Textual Analysis Reading

Week 5 Media 1 Reading: Textual Analysis

I just finished the Textual Analysis Reading. I got off to a rough start by not knowing the meaning to ‘Lacuna’ ¹ or ‘axiom’ ² but after the first page is smooth sailing.

I really enjoyed this reading. I thought the author did a very good job of explaining what textual analysis was and providing great examples that allowed me to fully comprehend their points. While reading this text I copy and pasted a few quotes/statements made throughout the reading that stuck out to me;

“There is a philosophical underpinning to textual analysis which suggests that even simple words and descriptions of the world are necessarily ‘texts’ – there is never one, single, ‘correct’ way to describe anything in the world. There are always many ways in which the same ‘truth’ can be accurately described. ” ³

This statement made think about the concept of a ‘singular story’; a concept that is popularly discussed amongst minority groups. A recent example of this is the criticism of Caitlyn Jenners visibility in the trans community and whether she is a good spokesperson for the community. When reading news stories about this subject many commentators discuss that it is important to view her as only one person in the community and that there need to be many trans people visible (mainstream) in order to show a broader spectrum of the what it means to be trans and the struggles that come along with it. ⁴

When analyzing media there is always more than one way to view anything. Going on from this another example that popped in my head was an article Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote about The Real Housewives in which he plays devil’s advocate to the popular view that the Real Housewives franchise portrays nasty stereotypes of women within the African American community. ⁵

The conversation of context throughout the reading I thought was the biggest point the author makes:

“you can do nothing with a text until you establish its context. You can’t even simply describe it without implicitly putting it into a context (for example, the Warlpiri video – if you simply described it as ‘empty’, or ‘shots of landscape’, you would automatically be putting it into a Western context).”  ⁶

Another example the reading brings up is how feminist analysis has grown widely and shows an example of analysis of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.  A paper I wrote few years ago comparing the classic fairytale of Cinderella to Stephen King’s Carrie immediately popped into my head.  In the paper, I shared my analysis that Carrie is a feminist driven retelling of the story Cinderella. After reading about textual analysis I can see I view Carrie this way based on the context in which I view it. From someone else’s eyes, Carrie could be the opposite … This circles back to the authors Idea that there is never only 1 way to analyze something.

I didn’t fully understand the ideas of semiotics and hope we go over it either in the lecture or tute this week.

FOOTNOTES