The Sleeper Curve in TV shows

Based on Johnson’s article “the sleeper curve,” a new trend appears in the mass media has turned the earthbound entertainment into a visual stimulus enhancing cognitive complexity through intellectual labor involved while the audience enjoys and makes sense of the show. One thing brought up was the texture and substance of realism in the making of new media. Johnson argues that the emerging public opinion about the “negative” influence of media pertaining to ethical ambiguity should be taken in a new perspective—the representation of how the world is exercised and how putative audience can interpret the phenomenon.
Johnson’s statement touches the issue of media rating. Though the media reflecting the ethnical ambiguity in today’s world may help audience make sense of their cultural experiences as a member of social mechanism, it is difficult to monitor who the audiences are and how they interpret the scenes they see. When these two factors are not determined, it is difficult to say whether TV shows or video games have positive or negative impact on people of different ages and, in turn, mental ages. People may see a violent scene, think about the issues of social disorder, and take it as a moral lesson. However, there are still people who believe that it is cool to be violent just like what the “heroes” do in the show. This echoes another issue of how the director approaches the realism in a TV show or film. Take a crime scene for example. The director can portray a bloody fight among characters and manipulate the dark side of human beings in a noble way; the director can also engage audience in a mental labor and complex social networks by focusing on characters who manage to use limited resources to solve problems.

The dialogue on the show “Desperate Housewives” involves several textual and substance cues that enable audience to get the joke by making senses of bits and bites of info embedded in the scene.

[Mike walks back down the driveway towards the car.]
Edie: Hi Mike. Susan.
Susan: Edie. [Sighs as she walks down to join Mike.]
Mike: Hey, I’m sorry about your house. How you holding up?
Edie: Alright, I guess. [Opens the car door and steps out.] Oh, is somebody having a party?
Mike: No, Susan’s just throwing me one of her traditional welcome-to-the-neighborhood dinners. Only I’m cooking. And having it at my house.
Edie: [Laughs] Traditional. Hm. I didn’t get one.
Susan: Oh, it’s sort of a new tradition.
Mike: Well it won’t be anything fancy, just a little home cooking.
Edie: Mmm, that sounds so good.
Narrator: Susan suddenly had an awful feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Edie: I’ve been having nothing but fast food lately. [Rummages through Mike’s grocery bags, taking out a grape and eating it seductively, staring at Mike.]
Narrator: As if she was watching an accident in slow motion. She knew it would happen, but was powerless to stop it.
[Mike turns around to look at Susan, cocking his head as if to ask if it’s okay.]
Susan: Edie, would you like to join us for dinner?
Edie: Oh that’s so sweet. No, I don’t wanna intrude. Three’s a crowd.
Mike: No, it’s not like that. I mean, Susan’s bringing Julie.
Susan: It’s not like that. The more the merrier.
Edie: Well, this’ll be fun.
Mike: Alright. Tomorrow night. We’ll eat at six.
Edie: Great. Oh, and Susan.
Susan: Yeah.
Edie: This’ll make up for the dinner that you never threw me.
Susan: Right. [Laughs feebly]
Mike: I haven’t, ah, told her we were having steak. She’s not like a vegetarian, is she?
Susan: Oh, no, no. No, Edie’s definitely a carnivore.
There are some flashing arrows occur when the narrator describe the feelings of the main character Susan. Also, the context of the conversation allows audience to further interpret the comment “Edie’s definitely a carnivore” in a nonliteral way. In this dialogue, Edie is an uninvited guest to Susan because they compete over Mike. Susan’s emotion is changed from embarrassment to powerlessness as Edie asks about dinner and finally joins her dinner with Mike. When Mike mentions about a traditional welcome-to-the-neighborhood dinner thrown by Susan, Edie knows the dinner is only an excuse for Susan to get closer to Mike. She purposefully points out that she did not get one. Susan justifies herself by saying “it’s sort of a new tradition.” The way she puts it is also contradictory because a “tradition” should be a custom that has existed for a long time while “new tradition” is difficult to define. Near the end of the conversation, Edie shows her interest in joining the dinner by saying “I’ve been having nothing but fast food lately.” Edie goes off-record, making statement nebulously and leaving the interpretation to the listeners. Thus, Susan and Mike could either invite her over or not. When Susan finally invites Edie over, Edie replies “Oh that’s so sweet” with exaggerate interest with Susan’s invitation. At the end of the conversation, when Mike asks Susan whether Edie is a vegetarian, Susan replies “No, Edie’s definitely a carnivore.” Susan does not only mean Edie eats meat but also implies that she is aggressive in competing over Mike, the “meat.” Susan’s comment about Edie’s diet habit would be interpreted different, may be literally, if the same utterance is put in different situations. The meaning of “carnivore” is constructed based on the audience’s previous knowledge, their tacit knowledge as well as their social-cultural recognition of the context.

Marxism, intellectual property, and Education

It is interesting to examine the present educational system through the lenses of Marxist and Capitalist thoughts. Shannon (2000) reminds us that under the logic of capitalist, everything including curricular designs, learning materials, instructional approaches, and evaluation procedures should be organized in a similar fashion, making education works like enterprise that ensures students, like products, to turn out to have the preconceived and fixed capacities bureaucracy sets in. Scripted program in senior high is very common in Taiwan as well. The force of high-stake exam such as college entrance exam for all senior high school students gives rise to the standardized textbooks, curriculum and class activities. Not only teachers but students are highly influenced by such system. Teachers are forced to negotiate their beliefs for teaching to match the social norms and avoid any dispute such as being blamed that they do not do a good job in teaching based on the scores of students. On the other hand, students would not pay much attention to teachers’ teaching if the content is not related to the high-stake tests. A number of drawbacks have been identified. Students lose their creativity because of the scripted structures of teaching. To be recognized as good students in mainstream society, they are trained to be test-taking machines instead of reflective and critical thinkers.
The notion of intellectual labor brought up by Spigelman (1998) makes me think about the issue of the criterion to measure textual ownership. In an academia where the importance of copyright cannot be overemphasized, each researcher strives to establish his/her ownership for texts. Thus whenever collaboration is involved during the process of composing, it is inevitable for people to argue who is more qualified to be the first author. Theoretically, people who contribute the most would be the first author, while in reality, it is not so easy to determine who accomplish the most because both quantity and quality of the duties need to be considered when making such judgment. The issue goes back to the discussion of the definition of originality. Do people do the most writing is the first author? Or people who come up with the idea? People who do the data analysis and collection? What if these duties were accomplished by different people? A piece of writing cannot be accomplished without any of those. After all, there are no rigorous rules clarifying the levels of importance of these duties. The debate of copyright would continue. In terms of the idea/expression dichotomy of ownership, Edward’s responses about the issue stood out for me. He believed that adopting the expressions used by other native English speakers can convey his ideas more effectively. As a nonnative English speaker, I feel that there’s always a language barrier that I couldn’t overcome when I need to express my opinions toward things. Thus, I would usually try to build a personal corpus of literary work for me to refer to when it comes to writing. The process of learning to express myself may invade the concept of copyright that “unacknowledged appropriate of either ideas or words is deemed unacceptable” while it is an inevitable process of language learning.