Attitude Magazine & Other Questions

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Attitude magazine being a 'gay' website is indictive of the fact that a vast majority of media take a heteronormative perspective

In Attitude, gay and straight men are constantly being sexualised, mainly seen on the 'Boys' section - having men not wearing very much clothing, much seen on the breeze advert in Woman magazine.  the boys body type.  The reason for the 'Boys' Section is for the male gaze, the magazine assumes that the gay male target audience exclusively find a hyper-masculine men attractive, this reinforces hegemonic norms about gay men.  There is a big emphasis on celebrities and celebrity culture.  There is another article ("Single & Fabulous, I thought I wanted a normal Guy until I dated One") that reinforces the male stereotype of gay men wanting to party and have one night stands with wild and dangerous men.  Cautionary tales involving dating apps and violence, this is indicating that gay men are prone to getting into violent scenarios.  The men who are presented as objects of lust are all toned and in good shape, there is not a person of weight represented in a good way, except those who have done something bad, for example, a woman was arrested for setting her girlfriends hand on fire while she was using hand sanitiser, her mugshot depicts her of being of weight.

• Attitude Presents a simple and straight forward symbol of Gay men.  
• Attitude is a simple and straight forward website for a simple and straight forward audience 
• The Only Reason Attitude.Co.Uk is to promote the magazine and get you to buy it (HyperModality)

Attitude is so stereotypical is because it can therefore target a mainstream gay audience, there is also a potential secondary audience of heterosexual women.  

What Representations of masculinity are constructed in this front cover? Make explicit reference to the TATK

- The body/facial hair with the slick backed hair cut

-The Pilot suit

  









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Attitude online, audience and fandom - Exam Question

To what extent does attitude targets multiple audiences?

• "Gay men, working class, aged 25 - 50, aspirational, interested in holidays, fashion and the theatre, and with a larger expendable income than average"

You can see Gay men are the key target audience as majority of the faces on the website are hegamonically attractive men, who are in the showbiz industry and appeal to gay audience.  The TA is from 20-50 as there are articles appealing to that age range, an example of this is the 'Boys' in the menu bar, this is more aimed at the younger of the adults viewing the Attitude Website due to them being more sexually active and sex and the way someone looks being a bigger part of their interests.  Another way in which this website appeals to those with aspirations is that it majority talks about the positives the gay community has accomplished, such as actors getting big roles, new things that has happened and new albums/songs LGBTQ individuals/groups are releasing, there is not much negativity or crime stories on this website, and the ones that do get a mention tend to be comical and/or far away from home, the articles themselves tend to be more uplifting and involve good news instead of negative news.  The TA are interested in travel and culture as there is a travel banner, when on the 'Travel' page, it mainly talks about which Gay parades are happening in different countries and how 'you cannot miss' it.  It also assumes that TA has a lover as there are articles talking about the 'perfect get away for you and a lover', assuming they have a lover, not taking into account they have a friend or no one at all yet still want to travel.  Fashion is one of the biggest themes on the website, those who are in the articles thumbnails are very stylish and unique in their fashion and style, and I assume it is to highlight the importance of self expression and to dress how you want and feel.  The over arching theme of Attitude website is that, gay men in particular, have a large and majority expendable income to be able to go to parades around the globe, while being at the height of fashion, it almost seems that to be able to read Attitude magazine, this is a must, part of the criteria even.  

15 - Media effects - Albert Bandura - The Producer can Directly implant ideas into the audience's mind

16 - Cultivation theory - George Gerbner - The Long Term Affects Of a Media product on the audience's mind

17 - Reception theory - Stuart Hall - How Different audiences read and what they take from the same media product 

18 - Fandom - Henry Jenkins - What extremity the fans of a media product go to after experiencing a media product, being levels above an average 'fan' joining chats about the product, buying merchandise, creating fan fiction

19 - ‘End of audience’ theories - Clay Shirky - That audiences do not watch the media product anymore, they interact instead and develop their own reading instead of accepting the ending provided

What assumptions, messages and ideological values are constructed by placing 'gay' films separate from other films?  Points 1,2 & 5 answered here.  

There are two main readings with the separation of their films from others.  The first one is a dated way of looking at it, allowing the community to be able share and distribute their films in an established store with a wide audience, but keep it separate from the other films to avoid confusion from other customers and for the established film community to keep their content separate from the Gay community's in fear of having a film being associated with it being of a Gay theme, I mean that in a sense of, a film like 'Saving Private Ryan' a brutal and incredibly accurate depiction of war, if placed next to/amongst a collection of Gay films, to an unknowing eye, could be thought of as a Gay war story, which is an oppositional reading of the producer.  Another way in which these films being separate can be read is that, if a customer desires to watch a film with a gay theme, they know exactly where they all are, they don't have to try and find it amongst the other films they have no interests in, they are all in once place and I believe it is no difference to having the Horror Films in their own section as Gay films have become their own genre, you could have a Gay Thriller and a Gay comedy in the same place as the underlying theme is that they are of a Gay theme, hence why you can get 'Scary Movie' (a horror parody Comedy) next to Scream, they are different experience but have a theme of horror, therefore placing them in the same section.  This however, does assume that gay audiences will watch any film as long as it has a gay underlying theme, which for the majority of the community, is false.  

If I were to ask you "what is your favourite heterosexual film", how would you answer?

I feel this questions answer could be twisted into saying that it is all about the reading, all films could be read differently, even if it is all the readings except the producers actual intentional ending, this is Clay Shirky's End of Audience Theory, and so regardless of what my answer is for this question, it could be read differently to be seen as a gay ending for the film, an example of this is if I said Jonah Hill's directorial debut film 'Mid-90s' was my favourite hetrosexual film, a different perception of that could be that Ruben is jealous of Sunburn for getting closer with Ray and FuckShit as he secretly has gay feelings towards the two, even though that, in my opinion, is nowhere near the producers ideology. 

How can we apply postcolonial theory to this display?

The fact that Gay films are so important in today's society they need their own section, as people coming from all over the world, and maybe from countries less socially developed than our own, can express themselves and access content they cannot back at home. 

Attitude is targeting a gay audience by tapping into their potentially bad experiences or making those who this hasn't happened to realise how lucky that truly are/were.  The bad experience it taps into is the fact that some gay people may have been a victim of homelessness and so has buffy, this allows some reassurance as to know it is not just them and not just because of their sexuality. 

Stream Magazine

Stream Magazine publish a wide variety of things, majority of which seem to be fairly small budget except two, Attitude Acquisition (with Prince William on the front cover) and Attitude Heroes Podcast (with Ian Mckellen on the Thumbnail).  The similarities to Attitude magazine are that there are gay themes however the budget and coverage seems a lot smaller, almost reminded me of 'The Listing' a small magazine that gets posted around Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire.  I feel Stream target an older gay audience, a settled and looking to enjoy retirement and what the community has to offer, so therefore targeting 50-65 year old gay men.  I feel that Stream is horizontally integrated as they appeal to a small audience but a range of different things within that audience.  I feel Attitude waited so long to release a website as their magazines sales were falling so had to keep with the trends and introduce a website instead, due to the fact they were bought out by Stream, it maybe because they wanted to increase their audience expansion too so introduced a website to appeal to as many as possible.     

I feel Stream bought Attitude as it was an opportunity to buy a company that poses the biggest threat  of becoming bigger than them in a long term and opens a bigger door to a wider audience.  Curran and Seaton's cultivation theory of smaller companies being bought to be purely driven to make profit.  This is what Stream did to Attitude. 

• They were bought out not the ones buying out - therefore a victim 
• Stream are a  Multisector and used multimedia integration
• Internationalisation - Stream of from New York City whereas Attitude is based in Ho Chi Minh City, allowing mass copied to be sold world wide - this allows it to be sold and therefore accepted in other countries, so it is not just done for profit in that sense
• They did not buy into multi sector industries but did buy into cross platform as they print out actual copies as well as having a website, making it accessible for everyone, so it was not bought for souly profit, but to be accessed on multiple platforms, however that could have been to increase the audience and therefore the money coming in.