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Discuss a cultural text of your choice in relation to representation and ideology.

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A cultural text can be anything from film to music, or art to books, such things only become a text after they have been decoded through critical interpretation. Each individual interprets text differently and it is through such things that we can experience culture. What exactly is culture though? The word culture comes from the Latin to mean 'tend and grow on land.' Over the years it has come to mean other things, we can see this by looking at the dictionary which shows us there are eight different meanings to the word culture and it is the more traditional meaning which is put near the end of this list, making way for new and more important meanings. It is the first four meanings which are of most importance to us; "1. the ideas, …show more content…

One theme, which is clear right form the start to the end of the film, is sexuality and masculinity. Gaz; the main character is especially proud to be male and he believes strongly in the loyalty between friends. Near the start of the film Gaz and his friend Dave walk past a group of women queuing to see the Chippendales; a group of male strippers, he uses the most offensive words he can think to the abuse the strippers with by calling them 'puffs' and insulting the size of their penises. Throughout the film we see evidence of male bonding through discussing problems 'downstairs' to playing football, something they use at one point to learn a dance move. We also see Gaz having problems with telling his son he loves him and looks around before doing so as if the be embarrassed about showing his emotions. Each one of the men we see have their own problems, firstly Gaz, whose idea it was to strip so that he can get enough money to pay maintenance rears and keep seeing his son. Dave has issues with being fat and believes his wife is having an affair, we are also lead to believe that he maybe impotent, exactly the opposite of the problem Gerald has. Gerald is a middle class man and his main concern with stripping is loosing his dignity, he is also far more worried that the others about finding a job because of his age and because he has not yet told his wife of his job loss. The ginger one (we don't learn the name of) is

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