FINAL POST

Media criticism has kind of always been something I’ve thought about, not to the point that this course required, but I’ve always been aware of the parts that made the whole. Its hard to not know about the critique that accompanies the shows you like, whether it be the people around you or the people who are paid for their opinions. Because most of my experience was in passing, things I’ve seen on the internet, I had this very pessimistic view of critics. From what I had seen, they were all very down on the things I loved and praised shows that I wasn’t jazzed about. When you see what you love constantly getting bashed or not given the praise you feel it deserves, it gets a little infuriating and I just gave up on the “authority” of critics altogether. Became my own judge.

BUT when I had to deliberately look for opinions I was pleasantly surprised. First, I had no idea that people actually sat down and reviewed a show on an episode by episode basis like they do. When I had to look up a review for the specific episodes of Community and 30 Rock that I’d seen, I was bewildered at the amount I found. Made me curious as to what other shows I watch that have the same kind of following. Anyway, these types of reviews were awesome because it helped to open my eyes to things I may have missed. Recently, I’ve noticed that its really cool how many different things two minds can get out of the same subject. Reading someone’s play by play of an episode is insightful in a way I would have never guessed.

I also realized that there are different types of critics. There are the paid ones, the people who write big fancy articles that are read by millions, and then there are the smaller blogger types that write for smaller groups. Typically, the larger critics focus on bigger topics, for example, Daniel Foster and the subject of “Game of Thrones” being racist. The smaller reviewers tend to simply summarize the episode and offer some insights into what is to come. I like both, but I tend to shy away from the larger topics.

I guess you could call me a simpler person…not that I’m stupid or unaware of underlying symbolism or issues in show….but I don’t dwell on them. You can make arguments about racism and sexism and many other topics until you’re blue in the face and you could find “supporting” examples in pretty much any kind of media. I just can’t stand that. If you stare at something long enough, its gonna move. In my opinion, certain nitpicking is just a pain. Yes, there are shows that are DEFINITELY in need of harsh criticism and scrutiny, I would like to nominate the parade of teen pregnancy shows that have invaded our culture, but there are several shows that have been critiqued for the wrong things. In summary, with some critiques I just shake my head and say, “Making a mountain out of a molehill.”

While this class forced me to confront some of these inner workings, I actually enjoyed it. I especially liked the analysis that was done on Arnold and his progression in his roles/fame. That is just something I would have never put together because when I was old enough to understand who he was, he had achieved a lot and had quite a bit of success. In fact, I think he was pretty much done in his “transformation” in the public eye. So much so that he was seen as another American celeb. I remember growing up and my father was getting into bodybuilding, leaving books with Arnold on the cover scattered around our house. My dad was a huge fan when I was younger, quoting the Terminator in his goofy fake Austrian accent and pulling lines from thin air with my mother from Last Action Hero. ANYWHO. I really enjoyed the observations of his earlier career. It was an unbiased view, unlike my own, and it was very cool to read. I was sitting there, nodding my head and going “dude, this is genius.”

In summary, this class didn’t really change my attitude to criticism, per say, but it did expose me to another side of it. A side that I don’t really mind. I might actually start checking in on the little guys, seeing what they have to say about episodes of my favorite shows. If people are as passionate about them as I am, I can only assume I would like what they have to say. 

Week 5

The first situation that came to mind, for me, was my constant quoting to fill in conversations. I’m always drawing from films for one liners. For example, I say “Houston, we have a problem.” whenever I get frustrated with a customer at work and I’m running around trying to fix things. I believe this matches the “intertexuality performance” domain. Even if people haven’t seen the Apollo 13, they know the words from just common knowledge and understand it’s a reference. Similar the ones the author names, like “Toto we’re not in Kansas anymore.” There’s also the paratexuality of me being at work and having issues, otherwise the quote wouldn’t really make sense…or even really come to mind.

A second situation was something I thought of when I was reading about Hypertexual Production. Parody. The first thing that came to mind when it came to parody was Robot Chicken. They are constantly making references, either indirectly or blantantly. For example, they often use action figures from shows or movies to make jokes about the specific show. Like, my favorite episodes, the Star Wars episodes. They take the exact images of the characters and use them to parody the movies. And they’re excellent.

Another situation I thought of relates to the third domain, Architextual Practice. My brother and I were in a theater and there were commercials playing, but the screen operator had turned off the picture momentarily before the movie started. We were listening to this music and deep husky voice and we both said, “car commercial” at the same time. And then, sure enough, it announced the make and model at the end of the ad. Even without the visual cues, we were able to pick up on the signals that the media was a commercial for a car vs. any other product.

Week 4 Writing

So when I was given the opportunity to talk about the formation of a celebrity, my thoughts immediately went to a recent favorite. Garrett Hedlund. He’s relatively new to wide spread fame and I’ve inadvertently followed his career since I was in high school. For this analysis, I’m going to primarily stick with his films since he’s been fairly absent from Twitter and online networks. He really didn’t need the media, other than the obvious film industry, to build his reputation. But keeping that in mind, he still has a ways to go, his fame is still very fresh and he still remains semi-unknown. I just couldn’t pass up on the progression of his roles. Garrett Hedlund has done a lot of growing in his roles, breaking out from his pretty boy/secondary submissive male roles to a more dominant/primary character. Hopefully he will continue to this trend because he is, in my opinion, very talented.

When Garrett started acting, he was only 18, just out of high school and his first role was in a major blockbuster alongside A list actors like Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, and Orlando Bloom: Troy. He was pretty young so his role was that of Patroclus, an inexperienced warrior and cousin to the protagonist Achilles(Pitt). The character was very gentle and submissive to his alpha and hyper masculine counterpart played by Pitt. The character is also very “pretty”. Garrett was blond and tan, fitting the typical Hollywood pretty boy and almost a “surfer” look.

After this film, he played a teenager in the film “Friday Night Lights”. Garrett, again, played a submissive role as Don Billingsly. The boy’s father, played by Tim McGraw, is both physically and verbally abusive to his son, expecting more of him. Again, just looking at the characters physically, Garrett has long, lighter hair and is clean shaven. Very pretty in comparison to his gruff, dominating father.

Next came his role in “Four Brothers” as Jack Mercer. To me, this role was (if stripped down to the bare skeleton) the same exact character as Patroclus. Not that I was disappointed by the similarities, but it was striking how much the two roles overlapped. Like “Troy”, Garrett worked with another A lister, Mark Wahlberg. In this film, Wahlberg took Pitt’s place as the dominant alpha to Garrett’s sweeter, softer secondary. In fact, both Patroclus and Jack die, prompting great grief from their “older brother” figures in Wahlberg and Pitt. In both cases the deaths lead to a major plot mark and bring about the climaxes of both films. Basically, he didn’t venture far within his first three movies. HE DID A GREAT JOB, but they were very similar characters.

Skipping past his duds, which I hate to admit…(“Georgia Rule” and “Eragon”….sigh…)…but lets be honest, he had them. We land on the film “Death Sentence”, released in 2007. While I was a fan of Garrett’s prior to seeing this movie, it was “Death Sentence” that made me a die hard fan. Everything he’d done in his previous projects was DROP KICKED out the window. He shaved his head, grew a goatee, gained 20 pounds, and donned fake tats around his throat. All pretty boy imagery, gone. His role was drug dealer, Billy Darley and this was completely different from anything he’d ever done. He was dominant, deadly, and just plain prominent in the film. The only other male that held any power over him, played by John Goodman, he ultimately kills. His ability to play a strong character became evident with his incredible work on this film and he hasn’t returned to a true secondary character since.

Finishing up, I’m going to combine both of his most recent films “Country Strong” and “Tron Legacy”. In “Country Strong”, Garrett played a country singer, Beau. He maintained an older persona, keeping some weight and growing out dark facial hair. Yet again, he played next to Tim McGraw, but unlike last time, he wasn’t the weakling. He, in fact, shows more backbone than McGraw’s character several times throughout the film. In my opinion, he deserved more recognition for this role than he received. His screen time rivaled that of Gwyneth Paltrow, the main character. But, as I said, this character was strong and, for the most part, primary. Tron Legacy? He WAS the main character. Playing Jeff Bridges’s son, Sam Flynn, Garrett returned to a blonder version of himself, but he was lean, strong, and fearless. Top that off with a sharp attitude, he had definitely come a long way from his days as the blonde, whimpy(sorry, but lets be real here), sidekick roles he’d played(and totally rocked) in this previous years.

Garrett Hedlund has proven his ability to play larger, blockbuster roles and his transition into these characters is evident through his body of work.

Week 3 Part 2

I have no previous experience with either of these shows, but I had seen bits and pieces of 30 Rock in passing. Nothing stuck, however, and I’m afraid I feel the same even now. When it kept winning awards I would think to myself, maybe I saw a bad episode…But now I’m just sure I’m crazy and the rest of the world operates on a different level of comedy. ;)

Community was something I had heard of, but never seen. I knew Joel McHale was in it and I like him from “the Soup” so I had a sense that it would probably be pretty good. At least one would hope so. Then again, sometimes network tv just kills an awesome comedian’s mojo. (I’m talking about the polite version of Chris D’Elia in “Whitney”….grrr…love him but…grrr) Anywho!

Community links:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/24/community

I really liked how this review went into the way community colleges are represented in the show. Its easy to forget that this is saying something about a piece of our society even though it may be covering it up with jokes. Having an educator’s point of view was interesting and made me realize stereotypes that hover in the education world. I hadn’t really acknowledged them before. Not because I didn’t believe in them, I just hadn’t sat down and thought it out. It was very perceptive.

http://www.thetvaddict.com/2010/11/18/review-community-season-2/

This review really delved into the pop culture implications of Community and I liked what the author had to say about it. This opening paragraph was just…awesome.

-For pop culture connoisseurs, it’s like a delicious, greasy, but still organic feast: any given episode (like the great Halloween one) is a tightly constructed, au courant homage to worn-out stories, plot cliché, and character archetypes — it’s an inspired take on a lack of inspiration; a celebration of what makes pop culture bad that makes it uproariously good.-

I can’t really describe it any better. I just have to take my hat off to this guy, Alaks Chan. His review was full of great insight and understanding of the characters, storytelling…everything.

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2011/05/community-review-a-fist-full-of-paintballs-pt-1-22.html

Loved this review because I loved the episode! Paintball is awesome and this episode was just fun. The review says as much and I really enjoyed the stray observations the author, Sean Gandert, made towards the end. He and I seem to be on the same level on what’s funny.

30 Rock links:

http://www.tvfanatic.com/2011/04/30-rock-review-100th-episode/

Watched this episode as well and I must say, this reviewer found it much funnier than I. As I reread some of his favorite quotes, I think, “yeah, that’s funny.” but I didn’t have a strong reaction to it whatsoever. Again, its probably just me. “It’s not you, it’s me.” I liked this review because the author sounded like a fan and that made it more…pleasant to read vs. someone simply rehashing the episode. He was also honest, pointing out the parts of the show that didn’t work along with the parts that did.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/14/AR2010101407822.html

I didn’t see this specific episode, but I read this anyway and I liked how the author mentioned that in 30 Rock, you never see much of the actual show they’re making. “TGS”. Thought was an interesting observation. I haven’t seen much of the show so I didn’t want to assume it was a general thing, but after reading this, I guess I can.

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/review-how-30-rock-rebounded-its-way-to-a-strong-season-5

I REALLY LIKED THIS. Why? It talked about Community!! LOL. Used it to compare the state of 30 Rock. The author talked about wanting to walk away from the show during season 4 and how its improved since then.  Went into some interesting detail and it really made me stop and consider the changes; also gave a little insight into what keeps a fan coming back and it also highlighted Community’s ability to be “conceptually ambitious”.

Now, in conclusion, I didn’t really find anything shattering in these reviews. While the last of my listed 30 Rock reviews did make me a little more…understanding of the show, it didn’t really change my feelings towards it. The Community reviews just made me aware of a deeper cleverness to the show. I can’t stress how much I loved that quote I pulled. Such a good read.

Week 3 Part 1

First, I wanna start by saying that I am biased in my comparisons as I enjoyed Community much more than 30 Rock. Not saying its not well made, the brand of humor is just not my taste. Community got me giggling.

Ok, first with Production value. From what I can tell, 30 Rock is very straight forward with camera angles and shots are set up so there’s something to look at in every corner of the screen. Most of the time anyway. I thought it was kinda nice that something could happen in the background of a shot while the foreground is still…happening. Not a great description but it made me smile a couple of times. The lighting felt more like a brightly lit talk show more than a television show...and I think that probably came from it behind about the behind the scenes, trying to feel more real.

Now, with Community, shots were a tad more creative. There was some movement with the camera during action. It also seemed a little unsteady during conversations, making me feel like I was a part of the scene. Kept me a little more entertained and the comedy seemed to flow better because of it. I don’t know if that’s just my sense of humor kicking in here or what, but I definitely felt a difference in the way things were presented.

Second, Intertexualization…if that’s a word. For 30 Rock, I noticed that a lot of the jokes used society’s current events or current trends for jokes. And it also used a bit of movie references. One that I can recall specifically was Tina Fey dressed as Princess Leia in a juror box, trying to get out of jury duty. This felt more true to television because, as you know, the show centers on the production of a show. It is supposed to be about the people involved in the industry and, to me, it would make sense to have a ton of references to the current entertainment industry around them.

For Community, I feel like the references were more general, using themes instead of direct content. Two of the episodes I watched used a paintball/spagetti western theme during the entire thing, drawing from what you would see in a typical western. Then they would play up the settings and styles of the production of said…motif I guess. It was really clever and had me laughing plenty of times.

For the third difference, I feel like it was good to talk about the humor. 30 Rock felt very slap stick and absurd(in a good way, like absurdism…I think that’s a genre) and a little crass. (Not that I’m bashing it, its just not my thing sometimes) It often just had me shaking my head with a smile. Probably funnier to someone who appreciates the craft.

Community was more up my alley. The jokes felt like something I could hear around campus. Not literally, but the attitude was the same. For some reason, the only example I can think of without going back and searching is a joke Ken Jeong made about the math team being Asian. Then them yelling back that he was being racist, but he was indeed correct, they were all Asian. I’m having a hard time explaining this, but in summary, Community felt more naturally funny vs. 30 Rocks more acquired taste of comedy.

AGAIN, totally not bashing 30 Rock lovers. Love Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan, and all them, I’ve just never been a huge fan of the show.

Have a good one guys. =)

Week 2 Blog

So, I'm gonna come right out and say this, I don't really read critics. Most of the time, they pick at the things I love about a show and not the things that truly deserve their attention. 

But, for this assignment, I looked up a few critics to get a feel for what’s out there.

First, I started with a critic name James Poniewozik, A TIME's TV critic. I started right towards what I'm obsessed with right now, Game of Thrones. I liked what he had to say because he looked at the show on a grander scale while at the same time addressing the finale episode. I LOVED the fact that he went to the books to compare. I haven't had the time to start reading them, but it was awesome to understand the small differences that he presented. He also mentioned things that I started to notice as well, commenting on the vast plot potential that was set up for the rest of the show. It truly is the only first act of a larger story and its SOO exciting to think about. Events have barely begun and the first season is OVER! So jazzed for the second season. Anyway, I liked his thorough approach and true dedication to the review. I mean, picking up the books for a single episode review? That’s epic. Bravo.

http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2011/06/20/game-of-thrones-watch-rising-from-the-ashes/

The second site I landed on was a bit more…unprofessional, but a critic all the same. I went from TIME’s to a small blog. Anyway, this blog offered a review of the entire season of Justified, another show that I am OBSESSED with. Now, this guy completely drove me nuts. They don’t really state a name of the author, but this person missed the overall point of the show entirely, calling it “just another cop show.” Honestly? This show won awards and you’re gonna say that? I love this show for the unique view of a poorer side of America. It’s also a really interesting play on the old cowboy/sheriff motif in a modern world. Thoroughly awesome. How would such a personality survive in a world of paperwork and internal affairs? This reviewer also claimed that characterization for Raylan Givens, the main character, was lacking in comparison to another of Timothy Olyphant’s smaller roles in Deadwood. The entire show center’s around Raylan’s struggle with his roots/family vs. his current occupation and dedication to the law. Its just irresponsible to say his characterization was weak. I barely got through this review.

http://thetvcritic.org/justified-season-one/

For the third, I went to a site of a collection of bloggers. Kind of a community sort of thing. I picked a piece written about the premiere episode of season 4 of True Blood. I had a lot of thoughts and reactions to this particular episode so I was very curious to see what this review would say. This author, Jerome Wetzel, gives a basic recap while also comparing the events of the series with the books. Ever so slightly. I was impressed with his observation that the previous three season had occurred in a matter of months, where as this season starts off with a YEAR gap. Massive amount of time for this show. In total, he didn’t do much “critique” but he did offer some insights into what is insinuated by events during the episode, for example, Sookie’s future decisions and place in the supernatural fairy world. He also makes some very good guesses as to what the characters have ahead. Overall, I liked this guy’s opinion and had no real problems with his ideas.

http://blogcritics.org/video/article/tv-review-true-blood-shes-not/page-2/

Week 1 Articles

Collectively, from the two articles, I really picked up on the idea of more reviewers being fans of the shows they review. I understand that being a fan can sound like you’re biased, but at the same time, I feel like I can be more honestly critical about a show I love because of the fact that I love it. I don’t know if that makes sense, but if I care about the direction of a show, I dissect and analyze what makes me like it. If that changes at anytime, I have no problem being honest about it. Or if something works and something doesn’t, I can point out the bad while I’m still enjoying the good. For example, Bones….but I don’t have time for that. ;)

As for the hyperlinks, the only one that was interesting to me was one that led to an article asking, “Is Game of Thrones racist?” I LOVE that show and was immediately drawn to it. Now, as for what I learned…I just think that people sometimes go a little overboard. Yes, the Dothraki are dark skinned and very…risqué in their habits…but honestly, if it was any other way, the show would be A.) DULL B.) uniform and BORING again. C.) unrealistic. The Dothraki are a nomadic tribe, they’re not going to be civil, light-skinned, people. I love them! Just the way they are. I find their scenes are some of the coolest parts of the show. And I don’t think it’s a representation of any race. Maybe that’s superficial of me...who knows. Enough of my ranting.

Happy Weekend All!!