Paper 1 mock exam learner response

 1) Type up any feedback in full (you do not need to write mark/grade if you do not wish to).

2) Write a question-by-question analysis of your performance. For each question, write how many marks you got from the number available and identify and points that you missed by carefully studying the AQA indicative content in the mark scheme:

Q1: 5/8 ‘What will take your breath away’ offers a reading of both the breath-taking (Nature, beauty, openness, range, exhilaration, spectacle) and the breath-expending (hill-walking, the scale of the view, the walkers in the foreground). This is a body and soul pitch: exercise for the body and beauty for the soul!

Q2: 6/12 The political contexts are largely determined by the ‘Town and Country’ dichotomy (which is in itself a set of stereotypes): here is urban and rural life juxtaposed to reflect certain kinds of poverty and abundance. The historical contexts are even more contradictory as the music video is historical (but not a limiting idea of ‘History’) and Figure 1 is both contemporary and yet timeless.

Q3: 5/9 black-fringed western shirt or references to the iconic Marlboro Man character alongside modern commercial brands normally associated with hip-hop culture like Gucci, Maserati and Fendi) clarifying an approach to meaning will help here: working from the premise that meaning is encoded leads to a different (but equally valid) response than if you adopt a semiotic approach which sees meaning as negotiated some may use the idea of ‘preferred reading’ or indeed ‘dominant/negotiated/oppositional’ readings (Hall).

Q4: 5/20 Of course this isn’t the only reading and could be seen as simplistic and ‘tongue-in-cheek’: it might be read as a playful postmodern indication that patriarchy is a bit of a joke and all bets are now off. This is not what life was like in the sixties for men and women but it does, in a fairly crude way, help understanding of underlying currents and contemporary notions of gender fluidity and non-binary gender identities which, in Butler’s view, are desirable and inevitable.• Like Score these themes are delivered through costume and props with a kind of bricolage of viable versions arguing for what Fiske years ago called ‘semiotic resistance’: here the genre of gender is exposed for what it is (and that which Butler confirms) – a law of anomaly. This ad was selected for its obvious contemporary flavour and progressive ideological stance but in its playful exuberance it also displays aspects of the post-modern turn, dripping with Jouissance (a particular kind of joy).

Q5: 2/6 Digital native is brought up with digital technology from an early age. Convergence smartphones, which combine camera, music, Internet, books, and other media together. Prosumer It describes those who distribute their adaptations via social media and the Internet.

Q6: 2/9 Newsbeat has a specific audience profile which is defined by age and outlook, and editorial choices aim to select ‘resonant’ material it does have though, and always has had, a very clear pitch and voice and assumption about its audience: this register is a key technique Newsbeat achieves this through editorial choices which define what young people are interested in (music, sport, other young people) one criticism has always been that it is trivial and anti-intellectual and bland, also apolitical

Q7: 7/20 social realist subject matter – a dialogue-heavy coming of age tale of a Pakistani boy growing up in 80s Britain). This renders the product somewhat culturally specific in nature and it may not play as well or resonate with global audiences, therefore Blinded by the Light can be seen to embody the idea of risk-taking in feature film production

3) Look at Question 4 - a 20-mark essay evaluating Judith Butler's gender is a performance theory. Write an essay plan for this question using the indicative content in the mark scheme and with enough content to meet the criteria for Level 4 (top level). This will be somewhere between 3-4 well-developed paragraphs plus an introduction answering the question planned in some detail.

Question 4 plan

Introduction: State how far you agree and disagree with the theory and introduce the reader to why u think this

Para 1: Score hair cream and if it subverts or agrees with the theory 

• Score acts as a useful reference point however it is read. It was ‘written’ at  the epicentre of a period of social upheaval particularly for women predicated on sexual liberation (a permissive society ‘on the pill’).

Para 2: Sephora and how it agrees with gender as a performance

• It can be read as advocating a greater diversity in representations and understandings of gender but also keeping with traditional tropes around beauty.

• These ‘performances’ are clearly renegotiating the blueprint: though there are a couple of men featured, this is about ‘women only’ spaces: a celebration.

Para 3: Relating to relevant theory and linking both csps 

the essence of Butler’s approach (as addressed at this level) is that gender is performative but also that there is no original/blueprint against which to perform so every gendered performance is discrete and potentially challenging

• Butler argues that not only is gender culturally constructed but that this also colours our understanding of sex (biological difference)

Conclusion: Overall whether you agree or disagree with the theory and add additional information

4) Based on the whole of your Paper 1 learner response, plan FIVE topics / concepts / CSPs / theories that you will prioritise in your summer exam Media revision timetable.

- Butlers gender as a performance

-Blinded by the light 

-Radio 1 newsbeat

-Key words definition

-Sephora and Score