Yours, Mine, and Ours: Analyzing posts of other classmates

The purpose of this assignment was to get us as media critics to explore the perspectives of our classmates. Each person will view a text’s cultural impact differently due to the various backgrounds we come from and experiences we have had. By reading through the textual analyses of others, we as media critics are challenged to expand our views to include other interpretations of texts. After reading three different blog posts, two of which were on the same show, I found that there truly is a difference in how each of us interpret texts, but that we all structure our analyses under the same umbrella. When I say that our analyses are under the same umbrella, I am referring to the methods of analysis. Most of the blogs applied a narrative analysis, more specifically Prop’s Eight Character roles to provide an explanation of the text’s impact on our society. In my own blog post I used this method to break apart the character types and their impacts in the show Haven. In Emma and Katrina’s posts they analyzed the television show The Big Bang Theory but approached their analyses from two different arenas. Emma focused more on the character roles while Katrina spent more time analyzing the genre of the show and how that determines the types of situations and behaviors show in the television text. This assignment taught me that while we may be looking at the same text there are numerous ways in which we can analyze its impact on our culture and that as media critics we must remain cognizant of these different types in order ot fully critique media’s cultural and societal impact.

Comment to Taylor

I loved how in depth you went on introducing the topic of the blog post and how you broke down each definition and approach in such a way that made it easy for the reader to grasp the concept. The addition of explaining the cultural diamond as a way to introduce the approach you would use for the analysis was useful in giving the reader a full understanding of how many different approaches there are for studying media criticism. One of the best parts of your blog post in my opinion was the detailed description of Prop’s 8 Character types. The video you attached to the blog that described Prop’s method of narrative analysis was useful to your blog post because it offered additional descriptions of the analysis method to those we learned in class. The way in which you described the character roles of each person on Lizzie McGuire gave the reader a clear understanding of their personality and how their actions fit the description of one of Prop’s Eight character types. The only suggestion I would make is that you offer more of a conclusion to the post. The last paragraph felt like it began to tie everything back together but as the reader I would have liked to see you expand more on how a narrative analysis using Prop’s 8 Character types helps an individual’s understanding of media criticism and its importance to our society.

Comment to Emma

First, I want to say how much I love the layout and design of your blog. Everything was easy to read and follow along which made understanding your discussion points even easier. What I loved most about your posts is the detail in which you introduced yourself and the concepts. For your analysis of the How I Met Your Mother episode I found the addition of the article to be useful in helping the reader understand more about the overall narrative of the television show. By allowing the reader to read through the article on their own it helped us understand the breakdown of the character roles. I loved the connection you made between the behavior of a character an individual identifies with and their actions in real life as an example of how important it is for us to have a critical lens on the media. One comment I would make in regards to what could have been expanded upon or added to the post would be to further explain the term critical media pedagogy. The explanation given was good, but I felt like you could have given more detail on the term and what its role is in our studies. Overall, it was a great post and gave me a new perspective of the narrative analysis and the show How I Met Your Mother.

Comment to Katrina

I think you did a really good job at giving an in depth analysis of the text you chose in the first blog post and in your response post to the movie about Disney. The introduction to media criticism could have been more in depth in my opinion. I like that you gave the definition of media criticism in class, but I think that giving the reader your interpretation or understanding of the concept would have made it easier for us to read the rest of the post through your critical media lens. That is not to say I miss your own opinion, because as we learned, media criticism is not opinion, but the way in which you understand what media criticism is will shape how you use the methods of analysis and therefore structure your analysis of the text. One thing I liked about your post was that you took the time to explain your text not just by what it is about but by the type of text it is. The description of “sitcom” you gave the reader helped us to understand the purpose of these types of texts and allowed us to draw our own conclusions about that genre’s role in our culture.

After completing this exercise I found that reviewing the critiques of classmates to be very beneficial in my understanding of the concepts we have learned in class thus far. Exposure to other viewpoints is something I find to be key in understanding more about our society since everyone comes from different backgrounds, each analysis of a text will be done through a different lens. While most of the methods of analysis we use to analyze texts position us to focus on the same aspect of a text, the experience and knowledge of each individual will bring some new perspective to the text. As we study media criticism I find that the recognition of different viewpoints is key because it sheds further light on how the media texts a person is exposed to leads to the socialization of ideologies and practices in our culture.

The Mickey Mouse Monopoly film response

Last Wednesday I was babysitting a six year old girl. During the seven hours I was with her, she had three temper tantrums, each of which would end with her handing me a dime after saying she’s sorry and hopes I don’t tell her dad. After she had gone to bed and the dad came home he asked me how things went like usual. Despite the thirty cents given to me throughout the night, I told the dad about her attempt at bribery and returned the dimes. At first, his initial response shocked me; he said “I wonder where she learned that, maybe in a movie? But we monitor what Disney movies she watches so I don’t get where she picked that up.” I thought it was odd that the father would correlate bad behavior to something she learned in a Disney movie, but after watching The Mickey Mouse Monopoly, I have a bit of a different perspective.

The documentary showed the underlying themes hidden in Disney movies and their affects on young viewers. Before watching the film, I was not blissfully unaware of the negative side effects of watching Disney movies. The majority of my knowledge came from a Gender and Communications class therefore most of it was about the false images of beauty rather than looking at the big picture like the documentary shows.

Expanding on what I already knew of Disney’s impact on the creation of gender identities and norms, the film showed how the relationships shown in the film represent types of abusive relationships. The most obvious of which is in Beauty and the Beast. The film gives the overall messages that as women we should not give up on the controlling, over bearing, verbally abusive man but rather we should stick with him and try to bring out the good in him. This correlates to a stereotype about women in our culture today that we look for men that we can try to fix, that they are our personal project to turn into a gentleman. Personally, this trend has always irritated me because when I think of relationships I don’t think of them as me willingly agreeing to spend my time trying to correct the behavior of a grown man, nor do I see myself accepting verbal and potentially other forms of abuse and brushing it off as part of the project.

Another example of the poor messages Disney sends out can be found in both The Little Mermaid and Aladdin. Both princesses in these films resort to allowing their bodies to do the speaking for them. In The Little Mermaid, Ariel sells her voice to Ursula essentially leaving her body as the only thing to drawn in her prince. Jasmine from Aladdin, on the other hand uses her body as a way to manipulate a man into doing something she wanted. The depictions of these female characters as well as other princess characters represent perpetuate the societal perception of females as sexualized, seductive, and petite. Themes like this one are so detrimental to out culture as a whole because rather than pointing them out for their inaccuracy and misrepresentation, we celebrate the franchise and expose the formative minds of young children to them allowing for yet another generation to foster the stereotypes.
Aside from the misrepresentations of gender, Disney movies feature culturally insensitive stereotypes of minorities. The most shocking example revealed in the film comes from Tarzan. In the original film released in 1918, exhibited clear racism between the main character and the supporting roles played by African Americans. In the remake of the movie in 1999, all African American characters were removed from the film. Instead the movie featured a supporting cast of apes who exhibited behavior that related to common stereotypes about African Americans. When the narrator is explaining how this change in character contributed to racial stereotypes and the impact it had I was taken aback. In explaining the film, it proposes a question to viewers. When a movie set in Africa is featured without African American characters but presents stereotypes through the ape characters, what message will this send to young African viewers? Who will the young children relate to in the film? The answer is the apes, which highlights a highly insulting and derogatory stereotype.

The presentation of race in Disney films is honestly disturbing in my opinion. In almost every movie there are stereotypical characters that act out misrepresentations of minorities. In The Lion King, the hyenas also feature behavior indicative of African American stereotypes. Latino characters are often shown doing something morally wrong as well as being treated in a lesser way by other characters in the film. The question of whether or not racism such as the instances listed above were intentional or not often comes up with this debate. Ultimately though, it does not matter whether or not the writers intentionally used cultural stereotypes to form characters. The bottom line is that the stereotypes are present and are harmful to our culture and race relations.

It is no secret that young children have sponge like minds, they absorb what they see therefore what is shown to them should be highly scrutinized. Just like the father I babysit for admitted, he monitors what Disney movies his young daughter watches because he is aware of the negative underlying messages sent through the film. The Mickey Mouse Monopoly breaks down the image of innocence that the Disney industry worked so hard to create and monopolize. The disruption of Disney’s sunny and perfect image is hard for some devout fans of the industry to accept, but it is important to become aware of the weight the messages in these movies play. As with all criticism of media texts, the uncovering of the messages must be done so that we can understand the source of cultural norms and stereotypes that contribute to the socialization of an individual.

The Ins and Outs of Media Criticism

Hi everyone! Welcome to my media criticism blog! For my first blog post I am going to give you a little insight on myself, the course, what media criticism is, why it is needed, and how to apply it to everyday texts. That sounds like a lot of information all at once, but I promise I won’t bore you.

However, that last statement above might not apply to this paragraph (sorry!) but I will do my best to make things interesting. First things first, my name is Bridget and I am a senior this year, working towards a major in Communications and minor in Mass Communications. More often than not I can be found sitting on my couch with my cat watching endless amounts of crime/mystery shows like Law and Order: SUV, Castle, Bones, The Following, the list goes on, but I am also a sucker for a good comedy. Golden Girls, The Nanny, the League, Friends, How I Met Your Mother, anything along those lines are guaranteed to suck me into watching an hour (or more) worth of episodes.

I was excited to take the this Media Criticism class because it combined one of my favorite things, TV, with academics and pretty much allows me to justify all of my binge watching behavior as research. In the course we will cover a wide variety of texts and apply theory and practice to them in order to greater understand their social and cultural impact. When we use the word text in this class and when I use it in future blog posts, it is not meant to refer to just the written word. In media criticism we use “text” as an umbrella term for books, magazines, advertisements, movies, tv shows, music videos, music, etc. Anything we can apply theories such as structuralism, semiotics, and narrative criticism is considered a text.

By the end of the course the goal is to have developed a new lens in which we view texts. The theories and practices we learn in class are meant to change our view of texts from simply that, a text, to a deeper societal and cultural artifact that play a role in the socialization of individuals and perpetuation of cultural themes. It is for that very reason that studying media critically is important to our understanding of our culture and society. For example, many of us may not realize the deeper implications a perfume ad has, such as its ability to trigger subconscious awareness of sexuality, those with a critical media lens are able to analyze and understand the impact the ad will have on society.

Now lets take a break on the technical terms and theoretical notions for a moment. Lets move on to a fun topic like favorite TV shows! Borrowing from one of my favorite shows and one I feel like most of us have seen, lets take a look at an episode of Friends for our example. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Friends was a sitcom that aired in the 90s that showed the friendship between six friends in their late twenties living in New York City. One of my favorite things about the show was that it appealed to such a wide audience. Friends was a show that found an audience in multiple generations, for the younger ones, the comedic behavior of Joey and Phoebe caught their eye, teenagers and those in their twenties were caught up stories of hapless first dates to the relationships between main characters, and finally for the generations above, the entire show was relatable and was a great escape from real life. Since the show had viewers in all walks of life, the impact it had on values and our culture varied. Some of the values that the show presented were the importance of friendship and providing support for those close to you. Additionally, the show was a great example of what our culture was like at the time from popular movies and music, to fashion trends, views on relationships, and major events.

Now that I’ve given you brief overview of what media criticism is and why you should care about it, we are going to go a little bit more in-depth. There are many different approaches an individual can take in analyzing a media text. My favorite is the narrative analysis approach. The technical definition given in class describes it as:

“ Systematic study of texts and how they are structured into a case and effect chain of events with a beginning, middle, and end”

The definition is great, but doesn’t exactly put the concept into easy terms. I found this video helpful in breaking down the definition into various parts with an example provided for each. Plus, the narrator has a British accent and that always makes things more fun. You can also check out the “Overview” section in an excerpt from the book, The Handbook of Narrative Analysis and find some more info about the approach!

Within this approach we find three common assumptions that show the importance of narrative analysis. The first states that we use stories to make sense of our lives, others, and the vast world around us. Basically, and this is my interpretation, this assumption is saying that we use the narratives found in media texts as a guidebook for how to handle life. The second assumption adds another chapter to the “guidebook” metaphor, this time focusing on how the stories we find in texts help us organize our experiences into a coherent structure so that we can make sense of them. So, watching a TV show that shows how someone would recover from an embarrassing experience might help the viewer then process his or her own cringe-worthy moment. Finally, the third assumption says coherence is created through a chain of events and use of common themes or paradigms. So those moments shown in the TV that give us ideas on how to deal with parts of life are useful give us a play by play of events and reactions to help process what is happening.

You might be scratching your head right now asking, what does that all mean? Well if you’re anything like me, having an example makes understanding concepts a lot simpler; so here we go.

To make things even easier, I am going to take a page out of Vladimir Propp’s book and apply his 8 Roles or Spheres of action to an episode from the Syfy TV show Haven. The specific episode that I am going to focus on is called “Magic Hour: Part 2” and reveals the killer that the main character has been searching for throughout the whole season. Here is the breakdown of the 8 Roles of Action for the episode

• The villain- for most of the episode the identity of the killer known as the Bolt Gun killer remains unknown, the only information the detective has is that he has committed multiple murders in the small town of Haven
• The hero- Audrey Parker, the detective that has the unique ability to remove the “troubles” or supernatural abilities from people in the town
• The donor- The characters Vince and Dave Teague who run the Haven newspaper serve as the source for most of Audrey’s information on the town’s history and about the townspeople that help her connect evidence to suspects (usually those with the “troubles”)
• The (magical) helper- Duke Crocker acts as Audrey’s sidekick in searching for the unnamed killer
• The princess- In this, it is the other detective Nathan Wuornos, who was taken by the Bolt Gun killer and is being held hostage somewhere in the town
• Her father- The way the episode progresses it is shown that Nathan, also classified as the princess, is the father in that he rewards the hero, Audrey, for rescuing him
• The dispatcher- In this scenario this dispatcher is actually the hero herself. When Audrey becomes aware that Nathan has been taken she begins her investigation and search for him.
• The false hero/anti-hero: The false hero is actually the Bolt Gun Killer who is revealed to be someone with a “trouble” that allows him or her to take on the appearance of another. The killer chose to take on the appearance of Tommy Bowen, the detective that came to the town looking for his missing partner. He chose this man because it allowed him to be part of the investigation with Det. Parker and Duke

So what does all this mean? What is the point of taking something made for simple enjoyment and looking for deeper meaning in it? Here is a simple answer. All the texts we are exposed to, images, music, TV, movies, etc. all have an influence on our behavior even though you may not realize it. Since media is such a prominent aspect in our culture many of the norms we develop come from what texts tell us. The way we interact with others, how we handle disagreement or embarrassing moments, what we think of certain people or trends, are all results from being socialized by media texts. Therefore, it is important for us to unpack the media texts we view and look at them piece by piece to understand all the meaning they carry and what they bring to the viewer and their culture.

Now that you’ve had an intro to the media criticism world and have been given resources and information on an approach to analysis, go find your favorite episode of a TV show and give it a try!

Till next time!