really good videos
of free runners, including one made by our
class. Audiences can see the potential of the
sport and of the human body by watching
video of others around the world doing
things they couldn’t have dreamed of. So the
internet is adding to the popularity of free
running in the world (http://uk.youtube.com/
watch?v=ZHI1AydHBpk).
Laurence Smith is studying the new Creative and Media
Diploma at Long Road Sixth Form, Cambridge.
MM
Sam Chappell-Winnington muses
on the power of music to debate,
critique and change minds.
Without a shadow of a doubt, you listen
to music. Of course you do, it’s everywhere.
There’s music coming from your television, your
computer, the car stereo, shops, phones, and
MP3 and CD players. The list of music sources
is endless. But how often do you stop and pay
attention to what the artists are saying in their
43
MM
work? Music is quite possibly one of the best
ways to get your opinions and feelings across
freely. Despite so called Freedom of Speech
legislation, our more controversial spoken
comments still get us into trouble; however it
often seems that the same opinions in song are
perfectly acceptable.
For decades artists from Bob Dylan to U2 to
Rage Against The Machine have been angered
by different troubles and inspired to write
songs about them, some to draw attention to
the problem and some to prompt direct action
against political wrongdoings. One of the first
widely-recognised artists to use song to speak
freely was Bob Dylan. He felt the government
of the United States might be so tied up with
other things in other countries that they forget
they must run their own country first. He made
it clear that the political problems in the United
States are not out of the reach of the general
public, but the problems are actually right
beside them and they could help to solve them.
Dylan famously brought this to everyone’s
attention when he released ‘Blowin in the
Wind’, with the ambiguity of the lyrics:
the
How many tflimy,es must
cannonballs y are forever banned.
Before the er, my friend, is blowing in
The answ
the wind, er is blowing in the wind.
The answ
Another good example of his early
tendencies to critique the American
government is in his 1963 song ‘Masters of
War’. Dylan writes about how the leaders of
the US just send young men out to war without
a care. In part of the fourth verse he sings ‘You
fasten all the triggers,/For the others to fire,/
Then you sit back and watch while the death
count gets higher’. Bob Dylan clearly has no
shame in what he writes about or how he writes
it: he uses his freedom in the music to put his
point across.
Rage Against The Machine, known as
the angriest artists in rock, are a much more
recent example of artists taking advantage of
their musical freedom. Formed in 1991, their
revolutionary blend of Rap, Funk and Metal
endlessly bombarded various political issues.
With songs like ‘Wake up’ from their debut
self-titled album it’s made clear that Zack and
his band are not shy. The lyrics discuss racism
within the American government and the
counter-intelligence programs of the FBI,
and a spoken portion of the song is taken from
an actual FBI memo in which J. Edgar Hoover
suggests targets for the suppression of the
Black Nationalist movement. The song also
makes references to prominent black figures
targeted by the government, such as Malcolm
X and Martin Luther King Jr., and goes as far
as saying that the government arranged their
assassinations.
MM
With regard to wage slavery and freedom,
Rage guitarist Tom Morello said:
America touts itself as the land of the free,
but the number one freedom that you
and I have is the freedom to enter into a
subservient role in the workplace. Once you
exercise this freedom you’ve lost all control
over what you do, what is produced, and how
it is produced. And in the end, the product
doesn’t belong to you. The only way you can
avoid bosses and jobs is if you don’t care
about making a living. Which leads to the
second freedom: the freedom to starve.
Although not all are as open and passionate
about making political comments and protests,
many artists make statements through their
music no matter how slight; it is still there and
still often turns heads, whether it is the Rock/
Hip-Hop group Flobots wearing American
flags as bandanas or Green Day and U2
collaborating to write the song ‘The Saints
are Coming’. Every artist has something to say;
and more and more often they are inspired by
something the government has messed up on.
In the past few years, we have seen young
people starting bands from as young as six or
seven-years-old. This means schools are full
of budding musicians of five to 16 bursting
to write and perform songs about anything
and everything. Despite a century of recorded
song-writing, and the exhaustion of every
random topic you could think of, even very
young bands are writing songs about the
political upsets of the world. For example, new
indie band, How to Kill a Conversation (five
16-year-olds from Cambridge) has a new song
called ‘Oil’. The song is about the War on Terror,
and the fight for the planet’s oil reserves. To
me this shows that it is not only multimillion
pound recording artists who can protest about
these things freely; even bands trying to break
into the market have the confidence and drive
to express themselves without limit.
In my opinion there is an extreme pressure
to be politically correct, to the point where you
can be criticised for voicing your views in many
public forms; yet this barrier does not seem
to diminish freedom of expression in music,
making it probably the most effective way
of getting your voice heard. Also, with all the
wars, general corruption and political wrongs
in the world today, people need the freedom to
express their views and hopefully make some
change without being discriminated against
or ignored. Music is so effective for sharing
opinions because ideas aren’t censored; it is
heard by audiences worldwide and provokes
people to think.
Sam Chappell-Winnington is studying the new Creative
and Media Diploma at Long Road Sixth Form, Cambridge.
45
M
MM
the cat empire
Alexander Whitcomb explores the diversity and hybridity of a remarkable
band which defies categorisation and national boundaries.
MM
I was recently introduced to a band that has
actually become my favourite band of all time.
The introduction was one of the most off-hand
comments I could recall. A friend of mine simply
stated, ‘Oh, listen to this, it’s pretty good.’ This
off-hand comment let me into a world of music I
hadn’t previously discovered – and I wasn’t ready
to go back. The song he showed me was ‘Hello’
by the band The Cat Empire. I was immediately
blown away by the song’s diverse style, unlike
any other I knew. The Cat Empire is one of those
bands that some people will not like, but in
others it will trigger intense adoration.
The band was first formed in late 1999.
It consisted of three members playing
enthusiastically in jazz clubs, bars and festivals.
But over the years it grew and grew and now
consists of six core members. There were three
horn players and there have been over forty
guest musicians and dancers in the band. The
Cat Empire has an incredibly eclectic style which
rubs off in their music and draws in a huge
range of different styles from all over the world
including Indie, Ska, Rock, Reggae, Jazz, HipHop, Latin, Funk, Cuban and Alternative (with
a smattering of rap thrown on the side). This
combination of several different foreign cultures
comes together brilliantly and is part of their
growing popularity around the world.
Having listened to this track (‘Hello’) I insisted
on listening to more, and was captivated by
the brilliant sound I heard. It isn’t just the fact
they have developed their own style of music
drawing from all of those different styles, it is the
vibrancy with which they play, and the energy
they put into the performance. They have
developed the songs so you can hear that, as
well as just recording the songs, they are actually
having great fun recording them. This gives their
music an edge above other bands, with the
enjoyment rubbing off on the listener.
As soon as I had finished listening to the
two tunes my friend showed me I hurried to
the stores and ravaged the shelves to find
this masterpiece. However, due to their lesser
popularity in England, the album I was looking
for (named Two Shoes) had limited supply.
Luckily I located it and before long I was back
at home, CD player on and listening eagerly.
Track one (named ‘How To Explain’) opens with a
trumpet solo, which, I will admit, is not too much
to my taste, as it follows a Latin jazz sort of style.
However, only seconds later the song explodes
into a fast-paced piece, with the enchanting
voice of Felix Riebl ringing through my speakers.
With the song turning out how it was, I learned
to appreciate the trumpet more, and now when
I listen to the trumpet at the beginning of ‘How
To Explain’, I enjoy it as much as I do the rest of
the song.
There are several different editions of Two
Shoes, each of which has the songs in a different
order and, occasionally, the songs on the album
differ. The track ‘The Chariot’ mixes a speedy
reggae verse with an emphasised brass-section
which kicks in lively during the chorus. It sounds
clashy, I know, but the mix is seamless. They
go perfectly together. Over the top is Riebl
singing about how the band fights its own war,
the punchline being ‘Our weapons were our
instruments’.
‘Two Shoes’, the song with the same name as
the album is a fantastic example of what The Cat
Empire is capable of. It is slower than most of the
other songs on the album, which some may see
as a bad thing; however I think it is nice to have
a bit of variety from songs such as ‘Sly’ and ‘The
Car Song’, which involve shouted choruses (in
a good way), call-and-response verses and are
altogether more lively. Both styles are executed
with brilliance and neither is better than the
other. Also, of course, their endless enthusiasm
makes the sound they produce seem like the
future of any feel-good Ska music.
Also on the album is the song ‘Sol y Sombra’
which starts off with a simple piano piece
before throwing in the drums and some Spanish
singing. The song consists of just seven repeated
lines, but this doesn’t take much away from its
feel. It’s all sung in Spanish and has a strong
Cuban accent to it. ‘Sol y Sombra’ means ‘Sun
and Shade’. It is a very different song to the
others on the album, and brings in its own style,
but you can still definitely see that Cat Empire
twinkle in its eye. The song is very jazzy in the
middle with a jazz drum riff and bass, with a
nice little piano solo over the top to finish it off,
which I have to say, is impressive.
It has been suggested that The Cat Empire
is a ‘Free Jazz’ band. However, I disagree. In fact
they take very conventional elements of Latin
Jazz – and Ska, and Hip-Hop, and Rap, and Rock
– and weave them together into something, in
my opinion, very new and unique. So I would
suggest that, while they might be Free Rock/Free
Pop, Free Jazz they are not.
The Cat Empire is a band that some people
just won’t get. I had a friend listen to them and
say, ‘They’re good, but they’re not that great are
they?’ I can see what he means, but it’s rare to
find a band that puts so much soul into each
and every song. The Cat Empire is growing fast
and its popularity increases every day. Personally
I find it amazing that a band so brilliant has
taken so long to climb to the top. They are a
band who can cheer me up whenever I listen to
them. I enjoy them endlessly. I recommend this
band to anyone, and I mean it. I normally like
Rock and Rave bands, yet this band is still my
favourite of all.
Ten minutes of listening will take you on a
‘World Tour’ embracing Melbourne Australia
(their home town, and often referenced), Cuba
(the source of many of their musicians), Jamaica
(the source of their spiritual inspiration – Bob
Marley), England (Madness influences are often
attributed to them) and others. For anyone
who wants to feel good, or anyone who likes
any of the genres listed that this band belongs
to – and even anyone that usually doesn’t – I
say, try them out. You might find it rewarding.
This is one Feline Kingdom that I wouldn’t mind
belonging to.
Alexander Whitcomb is studying the new Creative and
Media Diploma at Long Road Sixth Form, Cambridge.
47
MM
is online gaming hazardous to health?
David Pinchen debates the pros and cons, and decides it’s all a question of balance.
Online gaming these days has become a
large part of many people’s lives from all around
the world, bringing them together to fight off
hordes of virtual aliens, or just simply to pit
themselves against one another in a fight to the
death. They have, according to critics, sucked the
social life out of many of today’s teenagers. But
is it all bad?
A large portion of today’s teenage generation
spends much of its free time sitting in front of
a computer screen shooting aliens, zombies or
other teenagers sitting at another computer
screen. But is this really such a bad thing? Some
would argue that they do not get out of the
house enough, breathe fresh air, socialise with
other human beings, play with friends in the park
or go to the cinema with their peers.
the world. It’s even built up an economy, where
people buy and sell online currency and other
in-game items to players. While it may distract
some people from going out and seeing their
friends on a regular basis, it has given them the
chance to look inside the workings of many
other countries.
Getting the balance right
Global friendships
Many of those who sit inside playing these
games have made friends from all around the
world. Through their online games they have
connected with other people, sometimes their
own age, some older or younger, and have
become good friends, often playing the games
together with a group of people who they know
only through the wonders of the internet.
Bonding as clans
With the introduction of PvP games (Player vs
Player) people have grouped together in clans
and played against other clans in tournaments
and leagues. Often major corporations organise
events where people from all around the world
can get together and play their favourite games
against one another on a LAN network. These
events are becoming more and more popular
every year; with the emergence of nvision
and other large tournaments, players have the
opportunity to get together more and more, and
finally meet some of their online friends.
On the flip side, others would argue that it is
much better to spend your time outside with
your friends and peers, going out to the park and
playing football on a regular basis, or doing other
social things like visiting the cinema or going to
a party occasionally. It’s argued that it’s healthier
to spend time with people you know in person,
rather than wasting your time with people you
know nothing about.
Is the fact that you may spend much of your
time inside playing computer games, and talking
to people that you have never met really such
a bad thing? While inside playing those games,
you may learn about things from different
countries that you would never have known
before you knew someone online.
I can remember a few occasions when I have
been playing games and experienced things I’d
never expected to happen to someone half way
across the world. For example, while playing
one game with an online friend, he disappeared
for a few moments, only to come back to tell
me that a riot had broken loose right outside
his front door. And on several occasions I have
born witness to someone breaking up with their
partner through an online game.
Bringing the world together
On the whole I think that online games have
brought the world slightly closer together
than before, giving people from anywhere
opportunities to find out about things that they
would never have experienced previously. Online
gaming has arguably done a lot of good for
But perhaps sometimes a bit of a social life
is good for people; human interaction is always
a good thing. Perhaps a careful balance of
the two would be a good idea for everyone,
giving the people who currently aren’t gamers
opportunities to get together with the rest of
the world and connect with people they would
never have met before.
And at the same time, players who spend their
whole lives sitting at a computer screen need the
chance to get out and enjoy more of what life
has to offer. It’s good to spend time with friends,
and connect with human beings personally,
instead of assuming people are who they say
they are on the internet.
I think in conclusion people should all explore
the opposite of what they are currently doing. If
you’ve never used a computer to make friends
around the world by playing online games,
you should try it out. And if you’re an obsessive
player, try to get out a bit more and spend time
with friends and peers, get to know what else
life has to offer, and find out about your own
country, instead of everyone else’s.
A careful balance of games and socialising
would be a good thing for everyone. Not
everyone may be interested in blowing the
heads off zombies (although I can’t see why not!)
and there are always other computer programs
designed to bring people together. Online
social networking, using the same principle
as computer games, can enable anyone from
anywhere in the world to get together on a
website, post comments, have conversations and
make new friends every day. With the internet,
the possibilities are endless, and with so many
ways to connect with new people there are
opportunities for everyone. Some are easier than
others, some are more difficult; but in the end
both gamers and non-gamers can make friends
anywhere in the world.
David Pinchen is studying the new Creative and Media
MM
censoring the media?
Whatever your spec, debates about
regulation will be part of it, Tim
Hodson offers an overview of the
different strategies employed by
media regulators of film, games, TV,
the Web and music, and explores
their ethics and effectiveness.
Censorship comes in many different forms and in
all forms of media. Films, music, TV, magazines,
games, DVDs and even books are all regulated
in some way, shape or form. This could be
something simple like blanking swear words, as is
found in magazines where asterisks replace
49
MM
most of the letters in the word ‘f***’, whereas
TV will just insert a high pitched ‘beep’ over the
word(s) they do not wish to be broadcast.
The video game debate
Most forms of media, from video games to
DVDs, both rated by the British Board of Film
Classification, give a specific age rating if their
content is deemed unsuitable for everyone.
There is particular controversy about certain
video games. The popular Grand Theft Auto
series is frequently linked to violent behaviour
in teenagers as they try and repeat things they
do in the game. The game creators get away
with labelling the game with an 18+ rating: they
assume only people who are over 18 will play
and are smart enough to realise the difference
between games and life. But is this really good
enough? It is still very easy to get hold of the
game if you are under 18, whether you get an
older parent or friend to buy it for you, or even
just walk in and buy it, as very few shops bother
to ask for ID providing you look like you could
possibly be 18. Many people use the games as
a way to tune out of the real world and if they
want to steal a car, they steal a car in-game
instead of in the real world. In could be argued,
therefore, that the game stops people breaking
the law, although ironically many adults believe
that such games encourage kids to steal cars
and argue that the games should be banned.
The amazingly realistic graphics that some of
the newer games have seem to fuel such worries
about their impact on young people.
this happens, the game designers are generally
asked to remove some parts of the game or alter
them slightly to make it more appropriate; but
in the case of Manhunt II this was not possible,
so it was refused an age certificate and therefore
banned from sale in the UK. The BBFC wanted
to prevent children or impressionable teenagers
from accessing Manhunt II – mainly on the
grounds that you were practically forced to stalk
and brutally murder people, unlike other games
such as Grand Theft Auto, where killing people
is possible but is not always necessary.
Refusal of certificate
Age-related film
classification
Some games are even refused certificates. One
such is Manhunt II, which was scheduled to be
released on the Wii and PS2; but when the BBFC
played through the game, using cheats and level
skips to get through it as quickly as possible
(they only spend about five hours on each
game before discussing it between them), they
decided it was unsuitable for public sale. When
Films are also given age ratings by the BBFC
who basically say what films are suitable for what
age ranges from Uc to 18. The films are classified
by theme, language, nudity, sex, violence,
imitable techniques, horror and drugs. For
example, Eagle Eye is a 12A film, and is full of
guns, explosions, killings and car chases. I would
assume that it is a 12A due to the
rather action-based nature of the film.
Ghost Town, on the other hand, has
absolutely no violence in it and yet is
still rated a 12A. I think this might be
because at one point, near the end
of the film one of the characters says
‘F***ing’. I imagine this film would
have been a PG had the word not
been used, but parents may not want
their children to be exposed to that
kind of language at such an early age,
hence the higher rating. Similarly,
How to Lose Friends and Alienate
People is a 15, presumably because
there is a bit of ‘bad language’, a small
amount of nudity, and the idea of
doing drugs is hinted at part-way
through. Many parents worry about
their kids seeing people in films doing
drugs, so that would bump the rating
up. Death Race is another 15; in this
case, it is clear why. This film appears
to be almost two hours of needless
violence. From start to finish, the
film is about people making vehicles
to kill as many as possible, as quickly
as possible; however, there is little, if any, bad
language and no nudity or drugs, so it is a 15
instead of an 18.
MM
says to the audience. A ‘live’ show that has been
recorded and is being shown on TV is different,
because unsuitable parts can be edited out, but if
you are actually there the performer can say or do
whatever they want and with no consequences
– at least until someone important hears about it
and decides to do something.
I recently found out how to become an
audience member at the recording of BBC shows
such as Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Mock the
Week. Sadly, because the BBC is anxious to avoid
airing potentially offensive material (in itself very
difficult since virtually anything can be deemed
racist or unacceptable) much of the funniest stuff
in the recording is edited out and so only seen by
the studio audience. Some bits never get aired,
but do get released on DVD, for example Mock
the Week’s Too Hot for TV, which is rated 18 as it
was deemed inappropriate for TV where younger
viewers could watch it.
Where I stand
their children go and see, so by that reasoning,
shouldn’t 15A and 18A be a requirement in
cinemas? Once again, if your parents allow you
to watch the film, what is the need for rating it?
In any case you can simply get your parents to
buy you a ticket and nobody is any wiser; so the
system would appear to be flawed. Many films
have had sequences edited out in order to be
shown to a cinema audience. This may just be
cutting a bit of swearing, or toning down the
gore levels; this is most common in horror films,
and they are generally released shortly after the
original DVD in an ‘uncut’ version to sell to those
who want to see the film in its original form.
Getting around online rules
The 12A problem
Most multiplex cinemas ask for ID when selling
tickets for 18 films, but once you are past the
box office, you are pretty much free to go and
see whatever you want and nobody pays much
attention. What is the point of age ratings if
10-year-olds can buy a ticket to The Incredibles,
and wander in to watch Saw? 12A was created so
under-12s could go and watch 12-rated films in
the company of an adult. There is very little you
can do to check a child’s age, so for all the good
it does, 12A might as well be abolished, leaving a
jump from PG to 15. Parents choose what they let
Censorship is frequently seen as a way
of protecting children from unsuitable or
disturbing material. Unfortunately (or fortunately,
depending on your viewpoint) it is relatively easy
to get around censorship rules. For example, the
internet: one quick search on Google can bring
up millions of ‘adult’ web-pages, no matter what
age you are, so unless you constantly monitor
your kids or have a very strong parental control
program, it is very hard to keep them away from
damaging material. Most kids nowadays know
how to use the internet and can quickly access
the game, movie or TV show in question. Many
websites do ask for proof that you are old enough
to play the games, watch the videos, and listen to
the music, although much of the time they just
have a ‘yes or no’ button to press, or ask for your
date of birth, which can easily be made up.
I’m not entirely sure where I stand on this
argument. I can see that regulating games and TV
is important or children will all grow up to think
that killing people is fine and cars are just there
for the taking. I can also see that films need to be
rated by age to at least attempt to stop children
seeing risky material until they are deemed old
enough by society to do so. However, I also think
that the issue is taken far too seriously. This is well
illustrated in the episode of Family Guy titled
‘PTV’. Some people from the TV censorship office
come over and use the delightful phrase: His chin
looks like balls. You want me to cover those,
too? I think that phrase reflects my opinion
of censorship rules very nicely: people should
lighten up a bit and not be so easily offended.
However, no matter what I think, it is ultimately
up to the parents what they decide to let their
children do, play or watch. No matter how hard
they try, there is very little that parents can do
to limit their children’s exposure to unsuitable
material. They can ban certain age-related games
or movies from the house, thus stopping the child
accessing unsuitable material in their presence;
but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t going to
watch them at someone else’s house, sneak into
the cinema, or download the films they aren’t
allowed to watch.
Tim Hodson is studying the new Creative and Media
Editing live recordings
Live concerts, especially stand-up comedy,
have also been seen as a bad influence on people
as there is in theory no limit to what a performer
51
MM
MM
sexual freedom
Andrea Joyce celebrates the
representation of teenage sexuality in
Channel 4’s Sugar Rush, and explores
its construction through close textual
analysis.
Sexual desire on TV is represented as being
predominantly heterosexual; that is presented
as the norm. However, experience tells us that
sexual desire is a lot more fluid than this. The
depiction of sexual freedom on the small
screen is often the source of controversy and
concern as it can connote promiscuity. It is
taking time to break down the representation of
‘alternative’ sexual identities as a series of tired
stereotypes of highly effeminate men and butch
women.
Queer As Folk was considered to be a groundbreaking TV drama based on the lives of three
gay men in Manchester. It was a graphic portrayal
of the everyday lives and loves of the characters,
it screened late night on Channel 4, and was the
beginning of a more balanced portrayal of other
sexual identities.
More recently we’ve been offered an array of
characters embracing sexual freedom. There is
Kris Fisher, the cross-dressing bisexual student
who is a part of the core cast of Hollyoaks,
lovable Maxxie in Skins who is as promiscuous as
the rest of the characters, and the periodic foray
of an EastEnders character into homosexuality,
Sonia Jackson being the most recent.
However, until 2005 what was still lacking
was a TV drama aimed at a younger audience
that positioned a more fluid sexual identity in
the context of the everyday rather than one
53
MM
MM
that made these ‘different’ identities a cause for
concern or ridicule. Until recently, there was still
a gap in the representation of teenage sexuality.
Cue Sugar Rush.
Sugar Rush is a perfect example of teenage
sexual freedom, the time when new and strange
feelings emerge and experimentation is the
‘norm’ or can always be labelled as ‘just a phase’ if
necessary. The programme is based on the novel
by maverick journalist Julie Burchill.
The first series of the TV drama was screened
on Channel 4 in 2005. Sugar Rush shows the
life of 15-year-old Kim Daniels and is laden from
the outset with slightly risqué content. The very
first scene of Episode 1 sees Kim in her bedroom
masturbating with an electric toothbrush
under her duvet, before she is interrupted by
her Dad bursting in on her. This classic scene of
embarrassing parents and the awkwardness of
teenage years are illustrative of the themes of
Sugar Rush.
Using Sugar Rush to discuss representations
of sexuality is a very fruitful exercise as much of
Series 1 follows Kim through her obsession with
her best friend Sugar.
A close analysis: Series 1
Episode 8
Episode 8 in Series 1 opens the morning after
Kim’s dreams have come true and she has shared
a long, lingering kiss with Sugar, only to be jilted
minutes later, for a guy.
The setting is the interior of Kim’s bedroom
with archetypal iconography: posters on the
wall, trainers and clothes strewn across the floor,
jewellery and makeup lying around on the top
of drawers, and a framed photo of ‘best friends’
Sugar and Kim. The indication that Sugar is not
just a friend but a lustful obsession is indicated
through the diary-like notebook that Kim keeps
hidden in her drawer, the pages of which hide
a photo of Sugar and a hand-drawn heart
containing her name in pink pen, the classic
symbols of a teenage crush.
A clear sign that Kim’s heart has been broken
is the frantic tearing up of Sugar’s photograph,
the throwing away of the tickets for the gig
they attended together and the highly symbolic
crushing of the once treasured possession, a
drinks can covered in her lipstick.
The use of the distant diegetic sound of
seagulls reminds the viewer of the seaside
location.
Brighton is as much of a character in this
series as Sugar or Kim, with its bright lights,
pier attractions and openly gay club scene.
The fairground pier is the perfect visual
representation of Kim’s life: her crush on Sugar
takes her on a constant rollercoaster of emotions,
this being the latest low.
The speed of the fairground and the ferocity
of Kim’s emotions are also mirrored in the
camerawork and editing of this scene.
The shot cuts quickly from a close-up to a
mid-shot that follows Kim’s hand, pans down
to the drawer and tracks up as the contents is
pulled out and thrown to the floor. The handheld camerawork disorientates the viewer and
the increasing speed of the cuts, which are
particularly fast as Kim tears Sugar’s photograph,
is indicative of Kim’s anger.
The pace of the editing slows suddenly with
the introduction of the non-diegetic soundtrack
as Kim studies the drinks can with Sugar’s lipstick.
The shot cuts from the can to a mid-shot of
Kim’s face, allowing the viewer to see her reaction
as the highly sexual representation of Sugar’s lips
remind Kim of the night before and the kiss they
shared.
The shot cuts back to a close-up of the can and
tracks it to Kim’s lips. The voiceover dips into Kim’s
thoughts and acts as a sound bridge into the
flashback of the kiss.
The next shot is a close-up of Sugar and Kim
in a nightclub, which is long enough to identify
Sugar, who is resplendent in the full glow of one
of the nightclub’s spotlight, this emphasising the
amount of flesh she is exposing.
The shot quickly cuts to an extreme close-up
of Kim’s lips, slightly parted as Sugar comes into
frame. As their lips meet the white flash signals
the end of the flashback and the arrival back
into real time; we see Kim coming out of her
daydream as she pulls the drinks can away from
her lips, leaving a tiny smudge of Sugar’s lipstick.
The voiceover again acts as a narrative aid to
reveal Kim’s state of mind as the viewer is shown
a mid-shot of Kim throwing the can across the
room.
Cutting to a new setting, a long, slightly lowangle, establishing shot shows a figure standing
in an almost Christ-like position at an altar, in
front of a small group of seated people.
His orange jumper draws the viewer’s eye
straight to him, indicating his significance and
also in contrast to the sombre setting, hinting at
the forthcoming humour of the scene.
The characters about to be introduced
are an acknowledgement of the historical
stereotypical representations not only of
homosexuals but also of people who are
prejudiced against homosexuality.
The quick transition from a fast zoom shot
to a mid-shot of the open armed ‘preacher’ is
accompanied by a non-diegetic swipe sound to
make the quick zoom appear more of a transition,
again the voiceover of Kim adds context to the
scene and explains a little of what is to come.
The camera pans down the preacher’s arm and
directs the eye to the introduction of Belinda.
Her styling is stereotypical butch lesbian, from
her ripped jeans to the masculine-looking grey
tank top, which exposes her toned and muscular
55
MM
arms. Her jewellery is simple and quite chunky,
her hairstyle is soft to an extent but doesn’t draw
attention to her femininity and she isn’t wearing
any elaborate make-up.
One mid-shot frames Belinda and Kim
together, emphasising the visual differences
between them, Kim is a much more femininelystyled woman, wearing colourful clothes, lots of
jewellery and with a playful, soft hairstyle.
Cutting back to the preacher the camerawork
is as awkward in its movement as in the previous
scene. The shot pans from his face to his hands,
suggesting the way he is conducting the session
and seemingly controlling both Belinda and Gary,
the next character to be introduced.
Gary’s voice, gestures, body language and
well groomed appearance stereotype him as
a gay, camp man. The long-shot, which frames
Gary and the preacher together, represents the
preacher’s patronising attempt to ‘cure’ Gary
of the ‘disease’ of homosexuality. The repeated
close-ups of the preacher’s hands make it seem as
if he is trying to place a spell on his listeners; very
fast zooms also emphasise the outrageousness of
the statements being made by the preacher.
Again the non-diegetic music and Kim’s
voiceover act as a sound bridge to move to the
next scene.
A push-slide transition moves the viewer to
a new setting, the interior of a typical school
corridor lined with lockers and populated by
students going to and from classes.
Fast zooms are used graphically to interpret
the panic that Kim obviously feels, culminating
in an excellent example of the sexual gaze.
This gaze, historically in film and television, is
heterosexual as the viewer is considered to be
the same. One unique feature of Sugar Rush is
that lesbianism is not labelled as a phase. It is
positioned as similarly normal as heterosexual
desire. The way it does this is through a gaze that
can be interpreted as heterosexual, homosexual
or just plain sexual, depending on your taste.
A typical over-the-shoulder shot follows
and then cuts to point-of-view shots of Sugar.
These include a panning shot from Sugar’s breast
area down her body to her thighs, showing
her exposed flesh and school uniform, a highly
sexualised costume thanks to Britney Spears.
In this scene Sugar is the embodiment of
something that Laura Mulvey called ‘to-belooked-at-ness’. In her seminal paper on ‘Visual
Pleasure’, Laura Mulvey stated that:
in their traditional exhibitionist role women
are simultaneously looked at and displayed,
with their appearance coded for strong visual
and erotic impact so that they can be said to
connote to-be-looked-at-ness
Mulvey, 1975
The combination of a slow panning shot of
Sugar’s body and the close-ups of her looking
directly into the camera position the viewer into
Kim’s point of view. We are asked to look at Sugar
in the way that Kim looks at her, following Sugar
to the stairs, cutting back briefly to capture Kim
looking relieved that she has gone.
A final point of view shot of Sugar as she
walks up the stairs cuts off the top part of her
body and objectifies her, Sugar becomes a
wiggling figure and a pair of exposed thighs to
be gazed at.
The three scenes last only three minutes and
are arguably evidence of a wider intention by
broadcasters to represent sexuality in a broader,
more responsible and informed way. You could,
however, argue that it is using the controversy
still caused in some quarters by the unapologetic
representation of sexual freedom to gain viewers.
I rate it as an excellent example of the fluidity
of desire for women by women, for men by
men and for men and women by both men and
women.
Andrea Joyce teaches Media Studies at Long Road Sixth
Form College, Cambridge.
Filmography
Sugar Rush (Channel 4, 2004)
Bibliography
Braudy, L and Cohen, M (eds.): Film Theory
and Criticism: Introductory Readings (Oxford
University Press, 1999)
Miller, Toby (ed): Television Studies (BFI
Publishing, 2002)
Sugar Rush images courtesy of © Phil Fisk
MM
tank man and
the gold mine of
serra pelada
Jerome Monahan evaluates the
construction, impact and influence
of two iconic photographs which
represent the antithesis of freedom in
very different ways.
There is a paradox in talking of images that
capture what it means to be free. In composing
and getting a shot, a photographer manages to
encapsulate a moment in a way that effectively
puts a lid on the experience. Of course, such
images if they are any good may enjoy their
moment in the public eye illustrating copy in a
newspaper or as a part of a magazine spread.
But in a world of images, a picture celebrating
an individual’s resistance to oppression or the
plight of those seemingly trapped in a dreadful
round of back-breaking work (the subject matter
of the two images considered here), are in
danger of becoming just eye-candy for a dazed
reader casually flicking the pages of a Sunday
supplement. A shot that might have been taken
with the best intentions to inspire our awe,
empathy and passion, is relegated to near equal
status with pictures of the season’s fashions and
advertisements for limited edition china figures.
There is another danger. It is one examined
in Susan Sontag’s On Photography, first
published in 1973. In a chapter entitled ‘The
Heroism of Vision’ she discusses the way in which
photography has broadened the categories of
what it is worth looking at:
Photographic seeing meant an aptitude for
discovering beauty in what everybody sees
but neglects as too ordinary.
The power of the camera in skilled hands
to render any subject matter attractive, to
make anything aesthetically pleasing may
seem fairly benign, but for Sontag it is deeply
problematic. In finding beauty among the poor,
for example, photography has the potential to
carry out a rather grotesque ideological trick. In
discovering beauty in the humble, the inane
and the decrepit, photographs have the effect
of rendering the plight of other human beings
less immediate, more universal and somehow
tolerable. In Sontag’s view the process exemplifies
an inequitable distribution of power:
...one of the typical endeavours of portrait
photographers, professionally protective
toward famous faces (like Garbo’s) which
really are ideal, is the search for ‘real’ faces,
generally sought among the anonymous, the
poor, the socially defenceless, the aged, the
insane – people indifferent to (or powerless
to protest) the camera’s aggressions.
Although neither of the photographers
considered here – Jeff Widener and Sebastião
Salgado – spring from a background of
portraiture, it is important to consider to what
extent their famous images fall into the ‘beauty
trap’ and what the implications of that beauty
might be as time passes and the images are
separated from their immediate context –
Widener’s being Beijing of 5th June 1989 when
student protests were finally brutally repressed
by the Chinese authorities, and Salgado’s a
gold mine in the Brazilian state of Para circa
1986. Of course, it is the power of these images
to float free of their original context that ensures
their cultural (and Media Studies) interest. Again
these are photographs that deserve to be a part
of everyone’s visual frame of reference partly
because the Widener shot is widely regarded
as being one of the most famous images ever
taken and second because such images continue
to enjoy a varied ‘after-life’ – popping up in all
sorts of incongruous contexts, their connotations
shifting with every new reproduction.
Commenting on this phenomenon to MM, Jeff
Widener said:
The picture can be seen all over. It has been
used as cartoons and there are T-shirts,
art pieces. The picture has taken on a life
of its own and I have accepted that it will
be used in many different ways. I am a
photojournalist. I went to China to cover the
news. The Tiananmen event was just another
57
MM
Copyright restrictions mean we
are unable to include the image
of Salgado’s ‘Workers in a Gold
Mine’ in the downloadable edition
of MediaMagazine 28. You can see
this image in the print edition of the
April 2009 issue.
MM
news story. It just happened to be a big one.
As a part of the same interview Widener
explained how the image was a runner up for the
1989 Pulitzer Prize for ‘spot photography’. His
definition of this category was:
A news event that happens such as a natural
disaster, man-made catastrophe, or any
event that reflects an urgency or of massive
interest to the public. A general news image
by contrast would be one taken at a press
conference or some other organised news
event. ‘Spot’ means an unexpected news
happening.
His cool responses are perhaps those of a man
who has been asked once too often about this
one shot. They are intriguing for all that, and put
Widener in a very different philosophical space
from that occupied by Sebastião Salgado. For
Widener, the Unknown Rebel or Tank Man shot
– neither title his own – during the crackdown
on the Tiananmen Square unrest was, in the
end, just the result of another assignment in a
lifetime spent covering the world’s trouble-spots.
This desire to establish his broader experience
without denying his single most famous shot
emerges in a tellingly ambivalent website
homepage featuring the image alongside the
caption ‘beyond tiananamen’ (http://www.
jeffwidener.com/h/).
The work of Salgado
Sebastião Salgado came to photography late
in life having pursued a career as a professional
economist. It seems that his damascene
conversion came on a holiday in 1973 in East
Africa, during which he began to take shots
with his wife’s camera. His work has always been
highly political, often underwritten by a desire
to articulate the struggles of the ordinary,
the marginal and the dispossessed. Many of
his most famous images (including the one of
gold miners focused on here) are the product
of prolonged thematically-linked photographic
projects which have required him to rub
shoulders with his subjects over many months,
gaining their trust and a degree of invisibility
that enables him to ‘capture’ them so candidly.
There is nothing ‘smash and grab’ about Salgado’s
work. It is far removed from the constraints
operating on Widener where the obligation is to
come up with ‘spot’ pictures for the next day’s
newspaper. Contrast each photographer’s relative
positioning: Salgado teetering on the brink of the
vast open-cast mine, within yards of the toiling
garimpieros or gold diggers, while Widener’s
vantage point is 800 metres from his subject on
the fifth floor of the Beijing Hotel. Here he gains
a panoramic overview of the scene. To be fair,
he may have desired greater closeness to events
and it was a feat of ingenuity that he managed
to smuggle his cameras past the authorities that
day. In the hotel he avoided confrontation or
mistreatment by units of the People’s Liberation
Army which were at that point busy killing and
injuring protestors in their hundreds.
Another of Sontag’s concerns about
photography concerns the lack of connection
between the taker and the taken:
A disavowal of empathy, a disdain for
message-mongering, a claim to be invisible
– these are strategies endorsed by most
professional photographers. The history
of photography discloses a long tradition
of ambivalence about its capacity for
partisanship: the taking of sides is felt to
undermine its perennial assumption that all
subjects have validity and interest.
It is a fair bet that Widener might object to this
accusation – after all his interest in the Tank Man
incident was born of a desire to catch the essence
of the oppression on the streets of Beijing
and the bravery of the protestors exemplified
by this act of defiance before the approaching
tanks. Clearly, he had an agenda and it was not
a celebration of the restoration of the status quo
in China following six weeks of student protests
demanding the kind of political reforms that
were toppling Communist regimes in Europe at
that time. However, in his analysis now of what
he was witnessing then, there is a distinct macho
detachment to his words that appears to touch
the ‘invisibility’ issue raised by Sontag. According
to Widener:
It was a courageous event and many young
people will get from that what they will.
Personally for me, I think the guy was angry
and just had enough. It’s like poker. If you get
bullied too much in heads up play eventually
there is a risk that a player will go all in, even
if he has a bad hand.
It is even more likely that Salgado would
find Sontag’s thesis far removed from his own
work. The image in focus here emerged from
one among a series of assignments in the early
1990s designed to ‘capture’ examples of the
most extreme forms of mass human labour in
the world. It was a quest that took him from the
Channel Tunnel, to the oil fields of Kuwait ablaze
after the first Gulf War, and to his native Brazil
to record the back-breaking labour of the gold
diggers. In every instance, Salgado’s project was
to celebrate the dignity of workers despite their
sometimes frightful circumstances – portraying
them as ‘heroes’. At the same time the task
was also to carry out an ‘archaeology of the
industrial age’ – commemorating forms of
59
MM
Copyright restrictions mean we
are unable to include the image
of Salgado’s ‘Workers in a Gold
Mine’ in the downloadable edition
of MediaMagazine 28. You can see
this image in the print edition of the
April 2009 issue.
physical labour being replaced by mechanisation
and IT.
To accuse Salgado of a lack of empathy one
feels would be the greatest insult. His concerns
and commitment are suggestive of the political
consciousness he brings to his work, but at the
same time there is a deep streak of romanticism
in his images that manages to co-exist with the
brutality in many of the scenes he depicts. The
playwright Arthur Miller has suggested that
each of Salgado’s photographs is an ‘act of deep
devotion’. And yet Salgado does not attempt to
sanitise his subjects. In the shot that’s our focus,
he manages somehow, despite its stillness,
to suggest the bewildering, seething ant-like
scrabble – the ceaseless scraping and carrying
in progress as the diggers work each owner’s 60
square metre plot, always digging downwards
– or complete the wearisome journey back up
a succession of perilous ladders to the lip of
the mine carrying sacks of soil. This ‘action’ is
emphasised by the relative stillness of the central
figure, leaning on a post and with his arms
nonchalantly folded.
We started with a paradox and we end
with one. It is the photographer’s gift to see
pattern where to the untrained eye there is
only confusion. Both Widener and Salgado are
masters at composing a shot, and in doing so,
creating something that manages to acquire
lasting life. That ‘Tank Man’ has achieved such
endurance may have surprised Widener in the
way that Salgado – always preferring to shoot in
black and white – has as his project with every
picture he takes. It is hard not to ignore how
both images carry associations – particularly
Biblical associations – that enable them to
transcend the specifics of the moment at which
they were taken. In Widener’s image a latter-day
confrontation between David and Goliath is
played out, and in Salgado’s it is as if he has found
a modern equivalent of the slave labourers of
ancient history – commemorating the collective
effort that raised pyramids and palaces. It is such
associations that lie behind the mythic of these
photographs. But in rendering their subjects
somehow universal and aesthetically pleasing
one can’t help feeling there is an injustice at
work, not only to the subjects but also for the
viewer enraptured by their rich ‘ahistorical’
connotations.
To return to specifics – those that know what
happened to the ‘Tank Man’ have never come
clean. He was removed by security men soon
after Widener took his shot and was never seen
again. Even his name is uncertain.
Jerome Monahan is a freelance journalist and a frequent
contributor to the Guardian and MediaMagazine.
Links
For a full explanation of the Tiananmen Square
protests the Wikipedia account is a good
starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989
Jeff Widener’s ‘Tank Man’ image is discussed
widely across the web: and there is a
very useful interview with him at: http://
asianhistory.about.com/od/china/a/
WidenerIntervw.htm
Salgado also enjoys a detailed Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Sebasti%C3%A3o_Salgado
Salgado’s Workers – An Archaeology of
the Industrial Age is reviewed at: http://
findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1306/
is_n11_v59/ai_14667624
Further articles about Salgado and his workers
project are catalogued at:
http://www.encyclopedia.com/
doc/1G1-131819303.html
Susan Sontag’s On Photography: http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Photography
‘Gold Miners of Serra Pelgado’ courtesy of © Salgado and NB Pictures.
‘Tank Man’ by Jeff Widener courtesy of PA Photos.
61
MM
textual analysis in action
A2 Media student
Kirsty Leslie analyses
a sequence from
Skins to explore its
representation of
disability issues.
MM
The sequence of Skins shows the beginning
of the first episode of Season 2. In it we see
how people are dealing with main character
Tony’s disability as is shown through
people’s reactions, attitudes, preconceptions
and opinions. We also see how audience
expectations are challenged throughout the
sequence.
At the start of the episode the viewer is led
to believe that a funeral is taking place due
to diegetic organ music and a church setting.
This is the first preconception of many, as the
setting is actually a dance studio in a converted
church not a working church as the organ
music may have led the audience to believe. As
the previous series ended with Tony’s accident,
the audience assumes that it could be his
funeral. However, this is not the case and the
scene actually begins with dancers.
There are three dancers; one is female,
another is black and the other is Maxxie, who
is homosexual. They act as a representative for
the versatility of human bodies and human
nature in our multicultural society that is
the UK. Continuity editing is dropped for
faster, edgier jump-cuts that highlight the
flexibility of the dancers. The camera jumps
between short mid-shots and tracks around
their bodies, showing the action from tilted
angles, with close-ups of faces and limbs. This
reinforces the ductile nature of the dancers.
This image of pliancy acts as a substantial
contrast to our next shot, showing Tony, his
face in shadows sitting still and watching the
action. His isolation is suggested through
the way he is shot, the darkness acting as a
contrast to the light that Maxxie stands in, and
the emptiness of the frame showing how Tony
is once removed from the action and isolated
by his disability. Although the mid-shot has
only enough light to show his body and facial
features, this helps to communicate
the fact that Tony is not entirely disconnected
from the world and still has some power over
his mind. The mid-shot of Maxxie shows him
standing in the light from the stained glass
window. This image suggests biblical thoughts
and shows how Maxxie emanates kindness and
patience for Tony.
We later see the striking difference between
what emotions Tony can and cannot express
with his new disability. He does not react to the
dancer’s spectacle and cannot appreciate it but
when riding on the bus to Maxxie’s home, a bus
passes at high speed and Tony jumps, grabbing
at Maxxie’s hand. This is the only physical
contact that Tony instigates throughout the
entire sequence. To emphasis the enormity of
this act the sound of the bus is amplified and
fast editing creates sharp tension which pulls
the audience into empathising with Tony. When
the characters finally arrive at Maxxie’s home,
it is decorated with Maxxie’s dancing awards
and photos of him dancing in competitions,
dressed up in leotards. The character of
Maxxie’s Mother treats Tony with familiarity,
but after his accident, Tony has no recollection
of Maxxie’s mother, which is reinforced as the
camera cuts her out of the shot. As she leans in
to clean his face Tony flinches, demonstrating
his discomfort at her touch. The mise-en-scène
is claustrophobic and new to Tony. Maxxie tries
to make Tony feel comfortable even though
he is cutting up his food for him, stating
casually ‘Here you go mate’. Overall this shows
a contrast of two different outcomes in life and
a need for the characters to get back to normal.
It forces the audience to face up to disabilities
and make their own decision as to whether the
character of Tony should have the same level of
respect as he did before the accident. Should
his disability mean that we as the audience
perceive him any differently?
63
MM
Should his place in the narrative hierarchy of the
first series now be questioned?
Audience’s preconceptions are also challenged
in other ways in this sequence. After the dance
we see Maxxie and Tony walking along the street.
They are stopped by a group of ‘Tweenies.’ A group
of six 12-year-old girls lie across a car bonnet.
They are dressed up to look older and are sexually
aware of themselves. Their speech code and
body language tell us they are more aware than
they should be, but the idea of sweet little girls
is long gone from this imagery. These girls again
challenge the audience to confront their ideas of
disability. One asks, ‘Are you mental?’ to which
Tony replies, matter-of-factly, ‘Yes’. Tony is aware of
his condition and how it has affected his life, so he
is able to articulate a response without difficulty,
which contradicts the idea that he might have a
complex at all. The girls also acknowledge this
as they point out he is still physically attractive
despite his strange behaviour.
We meet Tony’s mother in a totally different
setting, a darkened bathroom surrounded by
equipment to help with her son’s disability. This is
accompanied by harp music that is suggestive of
her dreaming about the past. The darkened room
shows her low mood and state of mind with the
equipment making her own home unfamiliar to
her. The mother momentarily forgets that her own
daughter is able-bodied and finally even pulls on
the wrong cord; setting off an alarm instead of
putting on the light. These actions illustrate the
mother’s feelings of isolation and confusion in
coming to terms with the disability of her son. This
resonates with the audience, who must also learn
how to adjust their own expectations in the face of
the disability of such a main character within the
series.
Kirsty Leslie is an A2 student at Long Road Sixth Form,
Cambridge.
Images courtesy of Channel 4 extra.net press site.
GMTV
the runners’ stories
With four and half
million viewers a
day, who wouldn’t
want to start their
media career at
GMTV? But just who
gets their foot in the
door and what’s it
really like to work for
the nation’s brightest
breakfast show?
Maria Brannigan
investigates.
GMTV operates a
Programme Assistants
(otherwise known as
Runners) Scheme. It’s a
bottom rung of the ladder
position but everyone
has to start somewhere.
Although there’s no
guarantee of a job upon
completion, every effort
is made to find one. The
uniqueness of the scheme
makes it tough to get
onto and really tests your
mettle once you’re in it. The
company doesn’t advertise
for applicants; they don’t
need to. They receive
hundreds of unsolicited
applications that are kept
on file for a limited period
and referred to when a
vacancy comes up.
At any one time the
breakfast TV station
employs five Programme
Assistants. Currently these
include 19-year-old Aaron
Spendlow (see page
66) who studied Musical
Theatre at college and
27-year-old Fraser Gibson
who joined the scheme
with a Politics degree
and a year of working at
a travel company under
his belt. 23-year-old Jen
Archer arrived at GMTV
with an Honours degree
in Psychology and a
Postgraduate Diploma in
Journalism. She’s recently
been promoted to Trainee
Researcher and is currently
working on the News Desk.
Operations Director
Di Holmes, who runs the
scheme, insists a Media
degree isn’t essential
to becoming a Runner.
Instead she looks for a
certain level of academic
discipline in any subject
area, coupled with relevant
work experience. If they
make it to interview, Di
looks for an awareness of
the world around them;
‘I want to find out if they
know who the Shadow
Chancellor is, what soaps
they watch, which paper
they read and why, as well
as a good knowledge of
current affairs and popular
culture.’ Interviewees are
quizzed about what they
like and don’t like about the
programme and how they
would change it.
and hasn’t looked back
since. She says:
Aaron’s story
However, the reality
of bagging that fantastic
job can come as a bit
of a shock. A Runner’s
main responsibility is
to keep the office and
studio running smoothly,
which can seem rather
humdrum after a while.
Duties include distributing
the post and newspapers,
collecting numerous
pints of milk, arranging
guest and presenter travel
and accommodation,
printing and distributing
scripts, as well as sourcing
and purchasing props
for the show. Runners’
shifts alternate between
working on Lorraine Kelly’s
programme GMTV with
Lorraine and the Day Desk
where they assist several
different programme
departments as needed.
One week a month they
work night shifts when they
print scripts for the gallery
and studio.
In his interview, Aaron
stressed his passion for the
industry and emphasised
how hard he would work
for the opportunity to
become a Programme
Assistant. After a spell of
work experience he started
on the nine-month long
scheme in October 2008.
On top of the demands of a
Runner’s job, Aaron spends
his days off in the GMTV
Kids department because
it’s an area he wants to
learn more about. He says
his first job in TV has been
‘stressful and demanding
but a rewarding and
exciting challenge too.’
Jen’s story
The week before her
interview, Jen recorded
GMTV every day and
watched it whilst taking
notes on the main stories
and type of guests as well
as familiarising herself
with the presenters and
structure of the show.
She was enthusiastic,
determined and prepared
to move to London from
Scotland. She got the job
I find the atmosphere
when the live show is
on electric. Everyone is
committed to putting
out the best possible
show. It’s a wonderful
environment to work
in.
GMTV’s Director of
Programmes, Peter McHugh
says a successful Runner
needs ‘Enthusiasm and the
realisation they’ve bagged
one of the best media
jobs you can get.’ Before
applying for a position,
though, Peter emphasises
the importance of a dose
of reality through work
experience in a local paper,
TV or radio station.
Reality check
Ruby’s story
Fourteen years ago,
Ruby Kuraishe thought the
odds were stacked against
her when she applied for
65
a GMTV Researcher’s job
in the Media Guardian.
1200 people applied for
the position at the then
fledging breakfast TV
station. Although Ruby
didn’t have enough
experience to become a
Researcher, her thorough
programme knowledge
along with her enthusiasm
and work experience
placements instigated a
new initiative at GMTV.
She was to become the
first person on their new
training scheme, the
forerunner of today’s
Programme Assistants
Scheme. Ruby recalls the
experience as being a
baptism of fire for both
parties. The reality of a
live newsroom was vastly
different to the glamorous
world she’d imagined.
‘There were long hours,
menial tasks, obscure
shopping errands, vicious
senior producers and plenty
of stress...think Devil Wears
Prada, without the fabulous
clothes and you won’t be
far off!’
Ruby has since navigated
her way through the
various levels of television,
from Researcher to Director
to Producer to Series
Producer to Executive
Producer and most recently
Commissioning Editor for
Channel 4. Other alumni
of the scheme have gone
66
on to be Producers and
Executive Producers in
independent production
companies and other TV
stations. Many have chosen
to go up through the ranks
at GMTV, while others
have left and returned
having gained experience
elsewhere.
Katherine’s story
Katherine Quinn is
one of them. She joined
GMTV on the Programme
Assistants Scheme after
being a secondary school
teacher for four years and
took a 50% pay cut to
do the job because she
needed it to kick-start her
new career. Katherine was
given an interview after
completing two weeks
unpaid work experience
and subsequently got a
job on the scheme. She
remembers making tea
at 3am, travelling across
London to search for a
specific astronaut’s outfit, as
well as collecting 100 pints
of milk and cleaning the
kitchen surfaces on three
floors!
Never think it’s beneath
you just because you
have a degree in Media
Studies. I did it with
a smile on my face
knowing how many
people would want the
opportunity I’d been
given.
As a Researcher,
Katherine left to work at
the BBC but has returned
to GMTV where she is
currently Deputy Series
Producer on GMTV With
Lorraine.
For a Runner to make it
up to the next rung of the
slippery ladder to Trainee
Researcher, Peter McHugh
always looks for someone
to go the extra mile. To
anticipate what someone
needs before they have
to ask i.e. to get the daily
batch of newspapers to
him on time every day!
Di Holmes adds that a
good Runner is one who
doesn’t just moan about
a problem but comes up
with a suggestion on how
to solve it.
Fiona’s story
Now a Producer at
Granada TV’s This Morning,
Fiona McLaren also started
out on the Programme
Assistants Scheme. She
received a phone call from
a friend at GMTV to say
that their work experience
person had dropped
out and would she be
interested? It was Saturday
and they needed her to
start on the Monday. So she
cancelled the temporary job
she was due to start, and
travelled from Derbyshire
to London to sleep on a
friend’s floor for a week.
Before she left GMTV, Fiona
made sure all the pertinent
people knew who she was,
so when a Runner’s vacancy
came up she got an
interview and subsequently
the job. As a Runner,
Fiona says she got great
satisfaction from being part
of the production process
however small a cog. She
enjoyed the buzz from
sourcing a difficult prop,
seeing it on screen and
realising how it enhanced
the production values of
the programme item. But
she says:
The lows were often
at 4am when pulling a
tray of milk around the
studio, contemplating
my meagre salary
and wondering what
on earth I was doing!
However, I never
wanted to give it up
and always looked to
the bigger picture.
Strong communication
skills are essential for
Runners along with a
sense of confidence and
a cheerful nature. They
have to be able to deal
with a variety of people
including the General
Public, Correspondents,
Researchers and Producers.
They need to be able to
listen carefully to what
is being asked of them,
but not be afraid to ask
calmly for clarification
especially under stressful
circumstances.
Tiffany’s story
As a GMTV
Correspondent and
graduate of the Programme
Assistants Scheme, Tiffany
Royce (see page 65) has
experienced life on both
sides of the Runner’s
desk. She says the scheme
provided her with an
incredible opportunity and
although some aspects
of the job are incredibly
mundane it’s important
to have a positive attitude
and ‘believe in yourself
because no one else will’.
Tiffany joined the scheme
with a Journalism degree
and having completed her
training at GMTV worked
in regional TV before
returning as a reporter
and subsequently a
correspondent.
Get real – and
forget the
money
If any candidate is under
the illusion that TV is a
‘get rich quick’ profession,
the GMTV Programme
Assistants Scheme provides
just over £15,000 as a
salary. In exceptional
circumstances in other TV
companies, Runners have
been known to work for
just their travel expenses;
such was the profile of the
programmes and kudos
attached to working on
them.
With so many applicants
for a few prized positions,
it’s clear the industry is as
competitive as ever. In the
UK television workforce,
producing over 450 TV
channels, there are over
18,000 freelancers working
day in, day out. Inevitably
there will always be
someone willing to take the
place of an apprentice who
hasn’t done their homework
and realised that attitude,
their willingness to adapt
and learn is fundamental to
succeeding.
So which are you...a cog
or a spanner?
Maria Brannigan worked for
GMTV as a Producer/Director
for 10 years. She is currently
re-training to become a Media
Studies teacher.
F
or our next issues, we’ve gone for Big Themes,
which you can interpret in any way that grabs
you, in relation to any media – as long as they
relate to some aspect of film, media, or e-media
study, or the debates around them. We’ve given
you some starting point keywords – but we know
you’ll have far more interesting ideas. And we’re
not just after articles – you can send artwork,
2009
/2010
photography, magazine spreads, or even
just ideas about the sorts of stuff you’d like
to read in MediaMag. See below for details.
SEPTEMBER:
ER:
DEC
DECEMBER:
R:
a
Dram
r
y
y
u
t
s
i
o
l
a
t
a
m
n
Re
Hu
Fa
Deadline: 14th May 2009
D
Deadline:
14th September
S
2009
soap melodrama
realism
romance
crime
western
Bond action
adventure news
history
cross-platform
sport
gaming fashion
dramadoc
real life
stardom
representation
epresentation
reality TV
documentary
reportage
news
docudrama
journalism
FEBRUARY:
FEBR
Y:
APRIL:
AP
Deadline: 9th Nov
November
ovember 2009
Heroes
Hero
roes
What makess you
superheroes
llaugh?
Who
Galactica
actica
Deadline: 8th February
Feb
bruary 2010
Watchmen
Being
Stand-up
sitcom
satire surrealism
Human magic
games SF comics
black comedy
Boosh
Brand cartoons
Red Dwarf
photography celebs
utopia dystopia
politics
vampires aliens
Simpsons
funny
films
Writing for MediaMag
Once you’ve found your inspiration:
• Mail us with a brief outline of your ideas well in advance of the appropriate deadline – to
[email protected]. We’ll get back to you within a few days.
• Check the notes for contributors on the MediaMagazine website.
• Send us your articles ahead of the appropriate deadline – making sure you tell us who you are!
• Please don’t embed any images in written articles, but mail them separately as hi-res jpegs.
67
APRIL 2009: THE FREEDOM ISSUE
MM MediaMagazine
MM
edia
agazine
english and media centre issue 28 | april 2009
english and media centre | issue 28 | april 2009
Freedom from
Hollywood
Diploma students
on freedom
Sexual freedom
TV drama –
institutions and
audiences
Skins
Cross-media
platforms
Dead Set
MM

April 2009 - Guernsey Grammar School

Transcription

Similar documents

CARPRO 1 DAY. ENTRY LEVEL

Naqsh Short Films

Film quiz 12 May 2011

tierney gearon - Zeitgeist Films

Bandyke Moving Pictures

presents - Program in Arts of the Moving Image

THE CREATION OF MEANING - Press Kit

ergophobia - Student Cuts

Join us for a free screening of First Generation —

Oct 2013 reg layout