evaluation: represent

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

All media products portray people in them in different ways. Masculinity and femininity is a big part of this.

All magazines including music magazines generally exploit female’s bodies to sell their issues. I have also an example of this on my contents page:

The girl in this photo is standing in a way that suggests the person who is viewing the image should be drawn to where her hands are placed. There is a covertly and occasionally overtly sexual nature to most female imagery. As the picture is taken at eye height, the girl is not being empowered by the camera angle, but she gives off the notion of innocence, despite metal attitudes.

This picture is theoretically a poster inside the magazine which would serve as like a ‘pin up’ for the mainly male target audience.

This picture quite loudly says masculinity, the clenched teeth and angry brow, wide jaw and piercing stare embody this artist as a very alpha male style ‘leader’ in music with the characteristic long hair. This picture’s connotations are that the man in the photo is who the demographic aspire to be. He is a male stereotype in the same way the cute pose above embodies femininity.

Class:

Even though rock/metal seems more suited to a grungy and less educated social class, metal is not confined to this at all. In fact, it is more likely that Overdrive will be bought by the middle class who can afford to regularly splash out on treats such as magazines. The mainly featured class in my magazine would be middle class, as the people featured within it would be on high wages making them on middle class earnings. This is reflected in the way going to gigs is expected of the reader whereas working class buyers of the magazine may not be able to afford to visit venues very often at all.

Ethnicity:

The imagery in my magazine is entirely of white British people, this was not intentional although it may have something to do with black stereotypes being interested in rap rather than rock/metal conventionally. If I were to continue to publish overdrive magazine I would have an equal mix of races in the magazine to promote racial harmony. Despite these points i believe that the majority of the target market for my magazine is white.