The Medium of Television

One of the readings gave the definition of media literacy as able to access, analyze, evaluate and produce print and electronic media. Students are not being taught to or asked to practice all of these aspects of media literacy in most classrooms. All teachers would not be described as media literate under this definition as well. But the definition has key aspects that people who live in a democratic and capitalist country need to be able to do well in order to be critical citizens.

Many of the lesson ideas for incorporating media in the classroom were inquiry based and included critical and evaluative thinking. The lessons that included hip hop also emphasized critical thinking as a tool for empowerment. I would love to include hip hop in my lesson plans. Many of my students would be more motivated and interested in the lesson.

I do not spend a lot of time watching TV. However, I know that many Americans, especially my students, do spend a lot of time in front of the TV. I am glad to see that if students are taught to be critical thinkers they may not be turned into mindless enculturated robots by corporate television giants. The producers may get to decide what messages they want to send but they are not in control of who their audience is and how their messages are decoded by that audience. I hope that through education we can get students to use negotiated code at least. I want my students to question what they watch on TV. I want them to think about it and have a knowledge and understanding of the world to decide for themselves.

Oppositional code is not always wrong it may even be correct the majority of the time. If the message that the media is trying to get across is wrong then my students need to be able to operate out of an oppositional code. The reading states that decoding is not just social class but ones discourse position. This means that if someone does not have the language and understanding to negotiate or be oppositional they will not, even if the message is against their interests. Teachers need to give students the language and knowledge so that they can think for themselves and use negotiable and oppositional code when it is called for.

Last week we read about how big corporations are going to control the "development" of culture in the US if current trends continue. These corporations operate within the financial economy. This week we are given hope through the idea of the cultural economy. The cultural economy is concerned with meanings, pleasure and social identities. This is where the power of the audience can help to control the development of culture. The audience can take the control out of corporate hands. If they do not watch a new TV show it will not be successful, it will not sell commercials, and the corporation will need to find a different show. The audience can affect the financial economy the corporations care so much about.

TV is not making us more stupid. TV is getting smarter. It is exercising thinking skills more today than it ever has in the past. Audiences want more cognitively demanding shows. TV shows today require the audience to make inferences, follow multiple interweaving story threads at one time, fill in or question present information gaps, evaluate difficult social issues, and understand and predict complex social networks. While reading this article I thought of an example of a show that leaves information out that its audience may or may not know. The show "Gilmore Girls" includes a complex narrative structure as well as complex social issues. It has a very quick dialogue that includes frequent quotes and phrases that many people in the audience may not get. The dialogue references current events, pop culture, classical literature, etc. These references occur so often that the DVDs of the show actually come with a study guide in which people can look up references they do not understand.

I read the script of a movie and then watched the movie. It was difficult to find a script of a movie I owned but I finally got lucky with the movie "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" by Joss Whedon. I was very surprised at how different the script and the movie were. The entire original opening scene was cut from the movie. Much of the dialogue was changed as well. For instance, the script in one place has the line, "It's so '91," instead the actress said "It's so 5 minutes ago." Additional dialogue was also included. Once the literature is turned into dialogue changes must be made in order to maintain a sense of realism. The interpretation of the writing by the actors was also visible. There are a lot of people involved in the making of a movie. All of these people interpret the script (a piece of writing) differently.

An interesting note is the after this movie was produced the writer of the script went on to produce and direct his own show with the same main character and a different set of actors. The Buffy in the TV series more closely resembles to Buffy written into the script of the movie. Many of the snappy smart lines in the script were missing from the movie. These type of lines were included in the TV show.

There is a lot of information missing about the emotions and blocking of the actors during each scene in the script. This information must be interpreted into the performance by the actors and the director. There is a lot going on in a scene that can't be described by a script. Each person must decide how they are going to stand, how they are going to speak the line, and what facial expressions they will have throughout the scene. Much of communication is nonverbal and this is left out of most of the script. The nonverbal communication by the actors will greatly affect how the audience decodes the message. Humans tend to pay attention to body language more than verbal language. If the two are in opposition to each other the message the body language is communicating is the one most likely to be decoded.