Weekly News 26

Police launch hate crime probe after Polish community centre is vandalised with graffiti saying 'f*** off' in wake of Brexit vote

This is an article from the Daily Mail written by Hugo Gye about suspected hate crime in a Polish community following the recent decision to leave the E.U.

I chose this article because it firstly is extremely contextually relevant as it is about the recent Brexit vote to which Britain left the E.U.

Graffiti which appeared this morning of the 26th of June after Thursday's referendum.

Locals said that it was the first time in its 60-year history that the centre had hit by vandalism - and some linked the incident to the aftermath of the divisive referendum. This follows as a large part of the 'Leave' campaign was the promise to 'make Britain great again' by 'taking control' and tightening immigration. Despite the 'Leave' campaign giving no clear figures and solutions to the so called 'issue' of immigration and outcome that can be certain is the growing prejudice around those who have immigrated here from other countries, despite most of their occupation in the country being completely legal.

This is a good caste study for representation of both issues and events regarding the issue of racism and the even t of the E.U referendum.

Misrepresentation of gender roles in the media?

Negative representation of gender roles is an issue most commonly associated with the misrepresentation of women being perceived as sexual objects or as second class citizens. However what is often overlooked is the negative representations of men where the same inequality is being demonstrated.

A prime example of this would be the film Magic Mike, 2012 Steven Soderbergh. When the subject of stripping is highlighted audiences often make the assumption that it is women doing the stripping and the men come as paying customers however, as shown in the film Magic Mike, the role reversal does take place and can result in the same negative consequences.

In Magic Mike the lead Adam, played by Alex Pettyfer, is exposed to a variety of different corruptions such as drugs and alcohol as well as being exploited as he is young and naïve by the older characters such as Dallas, played by Matthew Mconaughey and Magic Mike, played by Channing Tatum.

Despite this clear negative representation and insight into the lives of characters who are more often forgotten about in society the franchise of Magic Mike is seen as a positive sexual objectification of men with the advertising campaign consisting solely of half nude men to the extent of the not-so-subtle phallic reference in the title of the sequel 'Magic Mike XXL'. If the same film had been made about the opposite sex with the same approach to advertising the entire campaign would be slandered as pornographic and inappropriate.

 

 

Similarly, as far as the concept of body image and sexual objectification is concerned the focus is usually around women and example being the campaigns against features such as page 3 modelling. The normalisation of a sexualised image of the female body has caused the same to happen to men, with equally high body standards these ad campaigns of both men and women have equal exposure but the exploitation and the effect on the everyday man is rarely discussed.

 

 

 

 

When I typed in a google search of Men's Health magazine cover the majority came up with covers like the ones pictured above, with lines such as 'Get back into shape' and 'Strip away fat' encouraging the same obsession with body image as in stereotypical tabloid magazines however it is not criticised in the same way. Additionally, the same applies to the nudity as many protest about the constant representation of women in the media without any clothes on yet here, the sexualisation of these men is normalised due to their high levels of fitness and attractiveness.