124267 KO Critical Media Analysis (2011W)

In this course, we will explore a selected variety of media, focusing on visual media (film, TV, some music videos, some visual art) to explore standard critical tools which can help us analyze how these produce the meanings that their viewers find pleasurable, interesting, convincing, repulsive, compelling, etc.
We will try to embed practical approaches and concrete analyses within an outline of the historical development of such tools from the 20th to the 21st century. To do so, the notions of 'reading' and 'seeing' and how they overlap and interact but also differ will constitute our framework. In the last century, the 'linguistic turn' -- in its broadest sense, the discovery the cultural and social questions can be investigated through the metaphor of language, that cultural and social processes are structured like language -- brought to the critical study of culture the notion of 'cultural texts' and a concomitant focus on 'representation', identity and difference, and on gender, sex, race, ethnicity, class, age etc. as factors that make a difference in how media are consumed, interpreted, or: 'read.' Signifiers and signifieds, icons, indexes, symbols, metaphors and metonymies, denotation and connotation are among the concepts that were elaborated to analyze visual media, along with notions taken up from e.g. literary studies such as genre or narrative; via semiotics, structuralism and post-structuralism, their use was adapted esp. to film as the key visual medium. Late in the 20th century, the 'visual turn' signalled both an extension and located at and beyond the margin of the linguistic turn, as the underlying theories and the corresponding practical tools of analysis were adapted to a culture and media landscape that was becoming ever more visual. Which cultural vision and visuality taking a central place on the contemporary cultural studies agenda, the emphasis on visual aesthetics and sensuality of perception interrogates the usefulness of some of the linguistic metaphors while reconfirming the usefulness and adequateness of others, as well as adding concepts more or less specific to visual culture such as the 'spectator' or 'observer', or the 'Male) gaze.' Some of the current issues we are facing can be summarized in questions such as, "How is seeing (not quite) the same as reading?"Or: "How do we make 'meaning' from visual media -- if we 'make meaning' at all?"