In one exercise, we looked at clips from Firefly (tv serial), Saved (movie), Baracknophobia ("Daily Show with Jon Stewart") and the animated Simpsons episode “She of Little Faith” (Season 13) and asked how real we each thought they were. But to answer that question we needed to explore how we defined "real"? Did the genre or the production values matter, did the message matter, did we feel manipulated, did anything resonate as especially authentic? The questions helped us appreciate that we all carry interpretive frames with us and that what is "most real" for me may not be "most real" for you.
Culture is full of cues and messages and we aren't going to all interpret them in the same way because we are each coming from different places and experiences, but just as I believe we need to be engaged in social media because people on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube are in conversation and we want to participating in conversations where people are, we need to engage culture and ask, "What are the implicit messages that are being conveyed there?" and "What do we want to contribute to the conversation?"
1 comment:
I really didn't think the question of "reality" was of any significance, especially since most of the pieces we watched were produced for comedic value (Firefly being the only exception). So how real is any parody? How real is science fiction, for that matte? I found value in the pieces for the kind of questions they provoked me about my faith or what comment the piece was making about religion and the attitudes thereof.
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