The Magic Flute

Recently Mozart's classic fairytale The Magic Flute premiered at the Lyric Theatre, directed by Julie Taymore - the director of Disney's The Lion King. I don't know if you are familiar with the story or not, but I took this from the QPAC website:

Tamino is a noble prince on a quest. He discovers strange lands, inhabited by wondrous creatures - scary women, wise children and even a bird man - but that is not what he is looking for. Will Tamino finally discover the truth? And will he find true love? 

.... So basically Tamino sets off on this epic quest to save the Princess Pamina with his trusty mate Papageno who is the bird man. Along the way he comes across some spirit children, a brotherhood, an evil queen (Pamina's mother), and three women who I didn't really understand.

But aside from this - IT ACTUALLY BLEW MY MIND. I'm not even being paid by  Opera Australia to say this (not like they would, how many people actually read this blog haha). So I might not have understood the plot as well as I would have liked, but this production boasted the most phenomenal visuals I have ever encountered. The set design was a versatile engineering masterpiece, which transforrmed seamlessly into countless different settings. The great thing about it was the postmodern element of it not trying to replicate where they were, just using a simple shape or something to represent it.

The other thing was the costumes and make up. I don't even have words, so absolutely fantastic. The Chorus wore these fantastic geometric gowns with diamond shaped headdresses alluding to a nuns veil. The protagonists all wore carefully constructed costumes which accurately represented both the shown side of the character as well as their inner traits.

There was a tenuous mix of Asian, Ancient Egyptian and Western influences in the costuming, makeup and set design, which came through well. The use of silk and yellow fabrics as well as kimono shaped garments alluded to Asia, while tall headwear, the use of staffs and hieroglyphic-like symbols was reminiscent of the numerous times I've done projects on Ancient Egypt.

There was also an extremely clever use of puppeteering and interaction with the stagehand-like figures. This well thought out crafting resulted in floaty polar bears that towered over the characters, flying spirit children, a giant serpent slithering about the stage, and larger-than-life, flirty, ballet dancing birds.

Credit must also be paid to the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, who never fail to disappoint anyway. They performed Mozart the way it ought to be, giving an absolutely spellbinding sound to the entire production.

Also we got dinner at the bistro beforehand and I got the wrong meal. Just saying.

Lecture #11

Or Lecture #10, depending on how pedantic you are. It’s not like it really matters. We missed a week because of a public holiday. I hope I’m not confusing you too much. Gosh settle down it’s not a big deal, stop freaking out about it.  Please calm yourself.

Thanks.

So in this lecture we talked about Agenda Setting – how the media constructs reality. Agenda setting originated from around 1968 during the Chapel Hill campaign in which there was a survey of undecided voters.

Basically, there are four basic agendas which are all pretty self-explanatory.

·         The Public Agenda

·         The Policy Agenda

·         The Corporate Agenda

·         The Media Agenda

All of these agendas, while for the most part remain separated, are interrelated and can’t really function without each other.

There are also 2 basic assumptions about agenda setting, and they are:

1.       Mass media do not simply reflect reality, they filter and shape it AND

2.       Media concentration leads the public to place higher importance on something.

So basically,

The more coverage an issue receives, the more important it is to people.

The main thing we covered, however, was the Agenda Setting Family, which consists of:

MEDIA GATEKEEPING

This is how individuals control the flow of information through a channel, and has a lot to do with exposure and what is revealed.

MEDIA ADVOCACY

The purposive promotion of a message

AGENDA CUTTING

If something is given less time in the media, it’s given less importance. The example used was that the AIDS epidemic in Africa took a backseat in the news to Justin Bieber’s new haircut due to the fact that the epidemic simply isn’t given as much time in the news spotlight.

AGENDA SURFING/BANDWAGON EFFECT

This element of the family mainly relates to following the trends in the media, and public opinion influencing others.

DIFFUSION OF NEWS

Who decides how, where and when news is released? This is the process through which an event is communicated to the public.

PORTRAYAL OF AN ISSUE

The way an issue is portrayed will influence the public perception. For example, the way that aboriginal issues are portrayed in Australian media heavily mould the way many citizens approach the matter.

MEDIA DEPENDENCE

In this day and age, more and more people are becoming increasingly dependent on the media and technology. Therefore, the more dependent people are on media, the more susceptible to agenda setting.

Finally, we looked over the strengths and weaknesses of Agenda Setting Theory, which were all pretty basic and for the most part were common sense.

Strengths	Weaknesses
Explanatory power	Public may not be the ideal audience
Predictive power	The effect is weakened on steadfast minds
Organising power	Can’t create or conceal problems
Can be proven false	New media is weakening agenda setting
Scientific facts/research

Lecture #9

LECTURE NINE – NEWS VALUES.

Ah, so we meet again inverted pyramid of journalism. I didn’t really understand you the first time, but I feel like we’ve bonded and connected a little more over this lecture. How nice.

So what exactly are news values? As I understand it, it’s the amount of importance and prominence a news network gives to a story. Due to this, news values have to vary over difference news services, countries and cultures. For example, some news networks pride themselves on covering local news, whereas others are well known for their coverage of international affairs.

From the lecture, I got that the four primary news values are identified as being impact, audience identification, pragmatics, and source influence – I feel like they’re all pretty self-explanatory if you have a basic grasp of English.

We also discussed the fact that the line between PR and journalism is slowly blurring, as well as spending a long time looking at both the 12+ factors of newswothiness and the 3 hypotheses of newsworthiness.

I'm out. 

Lecture #8

Our eighth (I just realised how odd the word eighth is to spell..) lecture was on ethics. Now, 8 is up there in my favourite numbers so I was hoping this would be a good lecture. My other favourites are 36 and 52 and well, that’s just ridiculous. I’m not going to 52 weeks of lectures just to find out about that one.

I know you’re anxious to find out whether I liked the lecture or not, which is a little silly because I know you know the answer. I loved it! Who doesn’t love a bit of controversy? The age-old puzzle of what is good or bad, right or wrong, ethical or unethical? And on top of that, the difficulty of distinguishing between the bad, the wrong and the just plain tacky.

One thing we covered in depth which I was interested by was the three ethical theories. I’ve never heard of anything really like that in ethics, so touching on each of them really had me hooked. As we went through them, they began to make sense and even more so when we looked at examples.

Out of Deontology, Consequentialism and Virtue, I think the one that I liked the most was Virtue ethics, simply because it made the most sense and I related to it most. Virtue ethics come down to the fact that goodness and happiness will come from good habits of character which is essentially every motivational sticky note I have around my room condensed into one sentence.

Deontology boiled down to being an attitude that by following all of the rules, you will be doing the right thing. Which we all know isn’t true, but all ethics codes are fundamentally deontological really. Consequentialism was basically obtaining the right or good outcome of a situation regardless of how you get there – you know; the end may justify the means, greatest good for greatest number etc.

I think, though, ethics in journalism boils down to one primary point. Treat others as you would like to be treated, and things should go well.  

JOUR1111 Annotated Bibliography

This Annotated Bibliography will delve into the media coverage surrounding the March school shootings in Toulouse, France through articles from CBS News, The New York Times, and The Telegraph. The mediums analysed; television report, blog post, and online article, conveyed both similar and contrasting views on the incident in order to engage with their respective audiences. This is evident in the following annotations.

Tripathy, J. (2010). What is a terrorist?. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 13, 219 – 232. Retrieved from

http://ics. sagepub.com/content/13/3/219

Jyotimara Tripathy, an associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, brings to light an interesting take on terrorism discourse within the field of media and communications. Throughout the piece, Tripathy touches on a number of intriguing points regarding the discourse of terrorism, the power of language in creating this discourse, and the inability of modernist vocabulary to address culturally ‘different’ problems. He also thoroughly addresses the now synonymous relationship between the words ‘muslim’ and ‘terrorist’, and the authorisation of this by both state institutions and common people, especially through the media. The use of the sentence “the location of the terrorist is less in the caves of Afghanistan … more in the media newsrooms, political agendas” (Tripathy, J., 2010) succinctly sums up the primary argument of the article, while still relating to everyday readers. The author regularly makes use of relevant citations, as well as linking his points to numerous real-life instances – adding to the credibility of his arguments, as well as creating a piece which many people are likely to relate to and understand.

CBS (Producer), & Palmer, T. (Presenter).

(2012, March 19). French Police on high alert after Jewish school shooting [Video recording]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QEPsqC0cHs&feature=plcp

Elizabeth Palmer reports the story of four people being shot at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France on CBS News, a major commercial television station whose audience is the consumer. Due to this, the story was crafted in such a way to maximise audience satisfaction. The short piece outlined the basic facts of the incident, accompanied by footage of distressed French citizens and police. Palmer took a dramatic approach to the story by using a sombre tone ad placing heavy emphasis on words such as ‘killer’, ‘horror’, and ‘fear’. The mention of Nickolas Sarkozy suspending his re-election campaign added a political element to the piece as well as heightening the significance of the incident. This inclusion of politics in the story contrasts starkly with The Telegraph post from Tom Chivers. This emphasis of certain words allowed palmer to mould and manipulate the audience’s perception of the incident. This resulted in an effective underpinning of the article with an atmosphere of tragedy while still presenting the necessary facts.

Chivers, T. (2012, March 19). Toulouse school shootings: let’s keep politics out of it for a few hours [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100144875/toulouse-school-shootings-lets-keep-politics-out-of-it-for-a-few-hours/

The Telegraph’s blog post was written by Tom Chivers, the assistant comment editor who is known for his intelligent posts regarding science and culture. This short post reflected on the Toulouse incident with heavy remorse, and made a specific point – in this time of tragedy – of putting the political and religious aspects of the shooting aside so as to acknowledge such a heartbreaking loss. The article focuses largely on anti-Semitism hate crimes stemming from the Muslim population, and the public opinion on this widely broadcast conflict.  Chivers makes an intelligent observation that no matter how the case turns out in the end, the ‘blame game’ is inevitable and the finger will be pointed at one religious group or another. Throughout the piece the author acknowledges not the logistics of the shootings, but the horror of the death of children and adults alike. He empathises with all those impacted by the incident, and ends with a poignant remark that the killer of these citizens is an extraordinarily evil person, regardless of his religion, and that – for now at least – political manoeuvring should be left out of the case.

Sayare, S. & Erlanger, S. (2012). 4 Killed at Jewish School in Southwestern France. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/world/europe/gunman-kills-3-at-a-jewish-school-in-france.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

The New York Times website article, published as a collaboration between Scott Sayare and Steven Erlanger, reported an in-depth coverage of the Toulouse incident. As well as accurately recounting the facts of the story, the authors quoted a number of people who were related to the shooting in some way, and cited facts which effectively escalated the perceived authenticity and credibility of the piece. The inclusion of quotes from varied sources also gave the lengthy article an element of unbiasedness, as well as by highlighting the contrast between the way left and right winged newspapers approached the story. This unbiased tone and abundant background information encouraged the readers of the incident and events surrounding it. This provided a large contrast with the CBS TV Report, which reported in a way which attempted to influence audience perception. The exceptionally detailed language which was used to describe certain elements (the school, the pistol), while not essential to the reporting of the facts, contributed effectively to the imagery and impact of the article as a whole. This imagery reduced the audience’s demand for a visual story regarding the incident to gain a more personal insight and connection with the story. 

belated posts :(

WOW so it has been an exceptionally long time since I've posted and believe me I am more than ashamed about it. I see all of these other phenomenal pieces of writing from my peers and can't help but feel a little inadequate.

Seeing as I'm here talking and typing already - how bloody cool is it about the first privately owned space rocket taking off today. Personally, I was devastated when NASA sent their last Shuttle into the atmosphere, so the  launch of the Dragon space capsule atop SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral was really exciting to me, and there was one thing that absolutely blew my mind about it.

Absolutely no humans are aboard the Dragon.

How is that.. just.. I don't even understand. Something so incredibly delicate and expensive has been engineered so well that it doesn't even need a person to guide it along. I don't know if that's as cool to you as it is to me, but a space capsule on autopilot knocks my socks off.