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Week 15 Blog Post
I’ve switched gears a bit this week and decided to focus more on Sandvoss than on Jenkins for your blog post (since we’ve barely cracked Jenkins at this point).
Choose one of the following three concepts from Sandvoss, try to explain what it means and note how you have seen it at work in your exploration of fandom.
- Fan objects operate in a “field of gravity” (with or without an Ur-text) through which fundamental meaning is gained through fan-created “paratexts,” which infringe on the text and its meaning making process (22-4).
- Aesthetic value is located in the interaction between reader, text and author, which makes the “death of the author” problematic for fan texts, where “multiplicity of meaning has collapsed into complete absence of intersubjective meaning” (28-30).
- Fandom constitutes an (problematic) engagement in which all of a text’s aesthetic value lies with its reader; however, aesthetic values manifested in the act of reading persist (31-2).
Have fun wrestling with Sandvoss a bit more!
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Sandvoss, Cornel. “The Death of the Reader: Literary Theory and the Study of Texts in Popular Culture.” Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World. Ed. Jonathan Gray, Cornell Sandvoss and C. Lee Harrington. New York: NYUP, 2007.
Week 14 Blog Post
As much as I would like to spend this blog post discussing the “Vampire Spike” article, we definitely need to get down to the business of working on Essay Three. Since I need to approve your topic/site selection for this essay, it’s imperative we get to these quickly.
This week, I would like you to discuss what show you have selected to follow and why. I would also like you to find the website that you will be following for the next couple of weeks and explain what interested you in the site, what kind of site it is, and what you feel you can learn about television fandom from following the site.
Please make sure to include a link to the site in your post.
REMINDER: The regular minimum word limit still applies, even if you are just discussing plans for your paper.
Week 13 Blog Post
On this, our last week of dealing with genres, I present you some hopelessly open-ended questions:
- What is genre?
- Why should we (or shouldn’t we) study genre?
- What can we learn as television scholars form studying genre?
Some television studies specialists believe the idea of genre is deceptive and that we shouldn’t study it at all. Why do you think that might be?
Link for Blog Post 12
Sorry for the delay – it’s been a busy afternoon.
Week 12 Blog Post
Our discussion of procedurals thus far has focused on television police and forensic procedurals. However, as we have discussed, these are far from the only types of procedurals on TV. Medical procedurals, in particular, tend to be just as popular.
In class today, we will be viewing an episode of a classic medical procedural. I would like you to apply the characteristics of the procedural we have determined through our discussion of CSI to the episode to see how closely it follow the same pattern.
Furthermore, since medical procedurals are just as concerned with trauma and the body as their law-enforcement counterparts, I would like you to consider whether the issues of procedural realism, body images, and psychic reassurance addressed by Tait and Lee apply equally to this branch of the procedural genre.
Week 11 Blog Post
Brainstorm!
This week we’ll take it a bit easier, as I taxed your resources in the last blog post.
We’re ramping up to Essay Two, and I would like you all to begin thinking about what genre you will be working with for that essay and brainstorming about what material you will need to cover to effectively write about that genre.
Think of this blog post as a kind of peer think tank. This is your chance to test out some ideas and get feedback on them before you jump into the process of drafting your paper.
No formal constraints this week. Just focus on getting some of your thoughts down and beginning to lay the groundwork for the essay.
Week 9 Blog Post
This one is going to be a bit challenging, and will probably run more than 300 words. Consider yourselves forewarned!
I’d like you to pick an episode of a television show you believe to be a Prime Time Serial (PTS) (you can use the episode of Dawson’s Creek we watched this week or something else) and watch it carefully, applying Newman’s characteristics of the PTS. Look at all three narrative levels – beat, episode and arc.
BEAT:
How many beats are there?
How many beats per act?
How long is the average beat?
How do the beats recap and forecast (give examples)?
How many ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ plots are there?
What are the various plots and how do they parallel each other to create narrative harmony?
Give a breakdown of the plot structure in each act.
EPISODE:
Which storylines are resolved and how prominent are they?
Which storylines are left hanging, and why do you think they do not receive resolution?
On the whole, is there more closure or more deferment in the ?
Explain how the narrative breaks down in terms of the four-act structure?
ARC:
Are any character arcs opened of closed in the episode?
What part does the opening or closing of each character arc play in the episode’s resolution?
REMEMBER: This post is not due until 11:59 pm NEXT Thursday, and your response is not due until Wednesday the week we return to class.
If your episode is available online, please consider posting a link here. I would like to view as many of these as I can, and your classmates may want to as well.
Week 8 Blog Post
First, finish watching Episode One of Frontier House. You can find it here.
If you are interested in watching the second episode, it is also available here.
Both Kompare and Rymsza-Pawlowska discuss the different ways that documentary and reality television present the “conceit of the real.” Both present a number of binaries that separate the two forms:
From Kompare:
Voyeuristic/Therapeutic
Truth/Actuality
Argument/Exhibition
Education/Diversion
Depicts/Explains
Exploding expectations/Embracing expectations
Hidden truths/Ordinariness
Revelation/Self-consciouness
From Rymsza-Pawlowska:
Pedagogy/Entertainment
Truth/Authenticity
Situation/Actors
Event/Experience
Social Issues/Therapy
Frontier House (and the many other PBS shows of its ilk) is an interesting example of “reality” programming, as it navigates a challenging line between documentary and reality. How does it negotiate the objectives of both reality and documentary television? Is either objective successfully met? Are both? How so or how not?
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Kompare, Derek. “Extraordinarily Ordinary: The Osbournes as An American Family.” Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture. Ed. Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette. New York: NYUP, 2004. 97-116. Print.
Rymsza-Pawlowska, Malgorzata. “Frontier House: Reality Television and the Historical Experience.” Film & History 37.1 (2007): 35-42. Print.
Week 7 Blog Post
What is schadenfreude?
What role does humiliation play in the pleasure of watching reality television?
Taking both Hall and Mills into consideration, examine the episode of America’s Most Smartest Model we watched in class this week and consider how it reflects these concepts. Do you think the ways it plays on the audience’s sense of superiority are typical of reality television, or do you find it to be an extreme example? Why?
Week 6 Blog Post
Since we’re not having a screening this week, I want to try something a bit different.
We’ve been covering a number of texts on narrative and genre theory these last couple of weeks. Many of these are densely packed, and, as a result, we can’t always get to all of the interesting or problematic issues they bring up during class time. Therefore, this week, I would like you to pick out a paragraph that you find particularly interesting, thought-provoking, confusing or problematic from one of the articles listed below and examine it in more detail.
Possible approaches (though you are certainly not limited to these):
Pick a paragraph you think is confusing and try to make sense of or ask questions about it.
Pick a paragraph you find interesting and consider what its implications are.
Pick a paragraph that is thought-provoking and try to break it down into easily-understandable terms.
All of you have brought up some very interesting points in class, so I am legitimately interested in seeing where you can take this.
Articles you can use:
Mittell – “Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television”
Mills – “New Jokes”
Thompson – “Comedy Verite”
Mittell – “A Cultural Approach to Television Genre Theory”
Mittell – “Cartoon Realism”
McCollum – “Pacing in Children’s Television Programs”
NOTE: The paragraph you choose to analyze will NOT be included as part of your word count.
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