Media Representation of Place (AQA A-Level Geography): Revision Notes

Media Representation of Place

Introduction

Media plays a powerful role in shaping how we understand and perceive places. Different forms of media—including television, film, photography, art, books, newspapers and the internet—reach large audiences worldwide and therefore significantly influence broader perceptions of place. This widespread media coverage has made geographical distance less relevant for learning about places. People can now gain instant knowledge about distant locations through media sources, even if they've never visited.

Photographs

In today's digital age, photo-editing has become commonplace. Places can easily be 'photoshopped' or filtered to make them appear different and, particularly for tourist destinations, more attractive. The photograph you may have seen of a place versus the reality is often significantly different. These differences can result from:

• Weather conditions at different times
• The season when the photo was taken
• Advanced editing technology used to enhance the image

Marketing photographs are particularly selective. They tend to focus on the natural beauty or scenic landscapes of places whilst removing any disturbance from human presence. The reality for many tourist destinations may be vastly different, as shown in the contrasting images of the Toshogu shrine.

The Toshogu shrine in Nikko, Japan is a UNESCO World Heritage site. This tourist image presents the shrine set in a beautiful forest, with ornate architecture including woodcarvings and gold-leaf decoration. The image is carefully composed to showcase the site's aesthetic appeal.

However, this second image shows the reality of visiting Nikko when tourist numbers are at their highest. The shrine is crowded with visitors, creating a very different experience from the idealised tourist image.

Textual sources

Novels can evoke a powerful sense of place, giving readers the feeling that they know what it's like to 'be there'. Some places have become so strongly associated with particular authors and their stories that they are now promoted or advertised based on these literary connections. Examples include:

• Thomas Hardy's Dorset - The southwestern English countryside featured in his novels
• Brontë country - West Yorkshire and East Lancashire, associated with the Brontë sisters' works

These literary associations have become part of the places' identities, influencing tourism and how people perceive these regions.

Poetry

Poetry has long been used to describe and evoke a sense of place. Many famous poets are closely linked to particular locations:

• William Wordsworth - Associated with the Lake District
• Seamus Heaney - Wrote extensively about his Irish roots
• William Blake - Famously described the poverty and despair of industrial London

Poets refer to specific places in personal and expressive ways, but they also enable readers to sense and imagine what it's like to be in those locations.

Contrasting representations: London through different eyes

Two famous poems about London demonstrate how the same place can be represented in completely different ways:

Contemporary poetry: Multicultural Britain

Daljit Nagra is a contemporary British poet born in England to parents who are traditional Sikh Punjabis. He writes extensively about Britain where Indians came and settled. His poetry enables readers to be immersed in the Sikh community and experience Sikh Britain from the 'inside'.

Nagra explores the thoughts, feelings and cultural attitudes of first, second and third generation descendants towards their own community, other minority ethnic communities and the indigenous white population. His poem "Our Town with the Whole of India!" describes the district of Southall in London which migrants had transformed into a 'Little India' in the 1970s.

The poem celebrates the multicultural nature of the area, describing features such as:

• Temples, mandirs and mosques on promised streets
• A parade with banners and tridents
• Guy Fawkes' Diwali celebrations with rockets
• References to Rama and Sita from Hindu mythology
• Sunny Radio and its listeners
• Pizza Hut alongside Somali cab joints
• Reggae music where Caribbeans once gathered
• The transformation into a Halal Boys hotel

The poem captures the changes which occurred in the community over the years, celebrating the multicultural nature of the area whilst also highlighting potential tensions accompanying it.

Music

Music can effectively evoke a sense of place. Different types of music may be associated with particular geographical areas, such as reggae with Jamaica.

Song lyrics can also help portray specific places. In 2010, Newport rapper Alex Warren and singer Terema Wainwright created an internet sensation with their parody of Jay-Z and Alicia Keys' song about New York, "Empire State of Mind". The spoof version received almost 200,000 views in just two days on YouTube.

Television and film

Places serve as vital backdrops to most dramas. We associate certain places with different types of stories—derelict houses in horror films or space ships in science fiction. However, television shows and films also play a significant role in representing place, which can have both positive and negative impacts.

Positive representations

Negative representations

Many crime dramas are located in urban settings, but not all crime occurs in cities. The sites chosen for filming can portray the same place in very different ways. Compare, for example, the representation of London in EastEnders (BBC, 1985–present) with the more glamorous skylines and buildings of The Apprentice (BBC, 2005–present) or the settings for the crime dramas Sherlock (BBC, 2011–2017) and Killing Eve (BBC, 2018–present).

Art

Art has long been used to represent place, most famously seen in landscape paintings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Certain painters became synonymous with geographical places:

• Gainsborough and Constable - Known for their landscapes of Suffolk, now sometimes referred to as 'Constable Country'
• Paul Cézanne - French artist who painted Provence in southern France
• Hiroshi Yoshida - Japanese artist famous for his iconic wood block prints of Japanese landscapes

Critique of pastoral fantasies

The common criticism of such landscape paintings is that they were pastoral fantasies, giving the impression of a rural idyll which didn't exist for the majority of people living in the countryside at that time. These paintings reflected a romantic vision which still shapes many people's mental images of the countryside today and is perpetuated through tourist brochures, chocolate boxes and jigsaw puzzles. Such constructs of rural places are powerful because they shape views on what the countryside is actually like and what it should be like.

L.S. Lowry and industrial landscapes

Paintings may be considered less reliable than photographs because there's more scope for individual interpretation and selection. However, they can also show a deeper understanding of place because they allow the painter to convey more of the character of what is present.

An artistic representation of an urban place can be seen in the work of L.S. Lowry, famous for his matchstick human figures and depictions of life in northern mill towns. Lowry became interested in the industrial landscape after he moved to Salford with his family. Although he made many drawings there, his mill scenes (a combination of the real and the imagined) have remained his most famous works.

Sculpture and place regeneration

Art has traditionally represented place, but it can also make a place distinctive and be used in the regeneration of an area.

Graffiti and street art

Graffiti is writing or drawing that has been placed illicitly on a wall or other surface, often in a public place. It has traditionally been associated with youth cultures claiming ownership of a place. However, the famous UK graffiti artist Banksy argues that the importance of graffiti is also to give a voice to people who aren't normally heard in the mainstream.

Many consider graffiti a type of vandalism and authorities are keen to remove it from public areas. Increasingly however, graffiti is being accepted into mainstream culture and art galleries now stock graffiti images. In these places, graffiti is seen not as being 'out of place' but as something which can be bought and sold. It is also being used as a type of street art in the regeneration of places.

Place and architecture

As well as designing buildings, architects are responsible for planning places. This planning is seen as increasingly important in terms of creating sustainable and healthy places. Architecture can also play a pivotal role in the redevelopment and rebranding of a place.

Some redevelopment schemes utilise the existing style or heritage of buildings and areas they're modernising, whilst others involve more radical change as part of a rebranding process. Compare, for example:

• The redevelopment of the SouthGate shopping centre in Bath to the redevelopment of the Bull Ring in central Birmingham
• The former mimics the city's original and popular Georgian architecture with a Bath-stone façade
• The Bull Ring was a much more radical redevelopment, incorporating the construction of the iconic Selfridges department store with a façade of 15,000 aluminium discs mounted onto a blue background

The latter has been seen as one of several architectural landmarks, including the city library, which have made a major contribution to the regeneration of central Birmingham.

Gentrification

Redevelopment of place comes at a cost to some. The process of gentrification has been strongly promoted by local government in many British cities as a method of economic regeneration.

Digital or 'augmented' place

The rise in the use of digital technology such as smartphones has led to much discussion about the notion of digital place. Parallel interactive places such as Second Life and Fortnite have existed for some time, but these are seen as virtual places rather than real places.

The increased use of digital technology is changing how people experience and interact with places, creating new forms of place attachment and identity beyond physical location.

Remember!