I focused on Katie’s blog discussion about Cougar Town because I’ve seen bits of an episode since my roommate watches it every week, and I was curious to learn more about the show. The post was an easy read because of its clever metaphors. One of my favorites was how Katie described how the show grabs the audience’s attention then doesn’t “[spit] us back out til’ the credits roll at the end.” Katie also takes a formal tone when explaining Todorov’s equilibrium theory in depth, which makes it easy to understand even if the reader has never even heard of the theory, let alone Todorov. I think it was also a good idea for Katie to just use on example of an episode rather than try to analyze the entire series. It localizes the points she’s trying to make if the plot remains the same throughout. I think the explanation would have been even better if the images or clips she used were explained, rather than just thrown in. I did that with my first blog post thinking that the video would explain itself, but Dr. Nichols explained it’s important to not only include visuals, but to explain their relevancy to what’s being discussed.
Emily’s post on Bristol Palin is extremely straight forward and easy to understand, which makes for a good start to reading any blog post. Her writing is also witty as well, which makes the writing fun to read. For example, after she admits to hating Dancing with the Stars, she said, “That statement may come back to bite me in the bottom.” Emily is also blunt in expressing her opinions. Instead of just saying how Bristol Palin is just awful in her dancing, perhaps she could elaborate a little further to explain her reasoning, and support it with critical concepts learned in class. Despite her clear opinion of Bristol Palin on DWTS and being headline news, her explanation of media criticism could have been a little more extensive. She proved a very good point how the news makes a big deal out of events or people that aren’t worthy of being in the spotlight, but it would have been a stronger argument had Emily described why she thought so in more detail from what we learned in class about hegemony or narrative criticism, etc. I definitely agree, however, that Bristol Palin deserves no attention from the media. Emily said it best: “Really ABC 2 News, really?” By reading this post, I learned a lot more about how reality TV exploits the beauty of dancing and media’s goal of making money over portraying what is really “real.”
Rihannon’s blog post about The Brady Bunch was extremely informative. Before delving in to any examples or theories, subjects like narrative criticism were well defined. Moreover, she cited her explanations from a variety of sources. She provided external links to explain the theories and concepts of Todorov, a theorist she used repeatedly throughout her post. Rihannon also linked the episode she analyzed. However, she didn’t just link an episode with a sentence saying something like, “watch it, it’ll explain everything.” She used the link as more support for the explanation she already wrote. Her post was broken up well, too, by everything that had to be answered in that post’s criteria. I think I learned more about narrative criticism from her post than I did in class (no offense, Dr. Nichols!). This is only because her explanations were clear and her analysis of the Brady Bunch episode was very applicable. I find little things she could improve on, since video clips, photos, outside sources and a thorough discussion were already applied.
The first thing I have to say about Ben’s post called “Ideo for Idiots” is that I want to read what he was to say based on his visuals. They definitely enhance the blog post and are extremely creative. However, I wish he incorporated the explanations of the visuals into his post. They’re funny and although they’re somewhat self-explanatory, it would have made for an even stronger explanation of ideological criticism. I also like that he provided links not to explain certain points, but to enhance his argument with outside sources. Like Rihannon’s post, it made it stronger. Ben mentioned hegemonic forces, but I think it would have been important to go into a little more detail about what those are. Granted, it’s safe to assume anyone reading this blog post knows since they’re part of the class, but in the event someone is just genuinely interested in hegemony but doesn’t know as much about it, it would have been appropriate to include another sentence or two explaining that it’s the idea that an audience sees certain aspects of American culture as natural and unchallenged. Ben covered a lot of good points, but I think they would have been better if separated into different posts. There is a lot of discussion on too many topics. So, an improvement in his discussion would solely by to break it up. His explanations and examples are point on, but could be elaborated if broken up into different posts; like one on hegemony or one on Disney, for example.
