vehicle strand the real: reality, realism & the media
TRANSCRIPT
Vehicle Strand
The Real: Reality, Realism & the Media
The Real
Modes, realist and the fantastic
Realism and the real Modes and technology Undermining modal oppositions
Key concepts: realism, modes
Representation and Reality
Genres: conventions and expectations; verisimilitude
Narrative: factual and fictional
Representation: re-presentation of reality
Genres and Modes
Genres: discursive categories involving narrative conventions, iconography types etc.
Modes: broader discursive categories cutting across genre distinctions
Significant modes (for us): realist and fantastic
Operation of Modes
What makes something fantastic or realist? E.g. subject matter or form?
Whose reality, whose fantasy? Are these diametrically opposed?
Ethical implications?
Realism
“Realism is a difficult word, not only because of the intricacy of the disputes in art and philosophy to which its predominant uses refer, but also because the two words on which it seems to depend, real and reality, have a very complicated linguistic history.”
Raymond Williams, 1988: Key words
The Real and Reality: complexities
social construction of concept transformed historically and geographically
Prioritised differently in different cultural settings a recent and provincial invention
Legal and economic connotations
Realism: multiple and changeable
Realism
“Documentaries…do not differ from fictions in their contractedness as texts, but in the representations they make. At the heart of documentary is less a story and its imaginary work than an argument about the historical world.”
Nichols, 2001, p.11
Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore (2002)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1iuEcu7O50
Consider:
Camera shots
Audio
Who is involved.
Dialogue.
Settings and costumes.
Elements of Realism
Factual Media: an alignment with ‘real events’: the facts
stylistic emphasis on the factuality of facts: e.g. documentaries and camera technologies; no ‘acting’; no intrusive music; objective information.
Film, realism and the material conditions of life
This is England, Shane Meadows (2006-2013)
Consider:
Camera shots
Audio
Who is involved.
Dialogue.
Settings and costumes.
Elements of Realism
Fictional Media:
representation of everyday situations
audio-visual techniques: detail
Concern with social, economic and political conditions of life
But, who are the film makers?
Ethical issues?
e.g. British Social Realism, Dogma 95.
Politics of realism
Often concerned with the oppressed and downtrodden: so, involves truth claims regarding groups lacking the resources to challenge them
Politics of aesthetics: debate about political implications of realism in film and media studies.
Colin McArthur: realist texts expose social conditions; this can inspire action
Colin McCabe: realist mode inspires passive, contemplative engagement – more inventive, disruptive, analytical forms required.
Politics of realism
“In essence, realism is a regime of unified portrayal: very criterion of realism aims at the same objective, to combine all the elements of the representation at any one point into a harmonious whole. This prevents the reading of the image, scanning it to see its different elements and their possible conflicts or combinations, which is a central feature of modernist tendencies in the other visual arts.”
John Ellis, Visible Fictions (1992,pp. 6-7)
Modes and technology
Realist and fantastic modes tied to technologies as well as styles
E.g. special effects, CGI and the fantastic
Realism and photographic technologies
Realism and media technologies?
A literal trace of the real? Photographs as ‘indexes’.
Mechanical: no apparent human intervention.
But: link between photography as much to do with professional uses and discourses: see John Tagg, The Burden of Representation, and Susan Sontag, On Photography.
Realist mode association with portable camera technology e.g. cinéma vérité; phone camera footage of 2009 G20 summit, London; Arab Spring.
Robert Doisneau: The Kiss, by Hotel de Ville. 1950
New media technologies and The Return of the Real
Convergence of TV and internet, ubiquity of webcams
Proliferation of ‘reality TV’ genres and sub-genres: apparently ‘demystifying’ and ‘democratic’
News as spectacle: rolling news as infotainment
Commodification of reality as entertainment, packaging of entertainment as reality (Andrejevic 2004).
Realistic and fantastic: a false opposition?
Genres that undermine opposition, e.g. magical realism, allegorical fantasy (not pure fantasy e.g. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter.)
Pans Labyrinth: both a fantasy and an account of the Spanish Civil War
Less a genre or mode than a way of reading.
Environment Strand
Rear-view Mirror
Rear-view mirror examples
electronic keyboards look like pianos
‘dialling’ phone numbers
‘file’ icons on computer desktops
the term ‘desktop’
Global Village?
Rear-view mirror (cont.)
Not just about anachronistic figures of speech
Our belong to the past: they have not kept pace with technology
We still live as if in the visual space
Electronic media produce acoustic space
How does this relate to the Internet?
New media examples
Intellectual property? free information vs. economic scarcity
Privacy?
moral panics?
do young people care about what McLuhan would see as another 19th century idea?
Case study?
Is McLuhan a technological determinist?
What is technological determinism?
Extreme (also called "strong" or "hard") technological determinists::
• Information technology transforms society and/or our behaviour.
Weak (or "soft") technological determinists:
• Technology as a key factor which may facilitate changes in society or behaviour.
Technological Determinism Critique
Socio-cultural determinists: •Socio- cultural and historical contexts determine technological effects.
•Voluntarists: •Individual action, not technology, determines change in society.
from: Technological or Media Determinism Daniel Chandler: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/tecdet/tdet11.html
McLuhan as technological determinist
• Newspapers create the public (collective made up of rational individuals)
• Electronic media create the mass (no separate and distinct viewpoints, no time or space for reflection etc.)
But consider…
“Today, the mass audience…can be used as a creative, participating force. It is, instead, merely given packages of passive entertainment. Politics offers yesterday’s answers to today’s questions.” (McLuhan and Fiore, 1967, p.22)
•What kind of statement is this?
•Paradox of the rear-view mirror…
•Is McLuhan asking us to think for ourselves about the fact that technology is thinking for us?
Case Study guidelines
Apply: a theory to a media text (vehicle strand)
Or…
a probe to a technical device or digital platform (environment strand).
Module handbook:
Assignment description
Assessment criteria
For week 9:
Bring case study topic, research and ideas to class.
Research Understanding Application
70-100% Evidence of at least 5 texts read
Excellent clarity of expression Excellent structure Consistently accurate grammar, spelling and
punctuation Consistently accurate referencing using the Harvard
System
Excellent knowledge and understanding of theories and ideas
Original application of theory or probe to chosen artefact or medium
60-69% Evidence of at least 4 texts read
Thoughts and ideas very clearly expressed Very good structure Essentially accurate grammar, spelling and punctuation Essentially accurate referencing using the Harvard
System
Very good knowledge and understanding of theories and ideas
Very good application of theory or probe to chosen artefact or medium
50-59% Evidence of at least 3 texts read
Thoughts and ideas mostly clearly expressed Good structure Some grammar, spelling and punctuation errors Some referencing errors using the Harvard System
Good knowledge and understanding of theories and ideas
Good application of theory or probe to chosen artefact or medium
40-49% Evidence of at least 2 texts read
Meaning apparent but not always explicit Fair structure Several grammar, spelling and punctuation errors Several referencing errors using the Harvard System
Fair knowledge and understanding of theories and ideas
Appropriate application of theory or probe to chosen artefact or medium
Fail, resit (30-39%) No evidence of independent research
Meaning is often unclear Poor structure Extensive grammar, spelling and punctuation errors Extensive referencing errors and/or Harvard System
not used
Poor knowledge and understanding of theories and ideas
Poor application of theory or probe to chosen artefact or medium
Fail, no resit (0-29%) No evidence of independent research
Meaning is largely unclear Very poor structure Consistently poor grammar, spelling and punctuation Consistent referencing errors and/or Harvard System
not used
Very poor knowledge and understanding of theories and ideas
Very poor application of theory or probe to chosen artefact or medium
Grade Research Writing Understanding Application
Assessment Sheet: Case Study
Next week’s reading
Branston and Stafford: Chapter 8
‘New Media’ in a ‘New World’
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