Constructing representations of crime, gender and place

Overview

Re-presenting the real, three processes by which a representation is made and what Stuart Hall means by stereotyping.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is meant by re-presenting the real?

   Model answer

   A representation is not reality itself but a version of it that has been selected, constructed and mediated by producers, so an audience always encounters a shaped account rather than raw events.

2. 2

   Name the three processes by which a representation is made.

   Model answer

   Selection, construction and mediation.

3. 3

   How does selection shape a representation of crime?

   Model answer

   Producers choose which crimes to dramatise and which details to include, so a genre that repeatedly shows violent murder rather than ordinary theft gives an unrepresentative picture of what crime actually is.

4. 4

   Explain what Stuart Hall means by stereotyping.

   Model answer

   Hall argues that stereotyping reduces a group to a few simple, fixed and easily recognised traits, exaggerates them, and presents them as though they were the whole of that group's nature.

5. 5

   Why does Hall connect stereotyping with power?

   Model answer

   Hall argues that stereotyping tends to occur where there are inequalities of power, because it is the dominant group that defines subordinate or excluded groups as different and other.

6. 6

   Give a case for the positive use of a stereotype in a crime drama.

   Model answer

   A recognised type allows a writer to establish a minor character in seconds so that screen time can go to the main story, and a familiar type can be set up deliberately in order to be overturned.

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