A Review on Laura Mulvey

I found this reading to be quite interesting as it goes into cinema, and how a film can have a large impact in ones sexuality and identity. For me it was quite heavy reading, mainly because I had to look words like phallocentrism and scopophilic. From my understanding, its about how women throughout the years in cinema, have been seen as eye candy in a way, and that becomes overly sexualized or at least have to be seen as beautiful to attract male audience for attraction and for women an idea of how they should look in a way. The reading was quite challenging to understand so I'm going off the topics that I think are being brought up, and I just hope I am not ranting. However the film she talks about; the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock movie Rear Window, about a man whilst he is bored spies on the people that lives across from him, I watched the beginning of the film and immediately, you have a half naked woman whose bra falls off, already within the first two minutes of the film, they have over sexualized a woman through the sake of appealing an audience, specifically an audience of men.

Subculture, is a group of people who differentiate from the parent culture, e.g. Punk, Skinheads etc. When a group of people act or wear something in a certain that wouldn't be seen as normal into their society they grew up in. 

Black Sabbath- Left, Slipknot- Right

Chris Kael- Guitarist for Five Finger Death Punch (top) Motley Crue (bottom)

I have looked at Metal Bands from different Eras, With bands like Motley Crue and Black Sabbath, they would bring round men wearing eyeliner, lipstick and provocative clothing like women's leggings, fish net stockings and of course the colour black being a main feature in what they wear. Now, tattoos on the arms are becoming more of a popular cultural idea now than it did when band from 80s and 90s. Other pieces of clothing that are becoming more modern are ripped jeans, alongside painted nails, which are seen to be more feminine, however it is becoming more normal for people who listen to this kind of music.

Here are my notes from my last lecture about the Graphic code of comic books.

This is a comic page made by Skottie Young. Skottie Young is an American Comic Artist and I've loved his work for a very long time, He is mostly famous with working with Marvel, and also his most popular graphic novel "I Hate Fairyland". This page is from the Marvel comic: Rocket and Groot, What I like about this is that there is no speech bubbles or thought bubbles or Narrator box, the only word in this page is the Onomatopoeia "KRAK". This shows through facial expressions and body language what is happening.

This ad is for men's cologne, its a Giorgio Armani advert with actor Chris Pine on the cover, I've done some quick annotations on the left just as a reminder and what the ad represents, The ad is mainly aimed at men of any age and that is because of how the advert is represented. The colours are very mostly black and navy blue, which is preferably meant for men, the grey background helps the product and the model stand out. The font has an Italian style to it as the brand Giorgio Armani is from Milan, Italy, so its makes sense why they chosen that specific font. The model used in this ad, is movie star Chris Pine, famous for his role in Star Trek and recently Wonder Woman '84. His prowess has audiences loving him as an actor and that's what also helps this advert, wearing a suit also gives the advert some sophistication, and the product is parallel to the model which shows equal importance.   

For this lecture we asked to read about The World of Wrestling and whether it is seen as a sport, and Media Semiotics and how symbols and signs are effecting our surroundings and cultural meaning.

Roland Barthes, wrote a book called "Mythology" and the chapter we were asked to looked was based on Wrestling and whether it was a sport or not, personally when I was a child, I believed it to be real and growing up I've learned to realize how fabricated Wrestling came to be. Barthes believed that wrestling was not a sport, However it had all the context and attributes of a sport like winning, losing and competition,  it has certain aspects that make it more of a pantomime rather than a sporting event. Though it takes a type of talent to become a wrestler, what Barthes proves that wrestlers aren't there to win like a normal sporting contender but they are to go through the motions which are expected of them. The video above shows the medias point of view of wrestling, though Barthes wouldn't have the commentators talking about the rules of the match or a  walkthrough about the match, but what Barthes sees is that the a wrestling is almost like a play were the wrestlers would be either talk about what to do before the match or when there in a "hold" for a long period of time as shown in the video, The Referee doesn't seem to be in control  rather to exaggerate how powerful or how heated the wrestlers are in the match, if the referee gets hit he would exaggerate how strong he is when really it would have been a nudge. 
What fans like to see is they like to experience pleasure through justice, they want to see the good guy win and the bad guy lose, sometimes the tables would turn that would make the fans feel a rage of emotions knowing their favourite wrestler has been beaten, Another thing Barthes shows is the  personality traits of the wrestlers, so a bad guy would be Tall, Big and Scary, and the good guy would be heroic and charismatic, with that they show passion through body language; the would look in pain but not actually be in pain, and the excessive gestures like getting the crowds approval or disapproval.

Media Semiotics by John Bignell, talks about the study of signs and sign systems and how anything that causes meaning is a sign like words, gestures and body language. We talk about semiotic being a big part of structuralism and how signs can define who you are as a person just by what you mean when you of something; for example if I thought of a dog the first dog that comes to mind is a previous dog I had growing up, for different people it could a specific breed, a trait, a fiction dog or a memory of one. A specific way knowing what a sign is the signifier meaning a physical representation ( in this case the dog) and signified meaning the mental concept ( which would be for me the memory of that dog) both of those are what make a sign. Another sign would be things like clothing, advertisement and designs are also relating to signs and symbols, Semioticians search for the systems which underlie the ability of signs like words, images and items.