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This Day Tonight: Using visual language to represent status

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Reporter interviews elderly lady in street
This Day Tonight: Using visual language to represent status

SUBJECTS:  English, History

YEARS:  9–10


Have you ever felt judged because of where you live?

This clip from 1967 explores the reactions of residents to a survey that ranks Melbourne's suburbs. But is this clip as guilty as the survey for reinforcing particular views of these places? You be the judge.


Things to think about

  1. 1.Consider the idea that social prestige can come from living in a particular suburb. Do you agree that certain places have higher status than others? If so, what factors determine status? Where does our understanding of why some places are more desirable than others come from?
  2. 2.Create a table to compare the audio and visual language used when exploring Toorak, Fitzroy and St Albans. For each suburb, note: what is shown in the opening shot the environment portrayed in subsequent shots background noise settings where interviews take place clothing and speech of interviewees reaction of interviewees to their suburb's ranking.
  3. 3.Do you think this clip encourages viewers to see Toorak and Fitzroy in particular ways? Consider the use of audio and visual language. Compare the representation of St Albans with that of those two suburbs. Describe in detail the representations of these three suburbs.
  4. 4.Imagine you are a resident of one of the suburbs in the clip. Write a letter to the producers of 'This Day Tonight' to suggest how they could represent your suburb without using stereotypes.



Date of broadcast: 16 Oct 1967


Copyright

Metadata © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia Ltd 2012 (except where otherwise indicated). Digital content © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). Video © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). All images copyright their respective owners. Text © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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