“Media Representations are complex, not simple and straightforward .” How far do you agree with this statement in relation to the collective group that you have studied?

Media representations are shown in a number of different lights in a

number of different examples. The examples that I am going to be using            

for this essay is going to be both Marvel Entertainments ‘Deadpool’

and the BBC’s ‘The Night Manager.’ these two show the male gender

which is the media representation that I have researched in great

detail to see how different media outputs have altered the perceived

representation of the male gender.

The first way we have seen the male gender represented is in Deadpool.

Deadpool is a revolutionary film in the fact that it has subverted the

stereotypical representation of the male gender. Previously we have

seen superhero’s have a set range of characteristics, these being

companionate and selfless and all for helping society. these are a

set of characteristics which Deadpool does not posses. Deadpool is

Rude , selfish and only concerned about himself in fact the only thing

making him “super” is the mutation in which he underwent to solve his

cancer. This set of characterises completely challenge what currently

makes a superhero character a superhero. we can use Buckingham’s

concept of “ contemporary representation of gender cannot be

encompassed by outdated notions of ‘stereotyping‘ , ‘negative images‘

and the ‘male gaze‘. This concept could have been the view that marvel

could have seen when they when they went ahead with making Deadpool.

Even though Deadpool has been a huge success it was a huge risk for

them to create a superhero movie which was aimed towards an adult

audience.

With the film Deadpool we can use Stuart  halls reception theory to analyse the audience and how they have handled this new concept of an R rated superhero movie. Due to rating and feedback from the film we can see that the film has done extremely well and the audience have agreed with themes that the director has created. We could take this example where the audience have adapted a new concept positively. This can be used to show the progress that society is making to adapt new media representations for certain media groups. This is something that would not have necessarily worked in past due to the audiences being much more less active and simply taking media for the way it was.    

Secondly we can also see this this statement from another perspective. There are also other cases of media being produced which stick to a strict set of conventions and don’t tend to push the boundaries to create something unique. My example where this has been implemented is the BBC’s “The Night Manager”. This television series is a crime drama which entails an undercover spy trying to take down an international arms dealer. We are made clear that the spy is the main character who is a young British male. This is a stereotypical set of characteristics for a spy characters, we can see other example of this through looking back at the James Bond film series going back to the early 60’s. We can use Vladimir Propp’s narrative theory to explain the set of commonly reoccurring characters. In The Night Manager we have both the main hero and the main villain are both British males. Looking more at the villain named Richard Roper, Roper Is a British capitalist male which is what the world has been led to believe is characteristics of a spy drama villain. This can show that the male gender can also not be very complex and sometimes media producers simply stick to the typical norm that has been created by previous media content.

Another interpretation and what I feel is the true answer to this question is that media representations can be complex and not simple if the creator of the content wants that to be. By this I mean creators who are wanted to produce a unique piece of content and not conform to stereotypical conventions of the male gender have the potential to make the media representations very complex and something that hasn’t been done before. This is where our Deadpool character can be used as an example for showing a male gender in a way that has not been done before, therefore giving the male gender a complex representation. The risk associated with Deadpool could have been down to the lack of responsibility that Marvel entertainment had to produce a piece of content. Whereas the night manager was produced by the BBC, the BBC have responsibilities to produce a certain type of content due to them being the television network responsible of bringing information to the United Kingdom and for this reason are limited to how able them are to push the boat out in the direction of creating a now perception of the male gender.

In my opinion I feel that with time media representations are becoming more and more complex. My reasoning for this the more that people are starting to branch out and challenge the stereotypical conventions of how a certain group is represented. using the male gender which is what I have personally researched into i came to find that the contemporary representation and the past representations of the male gender has become much more complex. Using the examples that i have featured in my response we can see how deadpool's character can be see to show how society's view on what makes a hero a hero in modern day media products. in the night manager we are shown an old outdated representation of a male hero character, this consists of compassion and completely  selfless. Where as the way that society is going nowadays it is more realistic for the hero to not be perfect and consist of other characteristics. for these reasons I agree with the statement that media representations are complex.