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Transcript

Stuart Hall, The Work of Representation

Why is representation important?

--Why think about it at all?

The Matrix Reloaded (2003)

  • According to Hall, representation structures our knowledge of everything (people, things, events). We cannot know something without it being represented to or for us.
  • This is the premise (and purpose) of thinking about media: How and why is this being represented in this way?

From Language to Discourse

"systems of representation"

A discourse "'rules in' certain ways of talking about a topic, defining an acceptable and intelligible way to talk, write, or conduct oneself." (186)

  • First system: objects/people/events are correlated with a system of mental concepts (172)

Discourse "defines and produces the objects of our knowledge." (186)

A discourse consists of:

  • Second system: these mental concepts then correspond to a set of signs
  • statements that give us knowledge about the topic
  • 'subjects' (persons) who personify that way of thinking
  • the ways in which this knowledge acquires authority in culture
  • practices within institutions for dealing with subjects (persons)

"Kim Kardashian"

The Matrix Reloaded Again:

An example: health & medicine (e.g., epilepsy)

People Like Us (2001)

Language--broadly understood

  • The "language" of traffic lights

signifier:

S

I

G

N

signified: what exactly?

"It is the difference between Red and Green which signifies." (178)

Barthes, Mythologies (I)

The Sands of Iwo Jima (1949)

Barthes, Mythologies (II)

Barthes, Mythologies (III)

Connotation

Denotation

Barthes treats "activities and objects as signs, as a language through which meaning is communicated....

He treats [wrestling] as a text to be read." (182)

skinny jeans ...

(descriptive level)

... connote what?

(broader level connected to the rest of culture)

Not a sport, but "the great spectacle of Suffering, Defeat, and Justice" (Mythologies, 19)

from literal meaning to ... myth ("a second more elaborate and ideologically framed message")

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