The Male Gaze

1. Chocolate Box: half or full-smile, lips together or slightly parted, teeth barely visible, full or three-quarter face to camera. Projected mood: blandly pleasing, warm bath warmth, where uniformity of features in their smooth perfection is devoid of uniqueness or of individuality.

2. Invitational: emphasis on the eyes, mouth shut or with only a hint of a smile, head to one side or looking back to camera. Projected mood: suggestive of mischief or mystery, the hint of contact potential rather than sexual promise, the cover equivalent of advertising’s soft sell. 





3. Super-smiler: full face, wide open toothy smile, head thrust forward or chin thrown back, hair often wind-blown. Projected mood: aggressive, ‘look-at-me’ demanding, the hard sell, ‘big come-on’ approach.





4. Romantic or Sexual: a fourth and more general classification devised to include male and female ‘two-somes’; or the dreamy, heavy-lidded, unsmiling big-heads, or the overtly sensual or sexual. Projected moods: possible ‘available’ and definitely ‘available’. 

The M&S Christmas TV Ad (2013)

 First in the clip, we see the chocolate box look as Rosie Huntington-Whiteley reacts to the scene around her. 

We then see a feature of the Male Gaze as the camera lingers on the curves of her body. The romantic/sexual look is shown next, which is inappropriate in the given context; her expression should show how cold she is more than it does, suggesting the look is added just for the entertainment of males.

We see her direct the invitational look at the male character so the audience can identify with the him. 

The last look is the super smiler, used to show the audience that she is happy, persuading them to buy clothes from M&S with the idea that the clothes will make them as happy as she is. 

Essay- Hotel Babylon

In the clip From Hotel Babylon we see ethnicity presented through the less positive stereotypes for each characters' ethnicity. Most of the characters of a foreign ethnic background have been portrayed as having less power than their white-British counterparts, working lower paid jobs as cleaners or kitchen workers. All of the police officers that participate in the raid of the building are white-British characters that hunt down the illegal immigrants, which enforces the idea that they are superior to people of other ethnic backgrounds.   

The music throughout the clip is upbeat and has a fast tempo, suggesting a chase or pressure will be present during it.

At the beginning of the clip, the focus is on the arrival of the all white-British immigration service that have come to take away the illegal immigrant workers. A mid shot is used when the police officers enter the hotel through the door to show their arrival into the scene as they become the subject. The next image is a mid shot of the hotel receptionist noticing their entrance, which then switches to a close up of the main officer's face, showing his stern expression, which suggests that he is not going to take any nonsense of anyone and he means business. 
Atmosphere is created through the movement of the officers as they walk toward the camera, which indicates that they are coming for the illegal immigrants and they are also walking towards the audience, making the scene feel more suspenseful. 
Once the main officer has reached the front desk, he verbally claims his authority to search the premises, informing the viewer that he has the most power in this situation and that he is to be feared by the illegal workers. 

Two hotel workers rush to inform 'Jackie' about the arrival of the police. A mid shot of Jackie working in her 'office' highlights the conditions that she works in, contrasting with her white counterpart, the receptionist. Jackie's office is below ground and is dark and dingy, and her clothes are black and red, which connotes 'hell'. Upstairs the white-British woman works in a modern and attractive setting that is above the ground and she is dressed in white, giving the connotations of 'heaven'. This suggests that while the hotel looks charming and innocent on the surface, within the hotel there are many dark secrets hidden away, with those secrets being the illegal immigrants. This also shows that the white woman has the better job, whilst Jackie, an Asian woman, has a lower rank than her.

Following pan is used to follow the action of the scene as Jackie runs into the kitchen to round up all of the illegal employees so that she can hide them from the officers. She is shouting in a foreign language, which is something that, stereotypically, people from different ethnic backgrounds do. 
The paralinguistic features used in the kitchen scene creating tension e.g. Jackie's and the worker's facial expressions and frantic movements. 

As the illegal workers run to a store cupboard to hide in, a close up of Jackie's hand shaking while attempting to unlock the door is shown to present how nervous she is to the audience.
The workers running into the cupboard is shown with blurred 'bars' in the foreground, creating the idea that they are trapped in these furtive lives that only ethnic minorities are subjected to.
When everyone is inside of the storage space, Jackie locks the door. This symbolises that they are now safe, but also being restricted and possibly victimised by society. 
There is low lighting in the cupboard, with the lack of light adding to the idea that these illegal immigrants are being kept in the dark, in both senses of the phrase.  

The diegetic sounds inside the cupboard consist of the heavy breathing and whimpers of the workers. This is not a situation that any person should find themselves in, which indicates how dehumanised these ethnic minority characters have become. The sounds also convey the stress within the scene and make the show more realistic.
With the exception of Jackie, all of the workers are dressed in uniforms typical of people on a low wage, again indicating that there is an inequality between these characters and white-British ones. 

Close ups of all of the illegal employees faces are given to present their emotions; anxious and panicked. Despite the illegal immigrants being of various different ethnic backgrounds, they have conflated, giving them one identity as 'the immigrants', instead of individual people that have their own lives and personalities, which is emphasised when we find out that one of the workers 'Adam', "wasn't always a cleaner" when he uses his medical knowledge to help a worker who fainted under the pressure.  

The camera zooms in on Jackie's face to show her reaction to one of the workers being absent from the hiding place, which is followed by parallel editing used to reveal the missing character 'Ebrahim' as he peacefully vacuums a hallway, oblivious to the raid.

As soon as Ebrahim (an African man) sees the officers, he gasps, showing his shock, then attempts to run but trips and falls, where the two officers in suits take get hold of him and begin to take him away. 
The camera moves down to the vacuum cleaner that Ebrahim was using not even 30 seconds ago to show that he is gone now and will vacuum the halls no more. 

The upbeat music stops when Jackie is informed that an illegal worker has been caught. We then see Ebrahim struggling to escape the grasp of the officers unsuccessfully as they take him outside. This makes the mood more realistic, therefore more emotional so that the audience connects with how Ebrahim and Jackie (who was responsible for the illegal immigrants) feel at that time. 

Stereotypes for gender

Males

• Physically strong
• Dominant
• Jobs in construction
• Love for cars/tools
• Masculine
• Clothing- jeans, trainers
• Breadwinner
• Better pay 
• Associated with darker colours e.g. blue

Females

• Weaker than men
• Feminine 
• Work less manual jobs
• Love for cosmetics/shopping 
• Emotional
• Housewives
• Romantic
• Associated with lighter colours e.g . pink

Fight Club podcast

Link to the podcast on Soundcloud. 

Representation of ethnicity

Representation of ethnicity

At the beginning of the clip, in the city office, the people are predominantly white Americans, showing that they are employed, and suggesting they are well-educated, a stereotype of white people. 
The next scene shows a white American woman trying to buy a car off a stranger and arranging to meet up with him to have a test drive of the car. Her actions make it seem as though she is very gullible, which is a less common stereotype for white people. 
After this scene, we see middle-class white Americans in a bedroom discussing baby names for their future child. This gives the impression that white people always have money and, on a whole, are organised people, which is a positive stereotype but is just that: a stereotype.  
The following scene is in a bar where friends of various ethnicities are testing each others knowledge. They are all clearly very intelligent and they act and dress in the same kind of way, not conforming to the stereotypes of their individual ethnicities e.g. the Indian woman is dressed in conventional 'white women's' clothes and all characters are working high ranking jobs, showing that their ethnicity does not mean they are unequal. 

Dredd Research Task

Dredd Research Task

  

Producer: The film was produced by Alex Garland and it was given the green light in 2008.

Distributor: Dredd was distributed by Lionsgate and Entertainment Film Distributors. 

Script writer: Alex Garland wrote the film's script. 

Budget: The budget was $45 million. 

Box office gross: The film made $36.5 million in the box office. 

Director and Actors: Karl Urban, Olivia Thurlby, Wood Harris and Lena Headey starred in Dredd, directed by Pete Travis.

Marketing: The website Dredd report was set up to promote the film and a motion poster was released, along with trailers and a tie-in comic. An exclusive movie poster was released at the Fantastic Fest . 

Critical reception: 
Rotten Tomatoes: 
"While not for the squeamish, Dredd 3D is an effectively gritty B movie accentuated by stylish visuals and irreverent humor" ~ Claudia Puig, USA Today. 

"Proves a surprisingly unimaginative cops vs. drug lord story, complete with the weathered veteran forced to take a rookie under his wing" ~Frank Lovece, Newsday.

Metacritic:
"Dredd, a second attempt at making Judge Dredd a movie star, overcorrects, veering in the opposite direction with a dark - literally and otherwise - nearly humorless bit of ultraviolence distinguished largely by a fondness for spurting CGI blood" ~ Keith Phipps, The A.V. Club.

"Dredd works because it's an action flick with wide appeal that takes risks it doesn't need to - in its delightfully off-putting violence and daring style - and those choices pay off in a singular and exhilarating movie experience. It's savage, beautiful and loads of fun" ~ Joel Arnold, NPR.

Reasons for lack of success: Despite its positive critical response, Dredd only earned $36 million at the box office. The reasons for this were due to the marketing, the 'remake factor', the lack of mainstream appeal, and the R rating. 

The marketing did not convey the film's concept of a Batman style 'dark future city' enough, which could have attracted a wider audience. Lionsgate did not invest enough into the prints and marketing to push the film hard enough and get it seen by the public. 

The remake factor left Dredd in the shadow of the 1995 Judge Dredd. The message that this film is not a remake was not clear, so it was left to audience's assumption. 

The lack of mainstream appeal highlighted that, in order to be successful, film adaptations of comics must appeal to more than just the fans of the comic.

The R rating limited the audience; while the comic's main audience consists of younger people (early teens), the film's rating meant it was not suitable for them, so a lot of potential viewers were lost. 

Awards: Dredd won the Empire award for best 3D, and the Golden Trailer award for Best Thriller TV Spot. 

Technology used: Dredd used a 3D camera and VFX was used to show the blood and gore when people are shot. The slo-mo 'look' was achieved by separating out the colours and objects in the scene, then taking them in different directions with hue and saturation . This was developed over a period of time.

Tie-ins: Tie-ins included a comic, the first frames of a motion comic, a soundtrack, and posters that are available for purchase.  

Personal opinion: In my opinion Dredd was not a particularly bad film, but there are a lot of things that could be improved. 
While I can appreciate that fans of the comic would enjoy the film and how it is true to the comics, I can see why other people would not like the film at all. 
The CGI in the film has been praised by many critics, but I found it to be too prominent. In scenes showing 'Mega City One', the use of CGI was blatant, which took my attention away from the focus of each scene.
Most of the acting in the film was good and Karl Urban's portrayal of Dredd was very accurate, but the script was very tongue-in-cheek. It was predictable, cheesy, and poorly-written, making it very annoying and made Dredd seem like no more than a B movie. 
When people weren't being blown to bits, the film was quite boring, simply because there was no atmosphere being created. Scenes where speech was the only sound were the most boring; the diegetic sounds you would expect to hear in the scene were not there and it did not seem to be selective sound as the lack of background noise did not create any effect at all.

Tony Stonem analysis

Tony Stonem analysis 

Tony is presented as a confident character; he exercises every morning and admires his appearance in the mirror. The audience would expect this from a teenage boy as teenagers are often associated with being 'full of themselves' or vain. 

He seems to be very intelligent, reading a 'challenging' book whilst on the toilet and outsmarting his own father on a daily basis. This is not what is expected of a teenage boy as the stereotype is often that teenagers are delinquents and incapable of outsmarting adults.

Tony's bedroom is minimalistic and tidy with everything in the correct place, this parallels his morning routine- very organised. Teenagers are stereotyped as being unorganized individuals, so Tony's traits are not what you would expect from someone his age. 

Tony's room is bright and the colour pallet consists of natural colours, which contrasts greatly with the stereotypes for the bedrooms of teenagers, which are normally depicted to look more like caves- dark and dingy. The colours and lighting used in presenting Tony's room have the connotation of being adult-like, suggesting he is a mature person. 

The walls of Tony's room feature the posters of serious films, again hinting that he is mature and he does not live up to the stereotype for teenage boys. The only real clue that suggests the room belongs to a teenager is the comical bedspread, showing a naked man and woman lying side by side. This represents how teenagers stereotypically have a love for anything humorous, and an interest in sex. 

Tony is shown pulling pranks on his dad, such as tricking his dad into thinking he's in the bathroom when he is really in the kitchen. This makes Tony seem mischievous, which is another conventional stereotype of teenagers. The planning Tony puts into each prank makes him seem very devious too, again, conforming to the teenage boy stereotype. 

An audience would expect a teenager's bed to be messy and for the duvet to to be crumpled when they wake up, however Tony's duvet is in the perfect place and isn't creased at all, which seems unnatural and gives the impression that he is a very level headed person.

When Tony finishes on the toilet, he washes his hands, then brushes his teeth, showing that he is a hygienic person, which is not typical of the stereotype, which is that teenagers are unhygienic.  

Tony's clothing is not what the audience would expect. Clothing stereotypes for teenage boys are mainly scruffy or indecent clothes, maybe jogging bottoms. Tony, however, wears smarter, more mature clothing- a plain shirt with a v-neck jumper and trousers that do not show his underwear. Along with his tidy haircut, Tony comes appears to be quite a presentable person.