For my Critical Investigation, I am going to look at the extent which the representation of female celebrities influence teenage girls? In order to do so I will be analysing contemporary texts such as "Extreme skinny celebrities", "Britain's Next Top Model”, as well as other resources such as magazine and newspaper articles.
*•..Linked Production..•*
As a Linked Production to this investigation, my partner (Anika) and I will be creating a four page magazine article interviewing teenage girls on how the representations of celebrities influence them, which will also explore health issues. We will seek to do a number of interviews and surveys mainly targeted at girls of Greenford High School in order to see how far the representations of celebrities affect teenage girls with any relation to their health.
- I will be analysing different angle shots in each of the TV series in order to determine where the emphasis is being put on most by the camera shot. For example the celebrities' waist lines, etc.
- I will also look into the timing of each shot, to see how long the emphasis of each shot has been put upon certain areas, For example whether 'skinnier' models/ celebrities have more emphasis than 'larger' models/ celebrities.
- Lastly, I will examine the different types of props that are associated with the celebrities or models in addition to studying the affects they have on teenage girls.
* Institution:
- Institution is also a big aspect in television as the instituter's market and advertise the TV series so it can appeal to its target audience. I will be looking into the instituter and seeing if there is a similar pattern in the types of TV programmes which they have distributed.
- I will also look at the institutions of Magazines and Newspapers to see any patterns in the articles they produce on celebrities and teenage girls.
* Genre:
- The chick flick genre is the genre that is prominent in the TV programmes I will study and therefore I will be focusing on the most. The reason for this is because "Britain's next top model" is mainly targeted as late teenage girls and I can see if the director has broken any conventions of the chick flick genre to make it more appealing to the audience.
- For my critical investigation I will also be looking at the drama genre as "Britain's next top model" creates drama and sustains tension throughout. The reason for looking at the drama genre is so that I can be able to identify whether the director has used dramatic parts of the series such as fights or back stabbing to attract a greater audience as the series mainly attracts females.
* Representation:
- The representation that I will paying particular attention to is the celebrities portrayed in "Extreme skinny celebrities". I am going to be analysing in close detail, to aspects such as their clothing, their facial expressions and the way they represents themselves to others. This will allow me to see how their appearance affects teenage girls, especially the facial expressions as if they seem happier with the way they are this will have a huge influence on teenager girls.
- I will also be referring to the other females which have been represented in "Britain's next top model" so that I can compare each texts to see how the representations are different or similar and what are the causes for this. I will then justify my argument and use statistics to prove that the media has an affect on the female teenage audience and how teenagers tend to copy what is being shown on T.V.
* Audience:
- For my critical investigation, I will be mainly exploring teenage audiences.
- I will also refer to the 'uses and gratification' theory in order to help me explain why these audiences have a particular interest on a certain text.
- For our linked production we will be having teenage audience of females. The magazine is based on girls and shows how the media has an effect on them, sometimes without them even knowing, which will regard to Louis Althusser's Hypodermic syringe model theory distinguishing teenage girls to be either a passive audience or active ones.
* Ideologies:
- I will be looking into the explicit and implicit ideologies of the institution as part of my critical investigation. Newspapers may have a particular political affiliation, which will make some of their articles biased to a particular view of teenage girls or health issues regarding celebrities, making their ideology explicit.
- However, visual representations of skinny models and celebrities in magazines and TV series will be implicit.
- I will also be looking at Mulveys theory about the "male gaze" and prove to teenage girls how women are just put in the media to-be-looked-at. The ideology will remain strong so long Hollywood keep portraying women as sexual objects.
* Narrative:
- For both my critical investigation and linked production, I will be looking into Rolande Barthe’s 'enigma code' theory. Some TV programmes use many enigma codes, for example before break showing clips of 'what's yet to come' in order to generate hype and keep audiences attracted to the show.
- I will also look into Lévi-Strauss’ theory of binary oppositions when analysing the texts. The ideas of skinny or slob, A list designers or charity shops are all stereotypical binary oppositions connected to celebrities and affect teenagers.
.*.*.Media Theories.*.*.
* Audience Theory is key when looking into the representation of Celebrities in TV programmes and other texts for my critical investigation. I will be looking into all types of audience theories including the 'Uses and Gratifications' theory, 'Reception' theory and 'Hypodermic Needle Model'. One of the main things to look at will be whether the audience of each text I analyse is active or passive.
* Semiotics is also a theory that I will be looking into as it involves me looking into the deeper meanings in the TV programmes to really understand each the representation of the characters. A passive audience will only notice the denotations in the texts, but if the audience is active, the connotations in the movie will play a very influential part.
* The male gaze by Laura Mulvey. The reason for this theory is that I believe that the representation of females in the media is strictly sexual to attract a male audience. Therefore, this gives a negative response to the female teenage audience and may imitate certain scenes as they may feel it is right.
This study fits into the contemporary media landscape as it covers an issue which is important in both society and the media. Looking into the representations of Celebrities over different types of texts and how they affect teenage girls will help us to understand whether health concerns for young teenage girls stem from the representations of these models or celebrities in the media.
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