Relationships through the Eyes of Soap Operas

This voice thread looks at the way that relationship are portrayed in one of the most enduring and popular media programs of all times, soap operas. Women have been watching soap operas for generations, dedicating every week day to watching their favorite characters fall in love and endure the battle of finding their soul mate and living happily ever after.

I think that these portrayals of relationships illustrate the ideal of what love should be like. Women often wish to live vicariously though these characters, as they dream about what could be. These portrayals show what can be possible and they teach women about what they should aspire for and what they should want.

Viewing Media through Critical Lenses: Adopting Perspectives and an Observant Eye

When looking at how to teach these concepts and ideas to a group of students, I think that there are three things that have to be paid attention to.

First, students have to understand why it is even important to do this. They have to understand why we should adopt different perspectives when looking at media. They have to understand why it is important to think critically about the information that we are exposed to and they have to be able to see how these messages are affecting them without them even realizing it.
In order to get this point across, I think that I would start this lesson off with a discussion of subliminal messaging. Perhaps I would show the students a more obvious advertisement that flashed fries every .1 seconds. I would want to start a discussion about how these media messages are orientating them as a reader. This would then demonstrate the importance of being aware of this so that they are able to fight back! The point of this introduction is to just make students aware that they are not receiving these messages blindly and that they are being positioned in some way.

Secondly, students should be able to understand why it is important to look through different perspectives and what these perspectives are. While I have now positioned them as a reader, I think that it is essential to teach them that this goes beyond just buying a product. They have to understand how this affects their own identity and how media develops the norms of society and makes things seem natural that are indeed inorganic. For this portion of the lesson, I think that it would be beneficial to look at something like Disney movies and how they socialize young children. These movies teach both boys and girls how to behave. I'm sure every student can recall either him or herself or someone else who grew up watching those movies and wanted to be a princess who was waiting to be rescued by a handsome prince or the other way around. I would use these Disney examples to explain the socialization process of the media and how much we get from the world by what we see.
Another personal example I could use from this would be about when I used to watch Saved by the Bell when I was a kid. I used this show to picture in my mind exactly what high school was going to be like. I thought that I would make friends with the principal, I would have clothes being sold out of lockers like Lisa, and I would meet a smart alec kid like Zac who would take me under his wing. This show created norms inside my head that I assumed to be true. I did not even question them.

Finally, after students understand how the media socializes people and creates norms, they also have to understand why. In this example of the King of Queens, I would not just have the students discuss how the working class citizen was portrayed as a buffoon, I would also need to include a discussion of why these shows would bother to do this. For social class, I would lead a discussion about advertising and how they pay for these shows. What is the goal of advertising? For people to buy their products. By portraying working class people as buffoons, it forces people to aspire to be rich. It forces them to want to be intelligent and to demonstrate this by proving that they have money. How do you prove that you have money? You buy stuff, preferably things that are being advertised.

I think that in order for students to truly understand this assignment, they would have to develop several components of background knowledge. I could not just throw up a lesson plan that asked them to analyze a piece of text like the King of Queens as I did here. I want the students to understand how they are positioned as readers, why this matters, why it is being done, and what they can do about it.

For every perspective that I discuss, I would want the student to not just understand the perspective. I want them to look at how the media has affected this perspective. I want them to see the instability that lies in the definitions and the control that the media has on creating what seem to be like stabilities. Thus for each perspective, I would lead a discussion about what the students believe to be true about say, what it means to be female. I would then work to destabilize these definitions as I would disrupt the binaries that they may have created. I think this could easily be done by looking at how media portrayals have changed over the years and through different cultures. We could look at the 50's woman who is the caretaker of the family with a smile plastered on her face or we could look at the pop music star who is half naked, sweat dripping off her body as the ultimate sex symbol.
The representations of family, races, and cultures have changed as the media has created new definitions. I would look at how the media has helped to create these constructions. After I have done this, I would then bring in the text that they are to analyze.
Thus, once students see examples of how a text shows what it means to be a woman, I would have them take a media example and dissect what it is saying about a woman and how that fits with what we see as the norms of society.

The Beginnings of an iMovie

Here is an iMovie in the process of being made. With more time, it would be absolutey amazing. Use your imagination.

P.S. It's documenting the future. That may blow your mind.

Teaching Idea for Film Techniques

Viewing in Silence: The Art of Film

A lesson plan designed for students who are just beginning film studies

Time: 50 minutes

One of the greatest ways to observe the art of a film is by watching a silent film. By taking away the conversation and the background noises, students can become more aware of the camera angles, the lighting, and the deliberate choices that are being made that guide a story. Watching a movie silently takes away the distraction of the story line and puts the film techniques on center stage.

For this activity, rather than watching a movie that was made as a silent film, students will watch a clip from a movie or television show without the sound on it. After watching the clip once, students will be asked to describe what they thought the clip was about. They should be asked what they thought the mood was. Was it happy? Sad? Suspenseful? They should also discuss any character developments or traits that they saw developed. Was somebody bad? Good? How do you know? Who was involved in the action? Was somebody hurt emotionally? Is somebody angry?

After this initial exposure and debriefing, students will watch the clip one more time, silently. This time, however, they are to specifically be looking for evidence for their earlier claims. They are to be paying attention to the color, the action, or the camera shifts, as they look for specific clues that led them to believe their earlier statements. After the second run-through, students will then get time to share this evidence and collaborate on the film techniques used.

Finally, the clip will be shown a third time. This time the sound will be on. After this showing, students will be asked how accurate their assumptions were. How does the background noise add or detract from the mood you felt without the sound? Were the storyline and character ideas accurate?

This lesson plan could be adapted with almost any clip. For example, the earlier clip that I annotated from the television show Friends could be used. Students could pick out areas where they thought jokes were being told, moments of suspense, etc. Could students figure out if the wedding was successful? What ideas can we come up with about what happened based on just the camera shots? What about the series of matched cuts that comes after Ross says the wrong name? Can we tell that something shocking just occurred? Taking away the sound of the clip, forces students to pay attention to all of these moments simply so that they can decipher what is going on. This activity will lead to a discussion about how these deliberate camera techniques add or detract form the mood and storyline of a clip.

"Friends" Video Annotations

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