Kelly's Place

In many ways I believe that studying media is a bit like being a detective; one must look for clues within the writing and derive meanings and motives to the pieces. The critical perspectives suggested by the Beach text offer tools to better break down media and to consider many angles of a given piece.

AUDIENCE- Thinking critically about how the creator of the media positions the work in conjunction with the audience will help to determine the purpose of the piece. Knowing this will allow students to consider what assumptions the media has about its audience as well as what the audience may project back upon the media. The examples of the text citing advertisements are perfect candidates for using this lens in the classroom and are catalysts for discussions about responsible consumerism as well as the propagation of stereotypes.

SEMIOTIC - Semiotic analysis delves into symbols, including words, their meanings and cultural relativity. This kind of analysis asks students to draw conclusions about the media using the cultural coding system. What I especially like about this lens is that it opens up an opportunity to discuss how symbols and words are not set in stone when it comes to their meaning. A dragon in the western ideology usually symbolizes something that is both greedy and dangerous, while in China, for example, it comes to have a figure of strength and fortune. I might do an exercise that would show that we, in our imaginary community, have a cultural code, and then show that other people around the world have differing viewpoints.

POST STRUCTURALIST- This approach challenges simplistic representations and stereotypes. Students can, like in the Beach text, identify binary systems and then proceed to contradict them.

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS- I think that Discourse Analysis would be an interesting way to consider a character's actions and thoughts. A Discourse seems to be something that people wrap themselves around, becoming very much part of their identity and shaping how they move and think. This would be a very helpful lens in helping students better identify with extreme characters, as it would provide some perspective into why they think and act like they do.

PSYCHOANALYTIC- Applying different psychological theories to media. I especially like the idea of talking about the subconscious and how certain elements of repressed desires can be seen expressed in media.

FEMINIST- A lens that helps to explore the limitations of gender roles as well as the exploitation of women in media. I would like to talk about gender as a social construct, and then proceed to analyze media and how they conform to or break the status quo.

POSTMODERN- I would like to use media to support a lesson on postmodern poetry. The rejection of conventional thinking and conventional forms can be found in many films, and I think that talking about how shifts in thinking about life, and purpose, would create some complexity when going back to more traditional and conventional works.

POST COLONIAL- A lens that brings to the table the imperialist influences in texts. A great opportunity to put media in a historical context and discuss ideologies such as 'the white man's burden'. I would enjoy reading a text or watching a movie from an imperialist perspective that represents the colonized as an exotic prize to be conquered and tamed. I would then like to look at a piece from the same region from the colonized perspective and have my students discuss the implications of the disparities.

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Laurence of Arabia – Mirage/Well scene

What happens in the scene:

Laurence’s guide brings him to a well in the desert to drink. The men are trespassing, and soon a man on camel back arrives and shoots Lawrence’s guide for the offence. Lawrence, furious, criticizes the Arab people by saying that they will remain “a little people� as long as they fight among themselves. The man on camel back seems to respect Lawrence’s courage, and offers to lead him out of the desert, however, Lawrence refuses, and decides to find his own way to Prince Feisal’s camp.

Music:
One of the most striking features of this scene is its lack of music. Although the movie has a famous soundtrack, composed by Maurice Jarre, this particular scene is without music. The silence of the scene emphasizes the lonely landscape of the desert, and also creates anticipation about the approaching man on camel back. The isolation of the desert is felt acutely because of the overall silence of the scene, the only sounds, besides the dialogue, are camels and the sound of the bucket plunging into the deep well.

Film Techniques:
Once again, to portray the vastness of the desert, the film uses mostly a wide-angle lens. The landscape of the desert could arguably a main character in this story, and the lens definitely assists in portraying the desert as a major force in the lives of the human characters. Because of the constant reminder of the landscape, the viewer realizes that the characters must all be analyzed in context with the setting.

There are some interesting uses of the point-of-view shot in this scene. At the beginning, the shot is looking up from the bottom of the well into the sky. This shot, in relationship to the wide-angle lens technique, provides stark contrast, from the depth of the well, to the width of the never ending desert. In this case, the point-of-view shot is not from a person, but of the precious resource of the water in the well. Another meaningful point-of-view shot occurs when Lawrence and his guide spy the camel back man in the distance. The shot is from their perspective waiting to distinguish who the man is wavering in the mirage created by the desert sun. The mirage shot is interesting because it is established by the extreme long shot, the man is a speck on the screen, and because of the mirage seems to be making no progress. When the man does arrive, it seems as if it were in a blink of an eye, a testament to the strangeness of the desert to western eyes.

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Currently, our language arts curriculum contains no formal media literacy standards. Since we are revamping our program, I believe it is in the best interest of both our students, and faculty, to implement media literacy activities in all areas of education. I understand there are presures to raise standardized test scores, but including media literacy training will do nothing byt help us achieve our goals. The " back to the basics" approach isn't really working; we, as teachers. are sacrificing lessons that we think are valuable in order to drill our students until all excitement and curiosity about learning has all but vanished. By using the technologies that are integral parts of our students lives, we will be able to get our kids literally plugged into the concepts and skills that will prepare them for not only tests, but as responsible and informed citizens of the increasingly media savvy and dependent world.

I don't think media literacy is something we should be afraid to teach. Technology is forever changing, and hopefully our students will help us with becoming more comfortable with that. The tools for analyzing and critiquing new media forms, however, are very much based on the familiar skills we have been teaching: we still need to look at the piece of media and decide what it is, why it was written and, how it is working. We live in an age where media can easily be created and communicated through the internet, providing people with seemingly endless sources of entertainment and information. Ther pervasiveness of media that we are subject to, and producers of is astounding, and we cannot, as educators, ignore the new forms of communication. The internet is a toolbox for teachers waiting to be opened!

The internet is a fairly new frontier for educators, and with our students we will be able to explore the implications of web videos, blogs, chat rooms, advertising, music, film, and various other forms of communication. Video games have also alot to offer educators and can help to generate great discussion about perspective building and how reason allows us to learn skills through reading books and engaging with other media that help us to remove from self and into the place of the other. I also think we must show students how to check for reliable information, and to gain a radar for overly biased or under resourced documents. Since students are also mass producers of media, we can have great discussions about media for social change, as well as many of the controversies concerning privacy and freedom of speech.

In order to jump start our new curriculum all we need are teachers who are willing to try and incorporate new media into their current lessons, and take time out to give students a vocabulary to discuss and better understand new media communication. I propose that teachers use the internet to enhance their lessons by finding videos, articles, music, maps, and other items to add flavor and variety to their lectures and exercises . I also think we should encourage teachers to use online blogs to extend the academic dialog further, and the students can also be encouraged to find different forms of media that relate to the lesson at hand. Media literacy encourages cooperation, collaboration, and creativity. Teachers should give students the opportunity to process what they've learned in various formats. Paper writing is a great skill, but their are other ways to creatively and effectively respond to a text. This can be something as simple as a power-point presentation, but could also take the form of an online diary or multi-media video.

It is in my experience that people become more invested when they see real life implications for their studies. Young people today are actively involved with multi media everyday and I believe they will become more responsive to instruction if we being implementing and exploiring media literacy, and give our students the skills to be responsible and informed citizens of our increasingly digital world.

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