MS10 Midterm
intertextual vs. extratextual
: Intratextually/ Zooey Deschanel—> quirky, cute, hipster in roles; Extratexually/ Johnny Depp—> professional weirdo
TV & multiple plotlines
A Plot": primary conflict (most screen time) usually with lead character; "B Plot" "C Plot": secondary conflicts ("subplots") usually with secondary characters
Mirror Views
A medium reflects society and its interests; mirrors major social change
values of encoding/decoding
All messages have more than 1 potential meaning; Producers cannot close off all decoding/ Must attempt to make meaning as clear as possible; experiences and ideological beliefs color our decodings/struggle with getting people's ideological agreement
Celebrity economics
Celebrity is an industrial function; encourage consumers to buy a new product by offering something familiar and appealing
two hybrid production logics
Combination of forms (ex. newspapers = commodities and ad supported); Economies of scope (selling a product across multiple revenue "windows" and logic)
four media production logics
Commodities~ paid in full by consumers/ One time sale~ consumers keep product; Turnstile media~ sell access to content/Consumer "pays admission the gate"/ Admission may only cover some of the costs; Ad-supported media~ "free" to consumer/Advertisers pay cost of media in exchange for access to consumers ("impressions"); Microtransactions~ lots of little payments/often manifests as free to use + optional "premium" options
Dominant ideology
Elites have the power to shape ideology through institutional control; Controls the messages of who gets to do what
critiques of the Frankfurt School
Elitist defense of high culture;Greater media choice today; Multiple motivations behind production; Doesn't account for~innovation, Failure, Subcultures
eight advertising persuasive strategies
Famous person testimonial, Plain Folks Pitch, Snob Appeal, Association principle, Bandwagon, Hidden Fear appeal, Irritation advertising, Shock Advertising
criticisms of encoding/decoding
Few perfectly dominant or oppositional readings; More about a continuum of dominance to oppositional; Works better for directly ideological texts over scripted ones; Less equipped to deal with media texts that have more ambiguities; Multiple motivations behind production/encoding; Collapses motivation into one single narrative
characteristics of consumer culture
Focus on accumulating consumer goods as an expression of identity and "free choice"; Products for a massive, anonymous audience; Encourages insatiable consumer desire; Tradition and heritage become "lifestyle" and experimenting with the "latest thing"; Represents status over function; appearance and taste becoming crucial ways of valuing yourself and others
pop culture analysis
How people use and interpret media; Concerned with meaning at consumption, not producer intentions; The meaning making process turns mass culture into popular culture
relevant fantasy (Fiske)
Ideological meaning behind a star text is more important than the product they produce; Less interested in the way their product appears, but how they appear; Interpreted for values and beliefs about the world
advantages of content convergence
Maintains their attention across media ; Collects two kinds of viewers~large + highly engaged loyal; By requiring viewers to use multiple media, they are exposed to even more ads
Incorporation
Mass culture scans popular culture for tastes/interests it can commodify
Hall's circuit model of communication
Meaning is shaped in multiple stages; Audience participates in meaning making; Each stage generates meaning and impacts the others; Producers cannot fully control meaning
cultural studies
Media changes society and society changes media; Avoid analyses that divorce media from industry; Not just study media texts but the contexts too (tech. Contexts and influence of promotion); Allows us to recognize industry, culture, and everyday life are interrelated
why study media?
Media saturates our everyday lives and rhythms; Media evolves over time/always in a state of growth; Media serves a commercial function and attempt to persuade us to spend money; Media influences and circulates information; Media prompts us to compare ourselves to media representation
Dystopian views
Passive and addictive; Exploitative and formulaic; Consumerist/ Exists solely as a mean to deliver us to advertising; directly harmful to individuals and society
Celebrity
Person who attracts attention to such a degree that their life and personality are of public interest; Only a celebrity if inspired to explore their private life; Both the workers and the product; cultural and economic products
popular culture & immediacy
Pop culture texts do not stand the test of time aka throwaways; Fiske argues that this is not a negative; popular culture is tied to immediate social conditions; Represent the public's current interests, immediate values and concerns
Excorporation
Popular culture scans mass culture for resources it can appropriate
criticisms of popular culture
Populist celebration~romanticizes resistance and ideological manipulation; Popular culture spreads repressive representations as well; Validates dominant/commercial interests; Audiences can be active, but that doesn't mean they're powerful
Hall's encoding
Producers encode meanings through their/ Frameworks of knowledge (ideological beliefs and beliefs about audience beliefs)/ Reaffirming audience beliefs and not rocking the boat; Relation to production~needs of industry economics; Producers are usually ideologically / economically linked to hegemonic elite
cultural studies & quality
Quality is determined by cultural judgment; Embarrassment occurs when social norms/taste hierarchies are disrupted
"Realism"
Realism is measured in plausibility (this could happen to you); represent the world and what it is like; All media representations impacted by commercial concerns, creator bias, the acts of recording and editing, etc...
four ways of constructing reality TV (Kraszewski)
Selecting participants~ certain people are chosen in order to represent certain character types; Overarching and mini narrative structures; Location~ decked out house or desert island; Editing~ Thousands of hours down to 22 minutes
Mirror Critiques
Selective process of production/can't help but reflect society; Ignores agenda setting function of media; Possibility that audiences might disagree or interpret it differently
mass media industrialization
Standardization~assembly line production; Pseudo-individualism~same product hidden by a veneer of difference; Social cement~ "Psychic adjustment" to the needs of capitalism (makes us emotionally obedient)
celebrity of audience-driven
Stars are the product of audience fascination; Celebrity is tied to the public/ site for analysis and interpretation on small and large scale
technological & content convergence
Technological~personalized content through a single machine; Content~similar content available through a variety of devices
"the medium is the message" (McLuhan)
The sensory experiences of new media powerful shape our thinking; The medium itself is more important than the content
Utopian views
There's something for everyone/choice to turn it off/Media genre form can effect positive change;Publicize corruption/injustice and act as informational and educational force
Cultural studies methods
Three Prong Approach to Media; Textual Analysis/ closely examine a text and make a convincing case about the text's themes, formulas, and meaning; Audience Studies/ meaning that the audience takes away from media; surveys, listening/viewing session; Political Economy/ relationship between media and economics/politics
Hall's decoding
Three decoding positions/ Dominant/hegemonic~ accepts preferred meaning/Media reflects dominant ideology; Oppositional/Counter-hegemonic~ rejects preferred meaning in favor of alternative one/ Disagree with the message; misunderstood the message; Negotiated~ partially accepts/understands preferred meaning
Utopian Critiques
Totalizing/Need space to interrogate the weaknesses of media forms; Tend to employ the "myth of progress"; Ignores commercial interests; Ignores production hierarchies/ restrictions that keep mass media only available to very few to create; is there really something for everyone?
Dystopian Critiques
Totalizing: is it all bad?; Collapses entire media and genre telling forms into one brushing stroke;Nostalgic/Denigrate the new and pedestal the old; Elitist/solely celebrating what they like; those who have access to higher education/higher forms; Dismissive of how consumption can be active/passive dupes
Ideology
Values and beliefs that people use to make sense of the world
narrative complexity & context for experimentation
a form of TV storytelling with its own formal attributes; Cumulative~combination of episodic closure and serial accumulation; Unconventional~new and intriguing narratives and storytelling (such as nonlinear storytelling and "enigmas")
popular culture as a process
a process, not a thing or category; something that we make and circulate (social activity); Assembled from mass culture resources; The circulation of meanings, values, and pleasures; creates new understandings, identities, experiences, and pleasure from mass culture
media literacy
all media are texts that can be read for meaning; Not only written word, but all media can be interpreted for meaning; Reading requires an active process of interpretation; never passive; representations that help construct our realities
domestication of technology
becoming so normalized we don't notice it as part of everyday life
Convergence
blurring of boundaries between distinct forms of media into new types of media networks and delivery systems
Narrators
can be specific individuals; Narrate inside own story; Anonymous voices outside the story/Describing the narrative from a god's eye view; The camera is a narrator visual media/ Orients and positions our perspective; right place at the right time
Celebrity and meaning making
celebrities are tied to public interests and can be analyzed for meaning
Episodic
circular closure: return to status quo; Programming becomes more engaging because audiences can identify with the same characters week to week
mass culture & what it provides
commodities produced for max profit by the culture industries; provides conformity and "dumbed down" escapist stimulation; Cookie cutter formulaic media that promotes conformity not individual growth; Artificial concerns and cheat people out of true happiness; No sense of collectivity
Identificatory practices
consume star's/character's product
definition of genre
content sharing the same conventions and codes; An attempt to manufacture success; Similar across the board to provide familiarity
Arc
crosses several episodes or seasons; Character journey that builds across episodes; storyline or character arcs
Identificatory fantasies
desire for star's/character's life
transmedia extensions
draws viewers from TV to other content platforms
digital divide
gap between those who have access to digital technologies and these who don't; Quality of access~familiarity with technologies and social interactions; In terms of convergence and entertainment media/creates 'participation gap'
genre as cultural category (Mittell)
genre is a cultural category formed from common discourses and understandings of definition, evaluation, and interpretation; understanding of genres change with how they're defined, interpreted, and evaluated; Because discourses change, genre categorizations change
"the operational aesthetic" (Mittell)
how the media makers orchestrate the plot, narrative, and story in this unconventional way to try to engage the audience through clues and hints; A form of narrative complexity focused on "narrative special effects"; Encourages long term engagement through disorientation and confusion
texts as polysemic
intended meaning set by producers shapes consumer meanings, but are not fully identical; Variable interpretations mean that texts are as sites of struggle; Different interests compete to promote different ideologies
technological determinism vs. SCOT vs. SST
machines change us/machines are the primary instigator of change; Social construction of technology~technology is a consequence of social factors; Social Shaping of Technology~the consequences of technology are a mix of machines changing us and being a consequence of social factors
industrial utility of genre
manage consumer interests/expectations through promotion; Attempt to make success predictable; rationalize the consumption process; Reducing the risk of the new; Production trend = if people like it, make more; Organizes production
Technical infrastructure
meaning is impacted by the meaning maker's access to technology, and their training in skills and styles
rationalizing the consumption process
methods to minimize risk and maximize profits/necessary to measure success; sales growth~ increase sales through economies of scope, international markets, overproduction (successes offset failures); Minimize expenses through economies of scale (the cost of making a product decreases with the number of units produced); Market share~ the % of a market held by a specific company; Tracks how well a company does compared to its competitors
false consciousness
mislead people not thinking that the route to contentment comes from consumption rather than upward mobility; De-skills, de-politicizes, and de-sensitizes overworked masses
Genre codes
modes of production external to the narrative (STYLE); What the texts look like and sound like; Visual Style/Length~sitcoms~30mins, legal drama~1hour; Visual style~lighting, camerawork; Editing~Stage-like editing approach, quick cuts, jump cuts breaking continuity; Animation/Animation-Style~cartoon, filmic/photorealistic representations; Audio Style~theme music, soundtrack, sound effects
convenience techs & what they allow more of
moving audiences from televisions to other media; Technologies that provide flexibility in what, how, when, where viewers consume media content; Facilitates greater control over the viewing experience; more formats, more contents, more viewing flexibility; result~ individualizing consumption experience
Serial
offers ongoing stories that change over time; Continual change of status quo; accumulation of detail and history
Counter hegemony
opposing ideology; counter-hegemony means that dominant ideologies must be constantly reaffirmed through the media; Ongoing process that needs to be continually maintained; Never complete because the counter is never removed
Audience
participant in the storytelling; Imagined audience~intended audience of consumers; Actual audience~includes "interlopers" not part of the imagined audience
genre mutation & recombinants
problem of generic repetition=risk of bored audience; genres mutate to add difference; deviate from generic codes and conventions; Recombinants~combines elements of 2+ established genres; provide predictability but also surprise; Shows how generic elements can be used, subverted, and combined
constructing "realism"
produced by codes and conventions; Apparent spontaneity, Handheld camera and loose compositions, Available lighting, Verbal spontaneity, Narrative spontaneity
Narratives
put our experiences into a narrative structure with a beginning, middle, and end; Stories are structured into narratives to keep audiences engaged; manipulated to become more interesting; Crafted to add suspense with obstacles and complications
Hyperreality
reflect, augment and enhance reality; more interesting and engaging to keep audience; Constructed to feel real, to suit audience expectations
Cultural function
role in the circulation of meaning
Material function
role in the circulation of wealth
Anthology
self contained/closure brings new/final status quo; viewed as the most prestigious; borrowed narratives from cinema, theater, and literature
Beat
smallest mode of narrative (1-2 mins); Builds to plots but also contain drama and purpose
Characters
social, physical, and psychological characteristics assigned to them by the media makers; Characters are assigned traits that impact the story; Protagonists drive the story; Audiences are encouraged to identify with the characters especially the protagonist; Externally~ spatial attachment and achievement; Internally~ voiceover, POV, access to thoughts and feelings
Hegemony
social, political, and economic order is not only maintained by police/military, but also by the dominant ideology; process of maintaining power through the struggle of seeking ideological consensus; Dominant class doesn't rule, but leads through consensus
genre conventions
specific narrative elements (STORY); Part of the story itself; Setting~ where/when does a show take place/Character type/Conventional plot and narrative structure/Iconography/Emotional effect~ emotions it wants to elicit from viewers/Ideology~ usually promoting a dominant ideology
Episode
structured by culmination or theme; 3 or 4 acts ("curtains" before commercials)
star text & its four components
sum of everything that is affiliated with a celebrity; Body of work; Promotion (authorized and calculated image construction); Publicity (generated by the press; outside of direct control); Audience practices (discussion, fan art, etc...)
transmedia storytelling (Mikos)
the systematic planning of a story throughout different platforms; A kind of transmedia extension in all the media share the same 'textual universe'; particularly useful in serial TV
results of consumer culture
ultimate impact of consumer culture is dangerous and harmful; mediated experience becomes the center of our social life; Delusion of control that we are empowered by our choice Isolated from tradition and community, we become open to manipulation through media
