ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship between representation and identity. It also explores the complex issue of how media representations operate to reflect and/or produce reality and the resultant impact on the society in which they operate. There are a number of debates about how the media represents or re-presents reality, and a number of theories drawn from the disciplines of psychology, linguistics and media and cultural studies which seek to explain the relationship between the mass media and society. The relationship between the Beatles and their audience, both at the time and retrospectively, is a key aspect of this work, as is the ways in which audiences related to their representation of masculinity and read the Beatles as men in particular ways. The chapter ends with a discussion of the Beatles on film and the ways in which the films allow a reading of changing representations of men and masculinity across 'the sixties'.
