TV and Film Criticism 03 26 2013 Value of Criticism For audience reading good criticism should Allow you to have a fuller appreciation understanding of a film or TV program you ve watched and why you did didn t enjoy it Provide you with guidance as to what films to see or TV programs to watch But criticism can fail if its not useful to you as the recipient reader of it If it uses too much jargon get too theoretical If you don t buy into its type of criticism e g political economy racial feminist politically conservative politically left based If you usually find a type of criticism useful but find the arguments in a particular piece unpersuasive You don t buy the examples provided You can think of some many more examples that undermine the argument being made If you say ah I ve never thought of that before that s good criticism Genre Criticism Vande Berg Chapter 6 Genre is a French word for type or category Examples include Situation comedy Soap opera Detective drama Prime time serial Game show Talk show Cartoon animated Documentary Western Sports News Genre Criticism A genre is both a static and dynamic system Although all texts in genre share certain common features often called the genre s conventions each individual program in a genre is somewhat unique e g has some innovations in the genre s basic components The central problem for TV and film creators is how to balance the tension between convention and innovation Hollywood genres a product of The pragmatic needs of Hollywood production companies to maximize profits by simultaneously controlling production costs and developing a loyal body of consumers The tastes of the audience who flock to some but not all of Hollywood s creations Horace Necomb s 11 TV Genres Situation and domestic comedy Western Mystery Doctor and lawyer dramas Adventure Soap opera Reality entertainment news sports documentary Other genre types names include Procedural Law and order Dramedy Docudrama Competition talent shows American idol Mockumentary The office Britcoms Sci fi Fantasy Horror Comedy horror Elements of TV genres Semantic formal stylistic features Character types Location in geography time space Scene settings indoors outdoors both Characteristic type of shots Camera angles camera work e g unobtrusive vs handheld Style of action naturalistic vs stylized Use of time compressed or prolonged Single plot or multiple intersection plotlines Iconography Metatextual practices e g self reflexivity intertextuality Type of diagetic and extradigetic non niagetic sound musical soundtrack laugh track Length of episodes Frequency of episodes daily weekly Types of lighting flat bright chiaroscuro Elements of TV genres Syntactic substantive features Narrative structure open vs closed episodic vs serial or anthology Dialectic structures of paired oppositions Recurring themes Discourses Narrative Criticism First assumption is that human beings construct their understandings of themselves and their lives their immediate environments and even worlds outside their experience using stories Fisher said humans are Homo Narrans because storytelling is what defines us as sentient animals What defines us and conscious creatures So we put events together to form a story to be able to understand it ourselves and to communicate it to others 9 11 led to at least 3 major narratives stories often told in the media The story of institutional failure CIA airport security The story of the new world order rogue states terrorism replaces communism fear The story of American renewal rebuilding the Pentagon TSA created Syntagmatically from syntax which is the organized of words in sentences rules for deriving logical structures rule based arrangement Narrative structure is a symbolic tool for creating something understandable We organized stories with beginnings middles and ends We organize stories by hours of the day days of the week years eras e g the roaring twenties s we can understand the past in comprehensible pieces Stories gain their coherence horizontally and vertically Horizontal and then and then and then seem rational almost cause and effect Only makes sense if you know previous information Vertical story makes sense because you ve experienced others like it Narrative Criticism Three Vocabularies Traditional Aristotelian narrative vocabulary The contents of dramatic stories writing Plot character thought theme The vehicles of dramatic stories performance Diction spoken language melody vocalizations spoken and sung spectacle bodily performance within some environment Structuralist vocabulary Useful in coming to grips with both story lines and characters thoughts and behaviors within stories A fictive universe in which audience can explore their own values perceptions of the world etc Example the movie se7en what would you do if you were Brad Pitt s character Visualist vocabulary Fourth wall usually being maintained per Aristotle But the story is being told by and with the camera The camera and editing are our narrators To talk about story you therefore need a visualist vocabulary Vocabulary Color Framing Light dark use of light Shot depth close up long shot Simplicity complexity of layers in a shot Foreground background relationships Icons flags uniforms Visual quotations v for victory Heisman pose Interactions of with others Mise en scene Mis en scene French for placing on stage The visual theme All of the available means that directions producers and editors have in creating a scene including camera placement and movement pacing positioning of actors and set decoration that when assembled in the camera shot convey the feelings attitudes style of directors producers editors Narrative Criticism Secret to writing good narrative criticism is to be a good storyteller yourself And to provide solid description details And to provide evidence good enough to convince your readers Auteur Criticism Its the author as a whole whole work how they are throughout their career Auteur is French for author Regards the auteur almost as a genre him herself Ex Scorsese film Looks at ways in which an auteur creatively managed to consistently place her or his artistic signature on all of her or his works despite the constraints of the film and TV industry Auteur can be a writer producer a director and some would argue even a production company executive network or studio In film the auteur is usually the director In TV the writing executive producer and often the creator or a series
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