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| Advertising and familiarity with genre constructs a narrative image to lure us to a new program |
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| Objects that are associated with characters and convey something about them (esp. sets) |
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How a line of dialogue is spoken and how a gesture is made—what the actor does that is distinguishable from the scriptwriter’s lines or the director’s positioning of the camera
-•We are not looking to evaluate or judge—just understand types of acting.
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| Four types of performance signs |
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1. Vocal: volume, pitch, timbre, rhythm
2. Facial: convey the most about character emotions.
3. Gestural: Delsarte System classified gestures into a vocabulary of meaning—not always that clear cut or universal.
4. Corporeal: the stance and bearing of an actor’s body—ties in with gestures.
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| actors or personalities whose significance extends beyond the program on which they appear. |
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*A star is like a text, a collection of meanings constructed from representations in a variety of media texts.
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| high concentration of ownership |
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| The Big Media Conglomerates |
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1.Time Warner
2.Comcast Corp.
3.Disney
4.News Corp.
5.NBC Universal
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| Turner on the media conglomerate oligopoly |
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–“The only way to survive in the current environment is to own everything up and down the media chain.”
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•Telecommunications Act of 1996
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–Cross-ownership limits rescinded – paved way for conglomeration
–Ownership limits rescinded or relaxed – paved way for media giants
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•3 negative outcomes from focusing on profits:
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–Loss of quality
•Examples?
• (some outside of the media?)
–Loss of localism
•Examples?
–Loss of democratic debate
•McChesney’s idea
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| preserves most of the original image, but shrinks it. |
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| selects the most significant part of the frame by scanning left and right, and eliminates the rest. Affects both camera movement and editing. |
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•Includes all the objects in front of the camera and their arrangement by directors and their staff.
•Setting, costuming, lighting and actor movement.
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Narrative Studio Set Design:
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the main function is to house characters engaged in a story.
•Sets also signify narrative meaning to the viewer.•Most have no ceilings because lighting is done from above.
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•Sets are normally wider than they are deep; rectangular rather than square.
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•Setting often determines story and theme, rather than vice versa.
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•Costume is one of the first aspects of a character that we notice.
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•We build expectations based on clothing.
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| Four Basic Properties of Light |
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Definition
1. & 2. Lighting Direction and Intensity: the most significant detail is the direction in which the light is shining.
3. Lighting color: color is produced by placing a filter or gel in front of a light source
4. Lighting Diffusion:
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•Soft light used to make actors look younger or more vulnerable.
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| makes characters seem sinister. |
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| the set is evenly lit—achieved by making the fill lights stronger. Used by talk shows, game shows, soap operas, and sitcoms—usually because several cameras are shooting at the same time. |
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| there is high contrast between bright and dark areas—the key light is quite strong. Used on TV to signify criminals, the supernatural, mystery and suspense. |
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| Two Parts to Every Narrative |
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1.The story: what happens to whom.
2.The discourse: how the story is told
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| the schedule: how the story and discourse are affected by the text’s placement within the larger discourse of the station’s schedule. |
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| the events that actively contribute to the story’s progression and/or open up options. |
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| those events that are more routine or minor |
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•Stories are governed by a set of unwritten rules to ensure the viewer understands the stories, you must use certain shared conventions.
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| the viewer’s sense of the organizing force behind the world of the show (usually a construct). |
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| person speaking aloud that chooses, orders, presents, tells the narrative (can be images and/or sounds). Can be inside or outside of the story. |
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| : the unspecified you to whom the narrator speaks (may be studio audience, talk show host, or news anchor) |
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| a construct, someone who is interested in the message. |
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| : Not necessarily at the beginning of the film; may begin in media res. |
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•The historical nonrepresentation or underrepresentation of specific groups by the media as a result of the decisions by those in power at media outlets.
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| Why does media representation matter? |
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Definition
| It is in social and cultural institutions like TV that specific representations are generated and circulated as silent and not so silent norms to millions of viewers the world over. |
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| Does TV hold a mirror up to nature or reality? |
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Definition
•Nature is not simply waiting out there to be reflected—it is not simply knowable—it’s already humanly and socially constructed.
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•TV holds up a fun house mirror to society.
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Definition
•TV is selective about what it chooses to represent and how
.–It largely ignores whole segments of society that it supposedly reflects.
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Term
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a social and cultural construction based on biological differences
•Gender is constructed through language and disseminated through social institutions
•Gender is both a product of language and something that is ingrained in our sense of self, in our subjectivity.
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Term
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•Media representations of gender have become part of our subjectivity by offering modes of understanding and representing ourselves.
•Media images confirm and make divisions between the genders seem natural.
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Definition
1.Capturing Viewer Attention: most significant function of TV sound.
2.Manipulating Viewer Understanding: sound and image support each other, sound and image contradict each other, and/or sound emphasizes elements of the image.
3.Maintaining Televisual Flow: helps viewers follow the flow of segments.
4.Maintaining Continuity within Scenes: smoothes over potential disruptions.
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Definition
Viewers who fully subscribe to ruling-class discourse interpret TV according to the preferred reading that is encoded into the message.
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Viewers fully reject the preferred reading of the text, using their own interpretation.
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| The most common—permits the dominant discourse to set the ideological ground rules, but modifies those rules according to personal experience |
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| Production and Political Economy |
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| : stresses the importance of analyzing cultural texts within their system of production and distribution. |
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| How cultural meanings convey specific ideologies of gender, race, class, sexuality, nation and other ideological dimensions. |
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aims to illuminate why diverse audiences interpret texts in various, sometimes conflicting ways.
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| overtly political approach |
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Definition
o attempts to show how various people’s voices and experiences are silenced and omitted from mainstream culture and aims to articulate these groups’ diverse views and experiences
oPromotes a multicultural agenda
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Term
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Definition
oMay focus on how an auteur’s thematics, narrative structure and stylistic techniques are expressed in individual programs.
oMay focus on the entire career of the auteur, explaining how the program fits into the trajectory of the auteur’s work.
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oTV programs resemble one another and grouping them together provides a context for understanding the meanings of a particular program.
oHow to classify a program in a certain genre:
a. Audience response
b. Style
c. Subject matter
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oThe study of how TV is produced by studios and networks and shaped by economic pressures.
oInvestigates transnational corporations’ holdings, globalization/cultural imperialism, TV’s impact on policy/public sphere, and the economic impact of new technology.
oAlso looks at government regulation.
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oDominant ideology: a system of beliefs about the world that benefits and supports a society’s ruling class.
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othe ruling class ideology has become so pervasive that even the people outside the ruling class absorb its values as truth.
oA society’s ideology consists of many conflicting sets of meanings (discourses). The dominant discourse is taken for granted and is seen as a commonsense explanation of the world.
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| Examines women’s roles on TV, female TV viewers, and gender more broadly. |
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§TV is dense, rich and complex, not impoverished.
§Audiences make meaning by selecting that which touches experience and personal history.
§Only so rich a text could attract a mass audience in a complex culture.
§This “forum” offers a perspective that is as complex, as contradictory and confused as American culture is in experience.
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Quality of TV: many meanings.
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–3 properties of polysemy:
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§A. ANY portion of the flow can be viewed as a text.
§B. TV emphasizes some meanings and ignores others.
§C. Discourses between VIEWER and the TEXT collide!!!
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