Timed paper

7 Explain the role played by the media in the construction of collective identity. [50]

In order to answer this question you will need to know off by heart:

• The details of your two contemporary Media texts Dr Foster and August: Osage County. Do you know the producers/dates/production company/awards for best actress etc
• The details of your historic text. Production company/dates etc. You also need to state the contextual detail of this text-what was going on historically/politically at this time for women?
• The details of your future texts. Production company/dates/actresses etc. You need to think what the future context of female representation in the Media may be like. Who will be producing the media in the future?
• Your media theorists. You will need some basic quotations from theorists such as Buckingham/Gauntlett and Mulvey in order to discuss the problems of representing collective identity and you will also need quotation from another two theorists to discuss Media construction or audience reception-look at Stuart Hall or Gramsci/Gillmor
• What you are going to say about representing women-try to summarise the different female roles in your texts in the introduction to make it very clear to your examiner that representing women is complicated! You will also need to be aware of the fact that they may still use stereotype traits in order to say something political about these representations-look at Kate and Karen. (Perkins 1979 may be useful here)
• Your structure- this will be defined by the different representations you are looking at. e.g. paragraph 1 - women as dominant (remember to discuss this in both your texts, paragraph 2- women as nurturing (again use both your main texts) paragraph 3 - women as manipulative/evil (again use both your main texts to compare/debate discuss. You will use your historic/future texts as single sentence to draw out further debate.
• Textual detail- you will need to have very clear/detailed examples from your two main texts (Foster and August:Osage) to discuss costuming/sound/editing/mise en scene etc to support your points about how complicated complex collective identity of women is. You will also need detail from your historic/future texts, but this doesn't have to be as detailed. 
• Media Terminology- you will need to make sure you keep using the media terminology you have been taught from your entire A-level studies e.g. signs/signifiers/semiotics/mise en scene/ shot reverse shot/ diegetic sound/ connotations/audience/reception/production/ etc etc

Try to fit all of this onto a storyboard design on A3 or A4 paper and check it through with me,

Phew!