Unit 3 Course Concepts
What are the different types of responses an audience can have to a text?
An emotional response and/or an intellectual response
A series of three parallel words, a rhetorical device.
tricolon
Seth Milchick
What archetype is Leonard Mead?
The everyday man
What’s the national flower of Japan?
Cherry blossom
List 5 dystopian generic conventions
Conflict: individual vs society, individual vs technology, individual vs self
Characters: The rebel, the conformist/sympathiser, the outsider, tyrannical/over reaching government/leader, reluctant leader,
Setting: futuristic highly developed technology, uniformed environment, lack of natural environmental/highly controlled natural environment
Themes: propaganda and language control, the banishment of the natural world, lack of privacy
A rhetorical device in which two opposite ideas are put together in a sentence to achieve a contrasting effect. For example, “Man proposes, God disposes.
Antithesis
List all the severed employees
Mark, Helly, Irving, Dylan, Petey
What style is The Pedestrian written in and list 2 ways Bradbury achieves this
Distant and impersonal - 3rd person P.O.V, motif of death
Poetic - figurative language features
How many time zones are there in Russia?
11
Comparisons are an important concept in Unit 3. In what ways are you able to compare texts?
To compare texts, you must consider the ways that they are similar and different. You can consider any of the structural or stylistic features, genre/content or even context.
If an essay question asks you to consider voice - what are the other course concepts you should also consider?
Perspective, attitudes, context
In the opening scene of Severance, Helly is shown laying face down in the middle of a office table in a meeting room. What camera angle is used and explain what emotional response is evoked from the audience and explain why.
An overhead shot. Helly's lifeless body is juxtaposed against the normality of the office makes the audience feel both confused and intrigued to continue watching to see if she is alive and where she is.
"The light held him fixed, like a museum specimen, needle thrust through chest". What technique is being used here and how can it help audiences understand context of production?
A simile - this helps to visualise what was happening in America in the 1950's. The McCarthy trials where left leaning figures were accused of communism. These trials were televised "on the world stage".
Which of the following empires had no written language: Incan, Aztec, Egyptian, Roman?
Incan
Interpretation is more than just an opinion. What is some ways a reader can interpret a text.
Identifying ideas, issues and themes; analysing the effects of language features, conventions of genre, text structures and stylistic features; considering the influence of context; focusing on various representations; for example, representations of gender, class or cultural identity
In what ways can characterisation happen?
Inner thoughts, emotions, actions, appearance, dialogue, relationships, what others say/think
Severance is clearly a dystopian text. How does the show CHALLENGE traditional dystopian conventions?
The subjects of the authoritarian society within Severance (Lumon employees) have perceived choice and autonomy - similar to Marxist theory of false consciousness, in which employees believe they remain in the position they are in because of their own shortcomings and failings.
From this, the lines of who is living in the dystopia and whether they are real are challenges because of the severance procedure. The character of the innie inherently creates an issue as to who has autonomy/control of decision making.
The threat to keep employees maintained is not physical violence, in fact the only physical violence comes from Helly. The violence is psychological.
Which direction does Mead decide to take on this particular evening?
Westerly
How many stripes are there on the US flag?
13
Context can be split into two major categories; Production and Reception. Aside from these categories what are the other two categories we need to consider (which float between the two) and what do they include?
Context of culture - general social, historical and cultural conditions
Context of situation - specific features of its immediate environment
What is the difference between language features and stylistic features
Language features are specific to word selection and often include known tools (such as metaphors ect). Stylistic features focus on the overall arrangement of the construction of the text (like tone, structure or voice) which can include language features but is not restricted to that.
Create a thesis statement using Severance as a text for the following question:
Examine how the construction of a text offers insights into the particular context in which it was created or received.
Dependent on student response.
The construction of Severance through is highly artificial and symmetrical office setting, splitting of character's identity and fragmented narrative structure offers an insight into the harsh and authoritative nature of modern corporate America and the overreach it has on it's employees lives.
The lack of people outside there homes has allowed for the natural world to start taking back the pathways. What is this symbolic of?
the way nature cannot be fully suppressed by humanity, thus becoming a symbol of resistance. Just as the natural world can resist, we might see the way nature is beginning to reclaim the urban environment as a symbol of hope that humans might also, one day, resist and reclaim their own lives.
Name Disney’s first film?
Snow White