Marry Me

Marry me is a new show on E4 about the lives of a heterosexual couple and their group of friends. In this post I will be focusing on the lesbian character named Kay and the gay couple called 'The Kevins'.

Kay is a member of the friendship group and is a lesbian. When watching the programme, I found that she is very open about her sexuality and uses it to her advantages when making jokes and sexual innuendos. However, her innuendos are often met with comments such as 'Ew'  or a slightly disgusted facial expression which suggest slight opposition to the idea that there is a gay female in such a mainstream show even though it is very obvious from the first episode that her friends have no problems with her sexuality.
Her dress sense can be mixed and sometimes quirky, but she usually just wears baggy but feminine clothing such as jumpers or 3/4 length sleeved tops.

Unlike the popular show 'Modern Family', This programme shows a kiss happening between Kay and her girlfriend, with no censoring or distraction. This scene is very powerful in the television industry because it is rare for any kind of homosexual affection to be broadcast.



The other gay characters in this particular show are the two Kevins who are the dads of main character, Annie. Although they are not married throughout the first series they are engaged and are actively planning a wedding along side their daughter. It is refreshing to see two gay couples who are so open and confident about their sexuality in a show that is broadcast on such a popular channel.

As well as their sexuality, they are also an interracial couple, making the show even more risky with it range of controversial ideas.

The show had great success in the US and is on its way to achieving the same level of success in the UK. The representations of the gay people in this show are not biased but they are slightly exaggerated when it comes to the 'Kevins'. They are both rather camp characters and they tend to have small 'bitch fights' in each episode over small things.

Women in Cucumber and Banana

Cucumber and Banana

Cucumber, Banana and Tofu are a set of new shows on the Channel 4 network, written by Russell T Davies. Cucumber is broadcast on Channel 4 and contains the main characters and plot. Banana is the second show, broadcast on E4 straight after Cucumber and Tofu is the spin-off web documentary, exclusively on 4oD. E4 has an audience demographic of 16-34 years old so it is the perfect channel to broadcast a show about homosexual relationships.

Banana and Tofu are directed more at the audiences who wish to look deeper into the lives of the characters and find out more about their love interests and personal issues, whereas Cucumber just looks on the surface at them and focuses on the same characters throughout the series enabling the audience to build a complete relationship with them.

In this post I will be looking into the characters of Cucumber and Banana as they are the two that are shown on television.

Cucumber

Cucumber primarily explores the romantic relationship between two middle aged men, how one of them does not want to marry the other and his years long refusal to have sex with him which causes tension between them. This refusal could be seen by audiences to be a way for Henry to deny his sexuality to himself. Unfortunately, this is the reality that we expect of most gay people when they first 'come out', but not when they are middle aged men in a long term relationship. This representation of Henry is fairly negative as it portrays him as being 'scared' of who he is, as he also turns down his partner, Lance, when he asks to marry him, becoming quite offended by the idea.
Davies uses this show to focus on Henrys life and the lives of middle gay men and does not sway from this to represent other characters.

This is why he created 'Banana', to enable him to focus on other LGBT characters and relationships, for example, lesbians, young men, trans, older women etc.

Banana

Banana is a more youth-orientated series, focusing on a different character each week. It follows the lives of lots of different characters and their standalone stories. However, all of these characters know each other, and even Henry is involved, creating an obvious link to 'Cucumber'.
The stories of these characters don't necessarily focus on their sexuality as the main plot of the story, it simply informs who they are, but is only a very minor part of the plot.
This is a list of the female characters in Banana, and the problems that they experience.
Scotty: She has a shy, quiet personality and holds down four jobs, whilst also looking after her sick mother.
Sian and Violet: They are in a fairly new relationship and throughout the series they discover the joys and pitfalls of getting together.
Helen: Helen find herself dealing with an ex that won't leave her alone. When he starts to become obsessive and wants to take revenge, she needs to use all resources available to her.
Amy: She is her own worst enemy and spends all of her time thinking the worst, at the same time as trying to start a successful relationship.
Vanessa: The oldest of all of the characters, and also the toughest and wisest. She finds herself with the fate of a young Nigerian girl in her hands.
Zara: The young Nigerian girl in Vanessa's care. She does not speak any English  but she has a secret to share.


From these descriptions of the characters, we can see that the sexuality of all of these female characters is not important to their stories.

Lip Service character analysis

Lip Service

Lip service was a fictional show focusing on the interwoven love lives of a group of Scottish lesbian women. It is aimed at all audiences aged 16-34. This audience is key to the topic of homosexuality because they are the two ends of the spectrum of how people feel about their sexuality. Around the age of 16, people begin to experiment with their sexuality and find out who they are and by the mid 30's people are clear on who they are and are comfortable in that. Because of this, the show is viewed extremely differently by these age groups. For example, the younger audiences may use TV shows such as lip service as a guide and a help to who they should be whereas older audiences will just use these shows as a source of entertainment or a look into the lives of homosexuals on TV.

Frankie is a very emotionally guarded character. She is seen as the 'butch lesbian' type although she still possesses feminine qualities. Her representation is skewed at times when we see her clearly showing feelings for her ex. This reverts the original perception we have of her, and changes our opinion. Using her persona, I aim to create a character that represents her feminine, emotional side as well as her 'butch' closed off personality, all in an image.
Through doing this, I will be representing a number of stereotypes in one, effectively creating an 'all-in-one' image, merging stereotypes and not keeping them separate from each other.

Tess is a character whom is represented more as a typical girl with relationship and life problems rather than being represented primarily a lesbian. Her appearance tends to subvert the usual lesbian stereotype because she has a feminine dress sense. However, she also dresses with a quirky style, therefore conforming to this stereotype. She does not have any kind of 'butch' features or characteristics which makes her easy to represent as an average emotional women with no bottled-up emption to show in an image.

Channel specific posters- E4

In this post I will be analysing the conventions of existing E4 posters.

In the E4 Brand Guidelines, it is stated that the E4 logo should be placed in the bottom right-hand corner with at least 10mm of space around it when used alone and should produced at a minimum of 8mm in height, but there is no maximum. When used with tape, the two parts must form a unit, with the logo placed over one or both pieces of the tape on either end, and may be placed anywhere on the page. 

As seen in these first two posters, the characters are always a main focal point and the photo is usually centred.

This poster has a large picture of the comedian placed in the centre of the page in full focus. He is addressing the audience with direct eye contact in the image. The colours are very bright and artificial which gives the poster a 'fun' feel and appeals to a younger audience. The vibrant colours instantly catch your attention and make the poster aesthetically pleasing. The comedian is fairly well known for being eccentric and different, which makes the artificiality of the images quite amusing. The tape and the logo are quite smooth and prominent on the page, making them easy to notice.

This is a poster for the popular teen drama 'Skins'. The colours in this poster are darker and more dull, which makes the poster more sinister. The ripped wallpaper in the background makes the scene very uneasy and gives us the impression that they are maybe somewhere they shouldn't be, perhaps in some kind of abandoned house. This suggests the rebellious nature of teenagers in today's society. The logo and tape of this poster are more dull in colour compared to the previous poster and they are placed slightly further towards the right of the page, making the image of the people in the background the focal point. The logo and tape are also more dishevelled than the Noel Fielding poster, suggesting the genre and themes of the show to be more serious and slightly dodgy.

This poster is different from the others because it doesn't use any image of the cast. The poster is for a show called 'PhoneShop'. They used the slogan 'The future's not very bright' on this poster which was amusing to audiences that knew the Orange Mobile slogan of 'The future's bright'. This instantly gives the show comedic value because it is using a brand that is very well known by the public. Again, because of the genre, the tape and logo are very bright and prominent on the poster.