Graduation! Results:

Well I have finally graduated!

My final score was a 2:1 (Second class upper division)

I now finally have a BA.

For information on how to get a copy of my dissertation click here.

For Any further work please go to my Other Blog. 

Stage One Overall Results

Here are the results for BA (Hons) Media Arts Stage One. The modules that give a percentage mark have their percentage and the pass/fail modules have either a pass or fail: 

MEDI 114:  69%

MEDI 116:  61%

MEDI 117:  64%

MEDI 118:  58%

MEDI 119:  55%

MEDI 126:  60%

MEDI 127:  PASS

All of these modules are a pass grade. :)

MEDI 114 (Subverting Image: Critical Evaluation)

Critical Evaluation:

We chose to focus in specific on the weight issue within the modelling and celebrity world. We did extensive research on our subject and collated it into a presentation. I started off the project with researching ‘Twiggy’ because her appearance in the fashion industry not only changed the way fashion lovers imagine a perfect model, but it also changed the general understanding of how  a woman, should look like; replacing the curvy pin up girl with a thinner look. This spiralled vastly out of control and as a result the media and especially the modelling industry is rife with eating disordered and has sparked a very startling trend of anorexia with many young girls making ‘Thinsperation’ videos and aspiring to be like models and celebs. The question of how thin is too thin has been prevalent since Kate Moss made her modelling debut 20 years ago, ushering in an era of "heroin chic." In 2006, at least two models died from complications linked to eating disorders, which prompted some in Europe to try to ban skinny models from the runway. Kate Moss herself is cited to encourage the skinny trend coining and using a new ‘buzzword’ of ‘rexy’ a combination of anorexic and sexy as a positive affirmation of how thin her and her friends look. Other models and celebs yet still follow this trend with increasing fervour, with many teen models confessing that they starve themselves, purge or use diet pills. We had a huge amount of ideas including having models peeling off their skin to symbolise that she is losing herself in the quest to be thin. Also we had ideas such as an Image of a model with bones exposed –to emphasize upon the thin look being unhealthy. There were also some ideas we had that we dismissed fairly quickly like having a mass production line of models and photoshoping their heads on Barbies but we wanted to focus on anorexia. We did produce our idea of photo shopping Victoria Beckam into the picture of Venus and although the image looks really good we feared that it may be pitched over the heads of the general public, the image can really be viewed and interpreted in one of two ways. The way we did not want it interpreted was in a positive light that we feared was all too easy to do. I think that it would require a vast amount of editing to make our point and even then I fear it may not. In the end we decided to go with an idea inspired mainly by the quotes "There is no torture that a woman would not endure to enhance her beauty” -Montagne. Our final idea is based on the quote “The resulting hallucination materializes for women as something all too real. No longer just an idea, it becomes three-dimensional, incorporating within itself how women live and how they do not live: it becomes the iron Maiden.” So we did a huge amount of research on said iron maiden and decided to combine it with an anorexic model for a very shocking image.  We could have possibly been more adventurous with Photoshop but I wouldn’t really change the image since it’s very shocking and proves its point. Our group all worked really well together and it was a pleasure to work with them, I really enjoyed this project.

MEDI 114 (Subverting Image: Final Image)

MEDI 114 (Subverting Images: The Presentation)

Subverting Images

Representation of women in the media

Origins:

• A lot of our group for the prior project did work based on Twiggy.
• She was the first model to start off the skinny craze
• She is naturally this thin however nowadays most models go to great lengths to emulate this 

 The thin model debate:

•  As a new model at 15, Coco Rocha said she went to Singapore and lost 10 pounds in six weeks. When she returned to the U.S. she was so obsessed with food, she beat herself up over eating an apple.
• "I'll never forget the piece of advice I got from people in the industry when they saw my new body," she wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "They said, 'You need to lose more weight. The look this year is anorexia. We don't want you to be anorexic but that's what we want you to look like."
  
• Rocha is one of the few models to speak out about the issue, even as ultra-thin models find their way into pro-anorexia "Thinspiration" videos. The question isn't just about model health; it's about who will win the hearts and minds of the teenagers and young girls who look up to them.
• "Thin is going to be the ruling look until someone says, 'I want voluptuous,'" said Fish. "I don't know if that ever is going to come back."

 Ideas we had…

We had a lot of initial ideas about what to do. None of us liked the way women are portrayed in the media and found some shocking things when researching into the subject. Our Ideas are as follows:

•  Image of a model with bones exposed –to emphasize upon the thin look being unhealthy.
•  Image of a model in an out of context house wife situation –to show the unrealistic idea of beauty and irrelevance in day to day life.
• Image of a model peeling  layers of her skin away –to show that she is loosing herself in the quest for perfection.
•  Birth of Venus idea –To show the changing attitudes towards beauty.
•  The Iron maiden idea –which is the one we finally picked.   

Venus in detail:

•  For a long time we toyed with the idea of using the Birth of Venus as a basis for subversion.
• The Birth of Venus depicts a fairly curvy healthy looking woman that was obviously the idea of ideal beauty in that time.
•  We chose to pick a famous thin person that was iconized as perfect by the media and settled on Victoria Beckham
•  Although the image itself is good we were worried that it might not reflect the statement we wanted to make and may be pitched over the heads of some of the general public.
•  Although its good its just not shocking enough.  

Back to phase one:

•  We then had to pick a new idea and direction.
•  We did some more research and came up with the idea that it is torture for most women to achieve a skinny body.
• We found that anorexia and problems related to it were very common in the modeling world and also in the world at large with extreme cases of diets leaving women brain damaged
•  Women world wide are literally DYING to be thin.
•  "There is no torture that a woman would not endure to enhance her beauty” –Montagne   

Our final Idea:

• Our final idea is based on the quote “The resulting hallucination* materializes for women as something all to real. No longer just an idea, it becomes three-dimensional, incorporating within itself how women live and how they do not live: it becomes the iron Maiden”
•  * the beauty stereotype promoted by media = a hallucination
•  So we decided to use the iron maiden as we liked its imagery and symbolism. 

The Iron maiden:

• An iron maiden is a torture device, usually an iron cabinet, with a hinged front. It has a small closable opening so that the torturer can interrogate the victim and torture or kill a person by piercing the body with sharp objects (such as knives, spikes or nails), while he or she is forced to remain standing.
•  The condemned would bleed profusely and weaken slowly, eventually dying because of blood loss, or perhaps asphyxiation. It would be a very slow horrible death!
•  They were often used for religious conversion torture and we liked the metaphor of this since being thin is fast become religion like in and of itself with a very fanatical following. 

The final Image:

• The way it is styled looks slightly like a motivational poster and we liked this idea.
• We added the words “Dying to be thin?” as an extra statement
• We think it would work without the words but wanted to make it have that much more of  an impact.
• The model we used is an anorexic girl that is not a celebrity. We chose a normal person for the shock factor that this could be anyone however we feel its clear she is a model
• We also decided to crop the picture and open the iron maiden to draw the focus primarily towards the spikes.   

That is all the content of my groups presentation.

MEDI 114 (Subverting Images)

I started of the project with researching ‘Twiggy’ because her appearance in the fashion industry not only changed the way fashion lovers imagine a perfect model, but it also changed the general understanding of how a girl, or a woman, should look like; replacing the curvy pin up girl with a thinner look. This spiralled vastly out of control and as a result the media and especially the modelling industry is rife with eating disordered and has sparked a very startling trend of anorexia with many young girls making ‘Thinsperation’ videos and aspiring to be like models and celebs.
The question of how thin is too thin has been prevalent since Kate Moss made her modeling debut 20 years ago, ushering in an era of "heroin chic." In 2006, at least two models died from complications linked to eating disorders, which prompted some in Europe to try to ban skinny models from the runway. Kate Moss herself is cited to encourage the skinny trend coining and using a new ‘buzzword’ of ‘rexy’ a combination of anorexic and sexy as a positive affirmation of how thin her and her friends look. Other models and celebs yet still follow this trend with increasing fervor, with many teen models confessing that they starve themselves, purge or use diet pills.

Some examples of thinsperation videos:
Thinsperation pretty in pain
Thinsperation -Perfect

MEDI 114 (Photo Shoping)

In our photoshop workshop we have been learning some nifty tricks in photoshop so I thought I would apply this in making myself a new profile picture for facebook. Now since my net nickname is often 'Nights-flame' I thought I'd make it flame based so I took some stock images from google of fire and merged them together till I was happy with the results. So here is the resulting pic. I'm pretty happy with it you can still see me behind all the fire. I have chosen to have the colours contrast fairly sharply.

MEDI 114 (Iconic Image)

So we were asked to find an iconic image that represented something we hated and me being very anti the Medias current portrayal of women decided to pick a photo of twiggy since she was one of the original ‘pioneers’ of the skinny look. I also did a little research into my topic and found some links. The Medias portrayal of women over all is very demeaning and the idea of a ‘perfect’ woman seems to be thin with huge breasts, which are both dangerous and unrealistic. During my readings I also found some shocking things about eating disorders and the Media influences on them.

Here are the links:
E-zine: Battles Against Media's Idea of "The Perfect Woman"

"Sexy house wife"

Lies the Media tells us

WHERE ARE ALL THE FAT PEOPLE?- Lynne Murray