“Television Culture”

In chapter nine “Television Culture”, by John Fiske, Fiske focuses on how television makes meanings that serve the dominant interest in society, and how it circulates those meanings between varieties of social groups that establish its audiences.  Fiske breaks it down into several sections, the first is the Codes of television which is used to generate and circulate meanings in and for a specific culture. These codes can often times be placed within dialogue in order to give a more “real life” feel to the audience. The codes are broken down into three sections, level one is “reality” which refers to appearance, dress, makeup sound, gesture, and expression. Level 2 “Representation” which refers to the camera lighting editing music, etc. which helps shapes representations. Level 3 “Ideology” is organized so that the act is socially acceptable. All of the tools used serve an important purpose, such as camera work, which is used to give a perfect and specific scene so that the viewer can completely understand what is going on. Editing has to do with how much time different characters are given. Music links scenes, and helps the viewer to identify certain characters or plots. We see this a lot when a movie shows a villain, the music has a deep and dark sound, so the viewer knows this particular characters role in the act. Casting is important because the characters represent coding’s of ideology. Setting and costume are seen as codes which correlate with ideological codes of class, heroism, villainy, morality, and attractiveness. Make up, helps to merge the codes by giving a detailed understanding of specific characters. The dialogue correlates with the action. Dialogue is used to affect the viewer’s sympathy, while the action pursues it. All of these tools are used as codes which brings the viewer a deeper understanding to the plot.  We see how all of these codes are used in order make sense of the program to the viewers by making them feel a resemblance with their own lifestyle, it is legitimizing the dominant ideology.

“Moneyball”

First off I am not a fan of working on group projects, usually because of others in the group, however this time the blame was on me. I had a lot of conflicts with my schedule so I made it a little difficult for my group, sorry guys. I have never been a fan of baseball in general, why I picked “Moneyball,” I have no idea. I must say however, I learned a lot about the sport of baseball in general that I have now taken some interest in the sport. My part of the project was in relation to some of the racial aspects that the sport went through, in order to help understand how it has become such a globalized sport. I wanted to understand what the hype is about and why there are so many movies relating to the history and baseball. After doing my research for my part of the project it came to my realization that it is indeed a symbolical representation of America. The history of baseball from the Negro leagues to what it is now has drastically changed my view on the sport. Baseball was seen as Americas sport, and 60 to 70 years ago, they took that very seriously. I decided to show a trailer from the movie “The Perfect Game” which is about the first Mexican little league team, and the challenges that they faced, such as being smaller than their opponents as well as dealing with the racial remarks that were made towards them. The clip is a great opener to how baseball in general correlates with America’s history with discrimination. The idea that people of color playing baseball in the same league as whites was seen as absurd, just like Billie Beans method in the movie was seen. His method gave a whole outlook on the recruitment process in baseball. He changed the way baseball teams were molded. The fact that he solely looked at statistics alone for certain areas the Oakland A’s needed improvement for, was the reason the team made the drastic improvements that they managed to pull off during that season. He did not look for all around good ball players, but players who simply performed well in a specific position, and inserted them in the team to fulfill those needs. His method, known as Moneyball has changed the thought process of society, it resembles the way America has changed its social system after the civil rights movement.  All of this occurred in order to transform baseball into what it is today. It is now known globally and very popular in countries such as Japan or even the Caribbean. In my presentation I mentioned how baseball was once looked at as an American identification, to now being one of the symbols of the American dream. One of my favorite parts of this assignment was simply watching the movie; it has a great story and encouraged me to dig into the history of baseball for this assignment.