GGM Texts

Arranged shag..Laughing at Indian arranged marriages, the 'arranged shag' ridicules the concept of arranged marriage by making it look absurd.Also embracing stereotypes amongst Indian families themselves of Indian parents trying to be more 'modern' and 'English' (hence shag as opposed to marriage)



One of the “______ is Indian” sketches…Is funny because it takes the makes fun of the self Indian stereotype of seeing Indian culture as superior by thinking everyone/thing originated as Indian. Also, mocks British traditions through ridiculing the monarchy by associating it with the stereotypes commonly placed against Indians.




Chunky LaFungaParodies bollywood film, indians laughing at themselves.. being aware of sterotypes and embracing them.

Black actors win more TV roles

increase in people from ethnic minorities features in Tv soaps and dramas
Casualty, Eastenders reflect cultural diversity.
Problems with on screen portrayal of ethic minorities: presented as simplistic and one-sided picture of brit racial probs.

why? - because there arnt enough people from ethnic minorities in senior positions therefore the people making the programmes lack multi-cultural knowledge and experience.


Tv: tends to exaggerate the violence caused through racial tensions and fails to seek out voices to articulate the concerns of ordinary people from ethnic minorities.

Ethnic minority push by BBC - Matt Wells

BBC Asian Network - being expanded to digital to reach more Asians.
Station includes stories and issues that were either being underplayed or missed altogether by other bbc stations.

the Asian network has its own team of journalists, it has it own target audience, but it has been said that the BBC national news operation doesn't make enough news use of the Asian network's specialist knowledge.

Subcontinental drift - Nitin Sawhney (observer review)

Asian music making a break for the mainstream in the last 10 yrs: Cornershop, Asian Dub Foundation, Fin-da-mental etc..

British Asian experience : Goodness Gracious Me was the 1st Asian comedy series to receive recognistion from the bbc.
Musical Bombay Dreams has was a success in the West End capitalizing on Brit Asian talent.
Celluloid films: The Guru, Bend it like Beck, Monsoon Wedding, Anita and Me etc have all revieved mainstream support and recognition.

The arts are brimming with contributions from British Asians.

"The question isn't why is this all happening now, rather why has it taken so long?"

How entertainemtn changed: The media and multicultural Britain - Alex Webb

- Multicultural entertainment is now an important/successful part of the UK's mainstream media : Bend it like Beckham, East is East, Kumars at No42.

BBC News Online survey: - 78% people think ethnic minorities are better represented on TV now (than the last 10 yrs)
-73% Black people + 67% Indians agree.

-Still a long way to go as the success of blacks and Asians visible on screen is unmatched on off screen roles. 57% of asians thinks its harder to get work in the media than it is for whites. Greg Dyke agrees: "hideously white".

Girl power - From burning bras to High Street honeys, how times change

Is this empowering?

Once women burned their bras, today they send photos of their breasts to lad mags and call it liberating. Is this really a new form of feminism or just the old objectification, asks Sarah Montague, of BBC Radio 4's Today.

Twenty years ago when I was in my teens, Page Three girls seemed old fashioned. Surely it was just a matter of time before they disappeared altogether.

Not only has Page Three survived, it has been joined by almost every other page of a newspaper, including the front.

Katie Price - aka Jordan - uses her body as a business asset

These days I find myself in petrol station queues trying to explain to my five-year-old daughter why these women haven't got any clothes on. I don't know what message she takes from it. Perhaps she'll think the only exploitation going on is of men's sexual responses.

After all, women like glamour model Jordan have made a fortune from this sort of stuff. She's become a role model for thousands of young women who no longer see the sex industry as a last refuge if they're desperate but as something to aspire to. And it doesn't seem to be just down to the money it can pay.

A few months ago, a woman from Nuts TV told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the reason thousands of young women chose to upload pictures of their breasts for free so that men could rate them on the Nuts website was because it was "empowering" to do so.

It reflects a change in society over the past ten years. I wouldn't blame the Spice Girls. I'm sure they just successfully tapped into something that was already there.

As a result of the success of feminism, women can now do exactly as men do. Not only are they doing the same jobs, they're drinking the same amount of alcohol and even treating sex in the same way. But 40 years after the Equal Pay Act, a female director in retail or business earns about £57,000 while a man in the same job earns £70,000, according to the Institute of Directors.

Preaching "girl power" to the converted

Ten years of girl power has coincided with the rise in what the journalist Ariel Levy has called "raunch culture" - a phrase describing how the sex industry has now become mainstream.

Perhaps no surprise that young women look at the images around them and conclude that, to be successful, they have to be sexy. They also often say that if they feel sexy, they feel confident.

The evidence is everywhere. At a competition for page three girls in Portsmouth, one entrant (wearing little more than a g-string) says we're "doing it for ourselves". She calls it a "confidence boost for us girls".

"If we get the cheers, we like ourselves even more," she says.

And that word "confidence" crops up again with young women in professional jobs I spoke to in west London. "If you're wearing smart and sort of sexy clothes, you feel more confident and empowered," says one.

Sauce for the goose...

But what is our image-obsessed society doing to teenagers? Girls struggling with their self-image are more prone to eating disorders and self-harming.

Every 10 or 15 years feminism needs to mutate and change and I think that's what groups like the Spice Girls did Author Katherine Townsend

And the boys? If the whole point of feminism is that you can wear what you like and people won't judge you, then someone needs to tell at least one bunch of teenagers in east London, who appear to assume women want to be treated as sex objects.

"The first thing that comes to mind is she's a 'ho'," one says. "The first thing, with girls like that, I see them as like easy targets - you can get their numbers, do whatever."

That doesn't matter if that is what the woman wants, but what if it's not? More women now report that they've been raped than ever before and convictions have not kept pace.

The first Reclaim the Night march was 30 years ago when organisers said there was a one in three chance of a conviction for rape. Now it's one in 20 and that's why marches have started again.

"I was raped by my best friend. I know for a fact if I had said to any other of my male friends that that happened, they would have said, 'well you must have been asking for it in some way' and that's really scary," says one victim.

Reinvention

But for Katherine Townsend, columnist and author of Sleeping Around, the rebranding of women's liberation was inevitable.

Back when empowerment meant the right to vote

"Every 10 or 15 years feminism needs to mutate and change and I think that's what groups like the Spice Girls did. It repackaged it in a very attractive way to young girls, but I don't think they can claim to speak for everyone."

And she believes it can be empowering to be considered sexy. "I'm not saying all women should go out and sleep around. For me it was a journey."

But Natasha Walter, author of New Feminism, says that while she felt "optimistic about where women were going" during the Spice Girls' era 10 years ago, she is now concerned about how feminism is being defined.

"I think obviously it can be empowering and liberating to throw off the shackles of modesty and go out there and be sexy.

"But I think we have to remember what empowerment and liberation meant - what is it in its wider sense? Let's not settle for the narrower sense."

Summary of Mulvey

Mulvey argued that in the classical Hollywood narrative the spectator is constructed as male. Over the history of history of Hollywood films the hero/central character have been predominantly male and female characters have sufficed as characters just to be looked at or be saved. Mulvey argued that this representation of men and women is the result of complex (male) fears revolving around castration anxiety (which as Freud stated is unconscious). The result of castration anxiety means that men are unable to feel sexually aroused by a woman without the processes of fetishization or objectification. Narcissism allows the male spectator to identify with the male character on stage who represents the ideal. The 'male gaze' theory is a coherent explanation for the dominating subordinate female roles in films, yet attitudes to women have changed and although film has not been so quick to reflect these films such as Alien and Tomb Raider have.

How Mulvey's theory links to my study:

-Narcissism : Male spectator receives narcissistic pleasure through identifying with the 'ideal' physical appeal of character Troy.
-Spectator: 'HSM' questions the validity of the dominant 'male spectator' position outlined by Mulvey. Although the film is not explicitly sexual the female spectators and male spectators alike are encouraged to see the opposite sex as an object of desire.
-Roles: More of an equal role between the male and female characters *not patriarchal*
Although, in 'Grease' there is a slightly larger emphasis on the spectator being male