Videoant and
Reality Television Assignment We have spent the last few classes thinking
about television genres and reality television, in particular. Class
discussion as well as the two readings by 1) Oullette & Murray and
2) Weber have focused on what reality television tells us about ourselves
and what tropes it uses to do so.
In this unit,
I would like you to work in a group to provide annotations of a reality
television clip. Annotate a clip to show us 1) what stories it is
tells us about “ourselves” (who we should be, how we should be, who
has authority, what is the standard, how to normalize, how are we
inadequate, how to consume, pull yourself, you are to blame for your
lack of success, systemic inequalities have nothing to do with it,
etc.) and 2) what generic conventions/tropes it uses to tell us this
(“I am not here to make friends,” “you failed because you did not
try hard enough,” “be the natural/better you,” etc.).
Form a group
of 4-5 people, choose a clip from a show. Identify the important components
of the clip. For the assignment, follow the directions to use videoant
to annotate the clip explaining what stories and tropes are used.
Each person should add 1 annotation. When you are done with all of
the annotations, post the clip on the blog. The annotations do not
have to be long, just a short paragraph of 3-5 sentences. Be sure
to think about who is intended audience, the expected response, and
what role the scenes play in the bigger picture.
This exercise
is intended to provide you with the opportunity to critically analyze
and "deconstruct" videos and their intended effects on the
target audience, and to think about ethical and social issues that
are associated with any given (video) media artifact. To accompish
this activity, you will need to access (or place) a video located
on the web that is saved in ".flv" or ".mov" format.
Fortunately, these are common formats and, if the video you have found
or created is not in one of these formats, there is a free (and easy
to use) tool for converting videos and saving to the web.