Inclusivity On The Runway

 Representing All Sizes

Welcome back my beautifuls for todays blog post! Today we will be going over who and how we did representation in our project

Before we jump right into talking about representation we used in our movie opening, lets talk about theories of representation to better understand what we are going to be discussing.

To start off with Stuart Hall is one of the theorists that believe that representation is the production of meaning through language, for example, stereotyping reduces people and things to a few simple characteristics and stereotyping usually occurs where there is a disparity or "other". Then the next theorist David Gauntlett said that Media help us to construct our identities as Media provides us with 'tools' and resources that we use to shape our identities. Next Paul Gilroy explores the legacy of colonialism and imperialism. Colonial discourse to inform contemporary attitude to race and ethnicity, “Civilizations” constructs racial hierarchies and sets up binary oppositions based on notions of “other ”ness.

And finally Liesbet can Zoonen claims that gender is constructed through discourse, gender as a product of discourse changes depending on cultural and historical context. For example, The objectification of women’s bodies is core to western patriarchal culture. The codes used in mainstream media to construct the male body are different from the mediated/objectified female body

So how do these apply to our story?

First of all Stuart Halls theories of representation applies in our case of creating the protagonist go through grief and using more stereotypical lines to portray it, for example the protagonist follows through the common 5-stages of grief which would seem familiar to the audience making it easier for them to interpret such complex emotions like dealing with grief, by reducing the complexity it can be more enjoyable and relatable to the watcher as it can appeal as familiar to them. 

Next, when we look at the Theories of Identity theory by David Gauntlett when the watcher is viewing our movie there are the mentioned 'tools' that can make them reflect and shape themselves as well.

By the watcher, especially young adults, can reconcile with the protagonist, the viewer can see how the character dealt with their emotions and the journey they were going through. This can cause to viewer to even take inspiration from the movie and apply it to their in-life situation if they feel as they are going through the same or similar situation the protagonist does in the film, making it possible for the watcher to take the same perspective as the protagonist.

Now the feminist theory by Liesbet van Zoonen may also be applied.

It is common for media to portray females as more emotional and expressive mentally. In our movie we choose a girl to be our protagonist and have her go through this journey of emotions and internal conflicts. To the watcher a girl in this role may seem more appealing and even make the viewer sympathize with the protagonist more than if the character was a boy. But why? Boys are usually not associated with mental and emotional expressions, the movie it self portrays grief which is a very complex idea of emotions so a boy in this case could seem distant for some watchers.

Next, lets look at some more basic representation we used in our film. To be honest I feel like it was hard  to make a large scale representation in our movie since the plot very much centralizes our main character, making it hard to emphasize other characters as representation. Our main character is a teenage girl turning to an adult, so mostly it is to represent people who are being in that transitional stage as it can be very easily relatable especially since everyone goes through it at one point in their lives. Another thing that our main character represents is grief, since Gigi just lost her mother and the point of her self growth and going through this can be relatable to people who have also lost a loved one and had to cope with it alone, since Gigi mostly had herself to get through this because of her dad's absence most of the time. 

I do not believe there are very stereotypical factors to these representations as it is something that majority of people go through and have to deal with.

So it is a good way to reach out to a larger audience in a sense that they can relate and feel for the main character better and causing them to understand Gigi's feelings. The challenges this may come to is that there is no very specific representation we are doing which can come off to some watchers as vague, and just not interesting enough. I do believe that our character needs more emotion to her, as we are really trying to show off the immaturity that she handles her emotions thus still conveying that she is not a mature adult yet and she has to learn how to deal with her feelings throughout her self-growth journey.

Well that is it for today my beautifuls, be sure to stick around for more blogs, and leave a comment on your thoughts! I always like to read the feedback you guys give. Bye!