Representation of Britain

Media: The Big Question

Representation of Britain.

In the hovis advert Britain is represented as a country and nation which is able to get through any hardships and come out on top. The advert follows a boy buying bread and then travelling through hundreds of years of historic events in order to bring bread home for his mum. The message of that advert is that even thought the times may change the idea that is Britain and the ideologies that we hold dear will remain. One of the ideologies that the advert shows is that family is very important. This is shown when the boy gets home in the modern day and it appears that he had bought the bread for his mum. Throughout this advert many historic events are shown, both dark and light. One of the dark events is the blitz which took place during world war 2. but even though it shows the devastation it has a clip from Churchill's speech to the people playing over the scene showing that even in the darkest times we have hope. The two theories of representation which I believe are most prominent in this advert are the Mediation theory and the Constructionist Approach theory. The selection portion of the mediation theory is strong in this is when the encoders decided which parts if history they wanted to put in and what they wanted to exclude. This is incredibly important as if they had chosen different events then the message would have been different. This also ties in with organisation as if the encoders had put the clips in a different order or put another event in between then the effect and overall message given by the advert could be changed or taken in a different way.

The programme 'The Good Life' represents Britain in two different ways. These representations are shown through the main characters Tom and Barbara Good who represent the rural and hard working part of British society and their neighbours Jerry and Margot Leadbetter who represent the higher ups and more conservative part of British society. Stereotyping is heavily present in 'The Good Life' as the Leadbetter family (Margot especially) are shown to live in a very clean house with prestigious artwork and pottery found across the house along with very fancy furniture. This shows them as upper class. The accent that the Leadbetter's have is also a stereotype of the upper-middle classes of England where it is believed that they all have posh accents and over enunciate words – speaking the Queen's English. This family is highly contrasted by the Good family. To begin with they were a normal middle class people until Tom decides to be self sufficient and so they make their back garden a farm. Their accent is also far less posh than either Margot's or Jerry's and care far less what people think of them.

The music video for the Blur song 'Parklife' represented the appearance of Britain to be quite rural. It also included plenty of British iconography including red double-decker buses, zebra crossings and red letter boxes. The use of archetypes showed us exactly who the two salesmen were. The archetypes where the cheap suits and the briefcase. The accent also seemed to convey untrustworthiness as it was just a common cockney accent meaning that it could be anyone selling anything rather than someone selling something authentic and worth the money. These charterers on their own seem to give the representation of Britain to be untrustworthy and common. This, to the modern British audience, would be seen as comical and entertaining as they would recognise the over exaggerated characters and iconography, however to others it would appear boring and just the same as any other music video as they would not get the humour.