Key Scenes In Humans

Humans key scenes:

• Joe tells Laura that he made a decision because she wasn't there to help him.

• Joe looks at Anita's bum

• Mum tell's Anita that reading to her daughter is the mother's job

• Sophie (little girl) asks the dad if the can send the synth back if she isn't pretty 

Les Revenant:

• Julie (the nurse) is a very caring and nurturing person 

• Jerome is a very dominating person who is not afraid to say what he is thinking and almost has no filter when it comes to talking about the monument for the children 

• Simon is a very aggressive character and is rude to Lena who has just shown him to Adele's house and doesn't say thank you. 

Knee jerk reaction: 
This theory is useful because there are several representations of both men and women within Les Revenant and Humans. Each character is different and represent an individual group. 

Introduction- DCA

Paragraphs- PEA 

8 - Feminist theory - Liesbet van Zoonen 
(advertising, music videos, television, magazines)
• Gender is constructed through codes and conventions of media products, and the idea of what is male and what is female changes over time
• Women’s bodies are used in media products as a spectacle for heterosexual male audiences, which reinforces patriarchal hegemony
Key work - Feminist Media Studies 

In psychoanalytic literature, a Madonna–whore complex is the inability to maintain sexual arousal within a committed, loving relationship.

Liesbet Van-Zoonen argues that media language encodes how male and female characters act in media products. Explore how representations position the audience in Humans and Les Revenants.

Lisbet Van Zoonen has stated that gender is constructed through the codes and conventions of media products. Adding that the idea of what is male and female changes over time. In both Humans and Les Revenant there are several different depictions of what makes up male and female characters. These personality traits have been constructed through stereotypes and hep us to understand who they are as a person. 

In some of the first scenes in Humans we see Joe and his daughter Sophie going to buy a synth. When the seller first shows the synth to the pair, Sophie turns to her dad and says "Can we get anther one if she isn't pretty?" This relates back to Lisbet Van Zoonen's theory because it shows that the young girl mind has been conditioned to believe that women should be ascetically pleasing through the codes and conventions of the media products she is exposed to. Following this scene, we see that Joe is watching Anita's bum as she walks away. This action links to Van Zoonen's theory because he is making her body into a spectacle for his own enjoyment. Media products often show women in a sexual manor, reenforcing patriarchal hegemony. 

Later in the show, when Laura (the mother) has returned home, we see that Joe becomes the more dominant voice when they are discussing Anita being in their home. The polysemic scene gives the audience a chance to decode their own meaning. The first of these meanings is that the scene reenforces the feminist theory because it shows that he is presiding over her and telling her that they will be keeping the synth after she tells Joe to take Anita back. This scene relates to the dominant ideology that all men should be strong and control ever situation they are in. The conversation between Joe and Laura reenforces patriarchal hegemony because it shows the dominance of one group over another, e.g. the dominance of men over women. 

However it can also be said that, Laura feel threatened by Anita's presence in the house because she feel that she should be able to take care of the children all of the time. This ideology comes from the idea that women should be maternal and always be there to look after the children while their husbands go out and work. This is strengthened by Van Zoonen's feminist theory because the ideology of Laura has been constructed through the codes and conventions of society that have been enforced by the media products they are surrounded by   

After this scene, we see that Anita is reading with Sophie when Laura find them. Laura then tells Anita that she shouldn't be reading with Sophie because that's her job. It is clear that Laura feel threatened by Anita and believes that she is not doing enough as a mother. The representation of mothers within media products has lead Laura to believe that she cannot receive help from another woman to raise her children because it will make her less of a mother. Lisbet Van Zoonen's theory relates to this because Laura has been conditioned through codes and conventions to believe that by asking for help she is some how less of a woman for not being the "perfect mother" shown throughout media products. 

On the flip side of this, Julie, the nurse from Les Revenant is shown to be a very kind and caring person when she visits Mr Costa in the middle of the night when he calls asking for help. As well as this, we see that Julie is a very nurturing character and wants to her Victor when he turns up at her door. This representation of women shows that they are supposed to be born to be loving and take care of people. The clip can be linked to the feminist theory because it is another media production that tells us how women are supposed to act with children and the elderly. However, many people in today's society find that not all women are able to be as caring and nurturing as they see mothers are throughout media products. This helps the audience to understand that Julie is a very kind person and goes out of her way to help people. 

Later in Les Revenant we see that Jerome has attended a meeting or the parents of the children who died in the bus accident. We see that Jerome is a very dominant character who has almost no filter when to comes to his opinion. The feminist theory explains this as showing stereotypical codes and conventions of men as being dominant and controlling of the situation. Similarly to Humans, we can see that Jerome represents the patriarchal hegemony of one person over the rest of the group.

In conclusion, while both Humans and Les Revenant show several different stereotypes and representations of both men and women, I believe that while they both show men in a similar light the way that women have been represented is much more different. For example, the male characters in both Humans and Les Revenant have ben portrayed as very dominant people. While Laura in Humans has been portrayed as feeling like less of a women because she is not as nurturing as society expects her to be. Where as Julie is shown to be a very caring person towards everyone, especially children and the elderly.