Representation of women in power

BBC PM trousers story

Newspaper headlines about rows within political parties are nothing new – but this one seems to have been sparked by a pair of leather trousers. Here’s how it all unfolded.

It’s just over a fortnight since Theresa May gave an “at home” interview to the Sunday Times, telling the paper about her childhood and explaining how Brexit keeps her awake at night. But it was her choice of trousers – which cost a reported £995 – that provoked most discussion.
“I don’t have leather trousers. I don’t think I’ve ever spent that much on anything apart from my wedding dress,” former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan told The Times, adding that the trousers had been “noticed and discussed” in Tory circles.

She added: “My barometer is always: ‘How am I going to explain this in Loughborough market?”‘

It was at this point that the story really took off, with another Conservative backbench MP, Nadine Dorries, taking Mrs Morgan to task.

“I think it shows Nicky Morgan’s comments were sexist, because she never criticised David Cameron’s extremely expensive suits,” she told the Daily Mail.

Mrs Morgan then found herself “disinvited” to a meeting at Downing Street to discuss Brexit, The Guardian reported.

Asked during a visit to Bahrain about the suggestion the price tag of the trousers made her “out of touch”, the PM spoke of “the importance of a country that works for everyone”, saying she had travelled around the country and “met people in a whole variety of circumstances”.

……..

‘Tedious’ and ‘impertinent’

Former chancellor Ken Clarke has not been impressed, telling the Sunday Politics it was “tedious” that stories about what women politicians were wearing featured in the newspapers.

“I feel sorry for women in politics,” he said. “I’m glad to say men in politics don’t have great news stories about what they are wearing.

“In my case, apart from my suede shoes, I’m probably very lucky because I’m not a very snappy dresser.

“Nicky and Theresa, I hope, will have some serious political discussions. If they want to have an argument about what they are wearing I think all their closest friends would advise them to keep that private.”

S4 task Single page advert – perfume

1 Read through the slides on the PowerPoint on Public.
2 Plan to make a single page advert for the following perfume: Acqua Di Gioia
3 You must plan in writing and drawings before you make.
4 Pay attention to slide 4 in particular and plan for six or more sections from that slide.
5 After you have made your plans you will be allowed to take suitable original photographs for your final advert.

Jurassic World

Jurassic World echoes Jurassic Park quite closely: The ‘monster-in-a-box’ gets loose. The narrative then becomes an exercise in escape and survival then defeating the ‘monster’ — Todorov: equilibrium/disruption/recognition/resolution/new equilibrium.

 

Characters

Teenage heroes – Gray and Zach need to lose their caretaker Zara, then take off on their own in order to get into trouble. Why? To create high interest stakes in the characters whose  trip to the park is shown and with whom  the typical teenage audience will most identify.

Adult leads – Aunt Claire’s desperate need to find the boys. This leads her to Owen for help, cementing together this “opposites attract” pair of characters. A bit of romance helps to sell tickets to adults. The damsel in distress is actually not that incapable – she’s a gutsy modern women who wears high heels while fighting dinosaurs! But, having a brave man allows her to act to save the boys.

The plot services the “showy” bits, the 3D dinosaurs. The audience really wants to experience thrills and frights in a safe environment.

ROLE OF MEDIA QUESTIONS

Media has various roles.

It can meet needs by entertaining, educating or informing its audience.

Media can also influence attitudes and behaviours. There can be intentional or unintentional  changes in attitude and behaviours of the audience(s).

Media can also serve particular purposes such as making a profit, promoting self-interest or performing a public service.

Thinking about The Apprentice, what need(s) of the audience does it meet? Give particular examples in your detailed response.

Again thinking about The Apprentice, how might this programme influence behaviours and attitudes? Give specific examples in your answer.

Finally, what purpose(s) does The Apprentice serve? Give examples from the programme to illustrate your answer.

(10)

The Apprentice

The Apprentice is a constructed reality show on the BBC which purports to show the journey of a winning candidate for going into business with Lord Sugar with a quarter of a million pound stake. It is filmed over 8 weeks and edited to last 12 weeks on TV. It follows the familiar narrative structure of a knock out game show.

Each programme begins with a heavily edited recap of the previous week’s show. The opening highlights tend to rely on footage which shows all the candidates squabbling, mishandling tasks and one of them finally hearing “You’re fired!”

The setting of London is shown by establishing shots of London from the air, candidates crossing over the bridge near the Tate Modern and frequent shots of Black London Cabs. It features repeated clips of aerial footage over the skyscrapers of the Square Mile and Canary Wharf financial districts, such as the 180-metre Gherkin, HSBC Tower etc.  Alan Sugar has offices in none of these locations. His “office” seen in the boardroom scenes is actually a film set constructed purely for the show. Most other locations are chosen to fit the task somewhere in the London area but one trip a year is made overseas to sell some product in an unfamiliar environment.

Tasks

The successful candidates are split into two teams, initially by gender, with each team discussing and picking a name for themselves throughout the process (until the Interview stage). The teams are then given a series of  tasks which test their skills in salesmanship, negotiation, requisitioning, leadership, teamwork and organisation, with each episode covering a single task. At the start of each episode, the teams each choose a project manager/fall guy to act as the team leader for the duration of the task. As candidate numbers are reduced week by week, the teams are periodically rearranged by Sugar, either to balance the numbers, ensure a fair distribution of skills for a specific task, or to give less vocal candidates a chance to demonstrate their claimed skills.

Each team is followed by two television crews and is provided with two vehicles to drive them between locations when required. As such they are only permitted to split into two sub-teams and no more. In reality most business teams work together seamlessly and are not out to sabotage one another. In addition to the crews and vehicles, they are also followed in the execution of their tasks by Lord Sugar’s advisers, who note down their opinions and thoughts on how they execute the task for later recaps in the boardroom.

The tasks themselves are significantly more difficult than they appear when they are televised, for a few reasons:

  • The candidates must adhere to very strict time constraints, which would not be enforced in the real business world. One example is that each series has a task in which candidates are required to design a product and pitch it to retailers within 2 days; in reality they would have several months to perform this.
  • On each task, candidates are usually provided with detailed dossiers which outline further guidelines that they must work under, i.e. cost restrictions when designing products, locations in which they are not permitted to sell or purchase goods, themes, ingredients or materials that they may use etc.
  • In tasks where candidates want to buy goods from or sell goods to certain stores and/or establishments, the production crew must first receive filming permission from the respective owners. This can be a cumbersome and time consuming process that may influence the results of tasks, especially during the one day scavenger hunt task when candidates must purchase a specified number of items within a strict time limit.
  • Candidates are usually not allowed to use the internet during tasks, and will have handed in their mobile phones to the production team at the start of the process. This increases the difficulty of determining suitable locations, appropriate pricing structures etc.
  • As tasks that are completed over 2–3 days are edited down to approximately 30 minutes when televised, numerous candidates may appear to make minimal contributions in them. However, if candidates do not feature prominently in these final edits, but are also not shown to be accused of staying under the radar by Sugar or his advisers, it can usually be assumed that they have completed their duties in a successful and professional manner, and that this has not been deemed as entertaining enough to be broadcast.
  • The persistent presence of television cameras when candidates are working intensifies the pressure on them, with their mistakes usually emphasised more during the final edits.
  • The process is extremely gruelling for candidates. The result of this usually leads to them working considerably long hours and suffering from a lack of sleep and food on task days, often owing to the fact that could start very early on in the morning and finishing well after midnight with minimal time for breaks. As candidates are usually only allowed one phone call home each week, and are living in the same house as their direct rivals for the same prize, this can further increase the stress that they are under during tasks.

Boardroom

A studio mock-up of a real company boardroom, usually after the completion, or the following day is used to show the weaknesses of the candidates and the strengths of the Sugar team. Once in the boardroom, Lord Sugar, with the help of his advisers, reveals the results of what they went through and discusses about their performance, often exposing flaws in the candidates’ strategies and personalities. Sugar, who is introduced in the programme as “Britain’s most belligerent boss”,frequently delivers scathing criticisms couched in colourful language (“This was a total bloody disaster” … “you haven’t got a bloody clue” …The boardroom is usually divided up into three stages:

  • Stage 1: Each team are asked to comment on their performance in the task, often through the project manager, but also through team members. Both Sugar and his advisers often gives out some criticism or praise in this stage about what happened in the team’s execution of the task; if the task involved the creation of a new product and/or a advert, they also review what was created. After this, Sugar and his assistants reveal which team has won, often giving out a result of figures (sales, orders, etc) to prove this. Members of the winning team are then told by Sugar that he has laid on a special treat for them such as a dinner at a fancy restaurant or a music recital, and they leave the boardroom. The losing team are dispatched outside the boardroom to discuss amongst themselves about their failures in the task, usually convening at the Bridge Café to do so.
  • Stage 2: The losing team are subjected to a detailed review of their performance, sometimes humiliating, with the PM and team members often discussing/arguing about how well they did, what mistakes could have been avoided, who they feel is to blame for their failure, often with Sugar and his advisers interject with their own opinions, either agreeing or disagreeing with an argument, pointing out things they felt was wrong, who they felt did good, and any feedback made by outside parties connected to the task. After discussions on the task, Sugar asks the team’s project manager to choose two team members to accompany him or her into a final round of interrogation, which are normally the two poorest performing members of the team, yet the project manager may act treacherously, and either seek to remove more able members of the competition or make choices based on personality. Those not picked are sent back to the house, while the “final three” are told to wait outside the boardroom.
  • Stage 3: Sugar and his advisers discuss about the final three in regards to performance in the process, relations to the other candidates, and any strong/poor points to them, before they are let back into the boardroom to discuss why they should not be fired by Sugar. These discussions often become acrimonious as each candidate tries to divert blame towards the others, and can sometimes lead to heated arguments. The discussion ends with Lord Sugar giving a quick review of what he and his advisers thought of each candidate’s performance in the task and the process, before dismissing one or in some cases two of the three from the process (in extremely rare cases, he has fired all three), with the catchphrase “You’re fired!”, at which point that candidate is eliminated from the competition (if more than one is fired, each receives the catchphrase separately). The fired candidate(s) then leaves and departs in a waiting taxi for the ‘journey home’, where they are briefly interviewed in the taxi to reflect on his or her rejection from the competition. Sugar then sends the surviving candidate(s) back to the accommodation provided for the duration of the show.

The scenes where candidates are grilled by Sugar in the boardroom usually last for several hours. This often means that the boardroom sequence in its 3 stages could take the best part of a full day to complete, further adding to the show’s gruelling schedule.

Music is an important part of the show. It creates a mood, is used to build tension, and generally add entertainment value. The main theme that everyone remembers is from Romeo and Juliet by Sergei Prokofiev. Additional music has included Jupiter from The Planets, O Fortuna from Carmina Burana and Promenade from Pictures at an Exhibition. https://www.rdio.com/artist/Los_Angeles_Philharmonic_Orchestra%2C_Leopold_Stokowski/album/Music_from_the_Tv_Show_-_the_Apprentice/track/Jupiter_(From_%22the_Planets%22)/

Adverts – Narrative Structure

Narratives are used in adverts to tell the audience a story which will grab their attention quickly and sustain their interest for the full advert length(usually 30 seconds or less). A quality narrative should lead to the audience noticing the product when they go to the shops so that they consider buying it. A story can be told in many different ways but this Irn Bru 32 advert has a linear beginning-middle-end structure. Linear means the message is told in the order that it would happen – sequential order – so that the audience can easily understand it. Todorov believed that all stories had a normal (equilibrium) stage which is upset by a problem (disruption). The Disruption is resolved in some way and the new normal/equilibrium exists at the end. Using Todorov to explain the narrative structure of the Irn Brn 32’s Derek the Cuckoo library advert, it is clear that the equilibrium is a quiet, library environment where a student is studying. Everything is so quiet that the ticking of the clock has been exaggerated to seem loud and distracting. The student appears tired and uninterested in his studies. The disruption is very obvious because a huge blue and orange cuckoo springs from the wall, causing loud noise and chaos. The cuckoo shouts “Wakey wakey!” which causes anxiety. We see the student trying to back away in his seat as the drink can (product placement) comes towards him. The new equilibrium at the end is where the cuckoo has won and the librarian’s complaints have stopped. The student appears to be enjoying the drink and this scene segues into the final shot of the can against an orange background hanging from the cuckoo clock spring. Just in case this message has not been clear enough there are words on the screen to drive the message home.

This advert has a humorous and dramatic tone. Whether you like it or not it will be memorable as it is an exaggerated version of life in Scotland. The fluffy appearance of the cuckoo is not matched by the words which are coming out of his mouth which are aggressive.

Media teachers in East Ayrshire

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