Critical Perspectives poster

I decided to write my essay on the 2009 film Mary and Max, since it's one of the few places I've seen my medium, animation, and an important part of my identity, Asperger's Syndrome, intersect, and I feel it would help my practice to analyse it in detail. The poster consists of a still from the film I captured myself using VLC Media Player, a wallpaper pattern from the film that I took from hdbitz.org and made as seamless as possible using a program called Paint Shop Pro 9, the film's logo (taken from the DVD cover on amazon.co.uk) and 314 words written in the voice of one of the title characters of the film, printed out and stuck onto the still/wallpaper combination. I chose to print the text onto ordinary printer paper and the logo onto Bristol board and physically stick them onto the poster (which is printed on fine grain artist paper) rather than compositing it digitally, since the film itself uses a very "hand-made" aesthetic. Click Read More to read the text if you're having trouble making it out.

Notes on my chosen cultural text: Adam Elliot's "Mary and Max" (2009)

Critical Perspectives seminar 3: 29/1/15

Critical Perspectives Seminar 2: 15/1/15

Looking a “cultural text” in context

Critical Perspectives Seminar 1: 8/1/15

Critical Perspectives 12: 11/12/14 - The Intersectional Self with Jenny Rintoul

Critical Perspectives 11: 4/12/14 - Considering the “Other”, with Alex Franklin

Prep for Semester 2

Content: Assessed Work:

• Blog → Plays the role of a sketchbook (what are you INTERESTED in?)
• Poster → 2pm Feb 9th
• Essay → 26^th March

Assessed on these three things en masse

After Xmas break:

Seminars – program-specific → uses stuff from the blog

Leading up to poster

No hard-and-fast rules for the blog – just ongoing engagement

Reference EVERYTHING!!! (citations)

Have a critical perspectives folder!

Find a way to manage all this – don't get hung up on the essay

Better to have too much and edit it down

The seminars will help you write it

Use the UWE Harvard reference system – practice using it on your blog

One set title: “Present a detailed, critical analysis of a cultural text”

Identify a cultural text you want to know more about

Find one with a representation of an idea you want to explore

The “Anaconda” video is a cultural text! Not just written texts

Critical =/= negative; how and why things work

Resist the urge to boomerang back to familiar territory – you're here to learn NEW things

You can mention other texts (contrast) but don't go into detail

Identify the broader issue

Poster – inherently tied to your essay

Will be discussed in the seminars

All posters will be exhibited in February!

Posters in this context are junior versions of academic presentations

Seminars are at Bower Ashton – NOT Ashton Court

x1 hour session a week (Thurs.) except 22^nd Jan and 12^th Feb

SHOULD be on online timetable

There WILL be prep for seminars – tasks (see Blackboard)

Seminars make university university – STEEL YOURSELF; take part

A kind of luxury item – builds confidence

Office Hours will be posted after Christmas

Talk to a librarian about research

Critical Perspectives seminar prep for 29/1/15

Task: Choose a cultural text and find one journal article and one book/book chapter that deals with either that text or its themes; find a key quote from each and source it

Critical Perspectives 10 – 27/11 – Participatory Culture, with Jenny Rintoul

Critical Perspectives 9 – 20/11/14 – “Social Media – Access Denied” with Rachel Evans

Critical Perspectives 8 – 13/11/14 – Making Cultures, with Alex Franklin

Critical Perspectives 7 – 6/11/14 – Making Histories with Clare Johnson

Critical Perspectives 6 – 30/10/14 - Cultural Hierarchies, with Rachel Miles

Critical Perspectives: summary of "Woman as Objects - Feminist Critique" from "A Queer Romance" by Caroline Evans and Lorraine Gamman

This excerpt analyses the concept of the “male gaze” from the perspectives of several writers throughout the 20^th century, concluding with the analogy of Michel Foucault's concept of the panopticon: a prison in which a single watchman may be watching any of the prisoners at any time, requiring them to assume they are always under scrutiny. In a male-dominated society, women are in a similar position to those hypothetical prisoners: Evans and Gamman cite Simone de Beauvoir's descriptions of “learning to appraise her adolescent self through male eyes” and John Berger's observation that in our culture, the spectator is usually assumed to be male (“Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at”). The authors mention that Berger “has no model of discourse to explain power relations” besides an “implicit” one, and argue for Foucault's panopticon as an “explicit” model for discussing the objectification of women (while also touching on the objectification of men in the gay community), as opposed to looking at the topic through a purely psychoanalytic lens – they admit psychoanalysis has its uses, but state that it “offers an inadequate amount of desire underlying sexualised looking” in the discourse (“ideology is inscribed in discourse... a way of thinking speaking, experiencing”, as Catherine Belsey wrote) that is feminism. Evans and Gamman make it clear that women live in a society in which they are under constant scrutiny while arguing for the importance of analysing that fact using several different methods and perspectives.

Critical Perspectives 5: 23/10/14 -- Creativity and Authorship, with Clare Johnson

[The lectures] will be recorded (on Blackboard) along with slideshow + office hours – check it regularly! Same for UWE email)

Engagement = IMPORTANT → Show up to everything

8 weeks of lectures (with some discussion) until Christmas; after that 7 seminars

3 things:

• Blog (throughout module) → set it up between now + next Thursday; “learning log” - allows tutors to track your growth
• Poster (summary of essay) – due Feb 9th
• 1200 word essay + bibliography – March 26th → “present a detailed, critical analysis of a cultural text” (artefact) – same for everyone

Both 2pm – university standard

Critical Perspectives 4: 16/10/14

Some Thoughts on Theory-Practice Relationships in Animation Studies by Paul Ward

Critical Perspectives 3: 9/10/14

Critical Perspectives 2: 2/10/14

Critical Perspectives Session 1: 25/9/2014

After the break is the first post of my notes from the Critical Perspectives module. I've made some minor corrections for spelling and clarity, but the notes are otherwise unedited.