Difference between pages "A History of TV Style (Discussion)" and "Concept of Genre (Lecture)"

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'''All groups'''
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Jason Mittell: “The members of any given category do not create, define, or constitute the category itself. Categories link a number of discreet elements together under a label for cultural convenience.”<ref name="Mittel">Jason Mittell, ''Genre and Television'' (NY: Routledge, 2004).</ref>
#Explain the concept that goes by the terms, "technological manifest destiny" and "technological determinism." Why is it a ''mistaken'' notion when applied to TV?
 
#*What are some examples that you've seen that prove this concept is wrong? (Don't rely on the examples in the book and you can refer to technology other than that involving video or TV.)
 
#What is a kinescope? How were kinescopes created and what characterized how they looked? (See figures in ''Television''.)
 
  
''' Group 3 '''
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Jorge Luis Borges’s essay “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins” (1942):<ref>http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/wilkins.html</ref>
#Outline the [[history of video editing]]--listing the major technological changes. How did these changes have an impact on TV style?
 
#Why type of editing equipment do you suppose was used to cut the following programs:
 
#*''All My Children''
 
#*''The Sopranos''
 
#*''Seinfeld''
 
#*''The Cosby Show''
 
  
'''Group 4'''
+
These ambiguities, redundancies and deficiencies remind us of those which doctor Franz Kuhn attributes to a certain Chinese encyclopedia entitled ''The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge''. In its remote pages it is written that the animals are divided into
#List the elements of the production of ''[[I Love Lucy]]'' that make it significant to the history of TV style. Explain ''why'' each element is important.
+
#What are examples of recent (within the past five years) programs that are shot the same way that ''Lucy'' was shot?
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#belonging to the Emperor
 +
#embalmed
 +
#trained
 +
#piglets
 +
#sirens
 +
#fabulous
 +
#stray dogs
 +
#included in this classification
 +
#trembling like crazy
 +
#innumerables
 +
#drawn with a very fine camel hair brush
 +
#et cetera
 +
#just broke the vase
 +
#from a distance look like flies
  
'''Group 1'''
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*Andrew Tudor: "empiricist dilemma"<ref name="Tudor">Tudor, Andrew. ''Theories of Film''. London: Secker and Warburg, 1974.</ref>
#The history of color TV is very complicated. Create a [[history of color TV|timeline]] that lists the significant events leading up to color TV's widespread implementation.
+
**"To take a genre such as a ‘Western’, analyse it, and list its principal characteristics, is to beg the question that we must first isolate the body of films which are ‘Westerns’. But they can only be isolated on the basis of the ‘principal characteristics’ which can only be discovered ''from the films themselves'' after they have been isolated."<ref name="Tudor" />
#What impact did color technology have on TV style?
+
**Tudor's two solutions:<ref name="Tudor" />
#What is the NTSC and why was it created?
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**#''A priori'' criteria, "depending on the critical purpose"
 +
**#"common cultural consensus"
 +
**#*Rely on presumed consensus: "genre is what we collectively believe it to be."
 +
**#*Jason Mittell: “Rather than emerging from texts as has traditionally been argued, '''genres work to categorize texts and link them into clusters of cultural assumptions through discourses of definition, interpretation, and evaluation'''. These discursive utterances may seem to reflect on an already establish genre, but '''they are themselves constitutive of that genre'''; they are the practices that define genres, delimit their meanings, and posit their cultural value.”<ref name="Mittel" />
 +
**A working definition uses both approaches
 +
****Validated by films themselves
 +
*Ways of defining genres
 +
#Audience response
 +
#Style -- the how rather than the what
 +
#Subject matter (i.e., content)
 +
#*Narrative structure
 +
#*Theme
  
'''Group 2'''
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==References==
#When did [[history of the remote control|the remote control]] first appear and what were the names of the early devices?
+
<references/>
#*How did they work?
 
#How do modern remote controls work and when did they become commonly used?
 
#What have broadcast networks done to try to combat zapping?
 
  
 
+
[[Category:TCF440/540 Lecture]]
<gallery caption="Early Remote Controls" widths="300px" heights="200px" perrow="3">
 
File:1956 Zenith Remote Ad.JPG|Zenith remote-control ad (1956).
 
File:Zenith Space Command.jpg|Zenith Space Command remote control unit.
 
File:56zenith.jpg|Zenith Space Command receiving TV set (1957).
 
</gallery>
 
 
 
{{Gallery
 
|title=Early Remote Controls
 
|width=160
 
|height=170
 
|lines=4
 
|align=center
 
|File:1956 Zenith Remote Ad.JPG|alt1=Back of statue facing a city building whose facade is Greek columns covered by a huge U.S. flag|The statue of Washington outside [[Federal Hall]] in [[New York City]], looking on [[Wall Street]].
 
|File:Zenith Space Command.jpg|alt2=Profile of stone face jutting out from a mountainside. Three workers clamber over it, each about the height of the face's upper lip.|Construction on the George Washington portrait at [[Mount Rushmore]], c. 1932.
 
|File:56zenith.jpg|alt3=Shiny silver coin with profile of Washington bust.
 
}}
 
 
 
 
 
== Bibliography ==
 
#Butler, Jeremy G. ''Television: Critical Methods and Applications''.
 
 
 
==External links==
 
*[http://www.tcf.ua.edu/EO/DV/Clorox.htm Clorox commercials] (password protected).
 
*[http://youtu.be/gV0Ralac0w4 ''The Magic of Television''] (1941)
 
 
 
[[Category:TCF311]]
 
[[Category:TCF311 Discussion]]
 

Revision as of 16:42, 3 February 2010

Jason Mittell: “The members of any given category do not create, define, or constitute the category itself. Categories link a number of discreet elements together under a label for cultural convenience.”[1]

Jorge Luis Borges’s essay “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins” (1942):[2]

These ambiguities, redundancies and deficiencies remind us of those which doctor Franz Kuhn attributes to a certain Chinese encyclopedia entitled The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. In its remote pages it is written that the animals are divided into

  1. belonging to the Emperor
  2. embalmed
  3. trained
  4. piglets
  5. sirens
  6. fabulous
  7. stray dogs
  8. included in this classification
  9. trembling like crazy
  10. innumerables
  11. drawn with a very fine camel hair brush
  12. et cetera
  13. just broke the vase
  14. from a distance look like flies
  • Andrew Tudor: "empiricist dilemma"[3]
    • "To take a genre such as a ‘Western’, analyse it, and list its principal characteristics, is to beg the question that we must first isolate the body of films which are ‘Westerns’. But they can only be isolated on the basis of the ‘principal characteristics’ which can only be discovered from the films themselves after they have been isolated."[3]
    • Tudor's two solutions:[3]
      1. A priori criteria, "depending on the critical purpose"
      2. "common cultural consensus"
        • Rely on presumed consensus: "genre is what we collectively believe it to be."
        • Jason Mittell: “Rather than emerging from texts as has traditionally been argued, genres work to categorize texts and link them into clusters of cultural assumptions through discourses of definition, interpretation, and evaluation. These discursive utterances may seem to reflect on an already establish genre, but they are themselves constitutive of that genre; they are the practices that define genres, delimit their meanings, and posit their cultural value.”[1]
    • A working definition uses both approaches
        • Validated by films themselves
  • Ways of defining genres
  1. Audience response
  2. Style -- the how rather than the what
  3. Subject matter (i.e., content)
    • Narrative structure
    • Theme

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 Jason Mittell, Genre and Television (NY: Routledge, 2004).
  2. http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/wilkins.html
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 Tudor, Andrew. Theories of Film. London: Secker and Warburg, 1974.