Author: Heejin oh

Week 12 Questions

Can reality tv still be thought of as a genre given the high level of hybridity that exists?

“Television’s cultural forms have lost their former rigidity and are increasingly confounded. What was once kept apart is now mixed together”(Wood,2004). Among them, reality TV continues to change and evolve, converging different genres, and this hybridity creates questions about whether reality TV can be considered as a genre itself.

“In fact, reality is not the preserve of one sort of programming. Rather, all media content produces worldliness and so can be typed according to the variety of ways in which it accomplishes this sense of the real”(Wood,2004). So the main elements of television — fact, fiction, entertainment, and advertising — create reality in a variety of ways. Hill (2005), emphasizes that documentary television has led to commercial success by combining certain types of reality formats, and that the cultural specificity of reality programming and the development of certain formats within different broadcasting environments. This appears as a hybrid of reality TV.

Currently, reality TV is evolving into a variety of styles and blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction by including various genres such as entertainment, documentary and drama through steady hybridization. Wood(2004), explains that “Hybridity is typically equated with a radical undermining of the distinction between fact and fiction.” This may drop the details of reality programs. “The loss of detail at programme level is made up for by a more general purview which highlights the complexity of hybridizing trends. Although a widely acknowledged characteristic of hybridity, this complexity has often frustrated attempts at analysis”(Wood, 2004). This can cause confusion about the genre for viewers who are exposed to reality TV.

Reality TV is changing endlessly and is also linked to other genres such as game shows and soap operas beyond documentaries, drama and entertainment. It is true that reality TV is linked to hybridity, resulting in a variety of sub-genres. But Wood(2004), explains that “Given the increased frequency of hybridized expression such attempts at generic identification are understandable, but they have not proved successful.” So It is difficult to separate reality TV itself into one genre and it can be fruitless to try to organize it into one concept. 

References

Hill, A. (2005). Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television. London; Routledge.

Wood, B. (2004). A world in retreat: the reconfiguration of hybridity in 20th-century New Zealand television. Media, Culture & Society, 26(1), 45-62.

Week 11 Question

How real is Reality TV?

According to Hill(2005), “Reality TV is a catch-all category that includes a wide range of entertainment programmes about real people.” Reality TV also became a mainstream genre of broadcasting programs located on the border between information, entertainment, documentaries and dramas, as it was called factual television. Moreover, it features real people participating in real-life events opposed to virtual creation by telling stories about everything from health care to beauty, from people to pets. Hill(2005) generally creates the question of how real reality television is by assuming that viewers can’t distinguish fiction from reality on television. 

In general, reality TV is closely linked to the form of documentary television. Among many types of documentaries, observation documentaries, in particular, tend to deal with current events unfolding in front of cameras, relying on the use of light, portable cameras, although claims of observing real life are not much included in the game show format, even traces of observational documentaries remain in reality game shows such as Big Brother. Big Brother is a setting in which participants live together for 24 hours under camera surveillance in a space cut off from the outside world and regularly vote for each other and the last of the cohabitants to win the prize. The people who produced the broadcast were entertaining, satisfying our desire to be curious about the behavior of the other person and to watch the other secretly. “Reality TV does not just represent individuals and character types. It shows us social interaction, group dynamics, interpersonal struggles, the process of voting, and even, perhaps, the workings of power itself”(Escoffery,2014). 

So it blurts the line, making us connect with our reality, whether it is real or fake. In addition, extreme places and prize money expand interactions to make attractive television sets, but we learn human interactions as “truths.”

t is also an entertainment factor that plays an important role in Reality TV. Reality TV mainly involves a wide range of human activities, with broadcasters aiming to draw their attention by associating the subject with viewers’ lives or experiences, no matter what subject they deal with. So they add a lot of entertainment elements to gain popularity and don’t let them know that they have been manipulated dominantly. What’s important for broadcasters is to make the audience feel mentally or socially and culturally connected to what they see on TV. Such entertainment elements can attract people’s attention or popularity, but they can be reduced to reality by extreme exaggeration or portrayal.

References

Escoffery, D. S. (Ed.). (2014). How real is reality TV?: Essays on representation and truth. McFarland.

Hill, A. (2005). Reality TV: Audiences and popular factual television. Psychology Press.

Week 10 Questions

2.What distinctions are there between alternate history, postmodern alternate history, and uchronie genres?

Alternative history has been regarded as a subgenre of literary fiction, science fiction, or historical fiction, with a series of fiction genres starting from the assumption”What if humanity’s history had evolved differently from previous facts?” Alternative history is mainly intertwined so closely that it cannot be discussed apart from intersecting time, time splitting that it is distinguished in many ways: alternative history, postmodern alternative history and uchronie genres.

Mountfort (2016) distinguishes the three genres with Philip K dick’s The Man in the High Castle, published in 1962 in research. High Castle is one of the most well-known of all alternative histories and is one of the most popular themes in the whole field of history. Also, The Man in the High Castle was inspired by I Ching, an ancient Chinese literary device also known primarily as the text of divination, or the Book of Changes. In the novel, it transcends the philosophical complexities of the story, given that the Nazi win World War II. However, many opinions are divided depending on whether they are viewed from a diachronic or synchronic perspective. 

“Amy Ransom argues that critics discussing alternate history (AH) have often neglected to distinguish among the more conventional forms, which are underpinned by a linear, causal, or diachronic view of time, and the more synchronic view implicit in the French term for the genre, uchronie”(Mountfort,2016).

First of all, alternative history usually has the straightest and diachronic view of time. A diachronic perspective can be understood as the concept of time from one point to another, which varies with the changes of the times. Also, unchronie has a synchronic view of time, which can be understood by the concept of a single point in time associated with the same era. In fact, many academic sources study High Castle as a formative example of alternative history, but mostly as a novel of a diachronic genre. However, “Dick’s notion of history is certainly synchronic rather than diachronic, in the terms of Jameson’s analysis, both in his evocation of a web of interrelationships and in his sense that the profusion of possible realities could radically undermine our sense of the real”(Mountfort,2016). 

This is linked to the concept of “synchronicity” that Carl Jung and other scholars have tried to explain. “Ransom describes Jung’s synchronicity concept as “related to that associated by Jameson and Alkon with the postmodern”. he defined synchronicity both as an “acausal connecting principle” and as “meaningful coincidence” or “cross-connection”.”(Mountfort,2016). It shows that the work is linked to the Postmodern Alternate History time view. From this, we can see that the three genres of alternative history are distinguished by whether we have a diachronic or a synchronic view, and these are dependent on how we accept stories.

References

Mountfort , P. (2016) The I Ching and Philip K Dick’s The Man in the High Castle SF-TH Inc

Week 9 Questions

1.According to Mountfort et al. (2018), what are the three main genres of cosphotography, and how did they historically develop?

Just as fan customs have historically achieved advances in specific genres of “cosphotography,” photography and video have served as formation agents as well as reflections on how cosplay is performed. Cosphotography appears as a target of cosplay itself. In the early days, cosplay is almost entirely based on the characters present in multi-media original text, so that, unlike modern cosplay, many costumes made by practitioners have emerged as imaginative predictions of future fashion and trends, and specific source text has been derived from providing a range of interpretations of how the characters are seeing themselves. Whereas, modern cosplay is almost entirely based on the characters present in multi-media original text so that they can accurately model the appearance and behaviour of the characters.

Photographers who take pictures of cosplayers should have an understanding of the characters and genres they are trying to shoot and draw the pose or composition of the course. Also, photographers shoot various cosplayers in three different genres: Runway, Hallway and Studio portrait.

Their history begins at the first Worldcon of the 1939 World Fair. According to Mountfort et al.(2018), early Worldcon’s costuming provided important models for cosplay to be adopted and presented costumes in two major convention settings: one was a costume contest derived from the annual formal masquerade and the other was a hallway costume in informal convention spaces. “These formal and informal convention settings facilitated the emergence of two distinct photographic genres”(Mountfort,2018). It means Runway and Hallway. The runway is linked to a fashion show or fashion magazine and requires a lot of preparation and planning before taking pictures, and produces a perfect look at the course player through correction or special effects. At the same time, the Hallway appears in the form of a quick snapshot, emphasizing naturalness and creating a more relaxed atmosphere than the runway.

Mountfort et al. (2018) explain that Polaroids soon augmented black-and-white photography in the 1950s and by the 1970s, the third genre of photography, studio portraits, became prominent overtime. Studio portraits are composed of the communication of photographers and course players, presenting more detailed and carefully modeled photographs than the previous two genres. However, the production of such pictures is also considered a combination of both genres, mainly because they are performed in temporary environments, not in real studios. But over time, due to the development of various media, “High- definition phone cameras and 4k video have made the comparatively spontaneous hallway shot both easy to shoot and share, and so hallway photography remains the most ubiquitous form, if perhaps lacking the cache of runway and studio styles”(Mountfort, 2018).

References

Mountfort 2018, Planet Cosplay (Bristol, UK: Intellect Books), Chapter 2

Week 8 Questions

2. What does the terms détournement mean and how is it applicable to cosplay?

“Détournement can be defined as a variation on previous work, in which the newly created work has a meaning that is antagonistic or antithetical to the original”(Wikipedia, n.d). The term is also similar to a satirical parody, but rather than creating a new work that strongly implies only the original; it employs direct reuse of the authentic or faithful imitations. On the other side, Mountfort(2018) explains “Détournement literally means ‘to reroute’ or ‘to ‘hijack’ and for the Situationists was linked to the ‘ludic,’ or purposive play.” The term is linked with the Paris-based social revolutionary group of intellectuals and artists of the 1950s, which is still used today in the theory of criticism and includes pranks designed to encompass subversive beyond more mischief and undermine authority, social hierarchy and political views, thereby creating a good resonance with cosplay.

First of all, Detournement is useful in making cosplay a critical practice, not just a form of fandom. While familiarity with the story world of the character that the course player imitates to immerse himself as well as the audience in the fandom is a factor to enter the community, material and social concerns such as the player’s body shape, clothing costs, and their cooperation within the cosplay group may be important to them. According to Mountfort(2018), Cosplayers use parody, pastiche, satire, burlesque, and caricature through citation rather than using the source material. They also creates re-contextualization of sources consistent with other mixing and mashing practices, such as fan fiction and animation music video production, rather than merely dressing up or acting in a particular bypass form of cosplay. “Fan fiction and parodies, cosplay is part of the feedback loop that allows fans to enter into a text and transform it, turning readers into authors and blurring the distinction between fan and critic, as well as reader and text”(Mountfort,2018) The cosplayer gives a three-dimensional presence in the story world by activating the character through the understanding of the narrative and interpreting or reconstructing the character in various ways by becoming the character, not the usual self, in such a detournement.

Cosplay also often overturns gender as a ‘cross-play,’ where cosplayers also express race in a fluid manner. For example, “Tim Curry’s character Dr Frank N. Furter rapidly becoming an iconic instance of drag and establishing an early genetic link between cosplay and the gender-bending practice of crossplay.”(Mountfort,2018)

Like this, Detournement applies in various ways to cosplay. It induces cosplay to be viewed as a form of creative or destructive citations by quoting not only data from sources but also as a critical practice as well as fan-based consumerism by destroying existing media materials in a very special way.

References

Détournement. (2020, July 27). Retrieved September 27, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9tournement

Mountfort, P., Peirson-Smith, A., & Geczy, A. (2018). Planet cosplay: Costume play, identity and global fandom. Intellect.

Week 7 Questions

3.Carroll (2003) and King (2010) discuss how the “monster” is a defining feature of a horror story. Using references, explain in your own words how a monster in horror differentiates from monsters in other popular genres.

According to King(2011), He has tried to delineate some of the differences between science fiction and horror, terror and horror and horror and revulsion. Carroll(2003)also separates science fiction from horror and claims that “it is tempting to follow the lead of the defenders of science fiction and to differentiate the horror genre from others by saying that horror novels, stories, films, plays, and so on are marked by the presence of monsters”. We can make monsters supernatural or sci-fi, depending on our purpose, which makes Horror distinguishable from tales of terror or Gothic exercises. It is true that monsters are the most necessary conditions in horror stories, but they are not enough to be a prerequisite for horror because they come from all kinds of stories, such as fairy tales and myths. So Carroll is looking for ways to distinguish between horror stories featuring monsters and other popular genres.

First of all, what distinguishes horror stories from many genres is the action taken when characters face monsters in the story. In fairy tales or myths, for example, monsters are accepted as ordinary beings by characters as everyday beings in the universe and come as devices that highlight the heroic nature of the characters. They are annoying or terrifying creatures in the story, but they naturally enter the characters’ perceptions and do not create fear for them. But in horror stories, monsters are accepted as disrupting the order of the universe beyond the existential validity of human. “They are putrid or moldering things, or they hail from oozing places, or they are made of dead or rotting flesh, or chemical waste, or are associated with vermin, disease, or crawling things”(Carroll,2003). In terms of the monster in horror story, Bauer(2018) says that “a monster is something more inhuman than human. The monsters can resemble humans, but they lack the mercy and compassion of a normal human being. Monsters are typically cruel and destructive”. So the characters shrink from the monster or deny their existence. Also, these settings create not only fear but also disgust for them. Like this, The characters’ actions or reactions to the monster determine whether the story is horror or not. 

Next, the difference between the monsters from horror stories and other popular genres is that they are intimidating and impure. The monster from the horror story is uniformly dangerous. Monsters can be psychologically, morally, or socially threatening. Also, “Monsters may also trigger certain enduring infantile fears, such as those of being eaten or dismembered, or sexual fears, concerning rape and incest”(Carroll,2003). Besides, creators use a fission or fusion device to impure a monster, for example, they fuse parts of a human body into a monster’s body, or they divide different biological beings so that they can alternate in one body. These terrible productions evoke emotional reactions to readers, such as fear of unimaginable beings, and make them feel scared just by their presence, showing that it is not another genre but Horror itself.

References

Bauer, A. (2018, October 14). The Case For Horror Films, Part 1: Creature/Monster Films. Retrieved September 08, 2020, from https://medium.com/cinenation-show/the-case-for-horror-films-part-1-creature-monster-films-3f921a9c0501

Carroll, N. (2003). The philosophy of horror: Or, paradoxes of the heart. Routledge.

King, S. (2011). Danse macabre. Simon and Schuster.

Week 6 Questions

2.What is the philosophy of cosmicism and how is it used to convey a sense of dread in both The Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Colour out of Space?

The philosophy of cosmicism is that there is no such thing as the divine being, such as the Gods, that we can recognize in this universe, and that humans are not particularly significant on a vast scale at the intergalactic level. So in Lovecraft’s Cosmic Horror, humans face a vast universe that is incomparable to them. As a result, they fail to accept their meaninglessness and become terrified and insane. “At first glance ‘‘cosmic’’ seems to be used here merely as a replacement term for ‘‘supernatural,’’ but the substitution also implies a particular psychological attitude to the supernatural. The text refers to ‘‘that most terrible conception of the human brain—a malign and particular suspension of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguards against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space’’(Stablefold, 2006). Also, cosmicism tends to emphasize the meaninglessness of human being itself and all human actions. In Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythology, it is only cosmic beings who can leave a significant mark, and humans can never understand the meaning or intention contained in their actions. So it maximizes the fear of humans.

This philosophy of cosmicism is faithfully reflected in The Color Out of Space. The merits of this movie are visualized tension, which expresses the sudden presence of the unexplored universe and the fear of human beings exposed to death unprotected. As Lovecraft(2013) said, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”, the work expresses the unknown from the transcendent existence of the universe in color, showing human fear of it and human helplessness toward destruction and endings.

These cosmicism philosophies also appear in The Shadow over Innsmouth. Lovecraft’s works tend to arouse readers’ fear of something else, often describing unknown as a terrible threat to the rest of humanity. In The Shadow over Innsmouth, the main character learns the truth about Innsmouth and runs away, but finds out that there is Insmmouth blood in his bloodline, and as the day goes by, he feels that he is turning into something other than himself. It shows a sense of dread that a human being turns into an unknown identity, a monster. So this is linked to cosmicism in that it shows the futility of man and the fear of being unknown.

References

Lovecraft, H. P. (2013). Supernatural horror in literature. The Palingenesis Project (Wermod and Wermod Publishing Group).

Stableford, B. (2006). The cosmic horror. Icons of Horror and the Supernatural: An Encyclopedia of Our Worst Nightmares, 1, 65-96.

Stanley, R. (Director). (2020). Colour Out of Space [Film]. SpectreVision.

Week 4 Questions

1.What was the cultural impact of Akira (1988), and why does it occupy a key place in the canon of anime greats?

Before Akira, several directors such as Hayao Miyazaki boasted considerable drawing style and production, but few of these Japanese theatre animations were exported from the West at that time. So Westerners were only watching Japanese TV limited commercial animations, so they thought that Japanese animators were nothing, unlike them who were making animations like Disney. But there is a work that changed their minds. It is Akira. Of course, Napier(2005) states “Unquestionably a masterpiece of technical animation, Akira is also a complex and challenging work of art that provoked, bewildered, and occasionally inspired Western audiences when it first appeared outside Japan in 1990.”
But Akira’s composition and directing were better than any other animation and attracted Western attention. So it creates a fandom culture like Otaku who finds and searches for Japanese masterpieces after Akira. Like this, Akira becomes a re-establishment of the status of Anime.

Also, Napier(2005) says “At the time of Akira’s first appearance in the West, animation was generally regarded as a minor art, something for children, or perhaps, the occasional abstract, art-house film”.
This tells us that Western animation has become a culture mostly for children. However, Akira’s story is about social problems that have not been dealt with in animation so far, so it attracts attention from children to various generations, creating a box office hit. Therefore, people’s views and evaluations of Japanese animation gradually change, and multiple works come in after Akira.

“As a cyberpunk genre depicting dystopia, Akira is hardly a whole new story”(Shin,n.d). The elements that makeup Akira, such as the boy who awakened his superpowers, the government’s conspiracy, and the forces against it, can never be said to be new. Nevertheless, Akira’s imagination was different from previous movies. The reason is straightforward. Akira is an animation. Akira showed the visuals that Hollywood and other American movies never showed in the 1980s. So, In the sense that Akira proved the status of Japanese animation, It is sufficient to occupy a principal place in the canon of anime greats.

References
Napier Susan, J. (2005). Anime: From Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle.

Shin, D. (n.d.). 재패니메이션의 마스터피스, 를 봐야 하는 이유. Retrieved August 21, 2020, from https://m.post.naver.com/viewer/postView.nhn?volumeNo=9312603

Week 5 Questions

5.What genre or genres is Princess Mononoke? How does it relate to its ‘prequel,’ Nausicaā?

Princess Mononoke is made up of various genres. First of all, It is an animation that puts voice, dynamism and background sound into static media such as cartoons and pictures. Also, scenes where animals and humans talk and the fact that animals appear as gods show genre of fantasy. We can also see the genre of adventure in Ashitaka journey to the West Village to stop the curse that eats away his life, and we can find action genres through fierce battles between humans and gods.

“Mononoke is intended as a sequel to Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds (1984) which depicts a post-apocalyptic world composed of expanding dead-zones”(Mountfort,2020). In Nausicaa, the narrative dividing the relationship between man and nature into a dichotomy of good and evil has drawn much criticism. So the director has come to think again about the relationship between man and nature. Later, he publishes Princess Mononoke to address this simplification with the more sophisticated treatment of the theme. His newly defined relationship between man and nature is that neither is absolute good nor evil and that both sides should be slightly better off in contradictory relationships.

“As far as the relationship between the natural environment and human technology is concerned, in particular, this is alternately addressed in a utopian vein emphasizing prospects of peace and regeneration, and in a pragmatic mode that accepts the inevitability of technology even in scenarios of relative harmony between humankind and nature”(Cavallaro,2015). When humans develop technology, the destruction of the environment is inevitable, and real human happiness cannot be achieved unless the technology is developed to protect nature perfectly. It is the contradiction they have. Acknowledging this contradictory relationship, the director emphasizes the constant effort to help each other move to a better state.

References

Cavallaro, D. (2015). The anime art of Hayao Miyazaki. McFarland.

Mountfort. (2020.). Pop Genres_Anime 1_Akira [PPT]. Aut: Blackboard.

Week 3 Questions

  1. What gaps are there in Hergé’s representations of women?

In The Adventures of Tintin, it is clear that much has been addressed and corrected on the issue of representations of race. Still, not much has been addressed on the topic of representations of women. Hergé explains why women are not expressed by saying that “Women have nothing to do in a world like Tintin’s. I like women far too much to caricature them. And, besides, pretty or not, young or not, women are rarely comic characters” (Mountfort , 2020). But this lack of representations of women causes problems as it is read to many public.

 First of all, in every adventure series, the woman faces come out almost invisible. Unlike men, women not only don’t get a chance to speak, but they are just used as a background. Women, for example, are visually behind the status of simple figures in the crowd in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. Also, in Tintin in America, women remain background figures, limiting women’s agency by being divided into the domain of someone’s guardian and mother.

 Women are also divided into the realm of labour. Housekeepers, housewives and mothers are mostly portrayed as characters representing female labor. Furthermore, “Wives may or may not double as housekeepers, depending on their station, but they are depicted almost exclusively as homemakers, care-givers or otherwise domiciled”(Mountfort,2020). It limits the role of women in families and prevents women from entering the daily lives of a wide variety of men. Of course, it does not rule out women in providing them with career options, but by limiting the jobs they can have to nurses, flight attendants and assistants, this is also feminized labor. These factors, when viewed in the context of the times, were understandable in that the status of women was low, but were sufficient to create a reactionary and wave of feminism in modern times.

Reference

Mountfort, P. (2020). Tintin, gender and desire. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. https://doi-org.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/10.1080/21504857.2020.1729829