I take it you’re reading this 6-7 months after I’ve written it. I seriously hope you’re a millionaire by now. If not – settle for alive, healthy and happy and be grateful!
I hope you’ve finally decided what you want to do with your life. Wearing business skirts and LouBoutin is NOT a job description.
I hope you haven’t become the typical journalist – pushy, ruthless and intrusive. You’ve always hated that sort of people. Perhaps feature writing? If you’re good enough, in the future you could make ends meet and still be able to look yourself into the mirror in the morning.
I hope you’ve deepened your knowledge on psychology – if you want to help people that way you need much more than 4 years of specialist training while doing some other job!
Now, let’s make a list of the things you should have done by now. Some of them you’ve been postponing forever!
Read in full at least one of the books for your course.
Finish the Media Studies book – it’s interesting, why won’t you just find the time?!?!
Finish Freud’s lectures and start looking into Jung’s work. Oh, and locate the rest of the 5 cases after you finish Dora.
Learn one Shakespeare sonnet by heart.
Practice your German and perhaps learn more?
Learn enough Polish to be able to understand Chris’s father.
Learn how to play at least 3 songs on the guitar. That’s right – the entire song, not just the solos!
Produce some journalistic materials (could be articles, radio materials etc.), of which you’re proud enough to present to potential employers.
Get (a step closer to) work experience in TV.
Make that video you’ve been dreaming about for years. You have the idea, you have the background music, you have access to a camera and you get to travel. What are you waiting for?
Make that other video, about Bulgaria. You’ll need it in second year when you get homesick.
Now here’s the list of personal qualities I’d like you to have worked on.
Stop trying to make everything much more perfect than it needs to be. THINGS ALWAYS WORK OUT ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.
Stop trying to take care of everyone and everything. PEOPLE DON’T NEED IT/DESERVE IT.
Stop doubting yourself so much. YOU’RE HINDERING YOURSELF.
Stop taking things in so deeply. PEOPLE ARE MEAN. GET OVER IT.
Stop trusting everyone. TRUST IS EARNED, STOP GIVING IT AWAY.
Stop getting worked-up over small things. YOU SHOULD KNOW BY NOW WHAT REALLY MATTERS.
Learn to give up. SOME THINGS JUST WON’T HAPPEN.
Stop trying to be in control. YOU NEVER ARE.
Well, that’s all I can tell you right now. A few more advices I deeply hope you’ve followed:
Don’t forget to appreciate every single day. Don’t forget to appreciate your family and friends. Don’t forget to appreciate Chris. You’ve been blessed with all of that, so don’t forget you already have what people spend their entire lives searching. Don’t forget to be happy!
If you’ve done at least a small part of the things in this letter – you haven’t wasted your time.
Preparing this project was a truly useful experience and taught me many things – maybe not exactly the things the lecturers had in mind when they were coming up with the idea about the challenge, but indeed – many.
First of all, I learned that perhaps the most difficult part is to work with people you’ve just met. It involves a lot of politeness in order to get on the good side of people you immediately know will not be your friends; a lot of diplomacy in order to persuade the others about your ideas without being pushy, ignorant or rude; a lot of patience to hear out some really crappy (in your opinion) ideas and not say anything that would let on what you’re actually thinking; a lot of persistence in order to demand to be heard even when the rest tend to ignore you. Unfortunately, I failed to do that last one.
The initial idea of our project was to produce and advert, which could be part of a media campaign against the over-usage of alcohol, especially among young people. Due to limited time and resources, we decided to take a series of pictures, then edit them into a 1.5-2-minute video clip with music in the background and ending in a dark screen, with voice-over and the catch line appearing (“A drink too much?” – this turned out to be my only idea for this video).
The character in the video was to be a girl. At first she would look happy, innocent and beautiful. The accent was supposed to be on her face. Gradually, with each glass of alcohol she drank, she would become less and less pretty (smudged make-up, messy hair, tired and absent-minded expression etc.), ending in a complete mess.
So that’s what we did when we took the pictures for the first time. It took us all day and after that came editing. At that point I learned yet another valuable lesson – in order to get the work done you have to be able to do everything. It turned out that from 5 people in our group only one girl knew how to edit sound and video! Thank goodness for that, otherwise it would’ve been very interesting how we’d finish our project.
We were quite proud and it was still day one. The next day we went to our faculty and showed the video to our module leader. He was very nice and gave us some pointers. What he said is that we should change the music, because the one we were using was copyrighted. And more importantly – that we should imply in some way that the girl is not sitting alone drinking, but that she is at a party somewhere. That’s all he said but as you can see – it turned out that we had to shoot the entire thing all over again.
Which we did. Only this time we messed-up even worse. Yes, other people were coming and going out of the pictures. Yes, there was a clock and the time on it changed. BUT everyone conveniently forgot, that we need to keep the focus and close-up on the girl’s face, in order to achieve the effect we were aiming at. After all, not so much the exact number of empty bottles, but the destruction of beauty (implied health) was the idea behind it all.
If right now I say that I reminded the rest of the group about that a couple of times during the shooting, but for some reason they just chose to ignore me (definitely not because I was the only foreign student from the group), it will look like I’m making excuses for myself. So I won’t say that. I’ll just make a mental note to myself that next time I shouldn’t assume that “perhaps they know best” and I should be more persistent when I see something is going wrong.
At the end the whole video looked way worse than the initial one and the idea was almost completely lost. Nobody wanted to work on that anymore so all of us just decided to close our eyes to the fact that the whole thing was a complete and total failure. At that point I was already quite fed-up with being generally ignored so I just decided to let the whole thing go down in flames and just call it a day as the others did. (MISTAKE!) Yes, I would go down with the rest but at least then I’d be able to say the one thing I’m sure they would hear: “I told you so”. (Later on I didn’t do it. I just took my things and left the lecture room, because if I’d faced any of my group partners after the total humiliation of presenting that video, I’m sure I would’ve told them much more than just “I told you so”.)
Anyway, despite the filming was done, there were still more lessons to be learned. We decided that the next day one of the girls would bring the video on a CD to be presented in front of the entire course (150 people or so). The other girl would upload it to You-Tube “just in case”. We all knew the video would look devastatingly horrible and meaningless if seen on the small YouTube screen and we just hoped it wouldn’t come to that. I’m quite aware that not all PCs can run all CDs and errors with the burning occur quite often, so I suggested that someone else should also record the video to a CD, so that we have a big-screen quality back-up plan, not just YouTube. I would’ve done it myself, only I don’t have a CD-ROM on my laptop so I asked someone from the others to do it. Again it was like nobody heard. I got annoyed and decided to leave before I let it show.
MISTAKE! As I expected , but secretly hoped I was wrong, the PC failed to read our CD and we had to present the already-hard-to-understand video on the small-screen, low-quality YouTube.
Now I know the whole disaster thing was probably my fault. Why didn’t I continue repeating that changing the focus was a mistake and would destroy the entire idea?! Why didn’t I continue repeating that someone should make a second CD with the video?! I was bound to become annoying enough at some point to be noticed! Even better! I should have not let myself become cynical and annoyed; I should have bought a CD myself and gone to a friend to ask them to burn the video for me. After all it’s true what they say: if you want something done right – do it yourself.
Yes, this 72-hour-challenge truly was an educational experience for me.
I am a victim! I am under the constant fire of new TV-series, whose plots DO levitate around the “cliché” but are still annoyingly addictive! As I result every Wednesday morning I am underslept, because I’ve had my TV-episodes marathon the previous night!
Wait. Let’s start from the beginning.
It was two years ago when I first discovered the addictive force of TV-episodes. It was the summer vacation. It was hot beyond the point of “just bear with it”. No one left their house before 6-7 in the evening. Including me. That presented a problem though. What to do with whole 9 hours of morning and early afternoon, while stuck at home? Read a book? OK, that’s 1 hour, 2 hours tops. Watch TV? I resent TV in general, but in this grand boredom – OK, that’s another 1-2 hours. Chat on facebook/skype/msn? That becomes annoying and lame after half an hour. Do chores? There’s simply nothing in the house, which requires my daily attention for more than 45 min. That leaves me with 3 hours 45 min. roughly with nothing to do.
That’s when I remembered my friend recommending me some TV-series, which supposedly were witty, interesting and very psychologically realistic. “Desperate Housewives” was the name. Don’t laugh. She just had to come up with something to get me to watch them, without letting on that the word she’s looking for is actually “addictive”.
So I decided to download the full first season on my PC (yeah, go on “legal authorities”, confiscate my PC and arrest me, ‘cause I’m the only one doing it and I’m definitely a threat to national safety).
“So much for witty,”- I thought after watching the first episode. But I still had 2.5 hours of boredom to kill before my freedom. So I played episode 2. And there was my mistake.
I just couldn’t stop! I was so curious to find out what exactly happened to Mary-Ann, will Carlos find out about Gabriella’s affair and so on and so on and blah blah blah etc. It had no end! Just when you think “that’s it! In a minute I’ll surely know everything! I’ll finally be satisfied and be able to move on to some more meaningful activities!” and BANG! Something happens and raises a whole new succession of questions, which the viewer (in that case me) is just dying to know.
People are curious animals by nature. If we weren’t we’d still live in caves and go mute before the wonder called fire. And the TV-episode producers know and exploit that. Oh, DO they exploit it!
In a matter of 3-4 days I had already seen all episodes from the first season. Since the final episode raised (surprise, surprise) new questions and I still had a month and a half of summer vacation and hot, work-free days, I decided to download season 2.
By the end of the month I had already seen all seasons of “Desperate Housewives”, which had come out. And again I faced the endless hours of nothing to do. I got bored again. I tried to study a new language. Failed. “Ou est la rue saint Jacques?” Don’t answer, I won’t understand you.
I tried to do Yoga and Pilates. Failed. Too hot to lie on the couch, let alone do sth., involving so much effort.
Then I remembered my friend was also talking about some other TV-series, called “How I Met Your Mother”, which were supposedly “hilarious”. I downloaded season 1 and gave it a shot. OK, I admit, this time my friend was right, I did laugh hysterically at certain moments. AND the episodes were just 20 min. each, which made them very convenient and easy to watch. There was I, again jumping into the rabbit hole. This hole I still haven’t gone out of. The next episode is coming after Christmas and I’m quite eager to watch it (although it’s been 5 seasons and we STILL don’t know who that wretched mother is!).
By the time summer vacation was over, I was already hooked with two more – “Heroes” and “House MD” AND I was still watching “HIMYM” and “DH”.
I was 18 then and by that time I was already quite disappointed with Hollywood movies. I was familiar with all the clichés, I knew how the film would end before the opening credits had all appeared. Movies just didn’t present a thrill anymore. I guess this is another reason why I turned to TV-series. I was unfamiliar with the clichés, the plot was always complicated and ongoing.
It became a habit of mine to watch TV-episodes every evening. Soon I followed enough of them to fill my entire week! I made a schedule:
Monday – “Desperate housewives”
Tuesday – “Heroes” and “How I Met Your Mother”
Wednesday – “House MD”
Thursday – my day off!
Friday – “Reaper”
Saturday – “Ghost Whisperer” (yes, I’m a hopeless romantic)
Sunday – “Chuck”
It was like smoking! Just one more cigarette (episode) and I quit! OK…. So just ONE more and THEN I quit… Oh, damn it, who am I kiddin’?
This went on for the rest of the school year. Then summer came again and there was a new problem. I had already watched all episodes so far of all series I was following. And new episodes don’t come out in the summer. So what now? What do you do when you find out that your favourite brand of cigarettes has gone bankrupt and will no longer be sold? You find a new brand to smoke, that’s what. In my case, I found new series to watch.
Two years later, I confess:
Hello. My name is Ellie and I am an addict. (“Hello, Ellie” ) I am addicted to TV-series. Here’s a list of the titles I’m following at the moment:
1. Desperate Housewives
2. Ghost Whisperer
3. How I Met Your Mother
4. Heroes
5. House MD
6. True Blood
7. That 70’s Show
8. Malcolm in the Middle
9. Gossip Girl (SEE! I’VE SUNK THIS LOW!!!)
And I’d still be following “Chuck” and “Reaper” if they hadn’t been cancelled.
As you can see, I’m no housewife, but the situation is desperate. I could have been reading books in all those evenings! I could have written that novel I’ve been meaning to write for years! I could have drawn my masterpiece! I could have ….
No. I haven’t done any of those things.
But you know what? I don’t smoke, I drink only enough to be polite in certain situations, I don’t chase after men. TV-Episodes are my vice and as long as they don’t threaten the serious aspects of my life or my sanity, I think I am allowed to have that one vice.
Last week has been a complete fiasco : snow storms, cancelled flights, stuck at airports, miles and miles on high heels in the storm pulling a suitcase, the possibility of spending Christmas alone away from home hitting me in the face, a sh*t load of money spent on a new airplane ticket,…… but I’ll get into that some other time. While being stuck at the airport for two hours, at last waiting to actually board my plane, I finally had time to sit down and look around.
The airport offered an exquisite view of… commercials. Wall-plastered commercials, commercials on screens, commercials on bilboards, commercials on flyers, commercials on magazines, commercials on shop windows. I’m suddenly surrounded. I have to buy the new perfume by Lancome; I have to have the new Adidas shoes; I have to book my New Year celebration in Hawaii with a certain tour operator; I have to buy the new L’Oreal lipstick, which obviously is the secret to Eva Longoria’s beauty ( so what? the previous lipstick she advertised was a fake? make up your mind! which is the real one?! ); I have to use Orange as my mobile phone operator otherwise… well, I suck; I have to spend my family’s annual income on a Gucci bag (doesn’t matter if they’re all ugly).
Since I won’t do any of those things, I discover I am poor, insignificant, unpopular, people just hate me, I will not succeed in anything, my little self isn’t worth a second thought, my life will come down to nothing. “Buy that Gucci bag or just get it over with.” – says the glowing commercial over the shop across. I am about to ask the nearest security guy for his gun when my eyes land on the cup of hot chocloate I’m holding in my hand. Wait! There’s still hope! The Starbucks logo is on it! It’s also on a number of commercials around the airport, assuring me that life is better with a cup of Starbucks hot drink and only people who know what they want drink it. Thank Goodness! I must be cool after all!
Feeling a bit better about myself, I decide to go into a souvenirs store and get something for my grandparents (not that they need yet another fridge magnet, but somehow it has become necessary to buy useless things like that when you’re abroad, otherwise you’re inconsiderate ). One of the shop assistants approaches me as soon as I walk through the door. And what a nice guy that is! Wanting to know about me, where I come from and wanting to help me choose the absolute best thing for grandma and grandpa! A few things catch my eye, but thank goodness for the nice salesman, who pointed me to other, according to him, more suitable things. Funny how they all are a lot more expensive than the ones I liked. Ah, well, he must know best… Wait! No he mustn’t!
“Look, mister, whose grandparents are these, yours or mine? I’ll take the fridge magnet and that’s that.”
“Are you sure? ‘Cause I can already picture your grandpa with this tobacco-pipe and your grandmother making tea in this tea-pot.” – smiles the salesman.
“What? Have you seen my grandparents? How exactly can you picture them?! My grandpa doesn’t even smoke and my grandma hates tea!” Well, that last one I didn’t actually say out loud. I just paid for my magnet and got out.
Thankfully it was already time to board my plane. I was quite tired of people trying to sell me things.
I got on the plane, didn’t even look at the brochure with on-board sales, and 3 hours later I was home.
And guess what? Later, when I gave my grandparents the magnet, they didn’t even notice it. They were too busy hugging me and being happy I was home. Nobody noticed I wasn’t wearing lipstick, my bag wasn’t Gucci, my sneakers weren’t Adidas. I’m not sure they’ve even heard of those names. Now what do you know! Somebody does care about me after all!
Since I have no TV while at university, I have temporarily replaced it with www.youtube.com. As any person with basic internet knowledge knows, you can find practically anything there with the exception of pornography and movies. But what has been a real hit for the last couple of years is a whole new type of bloging: the video bloging, or vloging as it is called. Many people decide they don’t want to write and decide to instead record themselves saying something, which they believe is interesting.
What most of them discovered is that YouTube users are not really interested in hearing their opini0n and their vlogs suffer the discouraging popularity of 5-10 views per video. So what happens then? Some of the people drop the whole thing altogether and decide to communicate live with their own friends over coffee or whatever. The rest get creative. They quickly grasp the idea, that in order to be popular they must be entertaining.
And what is entertaining? Playing the guitar (or any other instrument) makes you entertaining. It doesn’t matter if you suck or if you are brilliant – people will still want to watch you, either to enjoy your playing or to make fun of what an idiot you’re making of yourself. And the more extreme you get – the more views your videos get. In short: if you want to be watched by millions either be a total genious or be a complete moron.
You can do that with singing, with playing or (and that is getting increasingly popular) if you come across as a comedian. If you combine a couple of those – even better!
Here’s and example of a guy, who sings, plays the guitar and practices sarcasm:
This was Alex Day and I think the statistics will be enough to get my point across:
Channel Views: 1,897,262
Total Video Views: 7,748,564
Subscribers: 77,675
#18 – Most Subscribed (All Time)
#3 – Most Subscribed (All Time) – Musicians
There are people who rely entirely on their sence of humour and video editing abilities. Here’s a video to illustrate that:
This was Mak and he’s been around for 3 years. By now his ratings are as follows:
Channel Views: 9,648,188
Total Video Views: 59,975,776
Subscribers: 386,221
#28 – Most Subscribed (All Time) – Global
#12 – Most Subscribed (All Time) – Comedians – Global
Some people actually try to make it big time and score a contract. While there are naturally some completely delusional individuals, there is the occasional talent, which could easily kick any Disney manufactured singer’s ass.
This is Mia Rose. She joined the YouTube community about 3 years ago and has since then been getting more and more fans with her songs – both written and performed beautifully. The fact that she is really good-looking doesn’t hurt her contract chances either.
Hannah Montana, you can just pack up and go.
Mia’s channel data reads:
Channel Views: 13,518,448
Total Video Views: 95,558,497
Subscribers: 227,344
#4 – Most Subscribed (All Time)
#1 – Most Subscribed (All Time) – Musicians
To sum up, getting yourself on YouTube could actually be a good thing. The competition you’re going to face is definitely going to put you through some serious personal development and this is always beneficial. You are either going to become a better artist in your field or you’re going to realise you suck and find yourself another hobby before it’s too late. In both cases – everyone wins.
As discussed in Monday’s lecture, the world has developed certain perceptions about things, which are very generalised and on a large number of occasions are not true. But they are still what we expect to see each time we encounter the object of our preconceived perceptions. We say that these are culturally encoded, that they have turned into stereotypes. Here is a comparison, showing some of those culturally encoded perceptions about men and women, about the masculine and feminine. This is what is shown/described to us most of the types we see a movie or read a book or hear a story.
1.Women are more sensitive than Men.
For centuries society has expected of men to be completely insensitive and has allowed women and even expected from them to be overly sensitive. Anything differing from that social norm was considered bad, unnatural, even sick. Men, who showed their emotions were accused of being homosexual. Women, who contained their emotions were perceived as cold, evil or unhealthy.
In the modern society however those boundaries and expectations are beginning to fade. More and more films show us men, which are completely in touch with their emotions and women, who are tough and far from emotional., And the most important part – people are realising that that is normal and except it, rather than judge and condemn this, actually more natural, behaviour.
2. Women wear make up and spend a lot of time and effort on their look and Men don’t care too much how they look and the only “pampering” they give themselves is a shave.
It is quite obvious and well known that in modern society this is not the case. In fact, advertising companies have embraced this fact and are enforcing it with a large variety of cosmetic series, clothes brands etc. designed specifically for men and selling the idea that a man who takes good care for his body and pays attention to his look is more successful in both personal and professional plan.
3. Women wear skirts and Men wear trousers.
Again, contemporary trends completely defy this perception. Although skirts and dresses are still exclusively reserved for women, jeans and other types of trousers are perhaps the most popular wear among both genders.
4. Men’s closest friends are other men and Women’s closest friends are other women.
The idea that Men and Women mainly socialize and develop close friendships only with people from the same gender is again found in numerous films and books (ex: “Sex and the City”, “I Love You Man” etc.).In the past the opposite was considered highly inappropriate. Nevertheless, modern real life obviously defies that. TV-series like “Friends” and “How I Met Your Mother” support the change of that perception.
5. Women cook and eat healthy and Men eat fast food.
Also a largely exploited media idea. Every student can beg to differ. J
6. Women are passive and Men are active.
The idea of the hero who comes and saves the damsel in distress is as old as the fairytales. Every contemporary media exploits this and we are hardly surprised that instead of banging the bad guy on the head, kicking him in the … ankle and running away women scream and wait for a miracle (usually in the form of a man) to come and rescue them. But come to think of it, every human being’s natural instinct is to protect itself, not just stand there and hope for the best. So where’s the reality in that culturally encoded perception?
7. Women like shopping and Men don’t.
Referring back to what I mentioned about the advertising companies in p.2, nowadays this is not exactly the case. Nevertheless, the image of a couple of women going out of a Mall, carrying an impressive amount of shopping bags is as commonly found in media as traffic lights.
8. Women don’t know anything about sports and cars whereas Men are mainly interested in that.
Again, this idea is as far from reality as it could be. In fact, in my personal experience, I’ve known just as many women, interested in sports and cars as men, who have no clue about any of those, and their numbers are actually the same as the cases which support the stereotype.
9. Women drink cocktails or other light drinks and go to cafes and restaurants, but Men drink beer and other hard alcohol and go to pubs and bars.
Again – most students would disagree. J
10. Women are tidy and Men are messy.
The idea that men thrive in chaos and dirt is one of the most popular ones, exploited widely in most teen and romantic comedies. Nevertheless, everyone can point to at least 2 friends, and perhaps themselves, as examples of the opposite.
11. Men are obsessed with sex whereas Women hardly care about it.
It is truly remarkable how 70% of the dialog can be carried out on swearing and vulgar language and yet the film sustains the standard of something worth watching.
The plot takes place in what appears to be a Korean ghetto, where loads of curses, a punch in the face and hard beating have somewhat replaced common expressions like “hello”, “goodbye”, “please” and “thank you”.
Nevertheless, between the industrial amounts of violent scenes, the viewer becomes acquainted with the main issue of the movie – domestic violence and the vicious circle it constructs. What at first strikes as a particularly thick and brutal character, the gangster Sang-Hoon, throughout the plot develops as the most complicated and intriguing one. His story illustrates the damage a broken family can do to its children and how they as grown-ups struggle not to repeat the same mistakes while at the same time being prone to the same type of violent behavior. Yang Ik-Joon plays his part excellently, revealing all the layers to an emotionally scarred sociopath, and even managing to get the public to sympathize with him at the end.
Another portrayal, deserving attention is that of teenage student Yeon-Hue, played by Kot-bi Kim. Despite this part being the debut for the actress, she handles her job magnificently and displays how the otherwise vulnerable personality of a young girl has to toughen in order to survive in her own violent world of constant struggle, loneliness, insult, and unappreciation.
To sum up, “Breathless” definitely deserves its 4 awards, because when a film has that much violence and vulgar language and still manages to actually be very serious and humane – you know it’s something worth seeing.
1.For this week’s individual task I’m going to look at one print-based, one television-based and one film-based media object. I have chosen the book “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”, the television series “Ghost Whisperer” and the film “The Ring”.
“Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”
The narrative of the story follows Tvetzan Todorov’s narrative structure. The story begins with the equilibrium: Harry lives with his aunt and uncle in a little town and leads a fairly normal, although quite lonely life. Then comes the first disruption: Harry discovers he’s a wizard and enters the wizards world by going to study in one of the best schools for magic. This develops into a sort of second equilibrium. Then comes the second disruption: something very valuable and important is hidden in the school and someone is trying to steal it. The recognition happens at the same time, because the three main characters (Harry and his two friend) discover this at the same time. The follows the attempt: they try to break all the protective spells and get to the valuable object before the person, who is trying to steal it. The book ends with an enhanced equilibrium: the object is saved, the villain – defeated, and Harry returns to his aunt and uncle for the summer, only this time they won’t treat him as bad, because now he can do magic.
In the book it is also easy to identify Propp’s character types:
- Hero – obviously Harry Potter
- Villain 1 – Harry’s enemy at school Draco Malfoy
- Villain 2 – the actual villain, who turns out to be one of the professors
- Donor – the headmaster Dumbledor, who provides Harry with the Invisibility cloak, which aids his mission
- Helper – again Dumbledor
- Father – again Dumbledor, who is obviously a key figure and is to a great extent the one moving the narrative
- The Dispatcher – Harry himself is the dispatcher, getting involved in the quest due to his own curiosity
- The false hero – professor Quirrel, who eventually turns out to be the villain
The only missing character type is the princess, because the reward for the hero comes in the form of praise and a happier world, where he fits in.
Ghost Whisperer
The series revolves around the main character Melinda Gordon, who has the ability to see and talk to ghosts. Although there is an on-going plot throughout each season, each episode has an independent plot, which again follows Todorov’s linear narrative structure. The equilibrium in the beginning of each episode is how Melinda and her husband and friends live happily and calmly in a town, named Fareview. The disruption comes when Melinda meets a new ghost. The recognition has three parts. The first part is when Melinda finds out what the ghost is haunting and tells her husband and friends, who usually help. Then comes the attempt: to try and find what’s keeping the ghost from “crossing over” and then try and “get him into the light”. Then come the seond and third part of the recognition: when Melinda discovers what the unfinished business of the ghost is and when Melinda explaines to the living relatives that she has a gift and that their son/mother/father/daughter/friend is a ghost and aids them in talking to each other. Finally comes the enhanced equilibrium, where again Melinda returns to her happy and normal life and the ghost’s relatives have found closure.
Propp’s character types are again present in the series:
- Hero – Melinda
- Villain 1 – the big villain who is kept in the shadows throughout the season but becomes revealed in the last episode, and who is usually trying to keep Melinda from helping the ghosts.
- Villain 2 – the ghost acts as villain for the first ¾ of an episode, until he is understood correctly and helped to find piece.
- Donor – one of Melinda’s friends, a professor in the local college
- Helper – any of Melinda’s friends
- Father – a special ghost, who is called “The Watcher”
- The Dispatcher – Melinda herself
- The false hero – in some episodes from season 1, this is Melinda’s brother, who turns out to be helping “the dark side”
Again, the only missing type is the princess, because the reward comes in the form of piece and personal satisfaction for the hero.
The Ring
The equilibrium at the beginning is the normal and peaceful life that the main characters Rachel and her son live. Then comes the disruption: both Rachel and her son watch a tape, which carries a demon and a curse that the watcher will die in 7 days. The recognition comes when Rachel finds out about previous victims of the curse and believes in it. The attempt is when she struggles to find a way out of the curse and tries to find where the tape comes from in order to save herself and her son. The enhanced equilibrium is when she escapes the curse (a.k.a. copies the tape) and she and her son can now return to living a normal life, now closer than ever. The only downside that the enhanced equilibrium has is that the curse isn’t actually destroyed and the plot leaves an opening for a sequel where the curse returns to haunt them.
Propp’s character types:
- Hero – Rachel
- Villain – Samara, the demon from the curse
- Helper – one of Rachel’s colleagues, who provides information about the girl on the tape
- The Dispatcher – the demon, who gives the 7-days deadline through a phonecall
As we can see we have several missing character types: the donor – basically the hero discovers everything herself; the princess – the reward is the hero and her son’s lives; the father – this character simply is missing; the false hero – also, another missing character.
2. A media object, that does not conform Todorov’s linear structure or most of Propp’s character types is a certain commercial for condoms: A father and his little son are in a supermarket. The son puts a package of candy in the shopping cart. The father takes them out. The boy puts them in again, making and angry face. The father again takes them out. Then the boy starts screaming, throwing things, throwing himself on the floor, kicking. People all around are looking shocked and indignant. The father gives out a deep sigh and a message appears on the screen “Use Condoms”.
As we can see the plot starts with equilibrium – father and son, shopping. Then comes the disruption – the boy wants candy and starts screaming. The recognition: everybody in the store are staring in shock. Then the commercial ends, without an attempt or an enhanced equilibrium.
This is a sought-after effect, which leaves the viewer with the task to come up with a solution to the problem for himself – e.g. to use condoms and not allow a situation like this to happen. This commercial has been banned, due to the obvious implication that children are something to be avoided. Nevertheless, anyone who has seen it can confirm that, although it does not follow the usual linear narrative structure to the end, and in fact exactly Because of that, it is effective and leaves an impression.
For this week’s individual task I chose to look more closely at my favourite genre – animation, and traditional animation in particular. Although a commonly shared opinion is that animated movies are aimed specifically and exclusively at children, I strongly disagree. An adult will appreciate them in a different way than a child, noticing the professionalism around the making of the movie, the references and the humour, which touch upon real everyday life. Here I am going to compare Disney’s “Beauty and the beast”(1991) and 20th Century Fox’s “Anastasia”(1997)
• What elements of each of the objects seem to be the same?
The colours both of the movies are bright and strong. The images are with realistic proportions and features. Each of them is very rich on sounds and music, including songs, interlaced with the plot. The narrative is simple enough but not shallow. The characters are not complex, but rather strictly divided into good or bad.
• What elements mark each object out as being different from the rest that you have chosen?
Both movies are fairly similar, but “Beauty and the Beast” animation is characterized with more oval shapes than “Anastasia”, where human faces for example are more “edgy”. Disney’s movie uses brighter colours. “Anastasia”, on the other hand, builds a bit more complex and realistic characters.
• How might ‘the audience’ understand the object?
As I mentioned earlier, children and adult audiences will understand the movies in different ways. Children are fascinated by the colours, the sounds, the songs, the plot where the good always triumphs over evil, the instructive lessons to be good and loyal, to never trust strangers etc. Adults will notice the beautiful and realistic drawings, the simple but interesting narrative, the everyday life references and jokes, interlaced in the film, the actual music itself.
• What kinds of pleasure might ‘the audience’ get from each object?
Children will enjoy the fairytale world where magic exists, people sing and dance in the streets and good always defeats bad. Adults will have a break from everyday struggles and enjoy the short illusion that that wonderful world exists. After the movie all will me left relaxed and possibly happier than they were before they sat down to watch it.
Interviews
Kris, 18, dislikes animated movies
1. Why do you dislike animated movies?
Most of them are extremely unrealistic and give wrong perception of the world to anyone, who is susceptible enough, like children for example. Another thing is that characters are always either very good or very bad, which is also very unrealistic.
2. Is there anything you like about animation and if yes, what and why do you like it?
I have to admit I enjoy the actual drawings and the sense of humour in certain animations but rarely in full-length animated films. If I have to choose, the Warner Bros cartoons are my favourite, because they are a bit absurd, just enough to give the comical impression, but in no way grotesque.
Lilly, 20, loves animated movies
1. Why do you love animated movies?
For many reasons! First and foremost are the music and the songs, then the beautiful drawings and last but not least – the wonderful feeling they leave me with after each time I watch them. I have to say that the optimism in the end is contagious and I definitely need it after a whole day of work and studying.
2. Is there anything about animated movies that you dislike? If yes, what and why?
Well, sometimes I think the characters are a bit over the top. Just too evil and genius or too good and gullible.
The movie aims to grab you from the beginning with an intriguing plot and shocking scenes, which make you jump. And to some extent it succeeds.
Nevertheless, it takes no more than two minutes for every uneducated viewer to realize that the whole thing is filmed on a very low budget and the whole horror effect of the movie relies on the old trick cut scene – show shocking image – return back to scene, aided by dramatic music.
Contributing is the fact that the story is actually quite shocking itself. Insanity, incest in different variations, unsuspecting and innocent victims, brutal and seemingly pointless murders and finally suicide, unlocking the supernatural wave of death – all scrambled to give us a taste of Japanese horror.
On the whole, however, despite the poor quality of the production, Ju-On largely achieves its goal – to shatter your inner peace and make you grateful it’s all just a movie. It is very intelligently built and obviously made by film professionals, who know the viewers’ psychology. Instead of making the viewer wonder what’s going to happen next, the movie aims for a bigger effect by making him/her anticipate what will happen and wonder WHEN and HOW exactly, which is much more nerve wrecking.
In contrast to Hollywood horror movies, Ju-On: Old Lady in White doesn’t’ have any action scenes whatsoever. The murders, in fact, happen almost casually. And impressively enough, this also works to the movie’s advantage – the simplicity and by-the-way manner in which the psychopathic teenager kills the members of his family is almost as shocking as the murders themselves.
Finally, the acting is not quite brilliant, but it’s very satisfactory and you have to give them credit because most of the movie involves tension scenes played out by only one actor at a time and God knows, pretending to be scared in a kitchen for 5 minutes takes talent!
My advice: If you are a movie critic or a film professional of some kind – go and see what can be achieved with limited resources. If you simply like horror movies – go and see it and it won’t waste your time. If you are neither – better move on to something different, because this movie is for connoisseurs.
