Module 6 essay comparing "Fawlty Towers" and "The Bash Street Kids" continued...

‘Text 2’ is a cartoon strip and follows the conventions of bold close-up and medium shots concentrating on the character’s gestures and facial expressions. Particularly, the medium shot of the main female character saying “something’s not right here!” shows her to not have the quality of to-be-looked-ness due to her short dark hair, blunt features and simple boyish dress sense. However, the new girl fully conforms to Mulvey’s male gaze theory but although she is popular with the boys, her running away in shame of wearing glasses shows that in society women are wrong to use their good looks to be noticed and men are just as wrong for falling for her. Instead, it is the hegemonic values in society which force ideologies that women should use their looks to gain attention or even a slight status.

Similarly, the female characters act either very passive in ‘Fawlty Towers’ or are told to “shut up”. This shows that to the males such as Basil Fawlty the issue of the war is not as serious thus portraying women to be unable to understand or take part in the sarcasm he creates about the Germans in World War Two. This, like ‘text 2’ agrees with Mulvey’s theory of women being passive but their body parts are not fetishised so they are not objectified. The audience would be well educated about the history of the war, as Basil uses a pun to state that the Germans “stated it” because they “invaded Poland”, to find humour in the text.

The intentions behind the humour of the two texts are very similar. Basil Fawlty in “Fawlty Towers” laughs at the Germans but this backfires as the English man is called “a naughty moose”. In “The Bask Street Kids” the audience presume the girl is jealous but in fact she is correct in thinking that something is not right and then the audience laugh at the new girl’s stupidity as she would rather not see properly than wear her glasses. It is also humorous that the boys at the end have to hold hands; creating a sense of homophobia in the children pointing and laughing. This does not represent society today as the BBC reported in the same year that 'text 2' was published (2005) that it legally recognized gay relationships for the first time. It can be considered that the ruling elite want to impose more conservative values onto society by producing this text.

Virgin Media to back Big Brother



Mark Sweney
Wednesday March 21, 2007
http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,,2039130,00.html




Virgin Media has been confirmed as the sponsor of Big Brother 8 with the company's mobile arm to be the main service promoted.

It is only for the main big brother series but no the celebrity Big Brother. They had worries after the race row regarding the treatment of Shilpa Shetty in the house but Virgin Media is locked in a fractious battle with BSkyB after Sky removed its basic channels from Virgin in a row over carriage payments. This would generate greater c ompetition for virgin media as sponsorship of a major show like bir brother equals greater demand and greater competition.

"The sponsorship will be split between our mobile and media services," added Mr Kydd. "What Big Brother does is give a fantastic opportunity to bring to life quadplay in action and the core 16-34 demographic BB reaches is a bullseye for mobile. Virgin Mobile will be the lead sponsor but we will absolutely push Virgin Media messaging."

My Comments: Virgin Media deciding to back Big Brother is quite conterversial and really, i can see that the only reason they have decided to do this is to get back at BskyB because it removed its basic channels from virgin. However, this would generate a lot of profits for Virgin Media and after Carphone Warehouse's drop out Big Brother needed sponsorship.

Grade: no future for kids' programmes on ITV1


Chris TryhornTuesday March 13, 2007

MediaGuardian.co.uk

http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,,2033021,00.html



This story is about the main ITV channel- (ITV1) not showing any children's TV programmes as the broadcaster's executive Michael Grade said: "In terms of the valuable air time on a main network like ITV1, maintaining a loss-leading service for children seems to be unlikely to be sustained in the medium to long term." At the same time, the CITV, and BBC's childrens channels as well as others like Nick Junior and Junior Discovery are growing rapidly.


My Comments: I think this is a bad move for ITV because not only will they suffer through children watching the channel before and after school and giving in to the rivals BBC but it also means there would be less advertising revenue. If the children's programmes go, then so will the advertisements selling toys etc to children. It would have been thought that this would be one of the greatest times to advertise apart from peak time. However, "Ofcom launched a review of children's programming last month amid growing concern that the production of homegrown shows providing an alternative to the BBC was drying up" so they were kind of forced to do it.

Using the comparison of these two texts as your starting point, explore the media issues and debates which they raise.
In your question you will need to address:
- Key concepts
- Contextual facotrs
- Media theory

Text 1: Gil Scott-Heron's "The revolution will not be televised"(1972)
Text 2: Dj Vadim (ft Sarah Jones') "Your revolution"(1998)

Gil Scott- heron's "Your revolution will not be televised" is a song desired to protest about the under representation of black people compared to white in the mainstream media. He talks of the main idea that if black people revolted, even a big event like this would not be shown on television purely because it is black people who are demanding rapid change. Sarah Jones' "Your revolution" is a pastiche and protest song. Jones is protesting about female representations in the media instead of black.

Different periods of the 20th century shows that by 1998 although black people were represented more on TV, the women especially were stereotyped to be sex objects belonging to males. In her song, Jones parodies other texts such as the Fugees' "Killing me softly", Foxy Brown and L.L... whilst Heron parodies the phrases and slogans seen in advertising. The ideas behind these are very different. Heron writes "The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal" suggesting that through advertising, audiences are in a state where they have to conform to what they are being told/persuaded to do (buy the product) under a hegemonic society because of the "sex appeal" it will genrate. Here, by mocking and parodying advertising slogans, he almost makes the fact that the revolution will not be televised a good thing as he suggests that the reveloution would be too good to be shown on TV and it will not need to be forced on black people by the elite through the media.

Jones parodies songs from the past which are about women being passive and sexual. She writes "My Jamaican brother, your revolution will not make you feel bombastic and really fantastic, and have you groping in the dark for that rubber wrapped in plastic". This portrays black males to be self-obsessed and egoistic whilst the portrayal of women is conforming to Lauras Mulvey's theory of the male gaze and them being objectified because of their sexality and to-be-looked-at-ness. This signifies that the song is a post-modern text showing the mysogonistic values of black males.

Heron also uses the stereotypes of black people in his song. He writes "there will be no pictures of you and Willie May...trying to slide that color TV into a stolen ambulance" representing them as savage criminals because they are steeling. This is similar to Michael's Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" as he tries to understand why black people are treated as criminals on the news especially. Heron also goes on to say that "there will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock news...the theme song will not be written by Jim Webb, Francis Scott Key", suggesting that the revolution will not at all be affiliated with white people creating segregation between white and black people in 1972. By this time black people had civil rights in America but this was not portrayed correctly by the media.

When Jones wrote her song, black people were being represented in the media but the women still had to fight for thier rights. Heron uses "brother" showing that the audience for his text is black males and Jones writes "brother" as well, talking back to the men who thought the black revolution was going to happen and even Heron himself. This shows that black people were, in Jones' eyes, over ambitious with their revolution as "your revolution will not be you flexing your little sex status to express what you feel". This suggests that black males are very active and Jones wants to revolt against them. Black males empower the females to achieve a high sex status and Jones wants the reversal; for women to empower men.

Lastly, the idea of power is also seen in "Your revolution will not be televised" as Heron writes "There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers in the instant replay". This conforms to the theory of the Frankfurt School as "pigs" are the police and "brothers" are black males where the media has oppressed minorities but showing little and bad representations of them, such as the criminal and victim. This shows that the media directly effects the ways in which white people think for the stereotype to be present, tying in with the effects theory. Therefore, this song goes against the uses and gratifications theory beause in 1972 there was less media so it was more likely to be owned by rich, white, ruling elite who imposed forceful ideologies into the borgeoisie through the media.

In conclusion, both songs are a representation of the society they were living in at the time. Gil Scott Heron wants greater and realisitc black representation in the media and Sarah Jones wants the same with females. They use key issues such as stereotypes, conforming to the theory of Laura Mulvey, and a hegemonic society. Gil Scott-Heron wants to achieve a marxist sociey after the revolution where white people would be the borgiouse and black people the ruling elite. Sarah Jones plays on black male's egoistic, materialistic and mysoginistic values, damning and cussing them because the media's representations of women needs to be revolted against.