Mrs Baird - Homework Personal Respone To Media texts.

Media, Pleasure and Identity: What i gathered from reading the text, this article is about how audiences interpret different forms of media and why they appeal to them in such a way. A general theme that i seemed to understand from the article was that media (T.V and films in particular) are used as a form of escape from the real world. From this a sense a of relaxation or pleasure is assured which is what appeals to the audience in the first place.

In this text the term "Escapism" is used i had to research it to understand the meaning of the word, so i thought i should post a definition for future reference.

Escapism - Involves doing a activity you like as a form of relaxation or escape from reality. Examples can include: watching mindless T.V, Playing computer games and even eating. It has been argued that escapism can become addictive, which when you truly think about it is a very plausible theory. This can be seen through countless examples such as people comfort eating to an extreme.

Observer Film Quarterly: This article is generally about Richard Curtis. The article contains listings of some of his most famous films, such as, Four weddings and a funeral, Love Actually and of course Mr Bean. The article questions whether with the fall of New labour if Curtis was to succumb to the same fate. Throughout the article the term 'Curtisland' is used profusely this merely refers to New labours happy outlook on everything which just happens to appear in a selection of his films generally to do with the topic of love, for example Wimbledon. There are certain characters that can be seen in most of his films to do with this topic the majority being lovesick young men tripping over themselves for that one 'love at first sight' women. In my opinion this can be seen the most clearly in 4 weddings and a funeral.

Contemporary British Cinema: Within the article it goes through different eras of British film suggesting that what films may imply can have subliminal positive and negative effects on what the audience may think. For example in a film such as 'This Is England' can be seen to both raise awareness of racism but possibly make it seem as if its ok. This is a very difficult concept grasp as their are two very understandable sides to the argument, I would also imagine the film brought up a great deal of controversy between critics.

This article is about representation within British Cinema. The article covers 3 types of representation in detail, Sexuality, Class and Ethnicity.

Sexuality: It is clear to see that sexuality is not the most frequent thing represented within British film especially if you were to compare it to say American films where their seems to be a lot more generally shocking content. Even when sex is portrayed in British film there is always some form of complication in the storyline leading to it.

Class: Class within British film is displayed very stereotypically (both lower and upper). This is visible in countless films and as I said before very stereotypical, for example in films representing working class families a manual job held up by the father is generally all that is supporting the entire family. Within the films displaying working class situations there is always a very 'gritty' depiction of the context of the film where as a hugely glamorous depiction of upper classes.

Ethnicity: Within the article it states that British film fails to represent ethnic minorities justly purely by lack of content. I have never really thought about this but upon consideration I generally agree.