Week 06: Speaking & Listening

(Protesters in Libya are aware of the effect that global communications and influence media has on western opinion, clearly using western (Obama) influenced political posters)

This weeks reading 'The virtual sphere: The internet as a public sphere' deals primarily with the ramifications of political activism on the internet, the decline of political participation, and the role the internet serves as a political tool.
The reading then goes into how the internet may not be the saviour of public political participation as many think, but may fragment political communities to the point where you have many splinter groups that hold little relevance or political capital.

However I would disagree, I think that the fragmentation of politics is a positive thing. History has proven that a two party system is inevitable in many democracy’s. This (naturally) forces one to take the right wing (conservative) standpoint on issues, while the other takes a left wing (liberal) standpoint. This duel system forces there to be no alternatives in politics but 'yes' and 'no'.
A fragmentation of standpoints and issues brings more opinions to the public sphere, more alternatives. It is important to consider that the internet and many of its communities are still in their infancy, however events like the cascade of revolutionary protest that are sweeping through North Africa, The Middle East and the Arab States right now prove the importance and strength of globalised communications and media via the Internet.

Week 05: Mediating

This weeks reading deals with text, media and society (like most weeks). It starts by analysing about the similarities between the attacks on the world trade towers of September 11, and the imagery found in a blockbuster Hollywood film. The writer lists of all the films they can think of with visceral scenes of cities and buildings being destroyed.
The writer then goes on to talk about the differences, concentrating mainly on the fact that one is fiction and one is reality. The writer discusses how film-makers use techniques like 'shaking camera' and 'awkward zooms', to impose the quality of realism.
The writer then goes into great detail on how the media manipulates their images to look more film-like and how film-makers manipulate their images to look more news-like.

In my opinion this is another inevitable side-effect of out times. fiction writers often seek to replicate reality. This way you become more invested and the images you see have more of an impact on the viewer. By the same token, the media is always trying to portray the world in a film-like manor. To prove this, one needs only look at the pattern of stories during a news program.

• The program will usually start with local news (establishing setting, much like the beginning of films where the character is often comfortable in a familiar place).

• As the program reaches the mid-point the more 'heavy' news stories feature (the climax, the action at the centre of the film that grips you to the end).

• Then finally news programs end on sport and a human interest story (the ending on a human interest story, is like the end of a film when the character comes back home after a harrowing journey and finally gets to smile).

Week 04: Writing

This weeks reading concerns the nature in which we write and thus the nature of what the reader reads. A large potion of the reading concerns the creative aspects of writing and how creative writing is seen as separate from academic.

I feel as if the writer of this reading has only disproved the point they wished to prove, that academic writing can be creative and eloquent. I found the use of creative language and the lack of formality to the writing made it completely distracting. I found myself re-reading paragraphs, scrambling to identity a argument or point in the text amongst all the imaginative imagery. I even found myself 'googling' terms the text was supposed to be explaining, because I found it extremely hard to coax a definition out of the text.
Creative writing is whimsical because it is only trying to impart a story of events upon the reader, where vague non-essential knowledge can be compensated for by our great imaginations (ie. How a character looks, what a room in a scene looks like). However academic writing, requires the transfer of specific and specialised concepts and theory, it requires a sharper use of language and a formal style of writing to best impart the knowledge and not distract from the essential information.

Week 03: Reading

This weeks reading deals largely with reading into text and analysing structure and narrative form. The reading begins by explaining the different forms of narrative structure:

Fragmented narratives; are mainly defined by non-sequential time-frames, and non-unified multi-narratives.

Multi-strand narratives; also have multiple narrative lines, but 'multi-strand' narratives are typically more related to one another, but are usually told in a disordered manner.

Classical narration; refers to the classical style of film making typically found in Hollywood films from around 1917 – 1960, where cause-effect plays a driving force behind the narrative and the protagonists narration is hidden in the narrative itself.

Canonical story structure; a consistent format of narration with three acts, introduction, complication and resolution.

The reading then goes into the foundation of Structuralism, structuralism suggests that at the core of every narrative is organised around binary oppositions which are typically centred around typical oppositions (evil-good, race, gender ect.).

The reading then uses this technique of identifying binary oppositions to analyse the film Natural Born Killers, I will apply this process to the Star Wars films, comparing the Empire (the antagonistic ruling faction from the first three films) to the Rebels (protagonists):

Empire (Antagonist)	Rebels (Protagonist)
Seeks control through power	Seeks order through enlightenment
Large and cumbersome	Small and tactical
Arrogant	Humble
Almost exclusively made up of Human-looking characters, and display border-line racist / prejudices mentality	Contains cultural and species diversity, indicating greater acceptance of differences, reinforced by precocity to use indigenous creatures for help
Almost all characters from the empires ruling class have English accents	All have either American accents or speak in alien languages
Space ships are typically grey with red lasers	Space ships are typically white with blue or green lasers

Week 02: Looking

This reading deals largely with NVC (Non Verbal Communication) and outlines the technical used when crafting the mis en scene to convey certain ideas and implant specific connotation about the image. The reading then goes onto outline different techniques and technical terminology used in film and photography. I will now use the material in the ready to analyse the promotional poster for the movie “Never Say Never” staring Justin Bieber

by pointing out a denotation and identifying its connotation:

• The camera is from a low angle relative to Bieber's eye-level.

  • This indicates Bieber is in a position of authority, probably not in a position of literal authority in the text, but he is the authority figure simply by being the central figure of the text.

• The two worlds on either side of him and the bight light under.

  • The “suburbia” image on the left indicates Biebers humble beginnings (also through the social norm that westerners read from left to right),

  • The city image on the right indicates that Bieber is destined for greater things, in comparison with his cold (because of the snow), grey (use of Black and white on the suburb image but not on the city) suburb beginnings.

  • Finally the light can be interpreted in several ways,

    • It can be seen as an indication that Bieber will achieve greatness at the conclusion of his journey, this is further enforced by the light being at the end of the road Bieber is standing on, framed by the suburbs (past) and city (future).

    • It could be seen to imply religious implications upon Bieber, crediting him with some kind of messiah-like status, since religious imagery has strong connotations for most Westerners.

    • Finally it could be interpreted as an indication of Biebers status as a pre-teen sex icon, the technique of selling sex to children who don’t truly understand the subtlety’s of advertising is well established and I wouldn’t doubt if the bright light was placed there to serve all three of these NVC purposes.

• The way he has his hands in his pockets, with his thumbs subtly pointing towards his crouch, is again another indication of Biebers status as a sex symbol.