Critical Investigation: Project Proposal

Working title

Include your specific text in the title and either 'how or 'why' or both, e.g.: To what extent and why are video games such as 'Grand Theft Auto’ becoming more violent? This list of last year's critical investigation titlesmay help you write your question.

To what extent do series like "The Handmaid's Tale" dictate oppression in society and how is this shown through the perspective of feminism in today's society.
To what extent is "The Handmaid's Tale" series feminist?
To what extent do media products such as "The Handmaid's Tale" reflect to modern feminism?

Angle

How will you approach this question? E.g.: What impact are these increasingly violent games having on their audience? Is this simply a moral panic of the 21st century or is further regulation required?

Hypothesis
E.g.Video games are psychologically damaging for young people, and audiences have become increasingly desensitised to screen violence.

The media influences how audiences

Linked production piece

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MIGRAIN

Apply the Key Concepts to your text/topic by using the questions from the Summer Research Project to help you. (Include at least five bullet points per key concept). Include as many media keywords as you can.

Media Representations

Women as objective

Media Languages and Forms

Narrative

Genre

Media Institutions

Media Values and Ideology

Media Audiences

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SHEP

Apply the Wider Contexts (Social, Historical, Economic, Political) to your text/topic, including at least three bullet points on each one.
Issues/Debates
Select at least five and say how each relates to your study, using theMedia A-Z to help you think about this. Your research and essay plan will need to factor these issues and debates into your work:

Representation and stereotyping
Media effects
Reality TV
News Values
Moral Panics
Post 9/11 and the media
Ownership and control
Regulation and censorship
Media technology and the digital revolution – changing technologies in the 21st century
The effect of globalisation on the media

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Social

Historical

The Handmaid's Tale was originally published in 1985 in which the author Margret Atwood has said "is more relevant today than it was when I wrote it".

Economic

tyrty

Political

Current affairs

Ownership and control

There are many debates questioning who has ownership and control and whether they should have this power. A current example being Trump who has recently planned to stop "planned parenthood" as it gives women the opportunity to have an abortion. Feminists have looked into this further and sees this a taking away women's rights. The author of "The Handmaid's Tale" and also female cast members have said that this dystonian future is a possible “I was asleep before, and that’s how I let it happen, when they slaughtered congress we didn’t wake up,When they blamed terrorists and suspended the constitution we didn’t wake up then either

Now I’m awake”

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Theories

Select at least five and say how each relates to your study, using keywords/specific theorists' names from the Media A-Z:

Semiotics
Structuralism and post-structuralism
Postmodernism and its critiques
Gender and ethnicity
Marxism and hegemony (Marx, Gramsci)
Liberal Pluralism
Colonialism and Post-colonialism
Audience theories
Genre theories
Contemporary Media Landscape

Semiotics-
Gender and ethnicity- Women are treated as subordinates, uses as slaves to reproduce
Marxism and hegemony- Dominate ideologies of the bourgeois who own the means of production. Therefore, Marx (structural) argues that class is the main factor of inequality represented in the media and how it controls society, mainly working class. However, other Marxists such as Gramsci (humanistic) contradict this and argues audiences have free will and are not passive
Postmodernism and critiques- How theories criticises

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Research plan (media texts, academic texts and websites)

Media texts

The Handmaid's Tale Other media texts

Salt (2010)
Alias Grace (2017)

TV documentaries

He Named Me Malala (2014)
The Battle of amfAR (on HBO Go)
Maya Angelou and Still I Rise (2016)
Gloria: In Her Own Words (2011)
*She's Beautiful When She's Angry (2014)
American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs (2013)
Free Angela and All Political Prisoners (2012)
Equal Means Equal (2016)
*Miss Representation Trailer (2011)
I AM A GIRL (2013)
*The Red Pill (2017)
Status Quo: The Unfinished Business of Feminism in Canada (2012)

The Punk Singer(2013)

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Academic texts/books

Judith Bulter: Gender Troubles (1990)
Liesbet van Zoonen: Feminist Media studies (1994)
David Gauntlett: Media, Gender and Identity An introduction (2002)
Hall, Evans and Nixon: Representation (2013)
Bell Hooks: Feminism is for everybody (2000)

Internet Links