Last week Mum and I sat on the couch clutching one another and blubbering ‘IT’S NOT REAL. IT’S NOT REAL’ as our beloved Patrick passed away on the hit tv show Offspring. ‘ITS ALL A BAD DREAM’ we shrieked as the males of our household tiptoed around us and checked to see whether some catastrophic news event/cataclysmic domestic injury had sparked our outburst. Spurred on by the worksafe ad in the ad break whereby another husband/chosen one nearly doesn’t come home I and a few of my friends sent cryptic texts to our long suffering other halves, who rang us back in concern or bemused amusement (had they realised Wednesday night is Offspring night).

I write this post in complete dread at tonight’s episode, which will explore Patrick’s funeral and Nina giving birth without the baby’s father there. ‘For the love of g-bang!’ Offspring fans lament, ‘how could you do this producers???’.

Never before have I experienced a show with such little incentive for me to suspend my disbelief. The Offspring world is sort of a bit close to reality, there’s a dysfunctional family as hilarious as they are tragic, a protagonist with endearing faults that, refreshingly, do not include narcissism and locations I frequent as a Melbournian obsessed with finding the perfect pho. Every character could be your bestie, uni tutor or barista… save for Patrick, god’s gift to woman, tailored to perfection with his effervescent ability to listen, grin and wear a bear skin cape.

Deb Oswald, creator of Offspring, also wrote a famous Australian play called ‘Dags’. I studied a monologue from it as a toothsome young high school student and found it incredibly easy to inhabit a character called ‘Gillian’. Now, this could be because I am the greatest actress of my generation save for Mena Suvari, but I think my ability to do this was down to how relatable Oswald’s characters are.

We are all Nina in some way, we’d like to think we aren’t Billie but most of us are because of our conspicuous desire to marry Eddie Perfect (no matter his hair colour). We’ve all had a boss like Klegg, an incredibly qualified individual completely out of touch with social relations (yet still endearing). We know a guy like Jimmy who describes life as ‘organic’ and is everyone’s favourite man child, we know an ageing partyrocker like Geraldine and even a beautifully awkward Gary McDonald character who is our Phillip Noonan (I once saw Gary McDonald crossing the road and then later that night saw him as Polonius and passed away with excitement).

The show’s charm is in the beautifully lit slice of realness it offers viewers, mostly of the female persuasion, and it’s ability to be funny and sad at the same time like life is.

However, last week it tipped the balance and was just sad. My Mum proclaimed ‘IT’S WORSE THAN WHEN MOLLY DIED ON A COUNTRY PRACTICE’, my friend vowed to boycott the show for his own mental health and my other friend, Mimz, who just got back from 7 weeks in Europe, painfully alleged that the whole experience had been ruined by Patrick’s death.

So tonight, when I’m weeping like a baby I want everyone to know that I am doing this out of respect for Offspring as a construct. Just as I have been carefully positioned to mourn Patrick, so to have I been carefully positioned to mourn him as if he isn’t a fictional character, but a well lit yet imperfect feature of my dream Fitzroy life.

It’s pretty weird, but a couple of million Aussie gals will feel me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gA25T5m_Es

 

 

I’m so happy that we’ve finally got to this stage of the lectures, I just couldn’t help though to have a giggle at the lecture name’s relation to the failed Vegemite revamp ‘iSnack 2.0’.

 

However, our unlecture revamp was nothing like Vegemite’s! It wasn’t lame or preachy to tech literate young people, rather original and revitalising as the symphony of Vegemite and Cheezy spread intended to be.

I felt like a young person sitting in the audience of Q&A, with Adrian as Tony and no one as Sophie Mirabella or Christopher Pyne. If you had filmed today’s lecture in a similar vein, their would have been many close ups of enthused young people of diverse intellectual backgrounds (as a side note, I just hate it when they are discussing gay marriage on Q&A and the camera always tracks to the most mildly camp looking guy in the audience, who just so happens to be sitting next to another young male. They may well vote for Bob Katter’s Australia Party in the next election, stop visually typecasting Q&A cinematographers!) looking captivated and amused at the thoughtful commentary of the tutors.

I was excited about this reading because last semester I became quite fascinated with the idea of Hypertext and Interactive narratives. This came about through a tantalising mix of my obsession with George R.R. Martin’s ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ books (AND the tv show but I read the books first like all smug intellectuals) and this chapter I read in Yellowless’ 1999 book ‘The end of books or books without end?: reading interactive narratives’. I was sick of peeps proclaiming the Game of Thrones books as over rated sex and slaughter. Though George R.R. Martin is amongst the cruelest authors in the world save for the creators of the hit Channel 10 tv show Offspring in terms of killing off dearly loved characters…..

…. he is an amazing writer and his narratives are ridiculously well crafted.

I started thinking about how G-Mart’s books could fall into the realm of hypertext narratives and here is what I came up with:

In this genre, authors understand that ‘the text of the novel lays down certain limits, but within these limits are gaps which the reader feels impelled to fill and interpret’ (Yellowlees 1999, p. 27) the process of reading being what Sartre called ‘directed creation’ (p. 30). As a result, texts produced are littered with ambiguous statements and narrative possibilities, akin to a ‘choose your own adventure’ book a child might read on a long car trip. Our ‘understanding of a particular message will determine the choices made for moving on with the narrative’ as we are drawn in and ‘coaxed’ by the author into colouring moments ‘with the hues of our own memories’ (Yellowlees 1999, p.30)- our own experiences, or reception contexts. In their most extreme incarnation, the ‘Hypertext’, such novels are made up of hundreds of cards which the reader arranges into their own narratives.

A more mainstream version exists as George R.R. Martin’s ‘A Song Of Ice And Fire’ series.

In the novels the writer intentionally laces narratives with ambiguity. This is not used as a narrative device to create suspense for the next book, rather to impel the reader into colouring his words with their own interpretations. The reader is not told what to think, but what to think about- forcibly partaking in a complex process of interpretation since Martin rarely gifts answers or resolutions to readers. This could be seen in Book 3, ‘A Feast for Crows’ as Brienne is being put to death by the Brotherhood Without Banners, a renegade group who believes she was responsible for the deaths of their kin. Her fate seems final, but in the last seconds before she is to be hung she screams “a word” (p. 727). She appears alive in the next book, but Martin never states what she actually said to save her life.

In another example, Martin sometimes pays close attention to focusing the reader upon seemingly trivial and mundane elements of scenes, again forcing the reader to make sense of the information independently. In Book 5, ‘A Dance of Dragons’ Martin pays close attention to describing a Lord serving a pie to guests at a wedding feast with relish. The guests at the feast are responsible for his son’s murder, and fans suspect that the pie is gruesomely made of their own missing sons. It is never apparent whether this is true, however Martin’s focus on this detail spurns such elaborate interpretations.

I’m excited about Hypertext’s ability to empower readers into forming their own unique interpretations of texts, especially interpretations Yellowless described as being ‘coloured’ by our own thoughts and memories. Reading is an intensely speculative and personal experience for anyone and Hypertext takes these two things and makes them better and even more exciting!

Referring closer to the actual reading, how cool is this 80s prediction of pure design fiction brilliance:

Forty years from now, if the human species survives, there will be hundreds of thousands of file servers- machines storing and dishing out materials. And there will be hundreds and thousands of simultaneous users, able to read from billions of stored documents, with trillions of links amongst them…. many readers will choke and fling down the book, only to have the thought gnaw gradually until they see its inevitability

 

Hypertext was the way of the future for the Xanadu crew, and they were pretty spot on with their predictions. I hope Hypertext in fiction is the way of the future too!

As a creative person, discussions about science usually give me a mysterious rash. I have many loved ones who are scientific and mathematical wunderkinds, and when they try to talk about their exciting day learning the intricacies of some area of Biochemistry I always express a warm smile of generic enthusiasm. When asked for my thoughts on the subject I always offer, ‘oh I just love the way your face lights up and you get so animated when you talk about stuff you’re passionate about’.

However, Bush’s in depth discussion of science in relation to a future after warfare was actually exhilarating. I liked what he said about the inadequacies of the technologies of extension available to scientists, the archaic ‘methods of transmitting and reviewing’ now ‘totally inadequate for their purpose’. He draws on the example of how ‘Mendel’s concept of the laws of genetics  was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it’. Indeed, to draw on a traditional Easternish proverb/myth (not up with my knowledge here) if a monumental discovery is made (in a forest say?) and no one is there to hear it, does it actually happen? Well it does, but no one knows about it, thus no one cares about it- and no future dude will ever be able to chatter enthusiastically to his disinterested other half about it.

Even if the discovery or finding was communicated to others/the tree was heard by nearby squirrels, Bush states that such ‘attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential’. I think this is applicable to the current state of journalism and PR.

When I grow up I want to be Spinal Tap’s PR Queen Bobbi Fleckman, played by Fran Drescher, my messiah, so as well as doing Prof Comm I’m doing a number of internships in the field. Of course I’m not as fab as Bobbi yet as a bumbling teen still playing office dress up, but I’m lucky/good enough to be managing the media relations for an upcoming Mental Health Campaign. In this job I speak to a lot of journos and articulately beg them to pick up the releases I’ve sent out to them. Per day these guys get a mass of these, and I am in full knowledge that though what I am promoting is an amazing cause, my release is like a needle in a haystack of equally worthy and significantly less worthy causes (as a side note, why am I so worried about moral ‘worthiness’ and PR? I have another year of my degree to learn I guess :)) . Technologies such as ‘Medianet’ make it easy for what PR people call a ‘media spray’, and provides an incredible point of access to journos. However, this technology kind of empowers the sea of the inconsequential Bush is talking about.

Being a journo with a widely accessible email address must be like being a facebook user with 15,000 friends mosty under 15. There may be some valid stories amongst the mirror selfies and candy crush updates, but the incentive to look for them is not quite there.

Epiphany! Perhaps the secret to being Bobbi Fleckman is providing journos with the incentive to sift through the inconsequential.

Thanks Vannevar Bush, I’m sure that wasn’t the point of your article but I found it very life affirming!

 

I am probably one of the few people in this subject who actually is lovin it, however this has meant unlectures have been a mildly excruciating experience for me.

I am one of the converted, but I’m still being preached to, albeit in an articulate and engaging way. I’m sitting there when even the lecturer has stated I could be somewhere else. This is very true, I could be

1. Getting a good power brow done

2. Making money

3. Interning

4. Eating copious amounts of Hanaichi

5. And spending time with friends and fam of course!

BUT I’m here making the active choice I no longer need to make as someone mature enough to buy a good Yarra Valley Moscato/go to war.

Adrian is preaching to the choir and I am one of the most enthusiastic choristers. I love the idea of blogging, making links between things, setting people’s agendas to something they might never have thought about (who cares if it’s stupid gifs). I am not in denial about the fact that this course has been controversial, but I’m going to be a bit selfish and just say that I’d love for things to move on.

You have 200 bright, young things yet to find where their niche in an industry which isn’t super sensitive to dainty new comers like us. Can we use this physical opportunity to have a discussion about what it is that we love or are interested in? Can we use this subject to FIND stuff to love and be interested in for perhaps the rest of our lives?

Use this subject to create watershed moments for future media professionals! If people have a problem with Networked Media, that’s fine, I get that… but in the immortal words of Adam ‘The Man” DeMamp….

Loljks I don’t hate you. Just open your mind or at least pretend to and lectures will stop being the way they are :).

 

I was very excited to read this article by Kat Stoeffel in The Cut the other day.

It heralds the death of the ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’, a character type I have always despised in movies and tv. She always inexplicably has a ukelele, a fringe, coloured tights and is some form of painter. She cuts her own bangs and does weird stuff like sing at mundane moments and drink soy milk (LOL WUT?). Her eccentricities both frustrate and entrance the bookish main character who needs her as his sole means of waking up to life. However, by the end of the film the emotionally challenged cardigan sporting lead always realises his dream girl can’t be tamed Miley style because women are a whimsical yet fickle mystery and love does not exist once Zooey Deschanel decides to be alternative enough to ditch you.

Cool story bro. My major problem with these types of well lit Sundance ready pieces is that they are always about the socially challenged male throwing a tantrum in a supermarket because his idealized view of woman kind is being constantly disapointed by chicks already out of his lead.

This is why I found 2012’s Ruby Sparks very very interesting.

The movie is all about a male screen writer, Paul Dano in true awkward form, who manages to bring to life the mythic dream girl he creates through fiction. Like, she literally comes to life in all her whimsical glory, and even wears PINK TIGHTS. Of course, Paul Dano, in true brooding form, eventually gets sick of the titular Ruby. She’s too independent, too human, too normal. So he continues writing her, making scary adjustments to her personality like

“Ruby was miserable without Calvin”

“Ruby stripped and sang”

and distressingly

“Ruby barked like a dog”

But in any case, Paul Dano, in true lost form, realizes he cannot possibly understand women who transgress outside of his own view of how they should be. And this is taken further in the fact that Calvin does not superimpose his idealism onto someone, rather he completely contrives his ‘perfect woman’ and is still disapointed by her.

Can the nautical chino sporting hero ever win?

These manic pixies seem hellbent upon the sexy destruction of their feels, but I don’t think I’ve ever met one in real life. Capturing the multifaceted gorgeousity and terror of womenkind seems to be left up to male screen writers mostly and I think this is why they recur so often in Hollywood narratives.

However, if it were left up to females, representing femaledom would probably contain an excess of cats, shoes and tears in nightclub bathrooms over that anniversary you forgot.

Ooops, I find that I am now venturing into the land of stereotypes. Well Miss Deschanel and your creators, I’ll give you that. How else can we make sense of reality?