How does the opening episode of Mr Robot use voiceover to position its audience?

Elliot narrates directly to an imagined ‘friend’, which makes the viewer his confidant and gives privileged access to a mind that turns out not to be trustworthy.

Explain why Elliot is called an unreliable narrator in Mr Robot.

Everything is shown from his subjective viewpoint, and his dissociation, drug use and hallucinations mean what the audience sees cannot be taken as a record of events.

What does Elliot's renaming of E Corp as ‘Evil Corp’ tell an audience about the narration?

The corporation is seen and heard only as Elliot names it, so his private judgement is imposed on the world the audience is shown.

Describe the distinctive framing used throughout Mr Robot.

Figures are pushed to the very bottom or the extreme edge of the frame, with large areas of empty space above and beside them, breaking the conventional rules of headroom and balance.

OCR A-Level Media Studies H409

Contexts of Media

Topic overview The five media contexts: social, cultural, political, economic and historical Social context: attitudes, norms and social issues Cultural context, taste and the global circulation of media Political context, ideology and public service broadcasting Historical context and the reflection of past events Economic context: funding, ownership and financial constraint Technological context: production, distribution and audience devices Reflecting attitudes and constructing attitudes Media products as agents of social and political change Intertextuality as a trace of context

Media Language

Topic overview Signs, codes and conventions in media language Audio-visual media language: camera, mise-en-scène, editing and sound Print media language: layout, typography and image Audio and online media language Combination and selection: how elements work together to make meaning Developing technologies and the changing language of the media Barthes, semiotics and the making of myth Todorov, narratology and narrative structure Neale, genre theory and the intertextual relay Genre as dynamic and historically relative Hybridity and the subversion of genre conventions Lévi-Strauss, structuralism and binary opposition Intertextuality: pastiche, parody and the varieties of reference Baudrillard, postmodernism and hyperreality Media language, viewpoints and ideology How audiences interpret media language

Media Representations

Topic overview Selection, combination and the construction of reality Mediation, verisimilitude and claims about realism Stereotypes, countertypes and their uses Under-representation and misrepresentation of social groups Producers' choices and the process of representation Industry context and the economics of representation Social and cultural context in representation Historical context and changing representations Values, attitudes and beliefs, and their reinforcement Discourse, ideology and the positioning of audiences Audience response and interpretation of representations Self-representation, social identity and the curated self Hall and the constructionist approach to representation Gauntlett, identity and the pick-and-mix audience van Zoonen, the patriarchal gaze and gender as performance bell hooks, intersectionality and the oppositional gaze Butler, gender performativity and gender trouble Gilroy, the Black Atlantic and postcolonial melancholia

Media Industries

Topic overview Production, distribution and circulation in a global context The specialised and institutionalised nature of media production Conglomerate ownership and vertical integration Horizontal integration, diversification and synergy Curran and Seaton: concentration of ownership and plurality Curran and Seaton on the internet and the news oligarchy Hesmondhalgh: risk, public goods and the reliance on big hits Hesmondhalgh: repetition, copyright and digital labour Commercial funding: advertising, subscription and freemium models Public service broadcasting and not-for-profit funding Marketing and the maintenance of national and global audiences Technological change and the shift to digital distribution Ofcom and the UK regulatory framework Press, advertising and age classification in the UK Livingstone and Lunt: the citizen and the consumer Individual producers, convergence and the limits of regulation

Media Audiences

Topic overview Demographics, social grade and audience profiling Psychographics, lifestyle and taste categories Targeting, mode of address and the constructed audience Marketing, distribution and circulation as routes to the audience Mass and specialised audiences, nationally and globally Niche and fan audiences and their value to media organisations Media technologies and changing patterns of consumption Uses and gratifications, identity and cultural capital The effects tradition, the hypodermic model and moral panics Bandura, social learning and media modelling Gerbner, cultivation and mean world syndrome Hall, encoding, decoding and the three reader positions Jenkins, textual poaching and participatory culture Shirky, the end of audience and cognitive surplus Different readings and their social, cultural and historical circumstances User-generated content, citizen journalism and the audience as producer

News, Online and Participatory Media

Topic overview The Daily Mail as a mid-market tabloid The Guardian, the Scott Trust and the liberal broadsheet tradition Front page construction and the language of the printed news page News values, gatekeeping and the setting of the agenda Ideology, discourse and the positioning of the news reader Representation of social groups in news coverage Mail Online and the Guardian website as digital products Social and participatory media feeds Digital convergence and the changing newsroom Ownership, plurality and the concentration of the press Paywalls, subscriptions and online monetisation News audiences: targeting, reception and interpretation Press regulation from the PCC to IPSO and the online challenge

Advertising, Marketing and Magazines

Topic overview Codes and conventions of print advertising Dove, Real Beauty and the Beautifully Real Moms campaign Media language in the Dove advert Representations of motherhood and the maternal body in the Dove advert River Island and the Labels are for Clothes campaign Media language in the River Island advert Representations of diversity, disability and self-expression at River Island Shelter, charity advertising and the direct call to action Media language in the Shelter advert Representations of homelessness and housing insecurity in the Shelter advert Social and cultural contexts of the three advertising campaigns The Big Issue, the street paper model and its market position Media language of a Big Issue front cover Alternative representations in The Big Issue Social, cultural and political contexts of The Big Issue

Music Video

Topic overview Music video as a form: performance, narrative and concept Promotion, platforms and the star image Media language in music video: camera, mise-en-scène, editing and sound Representation in music video: stereotypes, countertypes and self-representation Artist-present and artist-absent music video Corinne Bailey Rae – Stop Where You Are Lil Nas X – SUN GOES DOWN Emeli Sandé – Heaven Sufjan Stevens – Sugar Radiohead – Burn the Witch David Guetta ft. Sia – Titanium

Film, Radio and Video Games

Topic overview Disney from Snow White to global conglomerate Vertical integration and the structure of the film industry Financing, risk and the franchise model in film Technological change in film production and exhibition Distribution, release windows and home entertainment Marketing a global blockbuster Film certification and regulation Public service broadcasting and the Radio 1 Breakfast Show Funding, ownership and competition in the radio industry Radio technology, platforms and convergent distribution Reaching and constructing the Radio 1 Breakfast Show audience Nintendo, ownership and the global games industry Producing and distributing Animal Crossing: New Horizons The Animal Crossing audience: targeting, play and participation Regulation and the social context of video games

Long Form Television Drama

Topic overview Mr Robot and the unreliable narrator Killing Eve and the gendered spy thriller Atypical and the representation of neurodiversity Stranger Things, nostalgia and the Netflix franchise Lupin, disguise and postcolonial Paris Money Heist and the second life of a national drama Trapped, Nordic noir and the Icelandic industry Deutschland 83, the Cold War and the export of German drama The streaming economy and the funding of long form drama Global distribution and the travel of non-English language drama Genre hybridity, intertextuality and multiple narrative strands Media language and representation in long form television drama Audiences, fandom and the regulation of on-demand drama

Long Form Television Drama

Mr Robot and the unreliable narrator

3 things to know
Component 02

Overview

Recall questions on Mr Robot: Elliot Alderson's double life and voiceover, why he is an unreliable narrator, off-centre framing and colour, fsociety and E Corp, its genre hybrid, Baudrillard's hyperreality, its post-2008 context, Fight Club and The Matrix, mental illness, and USA Network's commission.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started

Key term

Explain how Baudrillard's idea of hyperreality can be applied to Mr Robot.

Key term

Who is the protagonist of Mr Robot and what are his two working lives?

Key term

What meaning is created by the unbalanced compositions in Mr Robot?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1
Who is the protagonist of Mr Robot and what are his two working lives?
Model answer
Elliot Alderson, a cybersecurity engineer at the firm Allsafe by day and a vigilante hacker by night.
2
How does the opening episode of Mr Robot use voiceover to position its audience?
Model answer
Elliot narrates directly to an imagined ‘friend’, which makes the viewer his confidant and gives privileged access to a mind that turns out not to be trustworthy.
3
Explain why Elliot is called an unreliable narrator in Mr Robot.
Model answer
Everything is shown from his subjective viewpoint, and his dissociation, drug use and hallucinations mean what the audience sees cannot be taken as a record of events.
4
What does Elliot's renaming of E Corp as ‘Evil Corp’ tell an audience about the narration?
Model answer
The corporation is seen and heard only as Elliot names it, so his private judgement is imposed on the world the audience is shown.
5
Describe the distinctive framing used throughout Mr Robot.
Model answer
Figures are pushed to the very bottom or the extreme edge of the frame, with large areas of empty space above and beside them, breaking the conventional rules of headroom and balance.
6
What meaning is created by the unbalanced compositions in Mr Robot?
Model answer
The empty space isolates Elliot within the image and suggests powerlessness, alienation and the sense of being watched.

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Contexts of Media

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The Video Recordings Act .

198419741994

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The Big Issue was founded in 1991.

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