'Representations in media texts are often simplistic and reinforce dominant ideologies so that audiences can make sense of them.' Evaluate the ways you have used/challenged simplistic representations in one of the media products you have produced.

I am going to analyse my advanced portfolio in which certain representations where used in order to send out messages to the audience. Representation refers to the construction in any media that involves not only how identities are represented within the text but how they are constructed in the process of production.  “All representation has ideologies behind them. Certain paradigms are encoded into text and others are left out in order to give preferred representation”

We have challenged representations in our music video through genre. In our music video we have represented the main artist as an independent male who is unemotional and competent. Also he is of an Asian ethnic background, with the other artist as black. We tried to break the stereotypical view of the black male being dominated over the Asian which is represented in most other music videos, as black people are portrayed with drugs and guns and normally the dominant character. These videos are considered to portray real situations that are, according to the standards of western culture, severely condemned, based on an attitude that sees a direct link between the events of daily reality and their depiction in the music video. The breaking of the stereotype of the black dominant figure has allowed the video to be represented as more real.

Furthermore you can see that the artist is represented as an R&B performance artist by the clothes he is wearing. Most male figures tend to show off their clothes or ‘swag’. You can see the artist is wearing casual clothes which he then changes later on in the video. This is a key feature in R&B music videos as it makes the artist seen to be a dominant figure. However using the plurality model, we can see how a male audience would view the representation of our artist. It could be argued that the male audience would refer to the artist as their role model as he is living the life.

Most R&B videos tend to exploit women’s femininity as feminist would say that women are portrayed in patriarchal way. Most music videos show women as a sex object, that males would just ‘gaze’ at. We decided not to go for this stereotype as then the main artist wouldn’t be the centre of attention. We wanted to make the main artist dominant throughout the whole music video.