Dear all,
This is a quick reminder that next week we have an extended IMS seminar, starting at 9.00, where I, Signe, will present and discuss my thesis draft. Kim Christian Schrøder, Department of Communication and Arts, Roskilde University, Denmark, professor in Audiences and Mediated Life, is the opponent.
If any of you have not received the thesis, and want to have a look at it before the seminar, please email me at ims at lnu.se.
Abstract:
This thesis is an audience reception study of film music and animation film, centered around the ways that animated characters are constructed as psychological beings which children can understand and identify with – as if they were real humans. The analysis considers the narrative context of a character but is particularly focused on the musical and multimodal construction of a character, meaning particular attention is put on how character traits are communicated by the use of music, voice, colours, camera perspective, etc. This analysis of the construction of characters is then compared to actual child audiences’ expressions of their experiences and interpretations, obtained through observations and interviews, in order to highlight how children understand and relate to the material they are presented to.
Understanding and interpreting an animated film is conditioned by the structure of that film, but interpretation is also conditioned by the communicative situation and social position of the audience, as well as personal experiences, and as such no ‘absolute’ interpretation can be made, not even within a uniform group. This does not mean that we shouldn’t aim to understand how people process and relate to media, however, or to understand how children experience the animated films that are so immensely popular, overflowing our mainstream culture. By analysing the multimodal semiotic potential of three selected films, Frozen (2013), Up (2009) and Shrek the Third (2007), and comparing these analyses with children’s multimodal expressions (children often communicate through gestures or by humming or signing, necessitating multimodal interview transcriptions) of their understandings and opinions, it is the goal of this thesis to shed light on the ways that children relate to and use filmic form, particularly music, in negotiating the content, particularly characters, of the film, in a process where meaning is created in the active reception process of a child in a communicative situation
The seminar is on the 21 April. Note that it starts 1 hour early at 9.00 CEST. As always the seminar will be on zoom: https://lnu-se.zoom.us/j/940933326
I hope to see many of you there!
Best wishes,
Signe – on behalf of myself and of IMS
Signe Kjaer Jensen
PhD student in Comparative Literature
Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies (IMS)
Linnæus University
Department of Film and Literature
351 95 Växjö
Sweden
https://lnu.se/personal/signe.kjaerjensen/
signe.kjaerjensen at lnu.se<mailto:signe.kjaerjensen at lnu.se>
IMS on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LNU.IMS
IMS public email list: https://lists.sunet.se/listinfo/publik.ims
Dear all,
On the 21, it is time for my ‘final PhD seminar’, where professor Kim Schrøder will act as discussant, and we will go through and discuss my thesis draft. If any of you are not familiar with the Swedish concept of ‘final seminars’ for PhD students, I can inform you that it is an extended text seminar, normally held about 4-6 months before a doctoral defense, where a close-to-finished thesis draft is discussed. There will normally be a short introduction to the thesis by the PhD student, and then a discussant will go through the whole text. In the end, there will be time for general discussion. The seminar will be between 2 and 3 hours long.
I have tried and have been unable to send the thesis draft to you via this email list, my guess is the file is too large to go through, so if any of you are interested in reading the draft before the seminar, please send an email to ims at lnu.se<mailto:ims at lnu.se>, and I will send the draft to you personally.
Abstract:
This thesis is an audience reception study of film music and animation film, centered around the ways that animated characters are constructed as psychological beings which children can understand and identify with – as if they were real humans. The analysis considers the narrative context of a character but is particularly focused on the musical and multimodal construction of a character, meaning particular attention is put on how character traits are communicated by the use of music, voice, colours, camera perspective, etc. This analysis of the construction of characters is then compared to actual child audiences’ expressions of their experiences and interpretations, obtained through observations and interviews, in order to highlight how children understand and relate to the material they are presented to.
Understanding and interpreting an animated film is conditioned by the structure of that film, but interpretation is also conditioned by the communicative situation and social position of the audience, as well as personal experiences, and as such no ‘absolute’ interpretation can be made, not even within a uniform group. This does not mean that we shouldn’t aim to understand how people process and relate to media, however, or to understand how children experience the animated films that are so immensely popular, overflowing our mainstream culture. By analysing the multimodal semiotic potential of three selected films, Frozen (2013), Up (2009) and Shrek the Third (2007), and comparing these analyses with children’s multimodal expressions (children often communicate through gestures or by humming or signing, necessitating multimodal interview transcriptions) of their understandings and opinions, it is the goal of this thesis to shed light on the ways that children relate to and use filmic form, particularly music, in negotiating the content, particularly characters, of the film, in a process where meaning is created in the active reception process of a child in a communicative situation
The seminar is, as mentioned, on the 21. Note that it starts 1 hour early at 9.00 CEST. As always, the seminar will be on zoom: https://lnu-se.zoom.us/j/940933326
I hope to see many of you there!
Best wishes,
Signe – on behalf of myself and of IMS
Signe Kjaer Jensen
PhD student in Comparative Literature
Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies (IMS)
Linnæus University
Department of Film and Literature
351 95 Växjö
Sweden
https://lnu.se/personal/signe.kjaerjensen/
signe.kjaerjensen at lnu.se<mailto:signe.kjaerjensen at lnu.se>
IMS on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LNU.IMS
IMS public email list: https://lists.sunet.se/listinfo/publik.ims
Dear all,
Welcome to next week’s IMS seminar, We will be visited by PhD student Li Ling Siew, who will present her project titled: An eye for an eye? Or Lost in Transmediation? A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Political Visual Arts of Civil Disobedience Movement in Hong Kong.
Abstract:
Civil disobedience movement or social movement is often perceived as a tool to bring about political and social change. Using the Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protest as a case study, I explore the discursive constructions of social movement in media discourse and how they are ideologically produced through semiotic resources in multimodal modes. This work-in-progress includes critical reading on multimodal corpora collected from news articles by various media agencies, and user responses (such as writings, anecdotes and visual artworks) on social media platforms curated by ordinary citizens showing solidarity for different political affiliations. The interpretations of the event as reflected in the corpora through various modal assemblages offer contrary realities to the “official” public announcements and condemnations by the Hong Kong government agencies. In particular, the creation and sharing of political visual arts such as posters, memes, cartoons, and satires capture the complex multimodal representations of contestations, identities and values in relation to the social movement, to which some are used as a repetitive prompt or an ideological tool to create more visual expressions for political propaganda. Political visual arts often enable audiences to consider or reflect on perspectives on the reality surrounding the causes they are protesting, such as the larger socio-political context that a real photograph cannot. I am more intrigued to investigate as to what could possibly go “wrong” during the continual process of mediation when the primary text (such as a video or photograph captured by reporters, protesters, or civilians at the site of the protest) which serves as a prompt for propaganda is being transferred from one mode to another. Using a case study that involves a young woman who suffered a severe eye injury during one of the demonstrations in Hong Kong, I intend to examine the discursive construction of multimodal semiotic modes which are ideologically loaded in constructing visual representations of the protest. The conflicting realities offered by various media sources prompt me to reflect on the values, truthfulness and truth claims in the representation of facts and actual events of the Hong Kong protest in dominant media discourse. How is the primary text being changed into a series of aesthetic art forms for political propaganda? What aspects and messages of the primary are being
Li Ling Siew is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya, Malaysia.
The seminar is, as always, on Wednesday, April 14, at 10.15 – 12.00 (CEST) on zoom: https://lnu-se.zoom.us/j/940933326
Best wishes,
Signe – on behalf of IMS
Signe Kjaer Jensen
PhD student in Comparative Literature
Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies (IMS)
Linnæus University
Department of Film and Literature
351 95 Växjö
Sweden
https://lnu.se/personal/signe.kjaerjensen/
signe.kjaerjensen at lnu.se<mailto:signe.kjaerjensen at lnu.se>
IMS on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LNU.IMS
IMS public email list: https://lists.sunet.se/listinfo/publik.ims
