The Man Behind the Curtain Words do not stand in place of things, but instead of things. How can one talk about media in the world where media seems to be a shared dream (hallucination if you like), specter with divergent forms, common denominator with apparently little consensus among people of what it could even mean. Therefore, questions regarding the nature of medium, and consequently new media should not be sought exclusively in contemporary culture. Throughout this paper I will lay out two anecdotes which should illuminate more clearly not only the nature of the problem, but its lineage. When young Dorothy Gale accidentally ended up in the strange Land of Oz, the initial bewilderment she experienced in an unknown land quickly gave place to the determination of returning back home. With the help of fantastic creatures, she eventually did just that, making history for the director Victor Fleming (The Wizard of Oz, 1939) whose account of the wonderful Land of Oz garnered positive criticism, securing films place in the history of cinema. Throughout the film Dorothy had been told she is to seek a great wizard that could help her return home. Upon finally receiving the opportunity for an audience with the powerful Oz, his appearance is nowhere to be found. Yet, he speaks like a god in its omnipresence. Only through an accident she realizes that the all-powerful Oz is but a man behind a curtain, with a machine so compelling it could emulate god. At last, there was no god that could take her home, nor there was a creature so powerful it could speak without mouth, nor see without eyes. Dorothy’s realization of Oz’s mediocrity (besides taking her home) rendered one of the most pertinent metaphors on medium. For, the film had shown an... ... middle of paper ... ...n the Minute“. in: Jennings, W. Michael; Doherty, Brigid; Levin, Y. Thomas. The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility and Other Writings on Media. London: Harvard University Press, 2008, p. 407-411. FISKE, John. Television Culture. New York: Rutledge, 2001. HALL, Stuart. Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse. Birmingham: Centre for Cultural Studies, 1973. HECK, Marina Camargo. “The Ideological Dimension of Media Messages“. in: Hall, Stuart; Hobson, Dorothy et. al. Culture, Media Language, , London & New York: Routledge. 2005, p. 110–117. MCLUHAN, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. London: Abacus, 1974. MEAGHAN Morris. “Banality in cultural studies”. in: Storey, John. What is cultural studies?. London: Arnold, 1996, p. 147-168. SILVERMAN, Kaja. The Threshold of the Visible World. New York & London: Routledge, 1996
Frank Baums, The Wizard of Oz is arguably one of the most popular films made. Even though it was released in 1939, nearly three-quarters of a century ago, the film continues to entertain audiences and speak to them in a personal way. The question that comes to the mind when analyzing this film is: What is it about this film that gives it such timelessness? When reflecting on the film’s timeless qualities, it seems clear the plot is one of the things that enable it to maintain its relevance. Primarily, the plot of The Wizard of Oz is timeless because it is such an excellent example of the heroic journey, both in literally and cinematically. This journey of self-awareness is a metaphor for growth, which is something we all search to discover at some time in our lives.
5 Feb 2014. Fiske, John. The. Television Culture. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1987: Ch. 78.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is more than just a mediated artifact it is breakthrough, said to be one of the most famous films ever made. The film was not a box office success, it only received 3,017,000 on a 2,777,000 dollars budget but it still receive a large amount of positive reviews and remakes (). This is important in terms of the audience it reaches because it was not just a children’s movie, or an adult movie, or a movie for teens, it was a movie for the entire family that targeted no specific audience. The Wizard of Oz has won critical acclaim by being nominated for multiple academy awards such as best picture, best original song and is often ranked one of the top ten movies of all time (). The creator Frank L. Baum is very much significant because this was not his first ball game. He was originally an author of children’s books but wrote many novels, sequels and made many attempts to bring his work to stage and screen (). He had a vision like no other and saw things in a different pe...
“The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” has brought joy to people all over the world for many generations. As we grow older, the story enhances its meaning from a story about a girl wanting to return home, to a political, informal, brilliant novel. Many people would not hesitate to call Frank Baum a genius for creating this story, and I would not disagree. The amount of hidden meanings this story conveys is breathtaking, and it can open your eyes to many situations and make you look at them in an entirely different way.
Looking the historical moment we are living at, it is undeniable that the media plays a crucial role on who we are both as individuals and as a society, and how we look at the...
Any act of conscious communication always true, in varying degrees, two fundamental objectives. One is to inform, instruct and describe, and the other is to entertain or occupy. The products of the mass communication industry made that mandate the particularity that are targeted to a wide receiver, whose acceptance is intended to conquer. The intent of the act is expressed with the term broadcast (spread through mass media), which once meant to sow broadcast the farmland. The cinema, especially the US, is the great communication industry of the twentieth century. Although in recent decades seems to have given primacy to television, the information, education and entertainment on Western culture influence is undeniable.
O’Shaughnessy, M., Stadler, J. (2009)Media and Society: An introduction. Dominant Ideology and Hegemony. London: Oxford.
In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, he proposed that we focus on the way each medium changes cultures and traditions and reshapes social life, rather than the content. He describes the content of the medium as a “juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.” (McLuhan, 32). To him, focusing on the medium was important because he believed that different types of media change the balance of our senses. We start isolating and highlighting different senses.
In the words of Michael O’Shaughnessy, ‘narratives, or stories, are a basic way of making sense of our experience’ (1999: 266). As a society and a culture, we use stories to comprehend and share our experiences, typically by constructing them with a beginning, middle and an end. In fact, the order that a narrative is structured will directly impact the way it is understood, particularly across cultures. This idea originated through Claude Lévi-Strauss’s concept of structuralism in anthropology which ‘is concerned with uncovering the common structural principles underlying specific and historically variable cultures and myth’ in pre-industrial societies (Strinati 2003: 85). In terms of media studies, structuralism’s inherent objective is to dig beneath the surface of a media text to identify how the structure of a narrative contributes to it’s meaning. Structuralism encompasses a large range of analytical tools, however, this essay will examine Joseph Campbell’s monomyth and Claude Lévi-Strauss’s theory of binary oppositions. Through analysis of Victor Fleming’s film, The Wizard of Oz (1939), it will be shown that although the monomyth and binary oppositions are useful tools with which to unveil how meaning is generated in this text, structuralism can undermine the audience’s ability to engage with their own interpretations of the film.
Campbell, Richard. Media & Culture: an introduction to mass communication. Bedford/St. Martin?s: Boston, N.Y. 2005.
Gauntlett, D. Hill, A. BFI (1999) TV Living: Television, Culture, and Everyday Life, p. 263 London: Routledge.
...ely available and accessible from everywhere. New media has introduced innovative platforms and ways to consume media products, they have been embedded into our social context that we are unaware of the different ways we are constantly relying on technology. This leads us to call for more contemporary studies towards new media audiences for a more in-depth analysis and how they have merged the different contexts of media consumption.
Firstly, I would like to add some critical point of view toward the study of mass media. I had an impression that their articles tend to focus rather on data or numbers than on thought or ideas, maybe because my major is not mass media in sociology, but in cultural studies or anthropology. As is often said,technology including new media had achieved rapidly‐advancing development for decades, but it is difficult to use technology properly. It is essential to study of mass media to intermediate between arts and sciences. Secondly, after studying mass media, I noticed how much media makes my world or viewpoints. What is particularly interesting for me is how media contribute to making one’s identity. Experiences of studying abroad as an exchange students are precious, but sometimes make questions about identity such as race or ethnicity. These familiar issues are worth studying. Finally, I recognized some common points between some theories of media effect and other studies such as cultural studies, but it was not clear at that time. I thought that making those points clear could end in connecting and deepening the discussions in many
Sewel, Philip W. “From Discourse to Discord: Quality and Dramedy at the End of the Classic Network System” Television and New Media 11.4 (2010): 235-59. Web. 18 January. 2014.
Hence, any debate of the future becoming digital must take into consideration the reaction of the media to the technological innovations of the world, from the Personal Computers (PC) to the smallest Smartphone. Although mass media has increased with technological innovations, what driv...