Category: Semester 1

Institutions Group Project Update: Week 3

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On Monday we brainstormed more ideas and concepts that we could use for our website, bringing together different threads to create entirely new content.

Alana will be writing an opinion piece on modern media and a timeline to show the evolution of both traditoinal and modern media side by side.

Jess will do a comparison of both traditional media institutions and modern media intitution, looking at how they filter and utilise information from the same topic, e.g. the earthquake in Nepal. Some chose to cover the devastation in Nepal which caused thousands of deaths, while others chose to focus on the trpped climbers, both sending drastically different messages. As well as the idea of the ‘trending news feed’ and the ‘hash tag’ and their recent evolutions.

I will create small biographies on a variety of institutions of varying political bend and form of address, from the Age, to the Humans of New York blog, to Channel 9 news. I will also find archival footage of Rupert Murdoch in order to create a filtered view of him, showing how the media filter everything they produce in order to produce a desired response. Through the edited piece we hope to achieve a different persona and view of Murdoch, creating a different image.

We also came up with a list of questions to ask Philip Dearman, ranging from ethics and ownership issues in traditional media to the evolving landscape of news media itself. It’s shaping up to be a very interesting project.

Institutions

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Today Brian Morris talked to us about institutions.

The term institution is originally from sociology and is concerned with organising structures that make up society. An institution has to have social, cultural, political and economic relations, and principles, values and rules that inform and underpin these relations. An institution is material, but it is not tangible (Morris, 2015), think of Google and how it is both a material company but has now somehow become a verb, as we all frequently say, “just Google it”. This shows how Google has become a cultural and social entity as well as a company, therefore it is an institution.

Another institution is marriage. Brian asked us about how we thought Marriage counted as a social institution, and we all came up with a long list (which I thought warranted a blog post to explore more, which I will upload a little later).

Media institutions are enduring which produces limitations as they have a status quo to uphold, a reputation which doesn’t allow any breathing room for new creations and developments to occur. They also, regulate and structure activities, are ‘collectivist’, develop working practices, employees and people associated are expected to share values as the public is aware of their status, audiences are also created by institutions and their content. Institutions and their public status develops trust between the audience and the institution as the audience understands the general message of the institution. This trust is however being infringed upon quite frequently as of late, with recent developments over the years such as the News of the World phone hacking scandal and the cash for comments scandal on the radio in 1999. (Morris, 2015)

We then split up into groups for an exercise and researched a media institution out of the four: Facebook, Google, NewsCorp and Community Media. My group looked at Google, and we found that Google’s reach over multiple platforms and technologies shows the power such institutions have over pop culture and societal development. Through this activity we also noticed that many of these institutions, through their quest for money and profit, have gained a monopoly over the market, especially NewsCorp in both Australia and England.

Institutions, especially those which are omnipresent within the media, have a great deal of power and influence through their control of services and products within the market place. Through controlling basic mediums and media-related commodities, media institutions are able to shape social discourse.

– Morris, Brian. Week 10 Lectorial. May 12th 2015.

Audience: Fans and Fandoms (Cosplay)

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Conventions were once a ‘nerdy’ event that not many people attended. Today, they are still ‘nerdy’, but as the subject matter of such conventions becomes the center of popular culture, the number of people attending them has increased dramatically. A very large part of these events and many fans’ engagement with popular culture texts in today’s current pop culture landscape, is the art of ‘cosplay’.

Cosplay, which was coined by Nov Takahashi, a contraction of the English-language words ‘costume’ and ‘play’, began in 1939 “at the First World Science Fiction Convention in New York… Forrest J Ackerman and his friend Myrtle R. Jones appeared in the first S[cience] F[iction] costumes among the 185 attendees. … [Ackerman] was dressed as a rugged looking star pilot, and [Jones] was adorned in a gown recreated from the classic 1933 film Things to Come.” Takashi was said to be inspired by “hall and masquerade costuming at the 1984 Los Angeles SF Worldcon.” when coining the phrase, cosplay. While his reports of it in Japanese science fiction magazines “sparked the Japanese cosplay movement.” (costuming.org, 2005)

Many people don’t know where cosplay originated from, and mistakenly believe that it originated in Japan. This is not the case, Japanese fans of manga and anime heard about what was happening at Worldcon in America  in 1984 through Takashi’s reporting, and decided it would be fun to take it up themselves. Takashi did however coin the phrase cosplay.

After the popularity of cosplay in Japan, cosplay began to spread across the world again as anime and manga also gained popularity in western countries, all occurring in the mid-1990’s. This allowed for the reintroduction of cosplay to western countries, hence the re-popularisation of cosplay today.

Here is an example of some cosplay:

– Unknown. “The History of Costuming.” 2005. Available at: http://www.costuming.org/history.html

Audience

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Today Brian Morris talked to us about audience.

Audiences are often categorised in different ways. Such as ‘demographics’ (as in age brackets, e.g. 18-25) which concern businesses such as advertisers, commercial broadcasters, production houses, individual houses and program makers, government policy makers, social scientists/psychologists and cultural theorists to name a few. Over the years there have been changing conceptions around audience as broadcasting has changed to narrowcasting and citizens have become consumers. This has caused changes in TV institutions, the technology behind production, distribution and consumption, and audience practices (Morris, 2015).

When TV was first established in Australia, many were concerned about its effect on the individual and it was focused towards the ‘suburban housewife’, the key audience for television when it all began. Now, audiences and the content they like to watch have fractured and splintered into so many different niche areas, with different aesthetic sensibilities, and different needs to be advertised and catered towards.

The broadcast audience is public, that is to say that it is one person (a presenter) to many. Often this presenter, such as Oprah Winfrey or Ellen Degeneres, can create a sort of social glue and a community around their audience creating a virtual public sphere.

In the public sphere, who do media creators address? Many debates have arisen around talk show hosts and their heavily feminised views, as well as their concerns with previously taboo subjects.

Many media-oriented institutions use the idea of mass culture and mass audiences, but as R. Williams put it in ‘Culture and Society’ (1963), “there are in fact no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses.”

– Morris, Brian. Lectorial Week 9. May 5th 2015.

Institutions Group Project Update: Week 2

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Today we handed in our bibliographies and worked in our groups to develop concepts for our big final project. Now, while I was absent today because I’m currently sick, I was able to contact my group and brainstorm some ideas.

We have created a website called ‘Institution Revolution: Traditional vs Modern Media’. Each group member will be an individual contributor and post various articles, videos, photos etc. to make an interactive platform.

We also came up with some ideas for possible content, such as an interview with someone in the media, or a part of the RMIT faculty who is involved in journalism. Survey people about issues around our topic and post graphs alongside the results. As well as many others. We hope to come up with many more ideas next lesson, in order to really make a move on this project and start developing our content.

Nothing is Original: Narrative/Non-Narrative

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The idea that all stories have already been created is an idea that has existed for as long as before the bible was first published. The existance of genres and genre conventions placing expectations and therefore limitations upon films within such genres only forces them to be more confined and ‘cliched’ less they cause an uproar. It’s the way the these ideas are used and placed, and the variation of ideas that can give fresh and new life to seemingly tired and old stories such as vampires and zombies, “a constantly overused plot devise” my mum tells me. But with films like, “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” (Amirpour, 2014), an Iranian vampire western, and “Life After Beth” (Baena, 2014), in which a girl becomes a zombie and her boyfriend tries to deal with her new flesh-eating tendencies. These fresh ideas, to me, prove that there is no such thing as no originality, even if the same basic trajectory exists.

Heroesjourney.svg

This same basic trajectory, which can be found in most films, is known as ‘the hero’s journey’. The hero’s journey, which can also be called the monomyth, follows 12 basic stages and has 7 basic archetypes which are said to be found in most, if not all stories. This idea was created by the American scholar, Joseph Campbell.

The 12 basic stages of the monomyth are:

  1. THE ORDINARY WORLD
  2. THE CALL TO ADVENTURE
  3. REFUSAL OF THE CALL
  4. MEETING WITH THE MENTOR
  5. CROSSING THE THRESHOLD
  6. TESTS, ALLIES AND ENEMIES
  7. APPROACH
  8. THE ORDEAL
  9. THE REWARD
  10. THE ROAD BACK
  11. THE RESURRECTION
  12. RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR  – (Unknown)

Of course, not all stories use all the stages, it depends upon the character of the hero, and whether or not their journey is a difficult task and goes against their character, if they need to go through so much indecision and inner turmoil before they start their journey.

One part of the monomyth follows the idea that each great story includes the same 7 archetypal characters:

  1. Hero
  2. Herald
  3. Mentor
  4. Threshold Guardians
  5. Trickster
  6. Shape-Shifter
  7. Shadow

This video sums up both the character archetypes and the most fundamnetal stages of the hero’s journey:

There is also a lesser known heroine’s journey by Maureen Murdock. It’s stages are slightly similar, but also have a shocking difference – the emphasis on gender. The stages are:

heroine's journey

  1. SEPARATION FROM THE FEMININE
  2. IDENTIFICATION WITH THE MASCULINE & GATHERING OF ALLIES
  3. ROAD OF TRIALS, MEETING OGRES & DRAGONS
  4. FINDING THE BOON OF SUCCESS
  5. AWAKENING TO FEELINGS OF SPIRITUAL ARIDITY: DEATH
  6. INITIATION & DESCENT TO THE GODDESS
  7. URGENT YEARNING TO RECONNECT WITH THE FEMININE
  8. HEALING THE MOTHER/DAUGHTER SPLIT
  9. HEALING THE WOUNDED MASCULINE
  10. INTEGRATION OF MASCULINE & FEMININE, (Unknown)

This journey can be found in some way, shape, or form in films such as “Mulan” (Bancroft and Cook, 1998) and “Brave” (Andrews and chapman, 2012). It is interesting to me how films with female leads seem to have the need for a different model of story telling. However, I don’t think that is quite true anymore. While there will always be stories out there that follow this model, there are also stories breaking this mold and following a stranger more twisted version of the monomyth. Films such as “The Hunger Games” (Ross, 2012) and “Divergent” (Burger, 2014), which are both post-apocolyptic films featuring hardened female leads, and both stories follow the monomyth, not the heroine’s journey. But in saying this, I think it is more the case that both these films are set in a post-apocalyptic future and not the present, so they feel they can show characters who are more hardened due to their situation, regardless of gender, essentially getting rid of classic gender stereotypes because times are too tough to do otherwise.

– Unknown. “Hero’s Journey.” Available at http://www.thewritersjourney.com/hero’s_journey.htm

Narrative/Non-Narrative

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Today’s lectorial was all about narrative. Dan Binns told us how everything is story/story is everything, especially to humanity, who seek to create stories and meaning from everything around them.

Narrative is any retelling of any sequence of events and heavily involves the principle of causality; a logical progression from one event to another (cause and effect). Causality allows for character development which takes time within the narrative and presents the audience with a number of situations with which the character can respond, but only within a limited range of responses according to the characters traits. A character won’t do something you want them to just for the sake of a happy ending or plot, they are in fact their own little person with internal conflicts and choices, and if for some reason they did choose to do something ‘out of character’, you as an audience member wouldn’t be very happy. That is why good writing creates clashes between traits so a character must choose between them and the audience is left in suspense. Plot is the chronological sequence of events in a narrative and involves a key character carrying out action, the action, and recipient’s of the plot’s action. And of course the resolution, which does not have to have a recipient in order to receive the response (Binns, 2015).

Now that the basics are over with, Dan told us the first rule of storytelling: nothing is original. Just as it is in adaptation and genre films, it is how the filmmaker creates the world with a different and unique perspective, allowing them to subvert expectations and put a new and different twist on conventions, that truly makes narrative films interesting and unique.

Dan also explored the concept of non-narrative. These are visual explorations within the medium itself that see if it is possible to do away with the narrative entirely. Most things, if not everything has a narrative. Even if the story is not explicit, we as humans rely upon our understanding of story telling principles to understand their lack of story (Binns, 2015).

Non-narrative films possess no obvious causality, no character development, no clear diegetic plot-line, no clear linear events tying scenes together, graphic matches to make art not story, lack of cohesion, lack of conclusion/sense of closure, no character motivation, and the use of people as props not characters (Binns, 2015).

whereas narrative films contain people (or anthropomorphic creatures) as central characters in order to create a connection with the audience, how they arrived at the situation/backstory (context), thematic connections (patterns of representation), often different places creating a journey, parallel events, and a title which gives the film causality and the character motivation (Binns, 2015).

– Binns, Daniel. Lectorial Week 8. Apr. 28th 2015.

Institutions Group Project: Week 1

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Today we were sorted into our groups for our big final project, through the use of a deck of cards. I have to admit ‘pick a card! Any card!’ is much more fun than, ‘1, 2, 3… ok, 1’s over there.’ So now the project has officially begun and we’re working on the topic of media institutions, and the first thing we all thought of was traditional media institutions such as journalism and news media and how the landscape for such mediums has changed since such social mediums such as blogs and vlogs came into being. This gave us the idea for the entire premise of our project: traditional media vs. modern media.

Exploring the idea of traditional media institutions, one key figure immediately came to mind; Rupert Murdoch has a huge monopoly over the print media industry in Australia, England and some parts of the U.S. This case study of sorts led us to the question of ownership, political and economic agendas, and ethics, especially in traditional media, and how this contrasts to modern media institutions.

for the next part of the project, each member has to compile an annotated bibliography of five articles and we decided what areas each member will research. Alana will research social media institutions, I will research traditional media institutions, and Jess will research comparisons between the two forms, as well as a general overview that links all the aspects we brainstormed together. From this we will brainstorm further ideas and concepts to develop our overall project, which will be a multimedia platform, a.k.a, a website involving articles, videos, and any other pieces we can come up with.

Texts: The Emergence of Mass Culture and Pop Culture Texts

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Pop art, a “new art movement of the 60’s” (teh_manis, 2013) in a way signified the beginning of mass culture, as it was the form in which many artists chose to criticise the new mass mediums in which the cultures and societies around them had become so consumed. It is the presence of criticism that truly alerts us to the presence of a movement, in this case mass culture and consumerism.

The works of Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol are two great examples of individuals who took their art and used it in a way to critique this mass movement. Lichtenstein’s work was “heavily influenced by both popular advertising and the comic book style.” (teh_manis, 2013) His most famous works are his collection of comic strips, which are “close but not exact copies of panels from other comic books.” (teh_manis, 2013) as exemplified through David Barsalou’s work on “deconstructing” Roy Lichtenstein’s art, as Barsalou puts the pieces together, placing the works from the original comic books that Lichtenstein copied next to Lichtenstein’s own works (Barsalou, 2015).  “Instead of using the primary colors of red, yellow and blue; he uses the primary colors of a printer which are yellow, magenta and cyan. He uses think lines, bolder colors than the original, and ben-day dots just like a printer would create on paper.” All of these factors emphasise the idea of remixing and drawing from the original, as in a way pop art was the first remix, creating works from already existent work, but in this case to create a critique of mass culture, unlike today where it has become a staple of mass culture. (teh_manis, 2013)

An example of his work is Drowning Girl (1963), which came from a story from DC Comics’ Secret Hearts #83 (teh_manis, 2013):

drowninggirl

 

An example of the ben-day dots that Lichtenstein used in his works:

ben day dots

When Lichtenstein first published his works, he was met with much criticism as many in the media questioned his originality. “In 1964, Life magazine published an article titled ‘Is He the Worst Artist in the U.S.?’ Lichtenstein responded to this claim and others with ‘The closer my work is to the original, the more threatening and critical the content’.”  (teh_manis, 2013). The media continued to criticise his works, even asking the question ‘is this art?’. The attention to detail created by hand is no small feat, but it was created for the purpose of critiquing the climate of art and culture at the time and made you contemplate your current situation. By any definition it is art, just as John Cage created the ‘sound of silence’.

Another great example of the pop art movement of the 60’s is Andy Warhol’s work:

warhol-campbellsoup[1]

The “Campbell’s Soup Cans” painting by Warhol (of which the above is only a segment) references and critiques the mass consumerism and culture of the 60’s.

The works from this new wave movement from the 60’s were vital to the creation of the current mass culture as well as the expression of critical views towards society through art being fostered and continually fostered now,thanks to such artists.

– teh_manis. “The Originality of Roy Lichtenstein’s Comic Panel Art”. Mar. 15th 2013. Available at: http://graphicnovel.umwblogs.org/2013/03/15/the-originality-of-roy-lichtensteins-comic-panel-art/

– Barsalou, David. “Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein.” 2015. Available at: http://davidbarsalou.homestead.com/LICHTENSTEINPROJECT.html

Texts

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Today Brian Morris talked to us about our final assignment, a group assignment, as well as one of the subject matters for said assignment: texts.

When talking about a ‘text’ one can speak of anything so long as it falls under the definition of a “material trace that [is] left [for] the practice of sense-making. The only empirical evidence we have of how other people make sense of the world.” (Morris, 2015). When analysing texts one can respond in two different ways; the effects tradition in communication studies which focuses on the effect that particular text has on its audience, and an idea that emerged from structuralism post WW2 (mid 20th century) against a particular idea of culture. This ‘interpretive tradition’ focused more on the meaning which the audience gleans from texts and the idea of popular culture texts, creating the broader structuralist movement known as semiotics.

Semiotics, as developed upon by Noam Chomsky, is denoted by ‘signs’ which have two parts, the signifier and the signified. The signifier is the audio/visual stimuli that triggers the signified, which is the mental connection that we associate  with that stimulus. For example, if you see this image:

curious dog

 

the first mental connection (or denotation (litreral/first meaning) you make is that the creature in the photo is a dog. The second mental connection you may make (or connotation (cultural/second meaning) is that the dog is curious, or has heard some kind of noise/seen something to make it react in such a way.

Codes are also associated with these ‘signs’, as they are conventions operating in relation to the stimuli (in this case a photograph). Such codes can be formal such as technical codes (shot scale, focus, etc.), composition (are the objects close together or spread out/in clusters?), genre (e.g. a family photo has basic conventions representing togetherness and a strong bond). There are also social/ideological codes, such as family, gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, class, age and nationality.

Texts, and the study of texts is essential to our growth and understanding of society, as through texts we can glean information about social values and discourses. For instance, through the use of semiotics we can develop our understanding of how meanings are created in a society through signs, and codes and conventions, all represented through the stimulus.

Jasmine Roth also spoke to us about the affordances of sound, which was very interesting as she spoke to us about how “the sense of hearing cannot be turned off at will.. We are continually absorbing and filtering the landscape… the ears only protection is an elaborate psychological mechanism for filtering out.” (Roth, 2015)

These ideas led  the intimate and immersive nature of sound and further develop the idea of tuning in and out of the soundscape through a perspective of hierarchized sounds that fit into three categories: figure/signal (focus/interest), ground (setting/context (not aware they are listening too) and field (background/ambient space(heard but not listened to). (Roth, 2015)

It was very interesting to listen in depth to the values and mechanisms of soundscapes, to discover that it is a “representation of a place or an environment that can be heard rather than… seen. [It is] an environment of sound.” (Roth, 2015) I feel knowing these small details about sound and its affordances will help me to utilise sound as a craft better in the future.

– Morris, Brian. Week 7 Lectorial. Apr. 21st 2015.

– Roth, Jasmine. Week 7 Lectorial. Apr. 21st 2015.