Essay Question How does the portrayal of people’s lives in film and media affect the way the audience value their own? Discuss Kate hulme OUIL501
One of the first things I wanted to discuss within my essay was the watching Josephine (2011) Agent Provocateur campaign, I feel as though this is one of the most out right uses of Voyeurism used to sell an idea to an audience so felt it would be a good place to kick my essay of , more specifically looking at the Creative Director of the advert Johan Renhck, who is celebrated for his cutting edge ideas when working with advertising the mael form. I found the advert extremely perverse and felt it linked clearly with many of the points made in Laura Mulveys ‘visual pleasure and narrative cinema’ essay, she talks of how women are subjected to the male gaze powerlessly, which I see as being the whole point of this advert, viewers feel as though they have power of Josephine.
Jean Jullien is one of the most celebrated artists of our time, he works a lot based on the ridiculous nature of social media, shedding light on how people are accidentally dislocating themselves from society. Society itself I feel means the coming together of different people however in Julliens work he shows the direction in which it is truly heading. A much more bleak and dysfunctional way of being, he shows the ways in which technology and society are becoming part of the same things and perhaps soon they may not be able to exist without one another.
Caitlyn Jenner in 2015 became a women and graced the cover of vanity fair t showcase the new her. Shortly after she won Glamour's woman of the year award, this caused huge social upset, with people saying there were so many more deserving people of the award than her. I believe Caitlyn winning this award can be related to the theme of aesthetics and how important they are in the media now, despite being a man her whole life as soon as she changed the aesthetics of her appearance she merited winning ‘woman of the year’ , its shows that such awards are not based on anything other than qualities that are skin deep.
Eric Pickersgill Pickersgill recently released a new series of photographs where by he used photoshop to remove peoples phones from the images, the photographs show the ways in which technology is effecting our culture, its effecting the way that humans communicate with one another and distancing us from each other. I felt these images were incredibly powerful and really brought home the truth about social media, after seeing these images I deleted Facebook off my phone to stop me from using it when I was in social situations and also to save my mental health, you can see from the photographs that none of the people in them are happy, social media destroys are self confidence and worth by pitting us against one another, who can get the most liked and friends, and makes us forget about what’s really important in life.
I also needed to focus on the positives of cinema and social media, of which there are many. La La Land caused a huge surge in the number of tap dance lessons. A tap dancing teacher in the Guardian online said – “Our beginners’ classes have got really popular this year, tap has suddenly sky rocketed into the forefront,” said Rory Cubbin, 27, a dance tutor at City Academy in London. “People used to want to be Fred and Ginger, now they come to class and say they want to be Ryan and Emma.”
In 1995 French film la Haine (the hate) caused a stir in france, it was following a series of mystery bombings in the capital of paris. I believe this film closely links to the theme of politics, The film changed the way the middle classes of france viewed the people living in the suburbs of the city who had often been looked down opon, the film brought sympathy to these people and caused a huge stir with the police. The film caused marches and protests across the city and brought economical aid to those living in the Paris slums who needed it.