Communication Arts 250 Final Study Guide Texts and Genres Key Concepts Matthew Arnold The best that has been thought and said Meaning Referential Explicit Implicit Symptomatic Intention Mise en sc ne Composition D cor Acting Style Location Cinematography Costuming Makeup and Hair Lighting Film Stock Films discussed briefly 300 Schindler s List Moonrise Kingdom Oz the Great and Powerful Alice in Wonderland The Searchers Batman more Bond films Questions from Bordwell and Thompson p 70 1 For any element in the film what are its functions in the overall form How is it motivated 2 Are elements or patterns repeated throughout the film If so how and at what points Are motifs and parallelisms asking us to compare elements 3 How are elements contrasted and differentiated from one another How are different elements opposed to one another 4 What principles of progression or development are at work through the form of the film Does a comparison of the beginning and ending point toward the film s overall form 5 What degree of unity is present in the film s overall form Genres discussed briefly Film Noir Horror Soap Operas Musicals Formal Analysis Key Concepts Formal analysis Story and style Functions and effects of story and style Mobile camera Long take Point of view shot Subjective shot Subjective sound Ideology and Hegemony Key Concepts Ideology Heteronormativity Cultivation theory Hegemony Repressive state apparatuses Ideological state apparatuses Consent vs coercion Counter hegemony Absorbing incorporating counter hegemony Subordinate groups are if not controlled then at least contained within an ideological space which does not seem at all ideological which appears instead to be permanent and natural Dick Hebdige Hegemony involves the constant winning and rewinning of the consent of the majority to the system that subordinates them John Fiske p 176 Semiotics Key Concepts Semiotics Language as arbitrary The Sign signified signifier Denotation Connotation Myth Paradigm Syntagm Polysemy Semiotic Warfare Stats and Quotes The concept and the object to which they might be used to refer is entirely arbitrary Stuart Hall p 174 The meaning is not in the object or person or thing nor is it in the word It is we who fix the meaning so firmly that after a while it comes to seem natural and inevitable Hall p 175 Meaning is not given by nature or fixed by the gods It is the result of a set of social conventions Hall p 176 Constructivists do not deny the existence of the material world However it is not the material world which conveys meaning it is the language system or whatever system we are using to represent our concepts Hall p 177 Language is not a neutral medium for the formation and transfer of values meanings and forms of knowledge that exist independently beyond its boundaries Rather language is constitutive of those very values meanings and knowledges That is language gives meaning to material objects and social practices that are brought into view and made intelligible to us in terms which language delimits Language is not best understood as an innocent reflection of non linguistic meaning Chris Barker I see very well what it signifies to me that France is a great Empire that all her sons without colour discrimination faithfully serve under her flag and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in serving his so called oppressors Roland Barthes quoted by Hall p 184 One implication of this argument about cultural codes is that if meaning is the result not of something fixed out there in nature but of our social cultural and linguistic conventions then meaning can never be finally fixed Hall p 176 There is thus no single unchanging universal true meaning Hall p 180 The Text Outside the Text Key Concepts Intertexts Allusion Parody Paratexts Hype Trailers Convergence Transmedia storytelling Stats and Quotes There is neither a first nor a last word and there are no limits to the dialogic context it extends into the boundless past and the boundless future Even past meanings that is those born in the dialogue of past centuries can never be stable finalized ended once and for all they will always change be renewed in the process of subsequent future development of the dialogue Nothing is absolutely dead every meaning will have its homecoming festival Mikhail Bakhtin The flow of content across multiple media platforms the cooperation between multiple media industries and the migratory behavior of media audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of entertainment experiences they want In the world of media convergence every important story gets told every brand gets sold and every consumer gets courted across multiple media platforms Henry Jenkins Celebrities Key Concepts Celebrity Notoriety Glamor Celebrities as thronged Gossip Public vs private self Role of gossip Role of celebrity Celebrities as commodities Industry produced celebrity Audience produced celebrity Celebrity produced celebrity Star text Star texts as polysemic contradictory Star texts on the move Stats and Quotes Celebrity is the attribution of glamorous or notorious status to an individual within the public sphere Chris Rojek Star images are always extensive multimedia intertextual Richard Dyer Celebrity is a genre of representation and a discursive effect it is a commodity traded by the promotions publicity and media industries that produce these representations and their effects and it is a cultural formation that has a social function we can better understand Graeme Turner Remediation and Hypertext Key Concepts New media Lev Manovich s Principles of New Media 1 Numerical Representation 2 Modularity 3 Automation 4 Variability 5 Transcoding Mediation Immediacy Hypermediacy Remediation New Media Literacies Wikipedia Hypertext Stats and Quotes New Media Literacies 1 Play experiment as a form of problem solving 2 Performance adopt alternative identities 3 Simulation construct dynamic models of real world processes 4 Appropriation meaningfully sample and remix media content 5 Multitasking shift focus as needed 6 Distributed Cognition use tools that expand mental capacities 7 Collective Intelligence pool knowledge with others 8 Judgment evaluate the credibility of competing sources 9 Transmedia Navigation follow information across media 10 Networking search for and circulate information 11 Negotiation live in multiple communities Video Games Texts Identities