TV/Film Assignment Hints and How-to

Four page minimum, two sources, at least one scholarly.

Our task here, as always is to think critically about something that most people take for granted, like air, and figure out what its significance is, what its effect is, and what it says about us and our times. It's difficult because the point of TV and film is to go on zombie mode, but resist! The good news is that you've seen tens of thousands of hours of the stuff, so you're enormously sophisticated in your ability to read the system (the basis of semiotic analysis, right?). The system in this case could be the genre--a fancy French scholarly word for type. TV shows fall into the genres of drama, news, documentary, sitcom etc., and these often have subclasses (there are also hybrids and parodies of the genres, for example The Simpsons is a parody of the family sitcom, a sure sign that a given genre is getting worn out).

Another way of thinking about system is social system: for example Natural Born Killers is a parody and a critique of American culture in general, and media in particular, especially TV. You could also think of it in terms of youth culture, especially in the wake of events at UCSC (the copycat robbery of the Costco by two students) , Columbine and Virginia Tech.

You can use any or all of the heuristic toolkits on the How to be Brilliant handout , but I really want you at least to try out the Pentad, so you'll know what it's for. For one, it's a good focusing strategy: you can't write about every scene in a whole film, but you can zoom in on a pivotal moment; if you can understand the characters' motives, and maybe think about why the rules of the genre (and/or the audience) dictate that the show ends with a revenge killing or wedding or whatever, you're well on your way to understanding what makes it tick (this suggests you can pull in your training in literary criticism, but don't stop there since our purpose in this class is not to figure out if it is a quality work, but what it tells us about us).

You'll probably want to pick a show/movie that affects you personally, or one that affects someone you know well who will sit still for an honest interview. Also it's important to have ready access to video that you can watch repeatedly, take notes on, and ideally freeze frames. Many films and TV shows are available free downstairs in McHenry, but you have to watch them there (often these are director's cuts or have interviews with the makers, a nice bonus). Quite a lot of video is now online as well. See the Resources page

We see with the Power Rangers that shows often have an explicit generally positive message, (and the bottom-line message of most media is everything is as it should be, especially if you buy the right stuff), however, this message is often undermined by a more powerful (often visual) message.  Noam Chomsky in fact says that the purpose of media is to distract the 80% of the people who have no power in our country from what really matters. But he's careful to say it's not a conspiracy theory, but one that's built on a structural analysis. The purpose of TV, and increasingly movies, is to sell YOU to advertisers. Sometimes students construe my advice to look for the hidden meaning as a hunt for conspiracy or political correctness (it's not): the Smurf paper on the course website started off as an attempt to confirm a rumor/urban legend that the show was written by a Nazi or Communist, and as you can see it gets kind of silly. So start with a show itself, and your observations about it, and then figure out its significance (in the case of a TV show, do a specific episode. After dealing with the specific, you may be able to generalize about the overall significance of the show, but try to ground or back up the more speculative aspects by tying them down to specific details in your episode.

Here's some useful questions:

By what means does the show attract or even seduce us? Does the show target any particular goup of people? Do the ads that accompany it (and/ or product placement) give any hints?

What perspective do you have that allows you to "see through" the techniques that are designed to entrance the audience?

Does it work within the conventions of the genre, or against them?

Does it reinforce cultural stereotypes, or does it debunk or transcend them?

How to write this paper by the numbers:

1. List a bunch of shows that speak to you ( or purport to speak for you?), make you mad, or just bewilder you (maybe one that's phenomenally popular or critically acclaimed). Pick one that interests you (you cannot go wrong here, don't worry).

2. Find a pivotal moment or decision and use the Pentadic questions and ratios to understand it (here's an example ). You might do a quick cluster to sketch out your important observations, ideas and their connections. And/or freewrite on the overall significance of what you've found. Look that over and distill out a thesis (or at least a research question or hypothesis: e.g., Why isn't anyone bothered by the elitism in Wizard of Oz ? Why has Natural Born Killers , an anti-violence film, spawned murders?)

3. Talk your ideas over with friends and classmates . Or knock out a draft and show it around. This might be a good time to do some reading. I'd like two scholarly sources to be used to bring depth to your analysis (as opposed to merely mentioned or merely providing a fact or statistic). One or both sources can be from our text. Also, don't get too freaked out right now about what is or isn't scholarly: any article that analyzes the social significance of the show is useful for you to argue against or to use to corroborate your position, it's just that you're far more likely to find useful analysis in non-popular sources (popular tends to be glossy, have lots of ads and pictures, and no footnotes; scholarly is the opposite. The Internet has both scholarly and commercial info, but much more of the latter, so beware the Internet, but check out course webpage for examples and resources and McHenry Library for electronic and print resources ).

4. In addition to research sources, make sure your claims are supported by specific examples from the show. Check out possible introduction techniques on p. 15 of the Writer's Reference and try one or more out. You'll want your intro to engage your reader's attention and let them know what your position is. These techniques will also work for an ending, in which you can draw a conclusion from the observations in your body paragraphs and/or you can point out some of the larger implications of what you've discovered about the show. Let the draft cool off, show it around if possible, make sure it has a thesis supported by paragraphs with transitions between them, make sure each sentence makes sense, and then print up copies for your writing group.

Sample of final research paper based on film paper of 300

4/08