With reference to your own detailed examples, explore the ways in Britain is represented in the media today.

In the eyes of foreigners, Britain remains a rainy, small, and boring island, which doesn't offer many appealing qualities. These stereotypes have been built up via a method of representation in media texts around the world. From our ‘England-crazed football hooligans’ to our Olympic Closing Ceremony, all of these texts build up on peoples representation of Britain.

In this short advert, there is a montage of very ‘British’ scenes and settings, with a rare scene of a famous British celebrity telling the audience “You’re invited”. The scenes consist of very appealing and positive settings or recent events in Britain, covering things like the Olympics ceremony. The music is happy throughout and begins with a piano piece, which is classed as a sophisticated instrument. This re-enforces the stereotype that British people are all upper-class.

Judi Dench makes a brief appearance as one of the celebrities aforementioned. She herself promotes the Ideology that Britain is very ‘prim and proper’, she is a known actor in the famous British movie series ‘James Bond’. Her non-regional clear dialect portrays Britain is an upper-class and ‘posh’ country, adding to the stereotype.

This advert doesn't show much of the life in urban areas, and mostly shows the countryside and rural areas. The sky is always clear in this advert, nowhere does it show the very British rain that we are stereotyped for. The audience are steered away from the reality of the country (Like un-employment and widespread poverty) and instead are fed the whole ‘come to Britain, we’re still relevant, look we have hills’.

On this frontpage, the Sun newspaper selects the biggest story that is interesting to the majority of Britain, Football. They provide information in a humorous way ad while they’re at it they re-enforce two stereotypes; Britain’s obsession with football, and our sense of humour. Britain’s love for football is nothing to be ashamed of (well apart from the fact we invented it and we still can’t win), but it’s the insanely aggressive fanbase that England has, referred to as ‘Hooligans’ internationally. This stereotype is that we are all England mad, we love football and we love violence, this frontpage re-enforces that stereotype. Also, our sense of humour. Britain is famous for adopting its own sense of humour that only British people would understand. This humour isn’t just a silly joke or pun, it’s mocking people for our enjoyment and their expense (which they have to just ‘take on the chin’). This frontpage mocks the New England Manager’s ‘rhotacism’ (inability to pronounce the letter ‘r’) in a way which I think re-enforces the stereotype of our humour being unique.

Vicky Pollard is a character in the British comedy series ‘Little Britain’. She is an Archetype of Britain and is known around as a ‘chav’, the various stereotypes that she embodies show this. She is a teenage mum to a number of children, who is moody and obnoxious. She speaks fast with a hard-to-understand regional accent, this makes her unmistakably a British chav. In the series, she isn't the one making the jokes, but the one that the audience turn to and laugh at, this is often due to her stupidity. This is a negative stereotype of Britain and re-enforces the ‘chav-filled country’ stereotype that many may have about Britain.