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REPRESENTATION Written especially for undergraduate students, Representation synthesizes and updates our understandings of representation – and the tools for its analysis–for useinthenewmediascape. Jenny Kidd uses an engaging range of current examples and a lively style to explore a number of key questions reflecting existing and contemporarydebatesaboutrepresentation. Thesekey questionsinclude:Who‘owns’ and manages representations? Whose realities are foregrounded, and whose are consigned to invisibility? To what extent are increased opportunities for self-representation altering thelandscape?Andwhathappenstorepresentationwithinthenoisy,playful andoftensubversivecommunicationsoftheInternet? Kidd considers the political, social and cultural importance of representationacrossabroadspectrumofculturalandcreativeindustries. This examination of the relationship between media/cultural representations and the construction ofreality, identityand society makes itan ideal text for students that need to get to grips with this core thematic of mediaandculturalstudies. Jenny Kidd is Lecturer in the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University. Her research interests include digital media, museums and participation. She is the author of Museums in the New Mediascape (2014) and co-editor of Challenging History in the Museum (2014)andPerformingHeritage(2011). KEY IDEAS IN MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES TheKeyIdeasinMediaandCulturalStudiesseriescoversthemainconcepts,issues, debatesandcontroversiesincontemporarymediaand culturalstudies.Titlesinthe seriesconstituteauthoritative,originalessaysratherthanliterarysurveys,butarealso writtenexplicitlytosupportundergraduateteaching.Theseriesprovidesstudentsand teacherswithlivelyandoriginaltreatmentsofkeytopicsinthefield. CulturalPolicy byDavidBellandKateOakley RealityTV byAnnetteHill Culture byBenHighmore Representation byJennyKidd Forthcoming: ActiveAudiences byHelenWood Celebrity bySeanRedmond Mediatization byAndreasHepp REPRESENTATION Jenny Kidd Add AdAdddAdd AddAddAdd Add AddAdd AdAddd Firstpublished2016 byRoutledge 2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN andbyRoutledge 711ThirdAvenue,NewYork,NY10017 RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness ©2016JennyKidd TherightofJennyKiddtobeidentifiedasauthorofthisworkhasbeen assertedbyherinaccordancewithsections77and78oftheCopyright,Designs andPatentsAct1988. Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedor utilizedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,nowknown orhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,orinanyinformation storageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwritingfromthepublishers. Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksor registeredtrademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationandexplanation withoutintenttoinfringe. BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData Kidd,Jenny. Representation/byJennyKidd. pagescm.--(Keyideasinmediaandculturalstudies) Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. 1.Massmedia.2.Imagery(Psychology)3.Semiotics.I.Title. P91.K3752015 302.23--dc23 2015020133 ISBN:978-1-138-01669-9(hbk) ISBN:978-1-138-02071-9(pbk) ISBN:978-1-315-66678-5(ebk) TypesetinTimesNewRoman byTaylor&FrancisBooks C ONTENTS List of figures vi Acknowledgement vii Introduction: The ongoing significance of representation 1 1 Theories of representation 18 2 Language as power 40 3 Self-representation online 61 4 Reality TV 87 5 The mediated past 108 6 Subversive and alternative media messages 131 Bibliography 150 Index 166 F IGURES 0.1 Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red installation at the Tower of London, 2014. Image: author’s own 6 0.2 Skateistan volunteer Erika ollies in front of the destroyed Buddhas of Bamiyan, which were built in the 6th century but blownup by the Taliban in 2001. Image courtesyof Skateistan 9 1.1 The Prince of Egypt, 1998, Dreamworks 25 1.2 Human Infographic © Antun Hirsman/Shutterstock. com 31 2.1 Laverne Cox as Sophia in Series 1, Episode 3 of Orange Is the New Black, Netflix, 2013 51 2.2 Protester Logan Browning wears tape over her mouth reading ‘I can’t breath’ [sic], Hollywood, California, 6th December 2014. copyright: Patrick T. Fallon/Reuters/Corbis 54 3.1 Diverse Avatars © Janos Levente/Shutterstock.com 62 3.2 Selfie © Yulia Mayorova/Shutterstock.com 73 4.1 Pistorius Verdict BBC News 24 Special, BBC 89 4.2 The Only Way Is Essex, ITV 96 4.3 Gogglebox, Channel 4 104 5.1 Call the Midwife, BBC 113 5.2 America’s Army 3, 2009, U.S. Army 116 5.3 Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier, Bust of Said Abdullah of the Darfour People, 1848, Bronze, H. 82.5 cm (32 1/2 in.) (with socle), Ada Turnbull Hertle Endowment, 1963.839, The Art Institute of Chicago. Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago 122 6.1 Levi’s campaign, 2005, UK, reproduced courtesyof The Advertising Archives 134 6.2 Miss My Lung. Image courtesyof the California Department of Public Health, California Tobacco Control Program 146 A CKNOWLEDGEMENT Having studied media representations in avariety of contexts for morethan13yearsIhaverelishedtheopportunityinthisbookto consolidate my thinking in this area, and to synthesize existing theory with emergent discourses, particularly around digital media and self-representation. Thanks are due to the editorial team at Routledge, particularly NatalieFoster,Sheni Kruger and thereviewersof theinitialbook proposal. I also thank Fiona Kidd for her input on the drafts of the opening chapters. All of the chapters in this book have evolved from lectures on the‘Representations’moduleIrunforallfirstyearundergraduates intheSchoolofJournalism,MediaandCulturalStudiesatCardiff University. It is a module I enjoy teaching immensely, not least because I get to work with a crack team of Teaching Assistants who have included Hugh Griffiths, Xin Zhang, Dafina Paca, Susana Sampaio Dias, Judith Fathallah, James Rendell and Hiu Chan. In our meetings around lectures, we delight in sharing the responses of students to the subject matter, how we challenge them, and how every year they challenge us with the range of media they consume, the multitude of ways they interact with it, and the questions they wish to explore. This book is for those students. This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION THE ONGOING SIGNIFICANCE OF REPRESENTATION I write this opening on the day following the 70th Anniversaryof the Liberation of Auschwitz, and the attendant revelations about the towering horrors concealed within that camp. Yesterday our media–notleastthenewsandsocialnetworks–wereawashwith grainy still and moving images from that day 70 years ago, and the clear and considered voices of the survivors filtered over the radio. Many of those survivors had travelled to Auschwitz for a high profile memorial event attended by dignitaries from around the world. The anniversary had been the subject of intense inter- national interest, and underpinned by the realization that for the nextdecennial, theremay be few, if any, survivors left to tell their stories. This last point raises some significant questions with regard to the continued representation of those events, and of thosewhose lives – and life narratives– were forever impacted by their experiences within that camp, and indeed the many other camps: Who will continue to speak for the survivors (if anyone)? What presentations of their stories will be seen as appropriate in future years? Who will regulate their use and re-use, especially in