Lesson 11: Oh I do like to be beside the seaside...

FROM LONDON TO BRIGHTON [1]

The film was  released in 2006 with the benefit of UK Film Council funding and a predominantly ‘amateur’ cast.  The initial filming cost approx £80,000 with later elements of post production etc taking the total cost to around £200,000.  The film grossed in the region of £500,000 worldwide in theatrical admissions.  It went on to earn more revenue through DVD release, DVD rentals and TV rights sales.

It is a hybrid – part crime film, part social documentary - that manages to blend the best of both genres.  The crime element is grim and unrelenting, the pursuit of a woman and young girl in order to exact revenge.  The social realism is the story of life amongst the desperate and the socially inadequate attempting to survive, let alone to make a life, in the lower reaches of modern urban Britain.

The criminals are in some respects stereotypes wielding shotguns and blades and conducting business via threats and intimidation – violence is the currency that underpins many of their exchanges. It is a world in which everything and everyone has a price – drugs, sex, loyalty.


 In this world, crime is not glamorous and the criminals themselves are far from glamorised.  They are British gangsters in the realms of Sweet Sixteen or Bullet Boy far removed from those that inhabit the almost ‘mythic’ criminal world of the films of Guy Ritchie or Matthew Vaughn – the folksy cockney gangster.  These are uncaring men, violent criminal men, and no matter how high up the food chain they might get they are at their core inadequates, each of them afraid and ashamed of something in themselves.  Stuart Allen is a sadist - a man capable of slicing Derek’s leg not just as a warning but simply just because he can - who is full of disgust of his father [Duncan] and the implicitly suggested fear that such repugnant urges might lie in himself.  Derek’s deepest fear is of losing respect and face amongst those he sees as less than himself and being found out for what he is – a pathetic abuser of women and those weaker than himself.   The world of From London To Brighton is a world of parasites feeding off smaller parasites, where the very victims of abuse themselves become abusers and in these actions absolve the audience of feeling any pity for them.  These are men beyond any notion of redemption.

MEDIA TERMS
A device you encountered in the AS examination 'Meet the Super-humans' was the use of ellipsis [the individual stories of the athletes implied from the use of flashbacks].  We are now exploring a text where this device plays a key part in the structure of the narrative and we need to focus some thoughts as to how and why [the vital A2 indicator]

ellipsis
noun

1. the omission from speech or writing of a word or words that are superfluous or able to be understood from contextual clues.

TASK:

How does the director use mise-en-scene to create a powerful start to the film?

Why do you think this is done?

What effect does ellipsis have on the way that we 'understand' the story?

Why do you think the director has structured the narrative in this way?

Lesson 10: ideologies

cinema as ideological product

Vampire as Terrorist

As part of your examination you will be expected to understand that texts in addition to their many other functions always carry within them some sense of the spirit of the times that created them – what we have come to refer to as the zeitgeist.  In this idea, we see texts as cultural artifacts that reveal much about the way that we interpret the world around us and the values we hold dear and our fears, both general and specific.

Given their actions, it could be argued that the vampires of 30 Days of Night function as metaphors for terrorists and terrorist actions. In the wake of 9/11, such an analogy is all the more relevant: it is suggested that these people, who come from another country, instigate a planned and coordinated attack on American soil; they strike first without warning and with such an incredible force that the majority of the population of Barrow is killed. Although those that survive try and defend themselves against the attack, they soon realise that they are fighting a faceless, relentless and seemingly remorseless enemy, a situation that suggests the vampires function as an organised group of dangerous Others; threatening outsiders that must be stopped, at whatever costs. As one of the survivors comments, ‘Next time they’ll take out Point Hope…’

If the vampires of 30 Days of Night are indeed a metaphor for terrorists and terrorism, then the emergence of a strong and capable representative of Law and Order who is able, at personal cost, to vanquish the threat suggests a certain sense of catharsis. In this fictional world, as in the real world, innocent people are killed but the threat is finally understood and, partially, resolved so that recovery and healing can begin to take place. 

If the vampires’ leader is Dracula, then Sheriff Eben Olesen must be Van Helsing. As an officer of the law he represents the values of the good and the moral in the face of the Other, so making it his responsibility to resolve the threat. Whilst he struggles with this responsibility throughout the majority of the narrative, Eben does, eventually, realise how to resolve the situation: he must become the threat himself; to turn himself into the Other in order to ensure the safety of those he loves and for the few that remain of Barrow’s survivors. 

Eben’s reaction to the threat presents to the audience the ultimate sacrifice as he willingly surrenders his mortal body and his pure soul to the immortal body and impure soul of the vampire, to become that which is Other in order to save that which is ‘normal’.

Whilst the vampires of 30 Days of Night clearly pose a threat to the safety of the family unit, their presence also allows the family to come back together. It is the very terror the Other poses that reunites Eben and Stella, suggesting that from the pain of trauma positives can emerge, that a police officer can do his duty by serving and protecting his community and that a husband and wife can reconcile their differences, if only briefly. In this respect, Eben’s sacrifice becomes all the more poignant as, in the midst of the siege in which families are literally torn apart and friends are killed, the young husband and wife reunite in a symbolic gesture that implies once the threat is resolved a new, safe and more experienced family can be formed. 

Such positive connotations are quickly, if not immediately, dissolved upon Eben’s decision to become a vampire. In his state as the Other, the possibility of a safe and normal family unit cannot occur, leaving Eben with only one choice: to sacrifice himself again, this time to death itself. In a cruel parody of the romantic moment, Stella cradles Eben in her arms as they sit on the edge of the ice floe and wait for the sun to rise for the first time in thirty days. In these final moments they acknowledge their love, embrace and end their time together with a single kiss.

Media theory:

Binary Opposition:

 IIn the mid-20th century, two major European academic thinkers, Claude Levi Strauss and Roland Barthes, had the important insight that the way we understand certain words depends not so much on any meaning they themselves directly contain, but much more by our understanding of the difference between the word and its 'opposite' or, as they called it 'binary opposite'. They realised that words merely act as symbols for society's ideas and that the meaning of words, therefore, was a relationship rather than a fixed thing: a relationship between opposing ideas.

For example, our understanding of the word 'coward' surely depends on the difference between that word and its opposing idea, that of a 'hero' (and to complicate matters further, a moment's thought should alert you to the fact that interpreting words such as 'hero' and 'coward' is itself much more to do with what our society or culture attributes to such words than any meaning the words themselves might actually contain).

Other oppositions that should help you understand the idea are the youth / age binary, the masculinity / femininity, the good / evil binary, and so on. Barthes and Levi-Strauss noticed another important feature of these 'binary opposites': that one side of the binary pair is always seen by a particular society or culture as more valued over the other.         

Levi-Strauss searched for common ideas in myths across centuries and cultures looking for what he called the mythemes - the essentials of myths that were common across all cultures and languages

 Within the media field, binary oppositions are used very frequently in films to clarify points of view and also as to where we are to align ourselves.

 Such representations enable a more considered view of character actions that go beyond the merely simplistic of 'good vs bad'.  Many horror films include sets of binary oppositions in their plots such as  good and evil, sane and insane, rational and irrational and human and supernatural. 
     Westerns are about sophisticated vs primitive; domestic vs wilderness; 
     christian vs pagan; homesteaders vs wilderness etc.

Lesson 9: whose representations?

As we have seen, the vampires of 30 Days of Night offer a very conventional view of  The Other.  In such representations we might begin to see how these ideas were used by Hitler to de-humanise an entire race, by South Africa or some states of America to justify legalised racial superiority laws. The issue is like us but not like us 
In the representations in Slade's film released in 2007 we might see underlying ideologies of the lack of understanding of USA audiences regarding jihad-dist terror, suicide-bombers, Islamic  fundamentalist religious movements etc. The vampires say that they intend to kill everyone yet it is clearly not linked to any desire to feed, or any sense that is knowable to the American ideology or the American values represented by the people of Barrow.  It is simply the compulsion to destroy that which they find distasteful, different, other.

Lesson 8: Who do we think we are?

The figure of the vampire has been a rich source of ideas for films for almost 100 years.  Frederick Murnau's Nosferatu [1921] being the first great introduction to a figure familiar to audiences from literature and stage adaptations of the Bram Stoker novel.
The first talking Dracula - and the genre setting template - was Universal Film's DRACULA [1931] starring Bela Lugosi that went on to have a series of film's based around the immortal figure of the Count.  The Hammer Films series in the 1960s has become a classic representation of the vampire. the late 20th Century saw a glut of vampire inspired films - Francis Ford Coppola's DRACULA ; INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE; VAMPIRE 2000; BLADE TRILOGY - all of which explored the vampire legend.
Post 9/11 the figure has seemingly developed into a much more sexualised figure with TWILIGHT franchise and representations on TV such as TRUE-BLOOD, BEING HUMAN.
Each generation has seemingly constructed a version that reflects that era's concerns and values: the zeitgeist
Consider that in the post WW1 era of the 1920s with concerns of re-populating a European society devastated by war and the destruction of the 'flower of humanity' the vampire was a figure that represented a homophobic ideology.  In the 1930s it represented the blood-sucking rich preying on the working poor [the time of the Great Depression].  In the liberated 1960s the representation was sexual and sexualised represented by the change in victims and their seduction by the creature. In the 1990s - with the repeal of capital punishment and a more liberal approach to mental health -  the vampire is no longer a monster but a figure to be understood rather than hunted and destroyed. Post 9/11 the desire for romantic escape from the horrors of an uncertain world and the issues of 'living together' underpin Twilight and True Blood and certainly Being Human.
Much of the enduring fascination has been ascribed by psychologists [and they should surely know!] to a sense of The Other.

,Vampire’s can be found in the folklore of virtually all cultures.  Their physical appearance may have changed but their social function has remained the same, suggesting that the vampire is as much a symbolic being as a supernatural one.

Within Eastern European lore vampires are often depicted as dirty, stumbling and mindless peasants whose victims are often their own family or neighbours. Their existence was used to explain sudden deaths or the spread of disease within the community, clearly indicating that the image of the vampire, for this culture at least, was one of a contagious pestilence. From what you have already researched it should be clear that such a description is dramatically different to the image most Western readers and audiences are familiar with. To us, [despite the gruesome representation in Murnau’s Nosferatu – which itself clearly owes much to the mid-European background of the auteur himself] the vampire of Hollywood has - in general - come to be represented as a clean and sophisticated creature, a supernatural being that is personified by the Count in Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1897). In this narrative, the vampire comes to English shores from abroad and begins its seduction of virginal young women, biting their necks and turning them into his undead brides. Even from this simple description of Stoker’s complex narrative, a similar symbolic value to the East European folklore emerges: this time the vampire is a sexual predator that infects the innocent with their disease.

From these examples emerge two of the vampire’s most potent symbolic qualities:

·         they are a direct threat to the safety of the family unit  

·         their primary symbolic function is to represent that which is Other.

The Other

As a broad definition, the term the Other refers to those characters who stand in opposition to characters who represent the ‘normal’ within any narrative. In essence, the Other is simply that which is wholly different to the ‘normal’. Relating this to the vampire, consider any adaptation of Stoker’s Dracula: here ‘normal’ is represented by the protagonists Jonathan Harker and Van Helsing whilst the Other is, obviously, Count Dracula and those he infects. The opposition is obvious in that Harker and Helsing are good, moral, and pure, whereas Dracula is evil, immoral, and diseased. To take the character’s symbolic values further, it can be suggested that the protagonists represent a patriarchal, heterosexual and (more than likely) Christian society that is attacked by the satanic force of the vampire.

Clearly then the vampire, in all of its manifestations, is a prime example of the Other. But, in recent years the figure of the vampire has steadily changed: although historically depicted as a disease-ridden, aggressive and uncommunicative creature, contemporary depictions of the vampire have given them back their humanity and their voice so that they can communicate the pain of their ‘illness’ and reflect, in a melancholy manner, upon the horrors of immortality. Films such as  Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992) and Interview with a Vampire (Neil Jordan, 1994) all provide the opportunity for their vampire (anti)heroes to speak about their condition and so elicit the audience’s sympathy. Some vampires have such a loathing for their condition that they actively hunt and kill their own kind [Blade; Seline]. Such a transition clearly lends a certain sense of humanity to them as they talk of their human past, of those they have left behind and the horror of the vampiric infection. These recollections add a further sense of sympathy to these creatures, suggesting that most, if not all, contemporary vampires are as much victim as villain, and remind the audience that they were once us. In this context, these vampires can be read as ambiguous as they question their status as Other: their sense of disgust and regret for their condition implies a yearning to return to the normal, to be accepted as human as opposed to inhuman. Yet, for all of this, their fundamental sense of Otherness still remains: they are still vampiric regardless of their emotions, their regret and the ‘good’ deeds they perform. It would seem then that once one has become the Other there is no possibility of a return to the ‘normal’.

With this in mind, we can now begin to explore a very contemporary spin on the mythic tale of the Other, the ideas surrounding the representation of vampires in  David Slade’s 30 Days of Night (2007) returns the vampire to its original state as visceral and brutal monsters who crave only one thing – blood.
TASK:
From the sequence viewed [the arrest of the stranger to the group of survivors taking refuge in the attic] in what ways have the vampires been represented as 'Other' 

Lesson 7: The Other

We now need to move on with a consideration of a different representation of 'monster' : the vampire.
We will be using some ideas that have found their way into popular culture from cinemas changing representations of what has become a classic monster.
As we shall see, each generation creates a reinterpretation of the vampire. such evolving representations tell us much about the values and concerns of each era - the zeitgeist.  the fact that the figure of the vampire is capable of constant reinvention also says much for how it resonates with deep psychological needs of audiences over a period of almost 100 years.
The accompanying booklet to the lessons fills in some of the history and developments of this classic monster enabling us to spend the next few lessons exploring a contemporary manifestation of the vampire in David Slade's 2007 film  30 Days of Night.  In this we are concerned with notions of the Other and in the vampire as terrorist.

In the opening sequence we have the 'Classic hollywood Realist' conventions of the horror genre layered on top of the Todorov narrative structure we are now familiar with.

Equilibrium-disruption-complicating events-climax-resolution-new equilibrium.

The film opens with a sketched outline of the lives of the people of Barrow - their domestic situations, their frustrations, their coping with the particular climate of Barrow.

TASK:

What observations does it offer of small town American life?
What impression do we have of its people and their values?

Lesson 6: Resolutions

The 'end' of the film fulfills all of the ideas we looked at in AS regarding Todorov's narrative theory.

Equilibrium  

Disruption 

Complicating events 

Climax 

Resolution / New Equilibrium

The final sequences draw together much of what has happened previously in the film and what we know of Aileen's character and that of Selby. The resolution of the 'disruption' is the capture and trial of Aileen. The betrayal of Selby and Aileen's acceptance of it, her own final sacrifice to her love for Selby has been set up by all we have learned of Aileen - her capacity to endure; her capacity for self-sacrifice; her determination and resolve; her desperate need to be loved; perhaps even her desire for notoriety and attention.

What we now need to do is try to bring our understanding of the film to a conclusion as to how you feel about the characters, events and the way that the film has represented them to audiences.

We will watch the 'making ofs' and the documentary background in order to support how we come to this conclusion - what the film-makers were trying to do [their intention; their values and ideologies; their agendas] and the actuality of Aileen [what she says of herself; her beliefs about what she did and why].

Nick Broomfield, the documentary film-maker who spent many days interviewing Aileen for his two documentaries - the Selling of A Serial Killer and Life and Death of A Serial Killer - believes that there is a 'truth' that only a narrative fictional approach such as in MONSTER can get at when those involved are reluctant to talk about events that involved them.

Task:

[1] Assign the key events of the film to the Todorov model by creating a timeline of the film.

[2]  Write a 500 word evaluation of your response to the film.

Slide from AS module Audience and Narrative

Lesson 5: Positioning the Audience

In Lesson 4 we explored some ideas around how media language constructed an understanding of Aileen as a killer.  We may each have arrived at differing points on a line of understanding but each of us used the information provided by the music, the shot choice, the editing to form an opinion as to Aileen's motives and the judgement we make of her.

Now we can move to consider how the mid-section of the film attempts to convey more complex ideas/understandings of Aileen and her relationship with Selby.  The details here - a further murder, the incident with the character with the disability, the visit to the funfair all add to our view of Aileen, supporting or challenging our perceptions of 'what she is'.

There is no doubt that there are apologists, those who whilst not excusing or even condoning Aileen's rampage, see some understanding of the justification of it .  In this, they see Aileen as she depicted herself in court; the victim of a misogynistic male dominated society in which her crime was to to be a woman who fought back to punish those who had exploited or abused her throughout her life.

There are others, the vast majority, who see her as a killer, an emotionally unbalanced woman who saw conspiracy's all around her and used violence to take what she wanted.

Patty Jenkin's film seeks to shed some light as to why this should be so and offers an opportunity for audiences to make up their own minds. We must bear in mind that her film is a partial account, one that has only one voice in it - that of Aileen who even, at key moments, narrates it.

A key narrated sequence occurs in sequence 3 which we viewed in Lesson 3.  Aileen returns from the second murder and as she washes up in the bathroom whilst Selby waits at the door she narrates in a voice-over the story of the huge Ferris wheel that arrived in her town one day - The Monster.  This wheel saw captivated the young Aileen that she could think of nothing but riding it but when she finally did she was terrified and violently sick. Clearly, the voice over is significant - why else include this one seemingly meaningless fact from her childhood when there are so many much more relevant stories of abuse committed upon her.

TASK: 

• What is the significance of the story of the Monster Ferris wheel? 
• What do we learn from the incidents with the man with disabilities; what about the incident with the killing of the ex-police officer?  How does the film use these to further our understanding of Aileen?
• What is the impact of Aileen's ride on the Ferris wheel with Selby in this film

Lesson 4: Developing character

Having explored verisimilitude [appearance of reality] in the representation of Aileen and then considered why it was 'broken' in the representation of Selby we now need to consider how the narrative of the film positions the audience regarding the actions of a woman who moves from possible 'victim' in the original murder of Vincent to the brutal, seemingly cold-blooded monster of the title.

The second killing is positioned at a very significant time in the narrative. we have seen Aileen's attempts to put her life back together - her desire to be normal, conventional.  We have also seen the results of this - rejection, humiliation and, finally degradation at the hands of the patrolman in the underground car-park.

We have also witnessed the reactions of Selby - her anger, petulance, selfishness - that force Aileen to reveal what happened with Vincent and also her decision to return to her work as a prostitute.

Task:

• The second victim is portrayed as that: her victim. How is this done? 
• Consider mise-en-scene elements
• does the representation of Aileen change at any time during this sequence?
• Do we understand anything new about her?  what?  how?
• Why does she kill him?
• why does the film's narrative representation of Aileen now change?

The next sequence takes us through a series of events surrounding Aileen and Selby.  Each incident is now clearly there to shed light on their characters, to help us understand what it is that motivates them.  It also illuminates the nature of their relationship.  The incident at the funfair is one that we shall explore in lesson 5 as it seems key to understanding Aileen's emotional state and also seems to offer some insight into understanding why she may have become the 'monster'.

Lesson 3: Agenda setting and Representation

Today it's all about verisimilitude - the appearance of reality, or, in the case of film, the construction of a believable reality.  So, with this in mind we will be looking at the second series of sequences from Monster that chart the development of the love story between Aileen and Selby.

First, take a look at these images of Aileen and of Charlize Theron as Aileen and as herself. You will see the startling transformation of the actress into a believable resemblance of Aileen.  We know that Theron went to great lengths to create a representation of Aileen that audiences would find realistic, studying movements, gestures and expressions from videos of the trial and from Nick Broomfield's documentary on Aileen. A glamorous Aileen would have been ridiculous and undermined the narrative. - Aileen's trial had been world famous at the time, as were the almost iconic images of Aileen herself.

Then, take a look at those of Christina Ricci as Selby, the real 'Selby' and then the real Chrsitina Ricci.

Aileen Wuornos

Charlize Theron as Aileen

Charlize Theron

Christina Ricci as 'Selby'

'Selby'

Chrsitina Ricci

One of the key questions we might start to ask of these representations is 'WHY'? 

If  Charlize Theron - at the time described as one of the most desirable actresses in the world - was put through hours of make-up to create an accurate representation of Aileen then why was the character of 'Selby' represented in such an unrealistic manner - slim and elfin-like compared to 'Selby' who in reality was large and stocky?

LESSON 2: MONSTERS

MONSTER

Opening sequences

The film is based on a true story but we must always keep in mind that this, like any other true story, is situated from the perspective of one person: Aileen Wuornos.  With this in mind, the details of the meeting, her state of mind, issues around how she sees those around her and, more specifically, the events leading up to and provoking the first murder, are hers alone.  For some things we may have other sources of evidence - her school records detail her expulsions; her welfare etc - but the murder is purely based on Aileen's account of events.

The director [Patty Jenkins] also has a perspective on this.  She has a story to tell but she also has a purpose [a set of values/ideologies] that drive the narrative of that story [how the story is told to us]. Her agenda was to tell Aileen's story and to examine why Aileen came to be the Monster of the title. The agenda is clearly also feminist.  she is telling the story of a woman who saw herself as the victim of a male dominated world [a patriarchy; a misogynistic culture].
Here, then, we might see a use for McComb's theory of agenda setting, how the manner in which an event is presented can actually shape how audiences understand and come to believe that point of view, that representation. the story telling - the narrative - becomes the story that people take to be a universal 'truth' of those events, that person.

REVISION ESSENTIALS ; CAN YOU ANSWER THESE POINTS?

As the exam draws closer one of the key revision/preparation tasks is to consider what might be the key issues in SECTION B - what ideas do you have to have thought through

a reading of the specification and of the valuable examiner's report give lots of useful guidance that can be summed up in 4 points that you MUST be able to debate.

[1] Be certain that you are able to provide evidence of media institutions that have embraced digital media and institutions that have struggled to adapt to the digital age. The BBC is a good example of a media institution that has made the leap from traditional provider to the digital age [NEWS24; BBC website; I-Player] and to most extents have successfully adapted to the demands of the digital world. 

Even having done so, the BBC provides a good example of how such institutions have to continually adapt their practices of how to reach their audience.  Standing still is not an option - contrast with HMV case study that we looked at in class.  

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22042687
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22040237

Also, MYSPACE is a fine example of how quickly the digital world changes whilst companies like Apple [I-Tunes] and Adobe and SPOTIFY are examples of institutions that are constantly changing the digital approach of  their particular business model to suit the needs of the consumer and prosumers. The recent acquisition of BEATS by Apple is an excellent example of a company recognizing a change in its audience [the aging nature of the I-tunes audience who are prepared to download MP3] and the need to develop new audience [youth moving to streaming]. we might also consider Adobe's move to the Creative Cloud as a means of combating widespread piracy and also recognizing the changing needs of its core consumers.

[2] We have also discussed in class examples of how the digital world has challenged the dominant representations of the mainstream media. We focused on citizen Journalism, Arab Spring and even the Blackberry Riots.  You need to be very clear that this is a key media issue and a very important debate. A real need here is to find some less obvious examples [China; Crimea/Ukraine]

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/04/economist-explains-how-china-censors-internet

[3] You must have the ability to provide examples of how the audience has been empowered by digital media. You could refer to examples in the music industry [SPOTIFY], the publishing industry [CITIZEN JOURNALISM] Film industry [NETFLIX]  

MUSIC INDUSTRY/HMV RESOURCES:

[1] The Digital Age creates need for change in music
[2] The rise and decline of  HMV
[3] An illustrated timeline

[1]  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25450130

[2]  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-21028803

[3]  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21028024

HMV decline example of inability to read changes in audience needs/expectations in digital age

NETFLIX RESOURCES:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27102420
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27037504
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/opinion/2332897/an-online-bbc-three-could-be-the-next-netflix

[4] The one that many find difficult is to construct examples of media and democracy. The simple issue here is : Has digital media made our world a more democratic world? In what way? 

If not, then why has it 'failed' to live up to the aspirations held for it?

The key with all of these is concrete examples

Remember :  

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO AGREE WITH THE PROPOSITION IN THE QUESTION 
YOU CAN USE YOUR MATERIAL AS A MEANS OF SAYING WHY THINGS DO NOT SUPPORT THE IDEA IN THE QUESTION 

OTHER PAGES

Don't forget to look at the other pages on this blog -especially the Impact of New Technology page

ESSENTIAL REVISION 2 : THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

Accompanied by the theme music of JAWS, nearer and nearer the exam comes. 

This weekend brush up on your media understanding, especially around power of digital media.  What better way than having a look at this BBC News link:

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-27192089

Some useful background material and some sense of the issues/debates surrounding the story of Stephen Sutton and of the increasing use of social media to generate campaigns.  Remember the nomakeupselfie?  What about linking this to KONY2012?

Essential Revision

The Virtual Revolution: Homo Interneticus

Dear all

Time is ticking away so make certain that you revise with care the issues and debates.  I offer below some useful links to views on the debates surrounding the impact of digital media on society.

Navigate to these sites and watch and make notes:  Essential viewing

[1] This is a link to the clips section of the BBC series The Virtual Revolution [which won a BAFTA in 2010]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n4j0r/clips

[2] this is the link to the home page of the programme
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n4j0r

[3] Sadly, the I-Player links no longer offer the programme.  However, click on the link below to get to the You Tube clip from the first episode and from there navigate your way through the rest of the sections offered
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPD4Ep_J81k

[4] the last link is to the interviews page of the BBC site with unedited interviews with some key players.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution/interviews.shtml

Episode 1:
The wonder and walls of Wikipedia; the blogger media revolution; the price of peer-to-peer piracy... who really has power on the web? Is it the online crowd or the 'gatekeepers'? Is the web a platform for sharing or is it inequality writ large?

Episode 2:
Is the web indestructable or can censorship, cybercrime or infrastructure attack bring it down? As the web trancends the barriers of the physical world the orthodox view is that the nation state will inevitably wither as the porous web of hyperlinks conquers the globe. But some states are fighting back.

Episode 3:
Free services, limitless information, endless opportunities for the user... the web seems to defy all the laws of economics. But are we trading our privacy for a 'free' web?

Episode 4:
Are we empowered, connected and enlightened with the world's knowledge at our fingertips? Or distracted and addicted with shorter attention spans> Are our skittering brains bombarded and stupified by the 'yuck and wow' of the web? Is the web really changing us - the way we think, the way we behave, the way relate to each other? And is it for better or for worse?