Media Studies Induction

Reception Theory Stuart Hall is a professor who analysed media texts stating that they are encoded and decoded. The producer of the media texts encodes different messages while the audience decodes them. Different audience members will decode the media texts in different ways than the producer intended. Hall established three key concepts to understand how different people read media texts. These are: Dominant or preferred reading : This relates to how the producer wants the audience to read the text. If there are themes that are relevant to audience members in the media text, they are more likely to comprehend what the text is about. Oppositional reading: When the audience constructs their own version of the text rather than following the producer’s intentions and narrative. This is likely to occur when the texts have controversial messages or if the text is ambiguous. It may also occur if the beliefs of   audience members contradict the media text. Neg...

Bond as a text During the early stages of the Bond films, women were depicted as sexual objects who were vulnerable and weak. Hence, James Bond would come to their rescue as they were too inexperienced and cowardly to fend for themselves. While some of these values still hold true for current Bond movies, women are now seen as slightly more confident and capable to carry through tasks independently. This is evident when M, a female authoritative figure, is giving Mr Bond orders in the movie Skyfall. However, women are still sexually gratified in this franchise and still remain to play the role of ‘damsel in distress’. In this advert, females are clearly sexually objectified. Their lack of clothes portrays them to be sexual objects who attend to Bond’s every need. The variety of women in this advert illustrates the idea that Bond avoids emotional connections with women and prefers them to be their when convenient. The pompous expression on Bo...