LO4 Task 5 - Audience effects, Representation, Legal and Ethical and Regulation issues for X-Men

SCRIPT: Vlog 5 whatever, I'll just call the movie X-Men in this one, let's go. In this vlog I'll be looking at it in terms of the product's impact and effect on the audience, relevant issues of representation, relevant legal and ethical issues, and the role of relevant regulatory bodies. Let's go.

Product's impact and effect on the audience. Now there are two schools of thought when thinking about a media product's effect on the audience, active and passive. With a passive school of thought there is the hypodermic syringe theory, (Theodore Adorno 1930s) where the media has a negative impact on the audience where a mass audience believes everything they see or hear, so for example if I was to make a movie about kicking down lampposts because they have demons inside... don't ask.. then according to this theory a mass audience will actually believe lampposts need kicking down. When applying this theory X-Men there may be things that will influence people. There may be. In terms of violence, violence in the media can influence some people to actually be violent, and the people that do this are known as copycat criminals as they copy something in the media. An example of this which actually happened so I can't joke about it a lot is the Columbine High School massacre of April 20th 1999 where two students killed 13 people and then themselves as they were bullied and had serious mental issues, but they were also influenced by the demon killing game: doom as on a video tape they said the shooting will be quote on quote "like BLEEPing doom". Also the footage you are seeing right now is me playing on the custom level one of the killers made for Doom.  Anyway is there anything in X-Men that could be linked with violence and could cause some mentally ill person to replicate the actions? Well while there is nothing realistic in X-Men and the movie lacks extreme violence, violence does solve the conflict in the movie. Wolverine's the main character for one thing and he does underground fighting and his power is knives, which he does actually use to stab people, now not always for good but in the end it helps. Someone could put knives in between their fingers and pretend to be wolverine and stab someone... I mean stabbing aside the kids in Primary School always did it with pencil crayons. Cyclops has laser eyes, nobody has laser eyes but once again, violence which saves the day. Magneto uses his metal mind powers to pick up a shotgun and threaten to shoot a load of people, shotguns exist, some guy could decide to use one. And look at Sabretooth over here, always grabbing people aggressively, some could- you know you get the idea. Issues about sexual content: X-men is a move that features some really independent women who aren't sexualised, as they are part of the team and don't want to be made to pleas- Oh who left the door open, Mystique has come in again. The character of Mystique is like... naked. Don't worry you don't see anything to change the age rating as I'm not even sure she has anything like that but still she is pretty damn risky of a character in a 12 rated movie, which could have an effect on someone that age. 12 year olds shouldn't be exposed to this sort of thing, can you imagine how weird it would be if you got him the mystique toy? Oh god.. OH GOD... the world's a bit negative isn't it? How about positive role models the movie presents to the audience? Well Wolverine's not exactly Superman because he doesn't really know his side at first, does underground fighting, makes smoking look cool to do, doesn't wear a seatbelt, stabs people really quickly without taking a good look, you know he's pretty lucky Rogue can steal powers otherwise the movie would end with him a murderer, and says some taboo words. But he's not Magneto, someone who wants to kill on purpose and cause a war, and Wolverine stops Magneto so boom, he's sorta kinda positive. Well Charles Xavier then he's a great role model, the guy's isolated in a world full of people who hate him for something he cannot control, but instead of whining about it or causing Wars he creates a school for people like him to train to be peaceful, he's a rocking guy. Never uses violence either... rather mind controls which is kind of evil in a way too, taking away free will... whatever though don't think about it he's cool. Cyclops is someone I don't really like but he has good intentions and never does anything dodgy so he's there, but then the main character and selling point middle fingers him with his claw. Huh. Okay Jean Grey is a female member who has a really cool power and is a doctor and a public speaker, positive role model for women. The movie has positive role models aside from the main character of Wolverine, as he is meant to develop through the series. So if a passive school of thought is that people just see and believe what is shown, an Active school of thought is the opposite. We are able to filter and adapt to content in media (Gauntlett).  Not everyone is going to believe everything the box in the room tells them as any old thing could be made up, and instead of the media using the consumer, the consumer uses the media. Remember that Uses and Gratifications theory from Vlog 4? Works here too.

Representation.

You know who I miss? Good old Stuart Hall as here's some more theory from him, once again from 1980. All representations are mediated. Now does X-Men have stereotypes? Well before I get into that, more theory. Tessa Perkins said in 1979 that not all stereotypes are negative, so what good and bad stereotypes are in X-Men? For good stereotypes we have the character of Cyclops, who is a very generic morally sound male who wants to be heroic and saving the day. These are not bad qualities to have so yeah I'd say he's a good Stereotype. For a less positive stereotype we have Rogue who is essentially pretty weak and needs saving like a stereotypical woman for a film. Now alongside Stereotypes, we also have countertypes that.. obviously when hearing the name, are people that challenge the stereotype. X-Men has this with the female characters in the movie, as they're... pretty basic word.. cool, unlike the stereotype that women can be known as weaker than males. Like Telepathy is really cool with how Jean Grey is all picking stuff up, picking people up and almost having the same mind reading powers, and Storm's powers are also really cool like "Hey Lizard-Man, KAPOW" and then he's gone. The females are a part of the team making them much more than Damsels in distress or a forced love interest. Well aside from Rogue but you can understand her since her power is the central part of the film's plot, if Rogue was male and had the same power he'd still be kidnapped. Also while actual superheroes don't exist, the character of Wolverine is a countertype of a Super Hero who wants to only do good and nothing else but good, as he does all the bad stuff I mentioned earlier but especially that scene where he questions what side is right. Says a lot about his character unlike someone like Superman being all morally perfect all the time.  Now the plot of X-Men is about discrimination of mutant people from the normal people, which could possibly link with people who are actually discriminated in the real world, like a race, religion, sexual orientation, ability etc. Edward Said (1978) said these discriminated people are known as ‘The Other’, as they are not like the majority of people in their area, and the mutants in X-Men could link to this. The movie demonstrates how bad humans can be with the discrimination of mutants, but then it also shows how much worse the other people can be when reacting to this discrimination. However the main characters are mutants and most of the mutants are good people, just the bad ones are powerful enough to outshine the good ones, which I suppose you could link to things like the media’s portrayal of a religion like Islam where the vast majority of Muslims are generally good people, but because of some extremists the media can convince some, or even a lot of people to believe there’s a lot more bad about Muslims than good, and the movie captures that well with how most normal people don’t want to associate with the mutants. What I don’t like about this possible metaphor though is this poster. I will get more into it soon but it says "Trust a few, fear the rest" which doesn’t make sense as there’s only a few villains in this movie and quite a lot of good mutants, I mean there’s a whole school full of them. Really it should be ‘Fear a few, trust the rest’. I don’t know, I feel the advertisers should have paid more attention to the message of the movie.

Legal and ethical

Alright on this one we're going a bit Saul Goodman, a bit lawyer-like. Legal issues with the movie, isn't this fun. With this section I need to discuss copyright, on both the side of the consumer and the side of content creators. On the consumers side you cannot make a copy of a home media version of X-Men and sell it, put it out for download or give it for free since illegal downloading is one of the biggest, if not the biggest worry in the film industry; and you cannot show the movie publicly or charge for that without consent of the owner. However without consent, consumers can use the work for private and research study purposes, make a copy or lend for educational purposes,  copies and lending by librarians, format shifting or back up of a work for personal use, acts for the purposes of royal commissions, statutory enquiries, judicial proceedings and parliamentary purposes, recordings of broadcasts for the purposes of listening to or viewing at a more convenient time (known as time shifting), and producing a back up for personal use of a computer program. For content creators, they can play sound recording for a non profit making organisation, club or society.  Criticism and news reporting, incidental inclusion which means if X-Men was on a TV for a small amount of time in the background of another movie or TV show, and caricature, parody or pastiche. On the ethical side of the spectrum, does X-men have anything offensive or had anything censored? Well there's some more taboo stuff than the kids who watched the cartoon would be used to like the Wolverine against Cyclops thing, but overall the movie doesn't go too far there and nothing's really censored, well they could have gone a lot worse with Mystique but still. What about sensationalism? Well X-Men sensationalises that if people like Magneto existed and had these crazy powers, then there wouldn't be much regular humans could do at all to stop them.

The role of Regulatory Bodies

Now let's talk about the regulatory bodies, who decide what a product is suitable for. Now I'm sure you have seen a lot of age ratings on your DVD and Blu-ray covers, before your films begin in the cinema, and all that, but do you know who decide what those ratings should be? You bloody better considering they are plastered all over the age ratings like look at the 15 rating, it has the BBFC logo plastered 34 times on it, if you don't know its them that do it then I don't know what to say. But yes the BBFC, British Board of Film Classification, who decide what's appropriate for an age. Now how do they decide on that? Well I'll just tediously read out what factors decide an age rating for each age, because these vlogs need to be a bit more boring to be completely educational. For U, the lowest of the low on ages on the BBFC site, the film cannot have much bad language aside from very mild works like "damn" or "hell"; the most sexual stuff you will see if kissing and cuddling and some references, just no focus on innuendos, language or behaviour, same goes for sexuality, can't focus on it too much. Violence is only very very light with a mild fight or something that's solved quickly, only  baddie characters may carry or use weapons, but there will be no emphasis on these. Child or ‘hero’ characters are unlikely to use any kind of weapon outside, for example, historical settings. Hm.. blablabla can't influence kids to be mean, have positive messages, don't be discriminating unless there's a message about how discrimination is bad, can't put in illegal drugs or a misuse of drugs unless there's a message about how bad they are, etc. God I'm boring myself explaining all of this. PG movies don't go on about inappropriate themes for a child like drug dealing or whatever, you can have some more raunchy language like "shit" or "son-of-a-bitch" as long as the delivery is relevant, very mild sex stuff, slightly more violent stuff but still not a lot, don't influence bad things still and it allows for more drug references and such. 12 and 12A, the difference between them is that people under 12 can watch a 12A movie as long a parent is present, but with a 12 you have to be 12 or over.  So with the 12 rating you can have a darker tone, use the F word.. not sure why shit is uncensored on this site but fuck isn't, a bit more discrimination here and there but not strongly unless condemned, sex can be briefly portrayed and joked about infrequently alongside some nudity when not in a sexual context for very long, violence can go a bit further but not to detailed and such with no glamorising easily accessible weapons like knives and stuff, and drugs and antisocial behaviour can stay. So bla bla 15 has more sex, violence,  drugs, discrimination and swearing, 18 has even more of that, and R18 the restricted one goes even further. As in it's porn. Anyway thank god we have that clarified, and X-Men goes into 12 because of some bad language here and there and non-glorified language, alongside mild themes of discrimination with how the mutants are looked down upon. The rating never changed over here. In America the movie is rated PG-13 which is only a year difference.


For ASA.. hang on I need to make sure you're not asleep from my explanation of BBFC (buzzer sound effect, explosions, barking dog, carnival music with a clown on a unicycle all play on the screen at the same time to wake up the viewers).  Alright. I'll get you a cup of coffee in a sec. So the ASA is the Advertising Standards Agency, as they moderate advertising, with these codes. These long. Long codes. No no don't fall asleep again you're coffee is ready. I will just talk about harm and offense, children, and but since it's still a lot to talk about I'll put on a silly voice for entertainment purposes. For harm and offence, marketers are required to  keep out things that may create serious or widespread offense such as gender, sexual preference, religion, race, disability or age; they cannot cause fear or distress to people without a justifiable reason; references to the dead must be handled with care to avoid distress or offense; they can't condone anti social behaviour or violence; don't condone or encourage anything dangerous especially to children; don't encourage drinking and driving or that the effects of drinking can be masked, don't give people seizures must contain nothing that is likely to result in their physical, mental or moral harm; children must not be encouraged to enter strange places or talk to strangers; children can't be in dangerous situations or shown on their own on streets if they can't look after themselves; children can't be shown using or around dangerous equipment or substances without an adult around them; they can't copy actions that may be unsafe to them; distance selling marketers must take care when using youth media not to promote products that are unsuitable for children; advertisements must not exploit children's credulity, loyalty, vulnerability or lack of experience; you can't make a child feel unpopular or inferior for not paying for the advertised product; children must not be made to feel that they are lacking in courage, duty or loyalty if they do not buy or do not encourage others to buy a product, etc. That's all of the rules I can bear for today or I would have to hang myself with a rope tied to a speeding train. How does this apply to this X-Men poster? [http://cdn.bleedingcool.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/x-men-1-poster.jpg] It's just a letter X so it doesn't. I'll get one with people in it. [http://www.massappealdesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/xmen_ver2.jpg] Ah that's better.  Anyway there's nothing offensive to anyone in this poster directly though the "Trust a few, fear the rest" could possibly be mistaken for being offensive to any particular group despite the fact it's referring the mutants who without debate should have a few trusted because there's bad mutants out there; the fact it says "fear the rest" could possibly create fear to the select few who think the movie is real or something daft like that, but otherwise it seems fine. There's no children shown so all the rules about that can't apply, and it doesn't show any violence aside from maybe the fact wolverine's claws are shown, and while Mystique is shown who could be considered a sexualised character, she doesn't really have anything taboo stuff shown here so there's no sexual content in this poster.

So there we go. The final Vlog done. It's been a fun ride at Extreme Education of Death for Kids but like all things, it has to end. Good bye all, I hope I taught well.