What is the purpose of censorship?

Censorship is used in media to stop people from seeing things that are considered too innapropriate. For this reason the Hays Code was introduced. It was formulated and adopted by  The Association of Motion Picture Producers, Inc. and The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc. in March 1930. They recognised their responsibility to the public because they realised entertainment and art are important influences in the life of a nation, they know that the motion picture within its own field of entertainment may be directly responsible for spiritual or moral progress, for higher types of social life, and for much correct thinking. This shows that the media effects nearly everyone whether the are actively taking it in or passivley.  Its general principles are:

1. No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.

2. Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.

3. Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.

When it comes to music videos there isn't a lot that is censored however distributers will try to make the music suitable for a wide audience in some songs swear words are bleeped out and in videos they try to limit nudity and strong sexual imagery as they want to be able to sell to the widest audience possible and a majority of people would find that innapropriate and unacceptable.

The watershed is a time of night when the things shown on tv contain adult content. It is at 9pm because it is considered that children who shouldn't be seeeing or hearing certain things will be in bed. This suggests that if the children see or hear "adult" things enough they will start to copy it which would be inappropriate as far as society is concerned. Children are quite a passive audience. They probably don't understand any rude words or inappropriate actions but if they see it enough they will presume it is acceptable and it is very likely they will copy it.

How far do you agree with the comment that mass audiences are still passive recipients of media?

This question is asking me whether I agree that most people take in media passivley.

I do agree with the question quite a lot. When you are passive you are taking in meaning from the media without really noticing it. The media use this quite a lot to get their messages across, people subcontionsly take in meaning and ideas from the media without really knowing it. For example we all see adverts but most people probably don't really realise that they have taken in the message from it and that it influences on what they do. In the 1920's things were censored from films so the audience wouldn't repaet any of the actions or think in a certain way that wasn't considered aceptable. Things that were considered unsuitable were: white slavery, ridicule of the clergy, scences of actual childbirth, misusing the american flag, using words such as Christ, Lord and God in a rude way and showing leg above the knee. They didn't people to think it was ok to act in this way. This is ideology which is a set of beliefs that were dominant in society at the time. The idea of being able to inject ideas into someones head is the Hypodermic Neddle which was a type of audience theory.

The way we view people can be influenced by the media. We have ideas on stereotypes and what is acceptable but it is debatable whether its what we think or what the media has told us to think. The media shows us lots of stereotypes and we believe them and catagorise people because of them without really knowing them. However we have little choice to believe what the media tells us because we are shown the ideas all the time and they are everywhere. I almost completely agree that mass audiences are passive recipients of media.

Audience Theory

A target audience are the people something is aimed at which they should enjoy. This is what makes a target audience:
-age
-gender
-race
-hobbies/interests
-experiences
-class
-reginal identity
-disabiltiy

There are 3 main theories if audience, which are:
1) The Effects Model or Hypodermic Needle
There are 3 parts to this theory. The first is imitation. This is where you copy what you see. The second is catharsis. This is where you watch soaps for example and they make you feel better about yourself because their lives are worse than yours and there problems distract you from your own. The last one is desensitisation. This is where you get used to what you see and it doesn't have as much of an effect on you.
2) The Uses and Gratifications Model
It covers: personal identity, surveillance, pleasure and diversion/escapism.
3) Reception Theory

There are also 3 different ways of taking in meaning from media texts:
Primary-they physically engage with a media text
Secondary-for example you have the radio on in the background but you are doing something else primarily.
Tertiary-when you know its there but you aren't aware you are taking it in.

There are 2 key types of audience which are an active audience(engaging with a media text) and a passive audience(tertiary, they don't conciously take in the message being portrayed).

Representation

Representation is the way people, groups, cultures and ideas are shown by the media. Media texts show us not the truth but an interpretation of the truth therefore what we are shown is not always realistic, the media makes us beleive what they want us to beleive.

Semiotics is the study of sign systems which allows us to deconstruct media texts to understand how meaning is being created.

Semiotics are a sign, the reader creates meaning for the sign unless there is already a meaning there.

The signifier is the object itself e.g a rose.

                 

The signified is what the object represents e.g love.

                                                  

Denotation is the literal meaning of a sign and connotation is the interpreted meaning of a sign or signs.
Connotation is the interpreted meaning of a sign or signs.

Polysemic-more than one meaning e.g in a dictionary one word can have more than one meaning.

Types of signs:
Iconic-those which work through resemblance (photographs)
Symbolic-thise which are learned (arbitary signs such as words)
Indexical-those which work through a casual link e.g smoke as an index of fire.

Camera Angles

In lesson we learnt all about the many different camera angles and we applied them to a video clip we watched.

Terror in the Night-Editing and Narrative

In lesson we made our own storyboard for the film "Terror in the Night". We had to decide what the story was going to be, which cuts we would use between each scene and how long each each scene would last. We mainly used straight cuts and we used quite a lot of jump cuts near to the end when the film was getting more scary which should create suspense and shock the audience.
















How our story relates to the modern narrative theories:
Propp-our story has a hero who would be the woman, a sidekick who would be the dog and a villain who would be the crazy man who hung himself in the woman's house.
Todorov-it follows the classic hollywood narrative.
Strausse-the binary opposites are man and woman, inside and outside.

We also changed the sequence of our films by putting the 4th scene at the beginning. By putting it first we had to change nearly the whole narrative so that it would make sense. This meant the structure changed as we started with a linear sturcture but once we moved things around it became a circular narrative as it goes back and starts at the same place it began. The meaning of the story and the way the audience view the charcters has also changed because before they don't meet the killer until near the end but now they meet him closer to the beginning so their view of him has changed.