“Romancing the Tale: Walt Disney’s Adaption of the Grimms’ “Snow White”
Wright, T. (1997). Romancing the Tale: Walt Disney’s Adaptation of the Grimms’ “Snow White”. Journal of Popular Film and Television, 25(3), pp.98-108. To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01956059709602756
This article focuses on the impact Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had at the time of its release in 1937 as it was the first full-length motion picture in animated cartoon format. The piece goes in depth on the production process of Snow White, its influence on popular culture, and the films politics.
This article didn’t so much focus on gender roles in ‘Snow White’ as it did an analysis of when and why the film was created. The time the article was written (1997) could also account for the not so critical lens through which the film is looked at as in more recent years people have become more inclined to openly criticise films for the way they represent women.
This article was a good piece to read to gain a greater understanding of “Snow White” in context of when it was released. It was interesting to learn that at the time of it’s release, Snow White was seen as a strong female character, whereas looking at it now she is considered to be a very passive damsel. Further, the film was constructed to be inline with the cinema trends of the time, rather than be as true to the original story as possible.
Netflix’s ‘Love’
I would definitely recommend this show if you like romantic comedies about characters you hate. As a big fan of Judd Apatow I felt obligated to watch, I’m still not sure how I felt about the series but the soundtrack was an absolute banger. Credit to Spotify user Tyler Ortega for uploading this playlist.
Making Public Television Social? Public Service Broadcasting and the Challenges of Social Media
Van Dijck, J. and Poell, T., 2015. Making public television social? Public service broadcasting and the challenges of social media. Television & New Media, 16(2), pp.148-164.
This article looks at the effect the increase of social media in our society has had on European public service broadcasting. The article examines the interaction between the two platforms on three levels: the level of institution, professional practise, and content. The article then goes onto address broader questions of how public broadcasters are adjusting to the change social media brings in their field. It raises questions of how public broadcasting can capitalise on social medias ability to connect with younger audiences. The overlap between social media and public broadcasting is increasing and the article addresses the changing meaning of ‘publicness’ in European public broadcasting.
Week Nine Tute/ PB4 Progress update
Having completed the annotated bibliography exercise my group and I have began to form a much clearer idea of what we want to communicate in project brief four.
We’ve had a pretty clear idea from the start of the project that we’d like to focus on Disney Princess films(DPFs) particularly through a feminist lense, that is looking at how women are represented in these films and the effect this has on the films audience. After completing readings it seems to make more sense to seperate into two topics still related to DPFs in order to avoid a lot of overlap between our video and audio essay.
Currently, the plan is to in our video essay focus on the representation of race in Disney Princess films, particularly in ‘Mulan‘ (1998), ‘Pocahontas‘ (1995), and ‘The Princess and the Frog‘ (2009) as the protagonists of these films are women of colour. This is still related to our original concept as it is hard to discuss feminism without talking about race.
Our audio essay will be a comparison between the first DPF ‘Snow White’ (1937) and one of the most recent ones ‘Tangled‘ (2010). This will allow us to directly assess how the representation of women has changed over the decades.
These two ideas we have are still very broad but at least have given us a clearer direction for our research. In our next group meeting taking place later today we’ll begin to plan out exactly the points we want to make and the formatting of each essay. Hopefully after this we’ll be able to allocate specific jobs and start to make some real progress on this project brief.
Logies 2016 Red Carpet
That’s right it’s the biggest night in Australian entertainment: The Logies. As the who’s who of show business gather at crown cassino I thought I’d weigh in on the best and worst of the red carpet in 2016.
The Best:
Pregnant with twins Rebecca Judd looks like an absolute princess.
Delta is a goddess as per always.
If Lee Lin Chin doesn’t win the gold logie I will die.
Australia’s sweetheart Grant Denyer.
And the worst:
I honestly can’t figure out if this guy is trying to be funny, how can you be sure with “The Block” contestants?
Sonia Kruger decided to dress as the Gold Logie.
Leg jewellery is the new black (The dress is very lovely to be fair)
Maybe Gina should stick to creating perfume and drama..
Just to clarify, I personally think everyone here looks amazing – I just don’t love their outfits.
Also a very special mention to three men who hold a really big place in my heart:
All pictures from news.com.au sourced from Twitter, News Corp Australia and Media Mode.
Project Brief Three (the return)
Earlier in the week I received an email to let me know some of the found footage in PB3 seemed as though it did not have the correct licensing for me to use it. Many angst filled messages to the group chat and a very helpful conversation with Rachel later, it seems I do have the right to use the footage and I just had to adjust my credits to give full credit to the person who posted the video. Here is the new and improved version.
[Project Brief 3]_[Holly Karas]_[7:5:2016] from Holly Karas on Vimeo.
“Sleep”
In tute last week we listened to an example of an audio essay, titled “Sleep” on Radiolab, in order to gain an understanding of what an audio essay actually is and maybe take inspiration for our own essays we’ll soon be creating.
The first thing I noticed was how many introductions there was. It opened with ‘opening credits’ per say, not that different to how a tv show or movie would open, there was then an introduction to the essay topic by the announcer followed by segments of the essay to come. This also seems similar to the introduction of a television program. During periods of conversation between the two announcers, there is always some sort of background noise it is never just two voices, probably to keep the audience interested. Just as when watching a politician giving a speech, during which there will always be some form of movement in the background to keep the audience interested, the background noise here has the same function. Similarly, the announcers use really overly animated voices, more so than what people would normally use in conversation. The whole essay moves very quickly, using a lot of sound effects to illustrate what is being discussed, and cutting between many different people answering the same question which all works to keep the audience engaged.
From listening to this, I’ve learnt that not only does a lot of work have to go into the content of the essay, but effort needs to be put in to ensure the audience stays engaged and interested.
Post-Princess Models of Gender: The New Man in Disney/Pixar
Ken Gillam & Shannon R. Wooden (2008) Post-Princess Models of Gender:The New Man in Disney/Pixar, Journal of Popular Film and Television, 36:1, 2-8, DOI: 10.3200/ JPFT.36.1.2-8
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.3200/JPFT.36.1.2-8
Gilliam and Wooden’s article looks at the representation of male characters in three disney pixar films, ‘Cars’, ‘Toy Story’ and “The Incredibles’. All major Disney Pixar films released since 1990 have followed very similar storylines featuring a male protagonist. The article argus that these films offer a ‘rather progressive postfeminist model of gender’ as the plot will generally centre around a bildungsroman style story of a male character having to overcome his overly masculine traits to ultimately mature and reach their goals.
Both of the articles authors are scholars in gender studies and have backgrounds in popular culture, and aside from this article have written a book focusing on ‘boy culture’ in Disney Pixar movies. Therefore their writing on this topic can be respected.
Unlike other articles I’ve read, this focuses on Disney’s representation of men. It’s mostly praise for positive representations of male characters, which isn’t surprising, what did strike me though was that these representations are seen as positive because they embody feminine qualities. While this doesn’t directly relate to our topic, it is indicative of Disney’s move towards a more progressive social standing. However this is limited as they only strive (and succeed) to create positive representations of male characters, not women, thus the article links to our current arguments about Disney’s representation.