Creating Representation

It can be said that all forms of media are forms of representation. The people involved in making the representation are goverened by their own beliefs, values and attitudes. This means that no representation is objective. Most media products reproduce dominant ideologies in the way they represent the world, which has led to many minorities complaining that they are misrepresented in the media. (Taken from the Hodder Arnold 2007.)
Gender
There are many different ideas of gender representation accross the different genres of media. For example in soaps we often see the "tart with the heart," "the hard man," the "nymphomaniac" and "the gossip." However in music videos the representation can often be shown as much simpler than this; gender can be seen to be polarized. Men are shown to be the more dominant role whilst women are passive, men are portrayed as always wanting to have sex with women whilost women are portrayed as sex objects and features in a man's fantasy, emphasising their physical appearance.

Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze
Mulvey suggested that women in film are represented as 'objects,' images with visueal and erotic impact, which is termed their 'to-be-looked-at-ness' which is shown is Christina Aguilera's - Dirrty. However in this video Christina argues that she is portraying women to be the one in power, "OK, I may have been the naked-ass girl in the video, but if you look at it carefully, I'm also at the forefront. I'm not just some lame chick in a rap video; I'm in the power position, in complete comnmand of everything and everybody around me. To be totally balls-out like this is, for me, the measure of a true artist." However although this point is valid in some respects, she is also playing up to male fantasies with her being shown being around greasy men and dancing sexually around them. In Christina's video intra-diegetic gaze is present, this means when one character in the video looks/gazes at another in the video. Through the process of identification, this may lead to the spectator's gaze also. The spectator's gaze is when the audience is looking at the subject on the screen. When the men look at Christina this shows attraction and wanting for her and by doing this it allows the audience to look over her too.
Classical Hollywood films positioned the audience as males, and through identification with the male protagonist gave him an active role in viewing the female subject and gaining pleasure from them doing so. This look, from audience to actress, is termed 'the look' or 'the gaze.' According to Mulveythe look could 'voyeristic' (women are viewed as virtuous and beautiful) or 'fetishistic' (women are viewed are excessively sexual beings).

Another example of gender representation is Girls Aloud - Something Kinda Ooo. This video is very sterotypically protraying gender. In the early days of Girls Aloud, their music videos were very much fixated on the male gaze, close-ups of lips, stomache, legs and eyes. It is a very seductive music video that is actually aimed at younger girls however many boys would also like to watch this. In this particualr video we see the girls driving fast cars, looking very glamorous; some say that the way they drive is also very seductive as they are playing the the gear stick which is phalic. The roles have reversed from men driving fast cars to women.