Quotes...

1.
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/cultiv.html

Boyd-Barrett, Oliver & Peter Braham (eds.) (1987): Media, Knowledge & Power. London: Croom Helm
Condry, John (1989): The Psychology of Television. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Dominick, Joseph R. (1990): The Dynamics of Mass Communication. New York: McGraw-Hill
Evra, Judith van (1990): Television and Child Development. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Livingstone, Sonia (1990): Making Sense of Television. London: Pergamon
McQuail, Denis & Sven Windahl (1993): Communication Models for the Study of Mass Communication. London: Longman

‘Cultivation research looks at the mass media as a socializing agent and investigates whether television viewers come to believe the television version of reality the more they watch it’

2.
http://www.comminit.com/en/node/27072/2754

Health Communication - Lessons from Family Planning and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Center for Communication Programs, 1997, by Phyllis Tilson Piotrow, D. Lawrence Kincaid, Jose G. Rimon II, and Ward Rinehart. P. 22. To order this publication

‘Theories of the cultivation process attempt to understand and explain the dynamics of television as the distinctive and dominant cultural force of our age’

3. http://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20clusters/Mass%20Media/Cultivation_Theory.doc/

Boyd-Barrett, Oliver & Peter Braham (Eds.) (1987). Media, Knowledge & Power. London: Croom Helm.
Condry, John (1989). The Psychology of Television. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Dominick, Joseph R. (1990). The Dynamics of Mass Communication. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Evra, Judith van (1990). Television and Child Development. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Gerbner, G., & Gross, L. (1976a). Living with television: The violence profile. Journal of Communication, 26, 172-199.
Gerbner, G., & Gross, L. (1976b). The scary world of TV’s heavy viewer. Psychology Today, 10(4), 41-89.
Hawkins R.P & Pingree, S. (1983). Televisions influence on social reality. In: Wartella, E.,
Whitney, D. & Windahl, S. (Eds.) Mass Communication Review Yearbook, Vol 5. Beverley Hills CA: Sage.
Livingstone, S. (1990). Making Sense of Television. London: Pergamon.
McQuail, D. & Windahl, S. (1993). Communication Models for the Study of Mass Communication. London: Longman.
Stappers, J.G. (1984) De eigen aard van televisie; tien stellingen over cultivatie en culturele indicatoren. Massacommunicatie 12(5-6), 249-258

‘The combined effect of massive television exposure by viewers over time subtly shapes the perception of social reality for individuals and, ultimately, for our culture as a whole’

4.
http://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20clusters/Mass%20Media/Hypodermic_Needle_Theory.doc/

‘a powerful and direct flow of information from the sender to the receiver’
‘media messages are injected straight into a passive audience which is immediately influenced by the message. They express the view that the media is a dangerous means of communicating an idea because the receiver or audience is powerless to resist the impact of the message. There is no escape from the effect of the message in these models’

Davis, D.K. & Baron, S.J. (1981). A History of Our Understanding of Mass Communication. In: Davis, D.K. & Baron, S.J. (Eds.). Mass Communication and Everyday Life: A Perspective on Theory and Effects (19-52). Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing.
Golden, L.L. & Alpert, M.I. (1987). Comparative Analysis of the Relative Effectiveness of One- and Two-sided Communication for Contrasting Products. Journal of Advertising, 16(1), 18-25.
Lazarsfeld, P.F., Berelson, B. & Gaudet, H. (1968). The people’s choice: How the voter makes up his mind in a presidential campaign. New York: Columbia University Press.
DeFleur, Melvin L. Theories of Mass Communication New York: Longman Inc., 1989
Lowery, Shearon and Melvin L. DeFleur Milestones in Mass Communication Research: Media Effects New York: Longman Inc., 1983.
Severin, Werner J. and James W. Tankard, Jr. Communication Theories -- Origins, Methods and Uses New York: Hastings House, 1979.
Watson, James and Anne Hill A Dictionary of Communication and Media Studies New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 1997
Katz, E., & Lazarsfeld, P. (1955), Personal Influence, New York: The Free Press

5.
http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Hypodermic_needle_model

Several factors contributed to this "strong effects" theory of communication, including: the fast rise and popularization of radio and television, the emergence of the persuasion industries, such as advertising and propaganda, the Payne Fund studies of the 1930s, which focused on the impact of motion pictures on children, and Hitler's monopolization of the mass media during WWII to unify the German public behind the Nazi party.


Davis, D.K. & Baron, S.J. (1981). A History of Our Understanding of Mass Communication. In: Davis, D.K. & Baron, S.J. (Eds.). Mass Communication and Everyday Life: A Perspective on Theory and Effects (19-52). Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing

Critical investigation presentation/ How Horror Films Exaggerate The Mentally Ill

View more presentations from Megan Riley.

Changing minds about representations of madness...

Studying representations of relatively disadvantaged sections of the community is one of the staple concerns of Media Studies at every level. However, if ever there was a group for whom the disadvantages of repeated stereotyping may feed the formula prejudice + power = discrimination, then it may well be those with severe mental illness.

Prominent pressure groups involved in campaigning on behalf of this group certainly think so. And so, back in June, teachers and students were invited to a special education session ahead of the first London ‘Reel Madness’ Film Festival. This event and the film screenings that followed were part-organised by two charities – Rethink (the operating name of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship) and Mental Health Media. The education afternoon featured the screening of scenes from a variety of films including One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975); A Beautiful Mind (2001); and the recent Film Four production, Some Voices (2000). Also included was the challenging two-minute cinema advertisement ‘One In Four’ produced to promote World Mental Health Day in 2000 as part of the Royal College of Psychiatrist’s on-going Changing Minds campaign against the stigmatising of people with mental health problems. (See MoreMediaMag.)

Each sequence was chosen to highlight a key issue or misconception regarding aspects of madness – for example the relationship between insanity and genius that often provides the excuse for making madness the subject of mainstream movies, and which received its most recent emphasis in A Beautiful Mind. A formidable array of experts including a consultant psychiatrist, a neuroscientist, a mental health service manager and a service user were on hand to deliver their take on the clips being shown. It was a stimulating session, but one that posed more questions than answers regarding how practically this subject might be broached in class.

The ignorance issue quickly reared its head. For one thing many of the snippets were largely unfamiliar to the students (and teachers) there. Furthermore, the films from which they came are rarely, if ever, part of TV schedules, posing a potential headache when it comes to gathering such materials for classroom use. Then there was the problem that many of the portrayals screened felt as if they needed the insights of expert witnesses to place them in perspective. Quite unlike the stereotyping of groups by race, gender or sexual preference, which are familiar aspects of Media Studies, ‘madness’ is a highly technical and fought-over topic. Madness in its various forms has always been subject to a range of therapies and diagnoses – often conflicting and contradictory. So unlike other media portrayals, teachers and students are likely to feel unsure of their ground when evaluating the relative merits or otherwise of the depictions of madness they encounter.

Acedemic Articles...



The Sociological Quarterly

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1533-8525.1992.tb00383.x/abstract


'people labeled mentally ill experience negative societal reactions'

'respondents reject the mentally ill'




Stigma & Mental Illness Fink.P , Tasman.A (American Psychiatric Press, Washington DC, 1992)


http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=gmCxeAw7-Z4C&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=stereotypes+of+the+mentally+ill&ots=3jJKGwdgb8&sig=uuvd6lUaciWPA7hQeaBWWMoXphA#v=onepage&q=stereotypes%20of%20the%20mentally%20ill&f=false

'Stigma associated with mental illness can cause those afflicted to delay seeking treatment or to conceal the illness in an attempt to escape the shame and isolation of being labeled 'disturbed' and 'other' '




American Journal of Community Psychology Wahl.O, Yonaton Lefkowitz.J

http://www.springerlink.com/content/u576862827715776/fulltext.pdf


'media presentations about mental illness matched neither the views of the public nor those of mental health professionals'

'Domino (1983) compared responses to a questionnaire before and after the release of the film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." He reported that those who saw the film expressed less positive attitudes than those who had not seen it and concluded that cinematography can exert a powerful influence on attitudes toward the mentally ill.'

Oxford Journals: Schizophrenia Bulletin, Images of Mental Illnes in The Media, Volume 30 Issue 3 Stout.P, Villegas.J, Jennings.N

http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/content/30/3/543.full.pdf+html


'The mass media, including television and broadcast news, are the primary source of information about mental illness for many Americans'

'The media are believed to play a major role in contributing to mental illness stigma via the images they portray of characters with mental illness as well as the misinformation communicated, inaccurate use of psychiatric terms, and unfavorable stereotypes of people with mental illness'

How and why do Horror/Thriller films, such as 'Hide and Seek' exaggerate the mentally ill?...



Mentally ill Crazy Ill Health Depression

Exaggerate Amplify False Stereotype

Horror Scary Thriller


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8190036.stm

Health- Schizpohrenia

BBC Website

& it is relevent becuase it talks about how someone suffering from mental illness can cope in everyday life and situations - which is not what the media reflects.


http://ezinearticles.com/?(Mis)representations-of-Mental-Illness-in-Film&id=1610236

Misrepresentations of Mental Illness

Ezine Articles

& this actually partly answers my coursework question.. and talks about the respresentation of mentall illness in the media


http://www.shockmd.com/2010/08/09/mental-illness-in-movies/

Mental Illness in Movies

Dr Shock Blog

& links into how the movie industry portrays those with mental illness


http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/index.cfm?articleid=31091

'Sick' DVD Relsease

University of The Creative Arts

& this discusses a positive representation of mental illness in the film 'sick'

http://ezinearticles.com/?(Mis)representations-of-Mental-Illness-in-Film&id=1610236

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8190036.stm

Guardian.co.uk

Media 'Reinforcing mental illness stigma'...

Journalists are reinforcing the stigma around mental illness by failing to provide "balanced" coverage, according to a survey published today.

While common mental health problems are treated in much the same way as other health issues, sufferers of severe mental illness were portrayed as "problem people", in ways similar to asylum seekers, youth offenders and drug users, according to the report Mind over Matter: Media reporting of mental health.

The report was published at the launch of a five-year campaign to both monitor the media and encourage more balanced coverage of the issues surrounding mental health in a bid to reduce prejudice. It was compiled by an alliance of mental health charities, including mental health media.

Attending the launch, the health minister, Rosie Winterton, criticised the way people with serious mental illness were represented in the media, claiming journalists tended to represent sufferers as a threat to the general public.

Messages about the risk of violence posed by people with mental health problems were present in 15% of stories, over three-quarters of which implied the risk was high, not low, according to the study.

This is despite the fact that people with mental health problems were more of a risk to themselves than others. Around 4,500 people kill themselves each year, nearly double the number killed on the roads.

Only 6% of stories about mental health included interviews with people experiencing difficulties, the survey found, with coverage often including stigmatising language and "unhelpful comments".

Overall, the study found "clear evidence" that reporting on severe mental health problems across the media was still problematic.

But Ms Winterton admitted the government also had a role to play in the portrayal of mental health in the media.

"What it shows, perhaps, is some gaps - not only in the media response ... [but] are we as a government doing enough to assist the media and people with mental health problems to improve coverage?" she said, speaking to an audience of journalists and mental health professionals.

"We need to make sure there is balanced coverage, and that particularly applies to people with severe mental health problems. "

The minister called for action, "particularly looking at what can be done to work with journalists to provide a more balanced view", before being barracked by a psychiatrist from the floor over the conflicting messages issued by the government itself.

Professor Graham Thornicroft criticised the minister for sending out messages in "two different directions", which he said served to reinforce the very stigma it accused the media of perpetuating.

The draft mental health bill - which has yet to be tabled in parliament, despite first being drawn up three years ago - supported the mistaken assumption that people with mental illness were particularly dangerous, he said.

The controversial bill has faced strong opposition from a broad alliance of campaigners over plans to detain people with untreatable mental illness who have committed no crimes.

"It is time to consider having a close look and accept that the current mental health bill is pointing in the wrong direction," he told Ms Winterton.

Efforts to improve coverage under the five-year Shift programme will include a mental health bureau to enable journalists to access people with mental health problems for interviews for mental health-related stores.

Guidelines jointly drawn up in conjunction with the National Union of Journalists and the Society of Editors will also be distributed to the media.

Guardian.co.uk

Hollywood's Mental Block...

Cinema has long been bad news for the mentally ill, typically representing them as the likes of Psycho's Norman Bates – crazed, dangerous and in need of harsh restraint. Film-makers have treated them as conveniently dehumanised as useful monsters, inviting cinemagoers to assume they should be feared, shunned and confined.

So what, you may feel: people can tell the difference between fiction and fact. Unfortunately, such research as has been conducted suggests otherwise. It has shown the mass media shapes people's ideas about mental illness, and that entertainment plays a bigger role in this process than factual output. In focus groups, people with hostile attitudes have cited films like Psycho as influences on their outlook.

To be fair, in Hitchcock's day harsh attitudes to mental illness pervaded not just films but society as a whole. Since then, public thinking has been changing, and so has film-makers'. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest marked a turning point. Before it appeared in 1975, few would have believed that a film sympathetic to the mentally ill could win all five of the Academy's top awards. Though it cost only $3m to make, it brought in $108m at the US box-office. Hollywood took note: compassion can pay.

Of course, scary lunatics continued to find a place on the big screen. When Milos Forman's five-Oscar triumph was finally matched in 1991, it was by a film rather less sympathetic than Cuckoo's Nest – The Silence of the Lambs. The tagline of this year's The Crazies, "Fear thy neighbor", is probably as negative a message about mental illness as has ever made it to a cinema poster. Nonetheless, over recent decades, we have also been presented with the often winsome, sometimes gifted, but generally sympathetic flakes of the likes of A Beautiful Mind, Shine, Rain Man, Adam, The Aviator, The Black Balloon, Séraphine, Keane, Away from Her and Girl, Interrupted.

However, those portrayals have not necessarily been psychiatrically accurate or even entirely helpful to those who are mentally ill in real life. Those that sanitise conditions, like Away from Her, can give the impression that sufferers need less help than they actually do. Where a link with genius is implied, as in A Beautiful Mind, sufferers whose conditions will bring them no equivalent benefit can find themselves disappointing both themselves and those around them.

Still, cinema's treatment of mental illness has been growing more sophisticated as well as more sympathetic. The diversity of the conditions involved is now generally recognised. Autism has its own cinematic sub-genre, which even extended its reach into Bollywood with My Name Is Khan. Bipolar disorder has been honourably treated in Mr Jones, Sylvia and Michael Clayton. Depression has had its day in The Hours, Prozac Nation and The Butcher Boy. Schizophrenia has been acknowledged in The Soloist, Spider and Me, Myself & Irene. The Madness of King George may even have done something for porphyria, though that diagnosis remains disputed.

It's against this background that Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island was eagerly awaited by those concerned with mental health. Here was a big-budget, mass-audience film by a legendary director dealing not just with mental illness but with the intricacies of its treatment. Set in the 1950s, when psychiatry was a battleground in which traditionalists wedded to lobotomy, electric shock and incarceration clashed with modernisers eager to move over to psychotherapy, education and medicine, it is based on a best-selling novel by Dennis Lehane published in 2003. Before filming, Scorsese chose to embark on intensive research. He appointed a psychiatric consultant of his own, Professor James Gilligan of New York University, a world authority on violent psychosis. In the 1970s, Gilligan was the director of a Massachusetts prison hospital for the criminally insane like the one featured in Shutter Island. The film's heroic Dr Cawley (played by Ben Kingsley) is largely based on himself in that era.

Scorsese was out to create high drama and to maximise emotional impact. Gilligan was batting for accuracy. He says he also wanted to protect the image of psychosocial treatments, since he feared that enthusiasm for physical remedies might be on the way back. So what was the outcome of these two men's debates? Maintaining historical accuracy, Gilligan assured me, had been no problem. The lengths to which the designers went to get things right amazed him. The psychiatric picture, however, was another story. But don't read on if you don't want to know the film's big twist.

DiCaprio's character, Teddy Daniels, is essentially delusional. He's not a cop, but a patient. According to Gilligan, a sound medical basis for Teddy's condition does indeed exist: he could suffer dissociative identity disorder. "I have known patients who were like that," says Gilligan. It is Dr Cawley's treatment that is nonsense. Cawley attempts to shock Teddy out of his delusion by enabling him to act it out in glorious detail. This, apparently, is the exact opposite of what would actually happen. According to Gilligan, the therapist's task is to encourage the patient to face reality "and help him to mourn his losses".

Unfortunately, the film's plot depends entirely on Cawley's exotic roleplay experiment, so that was that. Gilligan says that the story as told requires "the willing suspension of disbelief". He comforts himself with the thought that it can at least be seen as "a kind of metaphor for psychosocial methods of treatment as opposed to damaging the brain". Not to worry; elsewhere he seems to have won a victory, given that in the film – unlike the novel – Cawley's non-invasive treatment succeeds.

All the same, Shutter Island has left much of the mental health community unimpressed. The film may speak up for humane treatment; DiCaprio is wonderfully appealing and empathetic. But Shutter Island's world is one in which bipolar mothers kill their children, to be killed in turn by their demented husbands. Hospital patients are gruesome scarecrows. Psychiatrists are obsessive crackpots.

In the end, movies are drawn to madness because it's scary, however kindly they try to treat it. Their chilling images are bound to leave more of an impression than their worthy explanations. Gilligan still believes cinema's ability to instil sympathy for the mentally ill has come to outweigh its negative impacts. It has indeed come a long way. But it has still further to go.

Critical Investigation...


How and why do Horror/Thriller films, such as 'Hide and Seek' exaggerate the mentally ill?


Issues/Debates & Theories...


Moral Panic
Moral Panic is a feeling expressed by a large proportion of society on an issue (by a group of people or individuals) that is deviant to society.
Internet Link: http://psychservices.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/54/4/441

Genre Theories
Genre Theories are the ideas that a certain genre has constructed different elements in order to tell a story.
Internet Link: http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Horror_film

Representation & Stereotyping
Reperesentation and Sterotyping are the ideologies of a group of people that is constructed through the media.
Internet Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6043231/Heath-Ledgers-Joker-exacerbates-stereotypes-about-mental-health.html

Media Effects
This refers to the theories of the ways the media is constructed to affect how audiences think and behave
Internet Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_influence


Guardian.co.uk ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jul/22/hollywood-mental-block

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/jan/24/broadcasting.pressandpublishing

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2004/jun/14/medicineandhealth.lifeandhealth1

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/19/schizophrenia-murder-mental-health

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/04/the-crazies-mental-health

Research...


To what extent does Horror/Thriller Films offer a true reflection of the Mentally Ill?
OR
Why does Horror/Thriller Films offer an exaggerated refelction of the Mentally ill?


Links:

http://thehorrorfiend.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/horror-films-and-mental-illness/

http://kpsych.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/hide-and-seek-media-portrayl-of-split-personalities-media-analysis-5/


http://www.helium.com/knowledge/29638-movies-and-mental-illness-the-depiction-of-mental-disorders-through-film



Texts that can be looked at:

The Uninvited (2009)- Dissociatve Disorder
Hide & Seek (2005)- Dissociative Disorder
Shutter Island (2010)- Schizophrenia
Obsessed (2009) - Delusional Disorder
Veronica Decides to Die (2009) - Clinical Depression

Critical Investigation & Linked Production Ideas...


1. To what extent are the mentally ill beautified in the media landscape?
- A Documentary exploring how the media portrays the mentally ill, coparing to the relaity of mental dissorders
- An opening to a soap opera, where the protagonist is diagnosed with a mental disorder, either glamourising it or oposing to this idea, and showing the reality of it

2. Is it still the norm to have 'White' main characters in the mainstream media?
- A documentary exploring different films/tv shows that have 'white' protagonist and those with ethnic minority- and compare sucess and reactions
- look at different adverts, those for higher and working classes and comapre what nationalities are used for which

3. Has classic Disney films, given false impressions on idealist Gender Roles/Relationships?
- A documentary exploring the view on society's on gender roles and if exaggerated films produced by institutions such as Disney (Pixar) have had an impact on these thoughts

Chosen Idea...

To what extent are the mentally ill beautified in the media landscape?

M- as it is a documentary, mostly natural lighting will be used, with a range of camera angles. Diagetic and non-diagetic sound will be used, and it is typical of documentaries to use a lot of sound bridges

I - non-hollywood, mainstream and will also be shown past the watershed (due to language, and offensive scenes)

G - this documentary genre will be: social issue and also reportage/investigative

R- A vary of positive and negative representations of those who are mentally ill

A- target audience ages: 15-25, students, those who are interested in the material featured such as Eastenders. These will be mainstreamers, but also explorers and they will be interested in whats behind what the media presents to us concering those who are mentally ill.

I - the positive values of this documentary will be to educate, inform and to encourage social change, as it will hope to change the ways those of mentally ill are percieved, whether this is different to the way the media present it or whether it conincides with it

N- as it will be a documentary, it will have a linear narrative.

The Global Village

Marshall McLuhan

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/bas9401.html

The underlying concept of McLuhan's view of electr(on)ic technology is that it has become an extension of our senses, particularly those of sight and sound

we are increasingly linked together across the globe and this has enabled us to connect with people at the other side of the world as quickly as it takes us to contact and converse with those who inhabit the same physical space (i.e the people that live in the same village)

McLuhan argues that it is the speed of these electronic media that allow us to act and react to global issues at the same speed as normal face to face verbal communication


http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_mcluhan.htm


McLuhan chose the insightful phrase "global village" to highlight his observation that an electronic nervous system (the media) was rapidly integrating the planet

His insights were revolutionary at the time, and fundamentally changed how everyone has thought about media, technology, and communications ever since

McLuhan's second best known insight is summarized in the expression "the medium is the message", which means that the qualities of a medium have as much effect as the information it transmits


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan

it is a tool that profoundly shapes an individual's and, by extension, a society's self-conception and realization

the world has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us

A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individual's encyclopedic function and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind

http://www.slideshare.net/upload

Research summer project: 'The Proposal' Research & Analysis

View more presentations from Megan Riley.

Research Summer Project Evaluation

Mr Bush's Evaluation


Significance 3
Structure 2
Simplicity 2
Rehearsal 2

9

WWW:
- used a clip (trailer)
- some good research
- gender roles discussed
- spoke about genre
- spoke about audience expectations
- ICT skills : good powerpoint, highlighted key words in bold, and well selected images, embedded video links.
- fluent and good paced: not reading off the screen and knows the subject well


EBI:
- dont start with the trailer, provide some background knowledge first
- more media terminology was used
- interactivity with the audience

Research Summer Project - Text Research

The Proposal


Telegraph


Tim Robey, displays his excitement for the awiated The Proposal, although it was thought to be all down to the stars that were present in the film, Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. whats found interesting is that Bullock and Reynolds have a chemistry that enabled directer Anne Fletcher the ability to sit back and let them work.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmreviews/5895077/The-Proposal-review.html




Entertainment Weekly



EW comment on Sandra Bullcoks comeback, and her upcoming movies, seeming most likely to appear next to Tom Hanks, how she conciously reloaded her career, and what she is going to do next. Sandra Bullock appeared on the cover of Entertainment weekly, being described as 'the most powerful actress in Hollywood' .


At the age of 46, Bullock has acomplished jumping from moving vehicles in Speed to being a criminal suspect in Most Wanted. This has been a succesful year for the actress as she won a best actress oscar and a new baby, EW have examined her rising status in hollywood, commenting on how well she makes audiences fall in love with her film, after film.

Co-star Bradly cooper, who was also in All About Steve, commented on Bullock: “From the minute we saw her in Speed, she just had this quality that people want to be around, it’s like being around a source of light.”

Summer Research Project

The Proposal, Anne Fletcher (2009)
Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds


Media Representations

Protagonist Bullock, is represented as breaking the stereotypical ideologies of women, by being portrayed as a hardoworking, career focussed woman. Which is enhanced by having a male assistant, which is usually thought of as a woman's role.

The representation if not neither fair, nor accurate, as it is at an extreme, that may not reflect the life of the everyday people who will be watching the text.


Media Language and Forms

The denotation of meaning in this text is that the protagonist is a selfish yet harworking woman who only looks out for herself in life, thus taking advantage of her employees and not caring about thier personal lives. Also, that the marriage of Bullock and Reynolds is that of conveienice to the protagonist in order for her to stay in the country.
Whereas the connotation of this, is that Bullocks charcter actually is not as selfish and hardfaced as she comes across but has had occurances in life that has made her this way. Also, that in this case Bullocks character may have had feelings for her secretary (Reynolds) all along, and is not only using him out of conveinience.
The significance of the connotation is that, it is unusual for the audeince to dislike the protagonist, and if this were to happen, the audience may not enjoy the film as they should.
The protagonist rarely smiles at the beginning of the text, and is usually shown to be frowning in the close-ups used of the character.
Setting at the beginning of the films consists of a well built up area, using a high amount of medium shots portraying how uptight and busy the life of the protagonists is. Yet towards the middle and end of the film, the setting is of a country-side like area, where there is a lot of space connoting the relaxation of the protagonist and ability to start opening up as a person.


Narrative

The film has a linear narrative, with, at the beginning has numeruous action codes, urging the audience to carry on watching the film.
Thw villain of the film (Bullock) is created through the fast pace of editing, when she is entering a room, creating panic, connoting that she is in control.


Genre

The genre of the text belongs to a hybrid, consisting of comedy, romance and drama. Typical of the romance genre, the couple generally despise eachother at the beginning, then grow to love eachother through the course of the narrative, due to findings of common grounds or realisation of one character having what the other doesnt. The film fulfills audiences expectations considering generic expectations. Although in some cases within the narrative it deviates from the charactersistics of the genre by


Media Audeinces

The text is aimed at primarily a predeominantly female audience aged between 15-25. This audience seems suitable due to the change in society regarding the role of women in the workplace.