Digital Media Within Society Week 4

This week's lecture deals with Structuralism & Narrative Codes.
We first took a look at how colors are represented in culture.

The same color can represent different meanings in different parts of the world.

The Color Green -
In China green hats indicate that a man's wife is cheating on him.
In Ireland the color green represents St. Patrick and the whole country.
Most western countries the color green can have several meanings such as health (pharmacy's usually have green text). It can also indicate spring, birth, nature and 'go'.

The Color White
In Japan white represents death.
Most asian countries white is worn at funerals.
In Western countries white represents peace, angels, good guys, weddings.

The Color Black
In China black represents a color for young boys.
In Western countries it represents death, funerals and evil.

The Color Orange
In Ireland orange represents the protestant religion.
In Western countries it represents halloween.

The Color Red
In China red represents good luck, celebration and summoning.
In India it represents purity
In South Africa it represents death and mourning.
Many asian countries red is worn by brides.
Most western countries the color red can represent several things including excitement, danger, love, passion and stop.

Structuralism

Structuralism emphasizes that the elements of culture must be understood in terms of their relationship to a larger, overarching system or structure.

I had great difficulty understanding what the above means so googled a simple definition or explanation for it. I came across this webpage http://archaeology.about.com/od/sterms/g/structuralism.htm which helped me to understand it a bit more.

'Structuralism started out as a theory of language and ended up impacting most of the social and historical sciences including archaeology during the second half of the 20th century.  Linguist Ferdinand de Saussure believed that there are subconscious yet identifiable structures in our language.
Anthropologist claude Levi-Strauss believes that there are subconscious yet identifiable structures in our behavior that are binary such as  left/right, night/day, hot/cold and magic/science etc. Structuralism is a scientific way to look at peoples behavior

I also looked up a dictionary and it says that structuralism is 'an approach to social sciences and to literature in terms oppositions, contrasts,  and hierarchical structures as they might reflect  universal  mental characteristics or organizing  principles.  It is also an approach to linquistics  that analyses and describes the structure of language, as distinguished from it's comparative and historical  aspects.'

Psychological Structures
That all human social order is determined by large social or psychological structures with their own logic, independent of human will or intention.

Denotation & ConnotationThrough this we learn that signs signify, name or Denote different aspects of our experience of the world.

Denotation refers to the direct meaning of a word or expression. E.G. the colour RED.

However the colour Red can be associated with many things such as danger signs, blood, romance, royalty and many other things. This is Connotation which is imagery that people associate with a colour, word or object.

e.g. home can connotate feelings of warmth, relaxation, comfort, family.

Our method of connotation may come from past experiences, repeated references, cultural value etc.

The video below demonstrates the meanings further.

Colour brings large connotation references in society today and can be used to great effect in business and advertising. The Link below brings us to a webpage which tells us what a specific colour connotates.

http://library.thinkquest.org/06aug/02403/english/colors.html

Examples of Connotation in Advertising:

 

Intertextuality

This refers to the mixing up and cross referencing of media.

Definition:
Link: http://grammar.about.com/od/il/g/Intertextuality.htm
The interrelationship between texts stand in relation to one another to produce meaning.

e.g. The intertextuality between two novels with the same setting.
In advertising it can be used to carry a similar theme in design from advert to advert under the same brand.

 

 

Bricolage

Bricolage is a process of borrowing signs, text, media from a diverse range of things that are available. An example could be taking a fashion style from the past and re-introducing it today as a piece of modern clothing. Another example would be taking sections of music from the past and overlaying it into a new song or music genre. As a cultural practice, bricolage refers to the activity of taking consumer products and commodities and making them one's own by giving them new meaning.

Many use's and examples of Bricolage can be found
in this link: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-bricolage.htm

More examples from : http://students.smcm.edu/ampugay/bricolage.html

In the above example, cupcakes are shown in an untraditional way to present video game icons from Super Mario World.

Multimodal Texts

Multimodal texts use a wide range of media such as fonts, text, images, video, music etc and mixing them from one medium to another.

e.g. the transformation of a book or magazine from print form to a digital download or 'app'.

Narrative Codes

All forms of media tell some kind of story where the narrative is the way the process of telling stories is organised. From this we see how stories are shaped, structured and understood.

Stories should follow a typical pattern:

Equilibrium - things are as they should be
Disequilibrium - disrupted by an event

There are two key codees involved in the sequencing of narratives:

Action Code - used for advancing narrative
Enigma Code - explains narrative by controlling what, whre, when and how much information is given to the audience.

Certain moments that resolution of equilibrium can take place.

 Vladimir Propp used fairy tales as a basis for his model of character types.

Character roles
The Villain - struggles against the hero
The Hero - a seeker character
The Donor - provides an object with some magic property
The Helper - aids the hero
The Princess/Heroine - reward for the hero and object of villain's schemes.
Her Father - validates the hero
The Dispatcher - sends the hero on his way.
False Hero - appears near the end of a story in order to trick the hero.

 His model of character roles is a form of structuralism, which is the view that all media is in the form of fixed structures. These structures are culturally derived and form expectations in our minds.

e.g. fairy tales always have happy endings or the bad guys always lose out in the end and the hero saves the day. e.g. Bruce Willis in the 'Die Hard' movies.