Representation:Japanese Pop (J-Pop)

As pop star misdemeanours go, Minami Minegishi's was tame in the extreme – breaking her group's strict dating ban to spend a night with her boyfriend.

Yet hours after a magazine published photographs of her leaving his home last month, Minegishi, a member of the wildly popular girl band AKB48, went on to YouTube to issue a tearful apology.

"As a senior member of the group, it is my responsibility to be a role model for younger members," she said, before ending the four-minute mea culpa with a deep, lingering bow.

The most striking thing about her apology, however, was her appearance. She had shaved her head, a traditional act of contrition in Japan, but perhaps a step too far for a 20-year-old woman whose "crime" was to have found herself a boyfriend – 19-year-old Alan Shirahama, a dancer in a boyband.

Minegishi explained she had decided to cut off her long hair immediately after seeing her photograph, her face hidden behind a surgical mask and a baseball cap, in the weekly tabloid Shukan Bunshun on Thursday.

Her dramatic gesture underlined the strict rules to which Japan's young pop stars must adhere to project an image of unimpeachable morals.

In the YouTube video, which has been viewed more than 3m times, Minegishi said the assignation has been "thoughtless and immature".

"If it is possible, I wish from the bottom of my heart to stay in the band," she said. "Everything I did is entirely my fault. I am so sorry.

"I don't believe just doing this means I can be forgiven for what I did, but the first thing I thought was that I don't want to quit AKB48."

AKB48's management agency demoted her to "trainee level" starting on Friday, according to the band's official blog.

Full story here

Shot Techniques

YouTube project nets over 820K views in just over one month

A YouTube video that was filmed and edited by several University of Saskatchewan students has gone viral, with over 820,000 views since publication on April 3, 2013.

The video, titled Representations of Gender in Media, is a school project that was created for a Women and Gender Studies class at the University of Saskatchewan by Sarah Zelinski, Kayla Hatzel and Dylan Lambi-Raine.

The group wanted to show how the media portrays gender roles and stereotypes in advertising.

The video showcases some seriously outdated advertisements that feature overtly sexualized gender roles. The students cast several of their friends in a role-reversal throughout the video.

It’s both eye-catching and thought-provoking.

Explanation of Intertextuality

Representation

Representation in the Media  By definition, all media texts are re-presentations of reality. This means that they are intentionally composed, lit, written, framed, cropped, captioned, branded, targeted and censored by their producers, and that they are entirely artificial versions of the reality we perceive around us. When studying the media it is vital to remember this - every media form, from a home video to a glossy magazine, is a representation of someone's concept of existence, codified into a series of signs and symbols which can be read by an audience. However, it is important to note that without the media, our perception of reality would be very limited, and that we, as an audience, need these artificial texts to mediate our view of the world, in other words we need the media to make sense of reality. Therefore representation is a fluid, two-way process: producers position a text somewhere in relation to reality and audiences assess a text on its relationship to reality. Extension/Restriction of Experience of Reality  By giving audiences information, media texts extend experience of reality. Every time you see a wildlife documentary, or read about political events in a country on the other side of the world, or watch a movie about a historical event, you extend your experience of life on this planet. However, because the producers of the media text have selected the information we receive, then our experience is restricted: we only see selected highlights of the lifestyle of the creatures portrayed in the wildlife documentary, the editors and journalists decree which aspects of the news events we will read about, and the movie producers telescope events and personalities to fit into their parameters. Truth or Lies?  Media representations - and the extent to which we accept them - are a very political issue, as the influence the media exerts has a major impact on the way we view the world. By viewing media representations our prejudices can be reinforced or shattered. Generally, audiences accept that media texts are fictional to one extent or another - we have come a long way from the mass manipulation model of the 1920s and 1930s. However, as we base our perception of reality on what we see in the media, it is dangerous to suppose that we don't see elements of truth in media texts either. The study of representation is about decoding the different layers of truth/fiction/whatever. In order to fully appreciate the part representation plays in a media text you must consider: Who produced it?  What/who is represented in the text? How is that thing represented? Why was this particular representation (this shot, framed from this angle, this story phrased in these terms, etc) selected, and what might the alternatives have been? What frame of reference does the audience use when understanding the representation? Re-posted from: http://mediaknowall.com/blog/

Exemplar Media Report

This is an example of an A grade media report.