Hello and welcome to my easy to understand guide to Stuart Hall's representation theory. Stuart Hall's representational theory seems to come in roughly three parts that you need to know. The first part is that the media often use stereotypes.
I'm sure we all know what a stereotype is. To give you an example, we'll often see women portrayed as mothers, caring, emotional, housewives. We'll often see men portrayed as big and strong and brave.
So Stuart Hall thinks that the media tends to use these stereotypes a lot and that often that's how the stereotypes are created in the first place. Stereotypes tend to reduce a group of people down to a few minor characteristics which people have come to associate with them. Ethnic minorities are represented in the media for example, they're often stereotyped, often in very negative ways. So we will see ethnic minority characters portrayed as dangerous or criminal and It's the stereotypes that are used by the media and that's almost all media products that do this.
Stuart Hall also believes that stereotypes tend to come about when there are people in power who are from the dominant hegemonic groups within society. So when we talk about dominant hegemonic groups in Britain, we're often talking about white, middle class, upper class, rich males. And... Because a lot of media companies are owned by people from that particular group, white rich men, it means that there is a tendency for them to represent people from outside of those groups in a stereotypical way because they have very little experience with people from those groups.
So, for example, in newspapers you will often see people from ethnic minority backgrounds represented in very negative ways and that's probably because a lot of newspaper owners come from quite... privileged white male backgrounds. There are very few women or people of colour at the top of media industries and so what tends to happen is they are seen as the weaker more vulnerable groups or they are stereotyped in often quite negative ways by the people who actually make the media.
So when looking at a text at A-level you need to first of all be able to identify any stereotypes and that could be stereotypes of gender, ethnicity, age etc. And you need to be able to identify if there are stereotypes there and how those stereotypes have been created. But also, could there be a reason hegemonically why those stereotypes are there?
Who owns that product? Who makes that product? Because perhaps it's because of who owns it as to why those stereotypes are there in the first place.