TEL 420 Electronic media
criticism
Spring 2009
Bulletin description
• Examination of each of several critical
theories and approaches to the criticism
of
telecommunications
program
content.
Practical experience in
evaluating critical writing and in the
writing of critical pieces.
Prereq:
Telecom major status or consent of
instructor.
Three main foci
• Construction of narratives
– Telling stories in electronic media
• Production of media content (texts)
– What goes into film, television, videogame
production
• Social critique of media texts
– Analysis of the quality, morality, ideology of media
content
Why?
• This course will help you as a producer and/or
as a consumer of popular culture
– Electronic texts are all around us
– We tend to take them at face value
• We have ‘overlearned’ the language of electronic
representation
– Even so, they affect us in important ways
• I’m not an alarmist, but we should recognize that
electronic narratives have effects we don’t recognize as
well as those that we do
How?
• First we’ll look at the components that make
up narratives and how we experience them in
film, television and videogame texts
– Stories
– Characters
– Settings
– Plots
– Action
– Myth
• Then we’ll take a quick look at how the texts
are produced
– Cinematography
– Sound
– Mise-en-scene
– Editing
– Shots/scenes/episodes
– Lighting
• Finally, we’ll review some of the social
implications of the narratives/texts commonly
found in film, on television, and in video
games
– Class
– Race
– Gender
– Morality
– Sexuality
How will we tackle these tasks?
• Readings
– The readings are moderate in amount and mostly
quite readable
• Some of this stuff can be absolutely impenetrable
• I needed to find content you could understand without prior
classwork in this area but that was not at a grade-school
level
• I tried to mix theory with application
• You’ll get more out of the class if you start reading film, tv
and videogame criticism in the popular media
• I provide some recommended readings and point to some
good sources for additional information
• Assignments
– Assignments are a mix of short quizzes on
Blackboard and simple analyses of electronic texts
to be discussed in class
• For example, I may ask you to watch the presentation
of Arabs in 24 one week and apply the readings to what
you see
• A midterm
– Mostly based on your understanding of concepts,
vocabulary, and basic theory about our topics
• An in-class presentation
– Each of you will present to the class your
interpretation of how a week’s topic applies to
some electronic text
• More on that later, but you should know that you will
need to propose your topic to me and get feedback
prior to your presentation
• The final test
– This will be a combination of demonstrating that
you have picked up the content from the postmidterm readings and that you can apply the
semester’s theoretical content to specific
examples of electronic narrative
• I’ll show examples at the time of the test and you will
be expected to be able to identify how our semester
content applies to the clips
• The final project
– Each of you will pick a topic you want to explore
more deeply than the once-over in class allows.
You’ll get the okay to go forward with your topic
and will keep me updated on how you are
progressing, getting your basic outline okayed, etc.
during the semester. You will provide a paper on
your topic and will share the knowledge you have
gained (in greatly abbreviated form) in a second
in-class presentation at the end of the semester.
Out-of-class assignments
• In order to be on the same page, I’ll be requiring
you to watch some films, television shows,
documentaries and perhaps watch some folks
playing video games. This will require some out
of class time but is necessary to see that we can
have intelligent discussions of various texts. I’ll
make the content available to you so that you
won’t be required to catch a single showing of
something—which might be a problem if you
have to be at work at a given time, etc. Much of
the content will be available online.
Grades
• In general, if you do the work, you’ll do fine as
far as grades are concerned. If you are doing
the readings, coming to class, etc. and aren’t
getting the ideas, please see me during office
hours or set up a meeting.
So, to get started:
• Narratives are, generally speaking, stories.
– There’s a whole area of study around narratives
and some of the folks who specialize in that area
would not want such a simplistic definition, but it
will serve us okay in this class.
Narrative
• What are the important features of narrative?
– Time
• What happens in narratives is ordered in time
• Though there may be flashbacks, flashforwards, parallel
activity occurring simultaneously, etc. the basic
structure of narrative is of linear time with a series of
events occurring
– Characters
• Narratives usually center on some person or persons
doing things or having things happen to them
Narrative
• Important features of narrative
– Causality
• The events, actions, etc. are thought to be related, with
earlier ones causing later ones
– Setting
• The actions take place somewhere
– Plot
• The actions that are included and their causal relations
– Structure
• There are common ways that the features above are
structured
– These vary by the type of narrative and the media by which the
narrative are disseminated
Why focus on narrative?
• Narratives are extremely common
– The great majority of texts you are exposed to
through electronic media present narrative content
– People tend to construct their communications in
narrative form
• What did you do last night?
– A list?
– A story?
– Narratives are more interesting and satisfying than
other forms of presentation
Narrative effects
• Even though most narratives are constructed for
enjoyment/amusement, they have been
demonstrated to be persuasive and educational.
– People tell stories as a way of arguing their point
– Stories are memorable and therefore are brought to
mind when we need to make decisions, evaluate
alternatives, etc.
– People don’t recognize narratives as acts of
persuasion and so often do not critically analyze them
the way they do arguments, etc.
Narratives in electronic media
• The great majority of fictional content is narrative
in nature
– Think about the structure of primetime fiction, film
fiction, etc.
– Videogames?
• Much of, if not the majority of, non-fiction is
narrative in nature, as well
– ‘Reality TV’
– News ‘stories’
– Commercial ‘mini-narratives’
Artistry
• Much of the artistry of electronic media is in the
construction of compelling and entertaining
narratives
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Scriptwriting
Direction
Acting
Cinematography
Sound design
Special effects
Etc.
So let’s take a first look:
• The Internet Archive has lots of video,
especially old movies, TV and cartoons
• http://www.archive.org/index.php