GSC2409

Narratives and representations

Mary Griffiths

8 points - Second semester - 3 hours per week (2-hour lecture/screening, 1-hour tutorial) - Gippsland and distance - Prerequisites: GSC1901 and GSC1402 or equivalents (For those students who commenced an English major prior to 1997, GSC1401 and GSC1402)

Objectives On successful completion of the subject students will have a knowledge of the regimes of representation through which 'ways of seeing' and 'ways of being' are constructed for and by mass audiences through film, television, in print, on the Internet, and through advertising and other forms of public communication. They will have researched a 1999 social issue of their choice, analysing the way audiences use media texts; they will have acquired a familiarity with the formal characteristics of four popular entertainment genres and canvassed the way these forms circulate social knowledge.

Synopsis Part 1 extends the study of the construction of meanings begun in the foundation communication subjects GSC1901 and GSC1401. It begins with the analysis of 'realism' as a regime of truth in a range of examples chosen from familiar media forms: news reporting, photographs, reality TV, community advice, documentary, soap operas, policy speeches, commentary and advertising. Medical, pornographic, scientific, and legal regimes of representation are studied as one of the means through which gendered, 'raced' and classed relations are constructed between individuals and groups in a modern society. A 1999 social debate will form the substance of the first assignment. The choice of the debate is not restricted to Australian issues and may be selected from ones arising in the student's home location, provided adequate supporting evidence is supplied. Part 2 develops a familiarity with the historical formation of four mass-circulated narrative genres; an understanding of their compositional techniques and likely social outcomes. Genre convergences between romance, film noir, melodrama and the detective story are studied. The final assignment, a cross-genre case study, analyses how selected genres work to encourage the formation of civic virtues.

Assessment Case study (3000 words): 45% - Major assignment (3000 words): 45% - Participation: 10%

Prescribed texts

Subject reader
Subject video
Palmer J Potboilers: Methods, concepts and case studies in popular fiction Routledge, 1991
and two examples of popular fiction (subject to availability):
Chandler R The big sleep Random, 1988
Du Maurier D Rebecca Arrow, 1992

Back to the 1999 Arts Handbook