Bits and Pieces for Week 8

Who Gon’ Check Me Boo? (start at around 2:00) and the subsequent single

Bristol Palin PSA

Bristol Palin + Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino PSA

Piece from Vulture about how to write an article on Teen Mom

A great article by Camille DeBose on Pretty Little Liars

Week 6 Links

Tuesday: 30 Rock and I Love Lucy

Liz Lemon breaking the fourth wall and anti-naturalist acting

Considering SNL + Sarah Palin as part of Tina Fey’s star text

Golden Globes 2012 opening monologue with Ricky Gervais + the 2013 opening monologue by Tina Fey & Amy Poehler (and a fabulous post by Dr. Petersen on why the Golden Globes are, hands-down, the best awards show)

Tina Fey on David Letterman talking about her kid: signaling a career lane change?

 

Thursday: The Mindy Project

An excellent, insightful essay by Phil Maciak about gendered tropes and figures at work on Fox and The Mindy Project

An interview/editorial piece from 2011 in the New York Times on Mindy Kaling

 

 

Reading for Tuesday

You will find the PDF of Jason Mittell’s chapter on Television Genres from Television and American Culture here. I’ve also updated the link on our syllabus page.

Mittell is a smart and prolific scholar. Check out his blog here.

Today’s Link Round-Up

Craig D. Lindsey on BET’s Real Husbands of Hollywood. Find clips and episodes here.

US Weekly on SpeidiShow. Explore “the show” here.

 

Notes on Sound

None of these links or clips are required reading or viewing, but they’re all excellent supplementary material for your reading this week.

Mark Juddery on Singin’ in the Rain‘s historical context

An encyclopedic site on sound for film

The FCC’s regulations for television commercials’ volume

Photos of Foley studios: one, two, and three

YouTube Accounts

I’ve gotten several emails about an error message on YouTube with the Scandal clip. The clip is working fine but because it has been rated TV-14 if you don’t already have an account verifying your age as being over 13, you’ll need to create one (or link your existing Google account). Let me know if you have other problems or questions. 

Textbook Glossary Link

Here’s the link to the textbook image/clip glossary I talked about in class today.

Notes on Scandal

NYT reports on Nielsen measuring Twitter chatter about television

USA Today publishes Nielsen’s report on Scandal‘s third season premiere, including Twitter data. What do we learn about Scandal and its audience from these numbers?

A fluffy but decent starter piece on thinking through the relationship between Scandal and Twitter…  which leads us into a conversation about fandom.

More on fandom(s) as we go, but I’ll leave this here for now. #teamolitz

Melodrama

What’s happening here? These programs are engaging with culturally and historically situated values, rituals, and industry standards (trends in set design, budgets, established network aesthetics, etc.). Analyze the mise-en-scene to find evidence for what kind of programming this is, what stories are being told, who the stories are being told to, and what distinguishes the programs from each other and/or connects them.

Extra reading on Nashville

Here’s an article about some of the on-set drama and how the influence of the industry is made visible in the second season of Nashville.