TEL 420 Electronic media
criticism
Spring 2011
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 types of criticism
• Pleasure from the content
– Did I enjoy it?
• Aesthetic quality of the content
– Is it art?
• Social and ethical critique of media texts
– Is it good or bad for society/people?
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 nonnarrative forms of
audiovisual content and how we experience
them in film, television and videogame texts
– Plots
– Storytelling
– Characters
– Settings
– Action/events
• Then we’ll take a quick look at how the texts
are produced and what makes for good
production values
– Cinematography
– Sound
– Mise-en-scene
– Editing
– Shots/scenes/episodes
– Lighting
• Next, we’ll look at some of the sorts of
aesthetic theory and criticism found in more
scholarly humanities studies
– Auteur theory
– Genre theory
• 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
• Assignments (30%)
– Assignments are a mix of short quizzes on
Blackboard and simple analyses of electronic texts
to be discussed in class
• For example, one week I may ask you to watch the
presentation of Arabs in 24 and apply the readings to
what you see
• A midterm examination (10%)
– Based on your understanding of concepts,
vocabulary, and basic theory about our topics we
will have a conversation where you have the
opportunity to demonstrate to me that you
understand the content of the course up to that
point
• An in-class presentation (10%)
– Each of you will present to the class your
interpretation of how a course topic applies to
some electronic text
• I will distribute a list of potential topics and allow you to
choose, but we will need to find ways to assure that not
everyone picks the same topic
• I will review your presentation prior to the period for
which it is scheduled and will provide
recommendations, see that we don’t cover the same
material, etc.
• A take-home essay question (10%)
– The second third of our class will lead to an essay
question meant to apply the concepts and
theories from that section to one of a limited
number of audiovisual texts. We will discuss your
findings in class.
• The semester examination (20%)
– 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
• Semester paper (20%)
– Each of you will carry out a form of critical analysis
of one or more audiovisual texts. 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 complete a paper on your topic
and will have the option to 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. 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.
Why focus on narrative?
• Narratives are extremely common
– The 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
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’