Tv fictions essay

  This is Tv fictions essay that needs 2000 words and a topic of your own choosing, using and responding to a title created by yourself. Choosing from soap and drama/ reality tv/game shows/ daytime tv/ lifestyle tv/science fiction, fantasy and ‘cult’ tv. Please firstly choose more than 3 different topics which are interesting and special, and then let me to tutorial with my tutor and choose one of the final topic. Essay In May you will submit an essay of 2000 words on a topic of your own choosing, using and responding to a title created by yourself, and with the approval of your course tutor. This essay represents 70% of the module assessment. Please note the following important points. • Tutors will not read drafts of essays. • You should practice your writing and analytical skills using the critical viewing logs • You may NOT duplicate material from your viewing logs for this essay. Your Television Autobiography In the first seminar, before the module moves on to considering the range of different TV genres, we will look at the significance of television tastes. To facilitate this discussion, we have provided the following set of questions and would like you to make informal notes on at least three of the following bullet points and bring the notes to the first seminar, where they will form a basis for discussion. One of the main themes of the module is a critical self-reflection about television viewing, so to get you thinking about this immediately, use this first seminar as a chance to think about your own relationship with TV, if or how it has changed over time, and what your attitudes towards television say about the kind of person you are. • Your earliest memories of watching TV • Family attitudes towards TV: did your family approve/disapprove of TV-watching? Did they encourage you to watch only certain kinds of programmes and discourage (or even forbid) others? Did they steer you towards particular channels or genres, and away from others? Have any or all of those attitudes stayed with you, consciously or otherwise? • Ways of watching: as a child, did you watch alone, with family, with friends, or a mixture of these? Did these circumstances vary according to the type of programme or the time it was broadcast? Have there been periods when you watched little or no TV, and if so, why? How do you generally watch TV in your current household? • Peer-pressures, fashions, guilty secrets: have there been times when your TV choices were influenced, even dictated, by the need to conform to the tastes of your peer group(s)? Have there been any series or genres you felt you had to watch in order to ‘fit in’? Are there shows or series you love but don’t admit to watching? Would your friends stop talking to you if you told them you never missed Meridian Tonight or Midsomer Murders? And are there texts so taken-for-granted as popular in your peer-group(s), past or present, that you feel uneasy criticising them? Or do none of these apply - are you a lifelong individualist in terms of TV viewing? • Technology / Scheduling: did you grow up in a single-set or multi-set household, and how did that situation affect how TV was used? Did being able to record and rewatch programmes alter your family/household’s consumption of TV ? What is your relationship with that most sacred and fought-over totem, the remote control? Do you watch TV programmes now mostly online and/or via streaming services rather than actually ‘watching television’? Does it matter anymore when programmes are broadcast? Are schedules (as printed in newspapers or listed online) relevant? Are you a box-set binge viewer? • Changing tastes: how have your TV preferences changed over the years? To what would you attribute those changes? Are you nostalgic or embarrassed (or, through some strategy of smart-arse student irony, both) about older once-favourite programmes? How do you negotiate taste conflicts if you are obliged to watch TV in communal contexts (families or other shared households)? • Watching TV as a Media student: has studying the media affected your everyday consumption of TV? Can you be an ‘innocent’ viewer any more, and if not, would you like to be? • TV and identity: do you have any sense in which your own sense of cultural/social identity (your gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, etc) shapes or determines your TV consumption? Are there shows, genres or performers that you follow in a way that you can relate to the identities that you inhabit? Is this an issue that you already think about or has it not previously been something that you have considered?