COMN 3316 Television as Culture

1. COMN 3316Television as Culture Oct. 1, 2010

2. Agenda • Getting ready to do autobiography project • Looking at use of life writing and place in Reading One. • Looking at the varied levels of analysis in Reading One: Viewing/Broadcast history/Plot/Set/Production issues/Marketing etc. • Reviewing the analytical tools we have used to think about television so far: • Icon, iconicity • Place • Binaries • Television’s own categories • Looking more in depth at other analytical tools offered in Spigel’s work: Space & the Autobiographical • Returning to look in depth at the autobiography project • Precis • Question Sets

3. Reading One My House Was On Torchwood: Media, Place and Identity By Brett Mills From International Journal of Cultural Studies 2008

4. The article discusses the many layers connecting place and television: What are some of these?

6. Analysis Identities The article discusses the many layers connecting place and television: What are some of these?

7. Identities Analysis The article discusses the many layers connecting place and television: What are some of these?

8. Modes of analysis to be used in Autobiographical Assignment : Autobiography

9. What is autobiography as a mode of analysis It is a way of using your own life to do research It is a way of writing, in which you present your story and also analyze it.

10. Modes of analysis to be used in Autobiographical Assignment : Categories of television studies

11. Article 1: categories of analysis, all areas in TV Studies • Broadcasting • Schedule • Distribution • Technology • Cultural Variations • Market • Local • National • International • Advertising • Policy: local, national, international • Performance studies

12. Reading 1: Categories of analysis in TV Studies • Filming/writing/acting/production/editing/costume/set/directing • Vocabulary related to • Elements of scene and dramatic composition/enactment • Techniques • Direction • Viewer/Audience Studies • History • Technological histories • Show histories • Motif histories • Policy histories • Institutionalized histories

13. Modes of analysis to be used in Autobiographical Assignment : Binaries

14. Binary: a pair Whose meaning develops directly or indirectly in relationship to one another

15. Binary: a pair Whose meaning develops or is developed, directly or indirectly in relationship to one another

16. How are binaries used in reading 1?

17. Modes of analysis to be used in Autobiographical Assignment : Icon

18. Reviewing: Icon or Iconic form • An imagic mode of communication • Which works with the imagination both individual, collective and cultural • It evokes rather quickly yet “deeply” • It works through shapes, patterns, themes, motifs, palettes, postures, grammars of rank, symbologics of value • It works in layers of significance that are emotional plus cognitive • It works through the perceptual apparatus connected to apprehension, ritual, worship, admiration, myth • It also works through perceptual apparatus that are subliminal/ connected to desire (dream apparatus) • It is especially connected to cathartic modes of human function ( or we could say modes that need discharge)

19. Icon or Iconic form (continued) • It is accessible to multi-sensual forms of reappearing: visual, tactile, audio (rhythmic), aroma • It is a means of gathering and transmitting collected sets of meanings, meanings that are entangled and embedded in one another • It taps into and acquires cultural potency – especially for that which eludes easy definition • It can often transmit a broad set of cultural motifs/values/ or other information while allowing them a platform for gathering and even transforming.

20. Icon or Iconic form • It is agile: It can be a person (Marilyn Monroe), A place (Mecca), a Musical theme (Mash), Shape (red lips) Smell (coffee) - its agility allows it to stand in for potent and important meanings yet without making rigid definitions of that meaning • It often partakes of the cultural rhythms (and thus these can decode them) For example in our culture which thinks in twos – binaries will often help decode our icons)

21. Another take • http://www.pedroguitton.com/phd_knowledge_center/pdf/LessonsIcons.pdf

22. Examples 1: gun

23. Example 2: Shiny Toy Guns Video • In pairs • Discuss use of icons • Discuss use of binaries • Discuss use of place • Account one autobiographical piece of info about video

24. Reading Two Part 2: White flight in Welcome to the Dream House: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs by Lynn Spigel 2001

25. In Reading 2: How does space function as • Icon • Binary • Means of taking us through television studies • Autobiography?

26. Returning to consider categories of analysis in TV Studies • Reading 1 • Reading 2

27. Precis • 2 readings: • one in the fall/winter term • one in spring/winter terms • 100 words • Author focused. • Summary of key bits (not a review, a summary) • Your own words

28. Question Sets (we will talk again next week about “good questions” • Write 10 “good” questions • One term: the set will be for the lecture • Other term: the set will be for a reading • Questions will be used in tutorials. • Questions will be evaluated by both tutorial students and TA, though TA will be main and final evaluator. • Question must demonstrate that asker has truly read and digested the article (or attended and digested the lecture) • Questions must help students digest the material, learn from it, and find its key elements and tensions. • Questions should cover basic reading, and also more sophisticated relevance of article or lecture to course.