Humans lesson 2

 Humans is set in England - London

Target Audience - Middle class British

Science fiction isn't actually about science or fiction. Its always an allegory, meaning something else. It tells us about the world we live in. 

The robots are the 'other' they are different. The humans are afraid of them because they are taking over the world. 

Ethical debate:

The Hawkins family are a stereotypical middle class family 

Anita is Asian - A British Chinese actor 

Robots don't have ethnicity 


Genre Conventions:

Glowing eyes, 18+ card, Soundtrack is very techno like, lots of synths etc...

Humans is both very conventional but its also not a hard sci-fi novel. Artificial intelligence, Robots vs Humans.


Narrative - How a story is told

Equilibrium (state of balance)

Disequilibrium

Partial restoration of Equilibrium 


Todorov's theory is not just the beginning, middle and end. Its about moving from one equilibrium to another. For example:

Episode 1:

Equilibrium - Buys the robot

Disequilibrium - Anita comes home

Partial restoration of Equilibrium - Starts doing the jobs 

Cliff hanger at the end of episode 1 where anita walks outside with the child in the night is never referred to again. 


Diametric opposition - Binary opposition 

The mother (Laura) is always angry and stressed, Anita on the other hand is calm and collected. She is caring and kind compared to Laura. The youngest sister Sophie begins to like Anita more and this makes Laura feel replaced. 


Hannah Hooch: DAS SCHONE MADCHEN /  the beautiful girl (1919-20)


Art collage 
Representaion of women
Juxtaposition between Women and mechanics 
Idea of possesion
Women are shown as being a status symbol
Objectification 

Anita is constructed and represented as the perfect women

List of Binary oppositions:
- Men and women 
- Human vs. Synths
-Warehouse and the home
-Younger and older sister 
-Young and old
- New and old synths 
- Laura and Anita
- Mattie and Anita 
- Normal synths vs. Conscious synths
- Aggression vs. calm 
- Traditional family vs. Hawkins Family
- Hawkins family vs. David Elster's Family

Exam Question 30 marks 
According to Claude levi-strauss, texts convay their meaning through a system of binary opposition. Evaluate the strucuralist theory. Refer to set episode of Humans in your response.

Synths vs. Humans 
Synths are doing all the manual labor 
Synths are basically better than humans
Humans are scared they are going to take over

Anita vs. Other Synths 
Anita and some others have consciousness compared to all the other synths who cant feel 

Anita Vs. Mattie 
'Don't come in dad i'm masturbating' - she is a typical rude, brash, lazy teenager 
Anita is well spoken and perfect

Odi vs. other synths 
Odi is broken, glitches etc... 
There are newer better synths (different models)
George wants him more as a friend than to do synth jobs.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Richard Dyer Theory of stereotypes

A Stereotype is a commonly held belief or assumption about a certain group of people. There are 4 parts to a stereotype Appearance Behaviour constructed to fit in to a particular medium Comparison with normal behaviour  Richard Dyer suggests that stereotypes are often used as a shortcut for the producer to convey their ideology. He also thinks that they are reference points for the audience and an expression of dominant societal values. Stereotypes legitimise inequality, " A way to ensure unequal power relations are maintained is to continually stereotype – GTAV is a misogynist video game where players have the opportunity to kill prostitutes in their own violent way – the game is entirely male point of view and arguably serves to maintain dominant male culture" This is something Dyer said himself, and we can see from the example he gave that there are many man and woman stereotypes.
Read more

Videogames 8 - Assassin's Creed and reception theory

Reception Theory - Stuart Hall Otherwise known as the encoding and decoding model The ideological perspective of the producer is encoded in every media product, through media language. Every media product therefore demonstrates a mediated perspective - Bias According to Stuart Hall audience's don't just stop at encoding a media product, it goes a lot further because audiences can decode the media messages. -Preferred Reading/Dominant reading The audience agrees with the dominant ideological perspectives encoded by the producer - Oppositional reading The audience disagrees with the ideological pperpectives encoded by the producer - Negotiated reading The audience agrees with certain ideological aspects of the media product, while dismissing and disagreeing with others. This is by far the most common reading. Assassin's Creed  One of the biggest dominant ideological perspectives of Assassins creed is that violence can be justified if it is used to further a
Read more

Magazine - Next article analysis - 350ppm

Image
Adbusters uses a lot of culture jamming by sub-verting or sabotaging mass media messages. 350ppm is talking about the amount of polution in the atmosphere. 350 is the safe level but scientists say we must reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from its current level of 400 parts per million to below 350ppm. There is no anchorage to the image on the left hand side, no headline or subheading to tell you what they mean. This is similar to a lot of pages in the Adbusters magazine. This double page spread shows a binary opposition between the model on the left who is all glamorous and the beggar on the right siting on the ground who is homeless.
Read more