Representations of Scotland

Version 2: 11 November 2013

Rick Instrell

www.deep-learning.co.uk

info@deep-learning.co.uk

Association for Media Education in Scotland

Aims

To explore the concept of representation by:

1. Examining stereotypes of Scotland & the Scots

2. Relating these representations to concepts of ideology, myth and discourse

3. Exemplifying ways of teaching representation through the analysis of film, advertising and print

4. Exemplify ways of teaching representation through media production

Representation

Can be understood in a number of ways:

1. Process of translating concepts into words, sounds and images

2. Continual re-presenting of stereotypes

3. Re-presenting in new non-stereotyped ways

4. Who represents whom and for what purpose?

Representation & the Real World

How are representations related to the real

world? Four possibilities:

1. Real world shapes representations

2. Representations shape real world

3. Relationship is two-way and interactive

4. Distinction is false – all we have is representation and there is no ‘real world’

Mediation

• Media not a ‘window on the world’• Media come between real world and the

audience i.e. they mediate• Media select what is – and what is not –

represented and then portray their selections in particular ways rather than others

• Mass media construct representations to maximise audiences and hence profit

Active and Passive Audience

• Naïve view of audience is that of passive recipient

• Audiences are active differential decoders and can resist dominant meanings

• Audiences are increasingly active creators of meaning and can represent their own perceptions of reality

• This can change power relations in society

Summary Diagrams

Real worldWindow

(media neutral)

Audience (passive)

Real worldMediation

(media constructs

representations by processes of

selection & portrayal)

Audience (active

differential decoders)

Naïve view of media

Media studies view of media

Ideology

• Althusser: ideology is the common-sense beliefs, meanings and activities through which we think, communicate and act

• Function of ideology in relation to power relations in society

• Dominant ideologies are means by which dominant groups maintain leadership without resource to physical coercion e.g. patriarchy – the idea that men are superior to women

• Society’s institutions are the purveyors of dominant ideology (family, education, media, religion, business, etc.)

• They attempt to form individual and shared beliefs along dominant lines as if these ideas are natural, universal and unchanging

Hegemony

• Gramsci: dominance is never total – oppositional ideologies from subordinate groups express rejection of dominant ideologies e.g. feminism is an oppositional ideology which in its varied forms challenges patriarchy

• Hegemonic struggle between dominant and subordinate ideologies

• Texts often reflect these struggles• We ourselves are the site of discursive struggles

(interdiscourse)

Myth

Myth: culturally-specific explanation of

national history and character

N.B. Myth can also be universal e.g. Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey narrative found in stories from may different cultures

Discourse

• Ideology & myths are inscribed in discourse i.e. they are expressed in words, images and sounds

• So a text could be analysed in gender terms by tracing the struggle between patriarchal & feminist discourses

• Ideologies and myths are ways of making texts intelligible to audiences

• They also give the individual a sense of collective and individual identity

• Identity has a sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’

Discourses of Scotland

The debate over representations of Scotland can be traced

to the 1981 the Scotch Myths exhibition and the 1982

Scotch Reels event. Three dominant discourses were

identified:• Tartanry• Kailyard• Clydesideism

Tartanry: 1. Highlander

• Fierce but romantic kilted Highland man set against wild landscape

Tartanry: 1. Highlander

Tartanry: 1. Highlander

Tartanry: 2. Elegiac

• Nostalgic feeling for a lost way of life (related to Flodden, Culloden, Highland clearances)

Tartanry: 2. Elegiac

Tartanry: 3. Landscape

• Scotland as peripheral & remote far from metropolitan heart of British culture

Tartanry: 4. Militarism

• Soldiers and pipers marching into bloody battle

Tartanry: 5. Carnivalesque

• Red-nosed, kilted, drunken, mean Scotsman

Tartanry: 5. Carnivalesque

Tartanry: 5. Carnivalesque contd.

Tartanry: 5. Carnivalesque contd.

Tartanry: 5. Carnivalesque contd.

Kailyard

• Scotland as small towns full of ‘characters’ (SR Crockett, JM Barrie, Ian MacLaren, People’s Friend, Sunday Post)

• People have little interest in what goes on in the rest of the world

• Central characters of kailyard novels are prominent members of a the community

• Local intrigue and homespun wisdom

• Sentimental and couthy

'Where's My Good Little Girl?', 1882 by Thomas Faed

Kailyard 2

Whisky Galore!

Urban Kailyard 1

Discursive Unconscious

• Colin McArthur: film and tv representations are tartan exteriors & kailyard mores

Brigadoon

Commercial Exploitation

Commercial Exploitation

Commercial Exploitation

Commercial Exploitation

Commercial Exploitation

Post Cards

Post Cards

Tartan Day

Modern Urban Kailyard 2

• Hybrid of kailyard and Clydesideism (Rab C Nesbitt, Chewin the Fat, Still Game)

Modern Urban Kailyard 2

Critique of Scotch Myths Debate

• John Caughie: reductive and ignored texts that did not fit polemic (e.g. Bill Douglas trilogy: My Childhood, My Ain Folk, My Way Home)

• Pam Cook: nostalgia can play a productive role by releasing desire for resistance and social change

• Cairns Craig: Scottish cultural renaissance of 1980s and 1990s was involved in construction of new myths

• One could argue that Braveheart had a progressive impact in mobilising the vote for a Scottish parliament

• Beveridge and Turnbull: meanings never passively consumed but are subject to active selection and adjustment e.g. Jacobite rebellion has led to tourist kitsch but also produced prose, poetry and song that symbolise rebellion and idealism

Usefulness of Debate

• Texts can be analysed in terms of whether they express or interrogate the tartan/kailyard monster or represent those usually absent from the discourse e.g. children, women, ethnic minorities

Moving on from Scotch Myths

• Scotch Myths debate needs to be moved on because Scotland has changed radically since early 1980s

• Debate around a restricted over-simplified number of discourses

• Debate framed within Marxist/post-Marxist problematic• Tim Edensor’s analysis• Gerry Hassan’s analysis

Edensor on National Identity 1

Edensor sees this national identity operating at both spectacular and mundane levels:• state level: providing the legal and bureaucratic

framework within which we act• the spatial level: the borders; iconic sites; rural, urban

and domestic spaces• performative level: the rituals, ceremonies, sports,

celebrations as well as everyday competences, embodied habits and daily, weekly and annual synchronised activities of everyday life.

• the material level: shared meanings of everyday objects such as clothes, tools, food, drink, vehicles, ephemera as well as obvious carriers of national symbolism such as stamps, currency, official logos and flags

Edensor on National Identity 2

• there need not be agreement as to the interpretation of shared objects, ideas and symbols

• a nation’s cultural resources provide the common ground on which discursive battles take place

Scotland in early 1980s

Gerry Hassan:• Decline of manufacturing sector• Over 50% in trade union• 52% living in council housing• Political disempowerment under Thatcher• Mass unemployment• Economic and social dislocation• Social conservatism in public and elite opinion• Patronage by political and professional elite• Stagnant cultural and artistic sector

Scotland in 2006

• Dominance of service sector• Declining trade union membership• Home ownership• Scottish parliament• Lower unemployment• Still deep degree of exclusion from employment market • Liberalism in public and elite opinion• Patronage still at work but under attack• Dynamic cultural and artistic sector• Significant migration from Eastern Europe

Shift

• Individualised society shaped by lifestyle and consumption rather than social class

• Society more at ease with equality issues• More feminised society• Post-labourist, post-nationalist politics• Globalisation and immigration• Digital revolution

Inadequate Response

• Mindset and stories have not changed• Nostalgia for collectivism (forgets its suffocating nature)• Urban kailyard (lost male world in Kelman and

McIlvanney; ‘McLad’ culture of Tam Cowan and Stuart Cosgrove)

• Despite decline of working class more people see themselves as working class

What needs changed?

• Need an ethic of living, set of stories that embody how we live now and in the future

• Has to capture:– Individualism– Renewal of collectivist values– Pluralism– Complexity– Rapid change– Post-nationalist politics

• Need to map past, current and future stories

Past Scottish Stories

Hassan identifies 11 basic historical stories:1. Enterprising Scotland2. Empire Scotland3. Enlightenment Scotland4. Educational Scotland5. Calvinist Scotland6. Tartan Scotland7. Kailyard Scotland8. Divided Scotland9. Collectivist Scotland10. Unionist Scotland11. Nationalist Scotland

Current Stories

Hassan identifies 4 post-devolution stories:

1. Holyrood debacle

2. Toytown parliament

3. Souped-up Labour cooncil

4. Politically correct Scotland

Future Scottish Stories

Hassan identifies 6 post-devolution stories:1. Labour minimalist devolution: politics of continuity

rather than change2. Black and white Scotland: questions Scots’ ability to

govern themselvesAnd more positively3. Post-nationalist Scotland: abandonment of old-

fashioned nationalism4. Smart Scotland: knowledge economy responding to

global markets5. Adaptive Scotland: personalised, flexible, collaborative6. New progressive Scotland: confident Scotland which

embraces change

Rebranding the Nation 1

Bond et al. identify processes involved in

rebranding Scotland:

1. Reiteration– a historically positive feature is mobilised within a

contemporary context e.g. stressing education as a past and current Scottish strength

2. Recapture– a historically diminished feature is mobilised e.g.

trying to correct a perceived entrepreneurial deficit which will recapture past economic success

Rebranding the Nation 2

3. Reinterpretation– a historically negative feature is mobilised as having

advantages or as being largely neutral e.g. the Scottish diaspora to North America is seen as a way of attracting those with Scots ancestry to return to Scotland to utilise their skills or wealth

4. Repudiation– negative features cannot be reinterpreted so are

omitted from current constructions of national identity e.g. the dominance of an ‘employment culture’ in the shipbuilding, steelmaking and mining industries seen to be a barrier an entrepreneurial economy based round small firms

INSPIRING

CAPITAL

WORLD LEADER IN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY,

EDUCATION, ARTS WHOSE BEAUTY & ATMOSPHERE

INSPIRES

INVENTION ASPIRATION SINCERITY

DIVERSITY ELEGANCE WARMTH

IMAGINATIVE DETERMINED AUTHENTIC

VIBRANT CONFIDENT

NOT LOUD NOT ARROGANT NOT IMPERSONAL

NOT BRASH NOT ALOOF NOT COMPLICATED

NOT INTIIDATING NOT COLD

ESSENCE

PERSONALITY

VALUES

TONE OF VOICE

Brand Pyramid for Edinburgh Inspiring Capital Campaign

Branding Edinburgh

Branding Glasgow

Branding Aberdeen(shire)

a brighter outlook

Creating a Brand

• Design a new brand for promoting the Scottish Highlands as an upmarket tourist destination

• It usually helps to have a picture of your target audience (e.g. London city workers on the Underground)

• You should produce– Strapline (slogan)– Logo– Typography– Choice of colours

and be able to justify each(N.B. You may want to use a brand pyramid)

Bibliography 1Beveridge, C. and Turnbull, R. (1989) The Eclipse of Scottish Culture: Inferiorism

and the Intellectuals. Edinburgh: Polygon.Bond, R., McCrone, D. and Brown, A. (2003) ‘National Identity and Economic

Development: Reiteration, Recapture, Reinterpretation and Repudiation’. In Nations and Nationalism, Vol.9:3: 371-391.

Caughie, J. (1990) ‘Representing Scotland: New Questions for Scottish Cinema’. In E. Dick (ed.) (1990) From Limelight to Satellite: a Scottish Film Book. London: BFI/Scottish Film Council.

Cook, P. (1996) Fashioning the Nation: Costume and Identity in British Cinema. London: BFI.

Craig, C. (1982) ‘Myths Against History: Tartanry and Kailyard in 19th-Century Scottish Literature’. In C. McArthur (ed.) (1982) Scotch Reels: Scotland in Cinema and Television. London: BFI Publishing.

Craig, C. (1996) Out of History: Narrative Paradigms in Scottish and British Culture. Edinburgh: Polygon.

Dick E. (ed.) (1990) From Limelight to Satellite: a Scottish Film Book. London: BFI/Scottish Film Council.

Bibliography 2Edensor, T. (2002) National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life. Oxford:

Berg.Hassan, G. (2005) ‘That was Then and This is Now: Imagining New Stories about a

Northern Nation’. In Scotland 2020: Hopeful Stories for a Northern Nation, edited by, Gerry Hassan, Eddie Gibb, Lydia Howland. www.demos.co.uk/files/Scotland2020.pdf

McArthur, C. (ed.) (1982) Scotch Reels: Scotland in Cinema and Television. London: BFI Publishing.

McArthur, C. (2003a) ‘Whisky Galore!’ and ‘The Maggie’. London: I.B. Taurus.McArthur, C. (2003b) ‘Brigadoon’, ‘Braveheart’ and the Scots: Distortions of

Scotland in Hollywood Cinema. London: I.B. Taurus.McCrone, D. (2001) Understanding Scotland: the Sociology of a Nation (2nd

edition). London: Routledge.Petrie, D. (2000) Screening Scotland. London: BFI Publishing.Petrie, D. (2004) Contemporary Scottish Fictions: Film, Television and The Novel.

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.