self evaluations

Attainment -- 1—I have developed my understanding of media a lot this year.

Effort -- 1 my blog work is always consistent and I hope to keep it that way J… also I do participate in class discussions a lot more than what I used to.

Punctuality -- 1 I’m always on time

Submission and quality of homework -- 1 so far so good

Ability to work independently -- 2 could be better, I depend on people input a bit, but I can do my own independent work as well.

Quality of writing -- 3 could be better I think personally I can use media terminology but I think I should be using much more.

Organization of Media folder -- 1 all in order

Oral contributions in class -- 1 I constantly participate in class discussions and I am not afraid to say what I think.

Standard of Module 5 blog-- 1 its sik lol its getting along very well, just having problems at home I can’t post up anything on the blog from my home computer there’ some sort of problem with the Google toolbar, so I have to come into school and then post things up .

Standard of Module 6 blog-- 2 good, we don’t have much to put up there yet, just media guardian stories so far so it should get better.
WWW--
blog work has been really good
class discussions and input
good understanding and focus in lessons

EBI--
more blog work, analyzing clips for med 5
read newspapers and articles everyday for med 6
try and use more media terminology

self directed research

Self directed research
Wickedness.net àacademic paper

http://lass.calumet.purdue.edu/cca/gmj/fa06/graduatefa06/gmj_grad_fa06_kleminski.htm --> another academic paper

Representation Tag: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/gaze/gaze09.htmlWomen Tag: http://www.uiowa.edu/~commstud/resources/GenderMedia/index.htmlMed 5 tag:
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Modules/MC30820/represent.html

www.youtube.com for all of the videos I’ve watched or analyzed

www.wikipedia.org I know it isn’t totally reliable but I have used it.

CSI fan sites and the official websites

The scene starts of with a bird’s eye view of Las Vegas. This sets the scene and helps the audience understand where the show is set. It has non diegetic sound and a bridge from the following scene which takes a jump cut. Hodges the forensic scientist is talking to Catherine willows about her evidence. There is a slow zoom into Hodges Catherine and Warrick. This scene predominantly conveys the genre to the audience. Over the shoulder shots and Catherine and Hodges speak. She is tested on her geology and this shows her as an intellectual women. This subverts the dominant ideology and shows women can be just as superior as men. She is also a blonde woman which makes it oppose many other ideology and values. However the following lines still make her seem like a sex object and goes back to her teenage rebellious years. She talks about dating the T.A in high school, in a normal tone but as soon as Warrick starts talking her tone of voice and facial expression both change. The angle becomes slightly higher than before making her seem inferior yet this could be for the male gaze for men to believe she can be controlled and they are dominant. She squints her eyes slightly and her tone of voice becomes much huskier, this shows she is trying to flirt with Warrick and is trying to appeal to him. They are both caught in a moment until Hodges interrupts. This shows people can see the situation between them, and therefore Catherine, even though very intellectual and is at work, is still seen through the male gaze by Warrick and possibly by the audience. Although CSI subverts representing women in the light of stupid and just there for men’s desires, it still fulfills that ideology by showing this situation between Warrick and Catherine.

The props are quite basic and reflect the police and crime genre. Catherine’s facial expression changes yet again with a slight pout but trying to conceal her laughter and embarrassment, she is yet still looking at Warrick still keeping that connection even though Hodges has moved back to the evidence. Throughout the rest of the scene we can still see the embarrassment on warrick’s face. This whole scene has a slight romantic feel with Warrick and Catherine but primarily is set out for voyeurism by the male audience. The male gaze is fulfilled with Catherine’s facial expression tone of voice and what she is talking about.

This scene itself has a linear narrative which just follows the storyline but has an enigmatic code, as to what’s going on between Warrick and Catherine. The issue this brings up is “can women be realistically represented without fulfilling the male gaze in media texts?”
Programmes such as CSI should follow the crime storyline but they always have dual narratives with relationships etc and through this many females are represented as they would be in many other programmes.

Ten more media key words 4rm dictionary
1. Chick flick-- I may use this term to respond to films such as legally blonde, they show Reese Witherspoon and a lawyer even though she is not too clever she is a typical blonde woman who has a small dog and loves pink. Yet she does so much with her self and achieves things that help many people.

2. Cognition-- is where the audience perceives what they see in the media and believe it. Many people at fault for this cognition involve George bush, Rupert Murdoch and Richard Branson. Relating this to my I.S I can show that the media builds up expectations of women for the male gaze and CSI subverts it a lot.

3. Cognitive dissonance-- this is when an individual strongly opposes the cognition shown within the media. This can consist of feminist women.

4. Auteur-- are directors who have recognisable traits within their work, antony E. Zuiker is an auteur as he has directed all CSI series.

5. Crime fiction-- CSI comes within the crime fiction genre. All the stories are creatively written.

6. Cultivation theory-- theory constructed by George gerbner which states that the media can change the audiences’ views even in the real world. He states the media has long term affects which slowly take place.


7. Gender-- according to gender we can state that Sara sidle in CSI has slight masculine features about her, e.g. the way he dresses her appearance compared to Catherine willows which has much more feminine qualities about her.

8. Effects theory-- this theory researches how passive an audience can be, so if CSI showed all their convicts as black men, we would see the reaction within the audience and how they would react to black men in real life. This is the same with the representation of women. After seeing Catherine willows the male audience may generalise and misjudge all blonde females.

9. Marxist feminism-- where feminist women believe that capitalism is the fault for the inequality and insecurity of males within society. This can slightly relate to Catherine because she became an exotic dancer for money.

10. New man-- term to describe the change within men since feminism revolution began. more men are happy to share household work etc.

i went through the delic.io.us tags and managed to find a few tags which can help me with my independent study, although there aren't ten up here, when i find more tags relevant to my study i will edit this post and add them to it.

Representation Tag: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/gaze/gaze09.html

Women Tag: http://www.uiowa.edu/~commstud/resources/GenderMedia/index.html

Med 5 tag: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Modules/MC30820/represent.html

10 key terms i may use in my independent study

Connotation --> (certain object/image may have hidden meanings to it beyond its denotation)
Whilst talking about representation I can evaluate what the representation refers to for example (irrelevant to CSI) a red rose has a denotation of a flower but it can have connotations of love and passion.
Denotation--> (the simple and actual meaning of an image)
Representation of women in CSI is so mixed up so it would be important to differ between connotations and denotations of how women are dressed, whether they just normally dress a certain way or are there connotations behind it.
Empathy--> relating to a persons feelings (pleasure or pain) by going through the same experience.
Catherine willows second in command in the team of CSI: LV is seen to empathise with prostitutes and the suffering they have been through because she used to be an ‘exotic dancer’
femme fatale--> French theory which states women use their sexuality in order to gain what she wants
Many female victims or suspects are seen as whores who manipulate situations to achieve what they desire even if it concludes in someone’s death. So when talking about representation of victims or suspects I can refer to the femme fatale French theory.
Ideology--> is a key concept which I will constantly refer back to. It basically means attitudes beliefs and values.
CSI has a dominant ideology with it being very masculine in the fact that there are only 2 main female characters and the rest are males, this concept is held in all CSI series(reference to CSI:NY or CSI: Miami)
Mise-en-scene--> is another key concept which refers to everything within the frame. This involves lighting characters props dress/outfit make up etc.
The surroundings of the science labs refer to intellectual people and a woman around this area makes her seem quite clever in the sense that they are on the same level with men working in the labs.
Laura Mulvey--> has a theory about the male gaze and how media objectifies women for male voyeurism and pleasure.
I will be referring to Laura Mulvey a lot throughout my independent study because she states how women are objectified in the media and to a certain extent they are but CSI also shows them as strong powerful women. Auteur, Antony Zuiker has tried to avoid agreeing with Mulvey and has tried to contradict her theory.
Stereotype--> a social classification which refers to general characteristics about a group of people, which is extremely simplified and generalised which makes it quite inaccurate.
Women are stereotyped in many ways, we have dumb blondes, but films such as legally blonde or even in CSI blonde women are shown to be just as clever as any other hair colour. I will be bringing up the issue of stereotypes in my study.
Voyeur--> a person who watches other people or a situation from a detached area and do not know they are being watched.
Examples of voyeurs could be stalkers or peeping toms, or even an average TV audience because we are able to watch situation or programmes.
Watershed--> a set time which separates late evening shows to avoid any one to young to watch programmes with sex violence or bad language.
CSI is often shown after watershed because of its high explicit rate. It used to be shown at tea time in America but in the U.K has almost always been shown after 9pm

another academic paper :)

This is another academic paper I found about scrutinizing the male gaze, and links directly to CSI. this paper was actually 13 pages but I have tried to cut it down as much as possible to keep it relevant to female representation in CSI

Scrutinizing the Male Gaze
Mulvey (1975), in her paradigm-setting piece, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” argues that the concept of the male gaze refers to three things: 1) camera position and angles that frame a scene voyeuristically, 2) the actual gaze of male characters when it objectifies female characters and 3) the gaze of the audience when it replicates either the camera’s voyeuristic gaze or male characters’ objectifying gaze.
Mulvey (1989) also asserts that the gaze’s frame of reference is the heterosexual, male experience around which the dominant society is normed. She argues that individual audience members, regardless their sex, view filmed performances through both the camera’s heterosexual, male “eye” and male characters’ perceptions of women. Hence, film and television socialize the audience into the male gaze and in so doing perpetuate hegemonic, patriarchal cultural notions of gender.

For example, in the first five seasons of CSI: Las Vegas, the “number one scripted series in the Nielsen ratings for three years running,” female characters consistently are objectified by the male gaze even as they are shown successfully occupying non-traditional roles for women (“CSI summary,” n.d.). The show’s popularity ensures that this bifurcated but ultimately misogynist representation of women circulates widely. Because the media play a critical role in shaping audiences’ behavior, identity, and values, this representation also informs beliefs about women’s social roles (Carilli, 2005; Del Negro, 2005; Dow, 1992; Heide, 1995; Meyers, 1999; Mulvey, 1975; Signorielli, 1997).

Crime Scene Investigation
As it narrates the team’s stories CSI: Las Vegas also portrays the gendered hierarchy that has emerged in the workplace since the mid-twentieth century when the number of middle- and upper-class white women who work outside the home increased substantially.
In 2003, women made up 47% of the total U.S. workforce (McBride-Stetson, 2004, p. 239). However, they held only 19% of the science, engineering and technology posts in the U.S. (Thom, 2001, p. 171).
Significantly, in CSI: Las Vegas self-determined women frequently are portrayed as fractured if not atomized under the male gaze. Sara and Catherine are among the show’s broken women. Their commitment to forensic science and their jobs is represented in ambivalent terms: Sara and Catherine are depicted as empowered and authoritative but also lacking, which is consistent with patriarchal assessments of women who are successful in nontraditional endeavors. Moreover, Sara and Catherine, because they resist patriarchal norms by performing a “man’s” job, are subject to a persistently invasive voyeurism—the women’s private lives become the focus of public scrutiny—that discourages similar career choices among female audience members.

Under the Microscope: The Female Body Atomized
In comparison to actual crime statistics a disproportionate number of CSI: Las Vegas’ victims are women who, regardless the nature of their work, act with a great deal of agency. But more often than not images of these women are atomized under the scrutiny of the male gaze. This is exemplified in Episode 93, “Viva Las Vegas,” which opens with the image of a bloodied woman lying on a hotel bed (on her back in her underwear). The male suspect is covered in blood but has no memory of murdering the woman.
Someone comments that the dead woman has swollen ankles. Catherine replies, “You ever tried shakin’ your ass in four-inch heels?” This hyper attenuated focus on the victim’s ankles is atomizing. It fractures the woman and splits her into disaggregated portions, reducing her to nothing more than a pair of implant-enhanced breasts, a “shakin’ ass” and misshapen ankles. Hence, here as in many other scenes, the female body is fragmented “into eroticized zones such as hair, face, legs, [and] breasts” (Roy, 2005, p. 4).
At the end of the scene a young woman walking down the hall in the doctor’s office contemptuously looks Catherine up and down. Catherine then stops to examine her image in a nearby mirror. She sees herself through the male gaze.
When these texts are juxtaposed they read like patriarchal urban legends. “Don’t stay single”–you will end up dead and naked in a hotel room somewhere. “Don’t age”–no man wants an old, wrinkled, flaccid woman.
Furthermore, when the camera casts its gaze on the “Viva Las Vegas” stripper’s breasts, ass, and feet it estranges her from her body which in turn socializes female members of the audience into similarly disassociated relationships with their bodies. Overall, in these types of shots women are portrayed as dissembled, objectified body parts rather than integrated subjects with a strong sense of their own personhood. Hence, if taken together, these scenes demonstrate Meyers’ (1999) contention that the “message may be that girls and women can be strong, smart, and independent as long as they remain within the confines of their homes and relationships while also maintaining traditional standards of feminine beauty” (p. 6).

The Different Faces of Power
Historically women as a group have had limited access to public power, especially in political and economic spheres. When women finally began to enter these domains they encountered obstacles preventing them from attaining power. Some of the most difficult challenges women must overcome are reactionary representations of female leaders that suggest they are “asexual,” whores, or dominatrixes (Jamieson, 1995, p. 72). These negative stereotypes are deployed with particular intensity in fields where the glass ceiling remains firmly intact and leadership continues to be predominantly male.
CSI: Las Vegas, a popular, powerful series, could encourage girls and young adults to pursue education and careers in STEM by showing female scientists in a positive light. It occasionally does. For example, in Episode 102, “No Human Involved,” Sara praises a teenage girl, Glynnis, for studying science and encourages Glynnis’ interest in quantum theory:

Sara: You like chemistry?
Glynnis: No. I’m not smart enough.
Sara: Sure you are. Glynnis, right? (Glynnis nods. Sara looks at the cover of her textbook.) Quantum theory. That’s compelling stuff actually.

However, for the most part the show portrays female scientists as either deploying patriarchal values in their relationships with other women, which are strained by animosity and competition, or lacking happy, fulfilling personal lives because of their jobs. Typically, for example, Sara and Catherine look at other female scientists through the lens of the male gaze, condemning rather than supporting female co-workers. Thus, the female scientists of CSI: Las Vegas conform to patriarchal mores just as do many non-fictional women.

Women’s Personal Lives in the Public Spotlight
In another episode the mother of a girl who was used to harvest organs for her older brother flings the ultimate insult at Catherine. The mother, who perpetrated the crime against the girl, attacks Catherine’s parenting skills. She asks, “So what kind of mother are you? When do you see her? You work nights. You probably don’t even know where she is half the time. Alicia’s life may not have been simple, but at least I knew her. Can you say the same?” Clearly this scene and others in which Catherine’s parenting skills are criticized suggest that she is unable to manage both a job and her family. These scenes’ common theme is that Catherine’s commitment to her work outside the home prevents her from being a good mother. Catherine, CSI: Las Vegas implies, cannot be both a first-rate scientist and a successful mother.
Catherine’s romantic relationships also are subject to public scrutiny and they tend to show her drawn to men who are abusive or emotionally and psychologically unavailable. However, rather than portraying this as the men’s flaw CSI: Las Vegas faults Catherine. This is evident when the audience meets her low-life ex-husband, a creepy guy she kisses in a bar parking lot in Episode 114 and when Catherine briefly dates a trashy club manager in Episode 93. Neither relationship is healthy and both end disastrously. At the end of Episode 93, for example, the manager breaks Catherine’s heart when she shows up unannounced at his club and catches him having sex with a younger woman. Instead of apologizing or expressing remorse the manager arrogantly defends himself: “What do you expect? I run a nightclub.” Catherine walks out without saying a word. Her silence speaks volumes. It suggests that she has a defeatist attitude and hints that she fears using an empowered voice to “talk back” to disrespectful, abusive male lovers. Therefore, Catherine’s silence signals that she acquiesces to rather than resists the male gaze’s voyeurism.

Conflict of Interests: What do we do with all of this?
CSI: Las Vegas is entertaining and features strong women occupying jobs that they would not have held a generation ago if it were not for feminist social change initiatives. Nevertheless, the show’s female characters struggle with the types of challenges that many non-fictional women face, such as difficult relationships with men, heavy workloads in and outside the home, and raising children as single parents. But CSI: Las Vegas also deploys patriarchal ideologies that limit women by encompassing them within the male gaze. No matter how strong, independent, and successful these women are portrayed they inevitably are objectified by the male gaze, which is dehumanizing:
Objectification does not simply mean that someone is the object or aim of your sexual desire. Rather, it is a systemic process whereby a sentient being is dehumanized, reduced to a thing, a being without social significance or stature, someone turned into something that can be exchanged, bartered, owned, shown off, kept, used, abused, and disposed of. (Caputi, 1999, p. 67)
Such CSI-style, patriarchal representations of women will continue to circulate in the media unless we can craft an alternative schema for narrating women’s life experiences that does not atomize them or put their private lives under the microscope for all to see (Fara 2004)

Hi i commented on 5 other blogs that have a similar independent study in that they lookat female representation as either inferior/superior or as sex symbols.Vishnas is different and interesting because she is saying women cannot be pretty and intelligent(because the media represent women in this way).Karundeep is luking at a wide media range because he is lookin at hw women representation has changed througout time.

http://representationsofwags.blogspot.com/
Vishna
http://dominantroles.blogspot.com/
karundeep
http://dilrajbhamra.blogspot.com/
raj
http://xxmrandmrssmithxx.blogspot.com/
dips
http://www.jas-thesopranos.blogspot.com/
jaspreet

hi cnt post up anything at home cuz blogger isnt working at home so ill post up things when i get 2 skl :)