Difference between revisions of "TCF 311 Exam 3"

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==Review questions==
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[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mjsVYGvm5ntujL_ER6ox41Pk_-iUel2xiGxGAluSvyw/edit Click here to submit a review question.]
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==[[Television Studies: An Overview (Discussion)]]==
 
==[[Television Studies: An Overview (Discussion)]]==
  

Revision as of 18:07, 8 December 2011

Review questions

Click here to submit a review question.

Television Studies: An Overview (Discussion)

Mass-comm methods vs. television-studies methods

To understand the difference between empirical and critical methods, we need to look at their basic principles and presumptions. The class will be divided into mass-comm researchers and television-studies theorists for this first exercise.

Mass Comm Research Television Studies

Group 4
Explain presumptions 1-3 of the MC method. Provide examples to illustrate your points.

Group 2
Explain presumptions 4-6 of the MC method. Provide examples to illustrate your points.

Group 1
Explain point-by-point how the TS method differs from presumptions 1-3 of the MC method. Provide examples to illustrate your points.

Group 3
Explain point-by-point how the TS method differs from presumptions 4-6 of the MC method. Provide examples to illustrate your points.

Design a research project of South Park.

Criteria for evaluating critical work

All groups will discuss Vande Berg, Wenner and Gronbeck's criteria for evaluating critical work--looking at one specific criterion. Apply your criterion to Kristen Warner, "'Who Gon Check Me Boo': Reality TV as a Haven For Black Women’s Affect," Flow (August 18, 2011). How well does this essay fit your criterion?

Group 1

  1. Explain what Vande Berg, Wenner and Gronbeck mean by internal consistency.

Group 2

  1. Explain what Vande Berg, Wenner and Gronbeck mean by evidence.

Group 3

  1. Explain what Vande Berg, Wenner and Gronbeck mean by cultural, critical, theoretical and practical significance.

Group 4

  1. Explain what Vande Berg, Wenner and Gronbeck mean by reasonableness for a critical interpretation.

Bibliography

  1. Butler, Jeremy G. Television: Critical Methods and Applications. NY: Routledge, 2011.

Genre Study (Discussion)

Television on genre

Group 2: What dilemma do genre scholars face when trying to define a genre? Explain the theoretical way of escaping that dilemma and the historical way of escaping it. Within your group, conduct a survey to determine what its "cultural consensus" is for the definition of the sitcom. You may wish to refer to sitcoms we've seen in class.

Group 3: Genres may be defined based on their stylistic schema. Explain that phrase and how it might be used to define a genre. Provide an example.

Group 4: Genres may be defined by their subject matter--specifically, their narrative structure. Explain how Kaminsky and Mahan articulate the police show's narrative structure. Does the episode of Dragnet we watched support their argument?

Group 1: Genres may be defined by their subject matter--specifically, their themes. Explain the "binary oppositions" (thematic structure) that Hurd finds in the police show. Does the episode of Dragnet we watched support their argument?

Jason Mittell on Dragnet and genre

Mittell writes that he wants to explore "how 'the generic categories of police show, documentary, film noir, and radio crime drama were all activated within and around the program. Dragnet not only drew upon these categories in its textual conventions, formal properties, and encoded meanings, but also in its larger cultural circulation in the 1950s and 1960s, activating discourses of generic definition, interpretation, and evaluation." (124)

Group 2: Mittell links the semi-documentary genre with Dragnet. What key connections does he see there?

Group 3: According to the Mittell chapter, how might Dragnet fit into a stylistic schema? (Hint: his term, "formal," refers to stylistic aspects of television.) For example, how does Mittell interpret the acting style of Dragnet and its "line editing"?

Group 4: What narrative pattern does Mittell see in Dragnet? How does it compare/contrast with the Kaminsky and Mahan model?

Group 1: How does Mittell apply the idea of oppositions? What is his point about "mediating figures"? Does this Dragnet episode support his argument? How does this fit with Hurd's notion of binary oppositions?

All groups

  1. List two strength(s) of genre analysis. List two weaknesses of this approach.

Bibliography

  1. Jeremy G. Butler, Television: Critical Methods and Applications (NY: Routledge, 2011).
  2. Jason Mittell, Genre and Television: From Cop Show to Cartoons in American Culture (NY: Routledge, 2004).

External links

Semiotics (Discussion)

Group 3

  • Explain C. S. Pierce's "indexical sign" (aka, index) in terms of the relationship of "signifier" and "signified." What examples of it are provided in Television and Channels of Discourse? What would be two examples of it that are not mentioned in the textbooks?

Group 4

  • Explain C. S. Pierce's "iconic sign" (aka, icon) in terms of the relationship of "signifier" and "signified." What examples of it are provided in Television and Channels of Discourse? What would be two examples of it that are not mentioned in the textbooks?

Group 1

  • Explain C. S. Pierce's "symbolic sign" (aka, symbol) in terms of the relationship of "signifier" and "signified." What examples of it are provided in Television and Channels of Discourse? What would be two examples of it that are not mentioned in the textbooks?

Group 2

  • Explain the semiotic principle of syntagmatic structure. What examples of it are provided in Television and Channels of Discourse? What would be one example of it that is not mentioned in the textbooks?

All groups

  1. Define "denotation" and "connotation." What does semiotician Roland Barthes mean by the term, "myth"?
    • What are the denotations and connotations of the Wonder Years' opening montage?
      1. Denotations: List/identify as many of the images as you can.
        1. Robert Kennedy
        2. Martin Luther King, J.
        3. John Lennon & Yoko Ono
        4. Nixon & Agnew
        5. Man on the moon
        6. Mexico Olympics, 1968
        7. Munich Olympics, 1972
        8. Class photo
        9. Hippie van (Wavy Gravy)--Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
        10. Kent State Vietnam War protest (2)
        11. Baseball -- "Miracle" Mets
        12. Boy at blackboard
        13. Girl on carousel
        14. Girl in grass
        15. Anti-war signs
        16. Vietnam war combat footage
  1. Ellen Seiter, in Channels of Discourse, writes, "The picture [of Fangface] itself is a syntagm. ... In the paradigmatic dimension the options are a pair of categories nature/culture (or animal/human...), which is the source of the image's meaning." She continues, "...Hodge and Trip have introduced the binary opposition (nature/culture) and proceeded to organize the elements of the television image into paradigmatic sets."
    • List three or four "paradigmatic sets" in the "Prophecy Girl" episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Refer to your list of the episode's scenes to provide specific examples.
    • Are there any "paradigmatic sets" to be found in the Wonder Years montage?
  2. List two strength(s) of semiotic/structuralist analysis. List two weaknesses of this approach (no, a difficult vocabulary does not count).

Bibliography

  1. Jeremy G. Butler, Television: Critical Methods and Applications (NY: Routledge, 2011).
  2. Ellen Seiter, "Semiotics, Structuralism and Television," in Robert C. Allen, Channels of Discourse, Reassembled, second edition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992).

External links

Ideological Criticism, Cultural Studies & Production Studies (Discussion)

Basic principles

  1. Group 4: Explain the original concept of ideology and how Marx connected it to social classes.
  2. Group 1: Explain Antonio Gramsci's (pronounced "GRAM-chee") concept of hegemony. Provide an example of hegemony in action.
  3. Group 2: Explain what the television apparatus is and Stuart Hall's theory of media encoding.
  4. Group 3: Explain Stuart Hall's theory of media decoding.
  5. All Groups: Explain John Fiske's idea of discourse. Using The Beverly Hillbillies episode we viewed for specifics: How would you describe the "hillbilly" discourse and how it conflicts with the "Beverly Hills" discourse?

Decoding (or reading) a text

Group 4

  1. Perform a dominant-hegemonic decoding of My So-Called Life. What would be the result of your reading in terms of representations of gender and sexuality, ethnicity, and youth (vs. middle age)?
  2. How could your reading be restated using Morley's notion of discourses encountering one another?

Group 2

  1. Perform a oppositional decoding of My So-Called Life. What would be the result of your reading in terms of representations of gender and sexuality, ethnicity, and youth (vs. middle age)?
  2. How could your reading be restated using Morley's notion of discourses encountering one another?

Group 1

  1. Perform a negotiated decoding of My So-Called Life. What would be the result of your reading in terms of representations of gender and sexuality, ethnicity, and youth (vs. middle age)?
  2. How could your reading be restated using Morley's notion of discourses encountering one another?

Group 3

  1. What do you feel is the preferred reading of this episode? What is the preferred reading in terms of representations of gender and sexuality, ethnicity, and youth (vs. middle age)? ("Hall and others often presume that the preferred reading encoded on the text by the television apparatus will be from the dominant position," but in this case it probably is not.)

John Caldwell and production studies

To understand how the society and culture of the television industry, Caldwell looks both at "texts" associated with the industry and at the interaction of actual television-producing humans. Explain what he means by each of the following "critical industrial practices" and provide at least two examples of such practices and the meanings associated with them:

  • All groups: Define production culture. How is what Caldwell is advocating different from earlier television ethnographers like the CCCS group?
  • Group 4: Deep texts
  • Group 1: Emic interpretations
  • Group 2: Critical industrial geographies
  • Group 3: Liminal industrial rituals

Bibliography

  1. Butler, Jeremy G. Television: Critical Methods and Applications. Mahweh, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007.
  2. John Caldwell, “Cultural Studies of Media Production: Critical Industrial Practices,” in Questions of Method in Cultural Studies, eds. Mimi White and James Schwoch (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006).

Discourse & Identity I & II (Discussion)

Television emphasizes four components of feminism:

  1. "Image of women" feminist criticism
  2. gendered viewing
  3. gender identity
  4. third-wave feminism

Group 1: Explain the basic principles of the "image-of-women" approach to analyzing TV. If you were an analyst using that approach, what would you have to say about the episodes of Designing Women and The Real World and the Justify My Love music video?

Group 2: Explain the basic principles of the "gendered viewing" approach to analyzing TV. If your group were using that approach, what would you have to say about the episodes of Designing Women and The Real World and the Justify My Love music video? How would you analyze the actual viewing of these television texts last week? Use your group itself as a test case.

Group 3: Explain the basic principles of the "gender identity" approach to analyzing TV, specifically Judith Butler's idea of gender identity as "performative." If you were an analyst using that approach, what examples of this would you draw from the episodes of Designing Women and The Real World and the Justify My Love music video? That is, cite an example of women performing gender roles in each of these three television texts.

Group 4: How was the Thomas-Hill controversy a key to the rise of "third wave feminism"? Explain its basic principles and how it differs from the second-wave feminism. How might third-wave feminism apply to TV analysis? If you were an analyst using that approach, what would you have to say about the episodes of Designing Women and The Real World and the Justify My Love music video?

Casts

Real World

  • Julie
  • Heather
  • Becky
  • Andre
  • Norman
  • Kevin
  • Eric

Designing Women

  • Anthony Bouvier (Meshach Taylor)
  • Mary Jo Shively (Annie Potts)
  • Allison Sugarbaker (Julia Duffy)
  • Carlene Frazier Dobber (Jan Hooks)
  • Julia Sugarbaker (Dixie Carter)

All groups

  1. Ann Kaplan writes, the video for “Justify My Love” “forces the spectator to question the boundaries of gender constructs and the cultural constraints on sexual themes and sexual fantasies" (Television, p. 417). Explain. Do you agree or disagree?

http://www.tcf.ua.edu/tvcritgallery/var/resizes/chapter13/Fig13-14_justifymylove_000013.jpg

Bibliography

  1. Jeremy G. Butler, Television: Critical Methods and Applications (NY: Routledge, 2011).

External links

Discourse & Identity III (Discussion)

To study race and ethnicity, certain key terms/concepts must be understood. Be prepared to define the following:

  • Group 2: essentialism, racial formation
  • Group 3: assimilationist discourse
  • Group 4: pluralist discourse
  • Group 1: multiculturalist discourse

Girlfriends

Beretta Smith-Shomade (pronounced "show-ma-day") examines "four intertwined elements in television comedy that define and give meaning to Black women's representation there: work roles, characterization, class, and identity" (48). Each group should discuss the key aspects of these elements and apply Smith-Shomade's analysis of 1990s sitcoms to Girlfriends (2000-2008):

  • Group 3: work and class
  • Group 4: identity: language
  • Group 1: identity: skin shade
  • Group 2: identity: hair
  • All groups: characterization (i.e., conventional roles and stereotypes)
  • All groups: Place Smith-Shomade's analysis within the context of the study of race and ethnicity. How would you characterize her approach to the sitcom?

Cast

  • William Dent (Reggie Hayes)
  • Toni Childs (Jill Marie Jones)
  • Maya Wilkes (Golden Brooks)
  • Joan Clayton (Tracee Ellis Ross)
  • Lynn Searcy (Persia White)

Bibliography

  1. Jeremy G. Butler, Television: Critical Methods and Applications (NY: Routledge, 2011).
  2. Beretta E. Smith-Shomade, “Laughing Out Loud: Negras Negotiating Situation Comedy,” Shaded Lives: African-American Women and Television (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 24-68.

External links

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