Yr 10 THE AVENGERS: SOCIAL, HISTORICAL & CULTURAL CONTEXTS

TONIGHT'S PREP: Watch chapter 9 and 10 - see below

CLASSWORK today

You watched The Avengers chapters 3 & 4 for prep yesterday, ready to discuss today.  We look at our text books (pages 31, 32, 33) to support our understanding. 

The Avengers series began in 1961. The narrative is built around Steed and Peele travelling to Little Bazeley to investigate the disappearance of four British agents. 

In Monday's class we set the scene with clips about the Berlin Wall (1961), JFK's visit to Berlin, the trend in spy thrillers like The Saint (1962), The Man From UNCLE (1965) and the Bond franchise - Dr No (1962), From Russia With Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964). We watched some of Went The Day Well? (1944) in which sinister foreigners pretend to be British and take over a small English village.

THE COLD WAR

The Cold War was at its height in 1965, with Britain a member of NATO and anxieties about the threat of nuclear war

Both sides used espionage - spying - as we read in The Observer (October 1966) about George Blake and the Cambridge Five

In the sixties, with WW2 not that long past, audiences knew about films that dealt with war themes, such as The Dam Busters (1955) and would have recognised the scene in which Emma Peel explains the planned invasion of Britain - an intertextual reference

The audience sees how Little Bazeley (and therefore the whole of Britain) is under threat from fifth columnists as part of the invasion (the enemy within), with imposters using disguise and impersonation

The Avengers reassures audiences. It has quirky comedy that makes audiences laugh and which lessens the level of threat (like the tea party on board the train, Piggy Warren, the jokes between Steed and Emma). In the smithy scene, they joke about Emma being tied up. Piggy Warren is played by a well-known comic actor, whose his handlebar moustache and rollicking laugh makes him seem less threatening.

Steed recalls his own war service as he walks around the deserted airfield and salutes into a cracked mirror: the audience is reminded of all those who served and who supported Britain, leading towards the triumphant conclusion of the war

The audience needs to believe that Steed and Peel are capable of keeping Britain safe.

CHANGING ATTITUDES TO GENDER

• The representation of Emma Peel as a new breed of intelligent, tough woman
• However, she is still represented as a sex object, too
• We pick this theme up next lesson

We watch the trailer for Made In Dagenham (2010) about equal pay for women for equal work. Look out for Barbara Castle.

We have seen Barbara Castle mentioned in one of the front covers of The Observer (our text). Do you remember seeing her when we watched The Crown - Aberfan when she advises the Prime Minister Harold Wilson? She is the only female politician mentioned on all three front, pages of The Observer, where in the front cover for October 1968 she argues for less unequal pay for women. This reflects the patriarchal social / cultural context of the 1960s in which it was accepted that women were paid less than men for doing the same job.

Yr 11 REVISION: RADIO

We revised Radio 1 Live Lounge in class: PREP revise this material

• We listen to Radio 1 Live Lounge on BBC Sounds which launched in 2018 
  

• OCR's 'green factsheet' is useful but needs updating: write about Clara Amfo in the past tense as in 'As a BBC radio 1 presenter, Clara Amfo brought particular strengths to offer, as a black creative with a strong music background and track record at Radio 1 Xtra
• Amfo took over Annie Mac's Future Sounds show on Radio 1 in July 2021, following Mac's announcement she would be leaving the station. It was also announced  that Rickie, Melvin and Charlie would take over Amfo's current Live Lounge show.
• On the green factsheet, OCR gives the following listening figures: Radio 1 has '9.7 million listeners aged 15+' (up from 9.59m last quarter and down from 9.87m last year) while the network's share of listening was 5.9%
• Media.info has more up-to-date listening figures: Total listeners per week
  8,790,000 (16.0%)adults (15+); market share 5.6%
• Leading BBC Radio stations ranked by weekly reach in the United Kingdom (UK) as of 1st quarter 2020 (source Statista):

• Radio 1 Live Lounge institution: PSB remit (to inform, educate, entertain). From BBC Trust:

• Radio 1 Live Lounge audience: 15-24
• RAJAR: 
• Radio 1 Live Lounge audience pleasures: big names and emergent up-and-coming artists
• Artists are filmed in an intimate radio studio, acoustically, often with little production rehearsal. They normally perform one or two of their own songs and then a unique cover from an A List Radio 1 artist who has had a release in the last six to nine months. Artists normally perform a cover song that is a contrast to their known genre. 
• Two examples that we watched / listened to today: well-known musicians like Rag'n'Bone Man and Lizzo as part of Live Lounge Month 2021 (click to hear the presenter introduce the show)
• Radio 1 Live Lounge's online presence makes it really attractive to the young target audience who can access it anytime, anywhere. They can interact via the website's convergent links to Twitter, Instagram (and less popular, FB)
• The presenter invites the audience to interact by posing questions to performers
• Online visualisation and social media: in recent years Radio 1 has used social media to help reach a younger audience. Its YouTube channel now has over 7.5 million subscribers. The highest viewed videos on the channel are predominately live music performances from the Live Lounge.

  The station also has a heavy presence on social media, with audience interaction occurring through Facebook and Twitter as well as text messaging.

• September is Live Lounge Month
• We read the 'candidate style answer'

PREP Read the 'candidate style answers' for TV & Promoting Media. 

Yr 10 AVENGERS: HISTORICAL CONTEXT

 PREP Please watch The Avengers chapters 3 and 4, ready for questions in class tomorrow.

In class, we have looked at a selection of clips to support our understanding of the period, in particular, cultural, social, political and historical contexts.

In class, we analyse how both Steed and Peel are represented and what the appeal of the programme is for audiences.

We consider audience theory: how audiences use media to gratify needs.

The Uses and Gratifications audience framework offered by Blumler and Katz suggests that audiences use media to gratify needs for:

• escapism, entertainment, diversion
• surveillance (finding out what's going on in the world) 
• forming relationships (both with on-screen figures and in real life through sharing pleasures with friends & family)
• shared values and beliefs (we identify with certain people as heroes, hope that villains will be defeated, want a particular set of values to be restored and so on)

Yr 11 REVISION: LEGO

PREP today is to revise the poster campaign. The links are below.

We have revised the Lego Movie Ad break.

Q8 and Q9 - Lego in-depth questions that ask you to show understanding of audience pleasures as well as genre codes and conventions. 

Audience pleasures - revise the Uses and Gratifications theoretical framework [each 10 marks]. Revise the Lego Movie Ad break, the media language of the poster campaign and the audience pleasures of the video game.

OCR pdf guide to the Lego Movie: industry here
OCR pdf guide to the Lego movie video game: industry and audience here

1.       The main poster featuring an ensemble cast, running from danger

http://www.impawards.com/2014/lego_movie_ver9.html)

2.       Character poster of Vitruvius in close-up

(http://www.impawards.com/2014/lego_movie_ver3.html)

3.       Character poster of Emmet in close-up

(http://www.impawards.com/2014/lego_movie_ver8.html)

4.       Character poster of Lord Business in close-up

(http://www.impawards.com/2014/lego_movie_ver5.html)

5.       Character poster of Wyldstyle in close-up

http://www.impawards.com/2014/lego_movie_ver7.html)

FILMING AN OPENING SEQUENCE

Four stages today

Stage 1: research the genre by watching three examples

Stage 2: film your table top in one take

Stage 3: film your live action sequence

PREP Write up an account of what you did on your blog

Yr 10 CULTURAL CONTEXTS 1960s

We are looking at 1960s media, making links across our newspaper component The Observer and our TV drama component The Avengers. The news report about George Blake refers to spy rings and the Cold War. This is one element of the cultural, social, historical context. 

In our episode of The Avengers, two British agents (Steed and Emma Peel) set off to a remote sea coast village called Little Bazeley to investigate the mysterious disappearance of other British agents.

Emma Peel is a cool, confident, new type of heroine. She relishes her job and her independence. She feels equal to Steed. She wears the carefree, youthful, fashionable clothes of young women in the Swinging Sixties.

There is a bit of a generation gap between Emma and Steed. He is a British gentleman through and through, from his bowler hat and three-piece suit to his umbrella. Changing gender roles are another element of the cultural, social, historical context. 

PREP

We are introduced to the world of The Avengers in the documentary programme (open link on left) which sets it in context.

Yr 10 1960s CULTURAL, SOCIAL & HISTORICAL

Media language: We compare the 'media language' of the modern day Observer with the 1960s Observer

We then look at the concerns about the Cold War and briefly learn about George Blunt and the Cambridge spy ring before turning to the same concerns in our 1960s TV drama The Avengers.

PREP Carry on watching from here: