Do ethnographies need “acoustemology ” or colloquially known as ‘sound’ to compliment cultural analysis? How?

What are the issues of recording background sounds of cultures for the purpose of analysis? Background as foreground

In what ways do we as a culture have selective listening? (Listening to earphones on bus etc.)

Does ethnography need to incorporate all of the senses? If so Why? How?

Does the inscription of a song provide sufficient material for cultural analysis? Is there room for sound and what more can it tell us about the culture?

Is the content or the context of a sound more important for an ethnographer?

For example: it’s important to understand that the tapes are listened to in context yet the content is less important because the story can change but the context is key

Discussion Questions:

1. Why do you think Indian and African photography has evolved into something that portrays the subject as they want to be seen (better than they are), rather than for what they are in reality?

2. In terms of documentary, how has European photographic tradition maintained depth, possession, and exploitation, consequently affirming chronotypes (i.e. time and space)?

3. How adequate is the metaphor for surface used in the article?

4. What is significant about the Yoruba gaze? How does the reciprocation of the gaze disembody and de-narrate?

5. Can we recognize a similar desire for images to represent a ‘better self’ than reality in Western photography?

Discussion Questions:

1. What issues arise when dominant cultures encourage indigenous cultures to preserve   themselves through media?  (i.e.: By educating them about media use?) Examples?

2.What do you think of anthropologists connecting closely with one informant?  Does their personal bias come into play?  How much of a culture does that represent

3.What is Culture and culture in Canada?

Additional Questions:

1.How does the transparent/casual tone of the paper affect how we read it?

2.How much of this revival of culture through media is real, and how much is imagined?

Deger, Jennifer
    2006  Culture and Complicities. In Shimmering Screens: Making Media in an Aboriginal
Community, Pp. 1-33.  Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.

Group members: Sharleen Petigara,Kimiko Winston, Kate MacMillan, Alice Bardos, and Marina Subramaniam

Anthropology 378 – Anthropology of Media
Discussion Questions
Article: Egyptian Melodrama—Technology of the Modern Subject? – Lila Abu-Lughod
Group Members: Ashleigh Murphy, Elsa Chanez, Abigail Manuel, James C, Morgan Radbourne and Kayla Morley

Video Clips:
Egyptian Melodrama Drama: Al-Gama’a
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99J4M1Dq6m4&feature=channel

Bold and Beautiful
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRAlemPefo0&feature=related

Discussion Questions:

1. What is a melodrama? Are there similarities and differences seen in the video clips between the Egyptian melodramas described in Lila Abu-Lughod article compared to Western melodramas? If so, what are they?

2. The author notes Raymond William’s suggestion that Television has become so ingrained in our lives that it has led us to “see our own daily lives as dramas”(118).  Do you feel this is true?  Has the presence of narratives from Television, or even Movies, made you change your view of your life in a more dramatic way?  Do you believe you view your life differently because of the omnipresence of Television and Film dramas in our daily lives?  What ways do you believe you would view the world differently in absence of the dramas of Television and Film?

3. Lila Abu-Lughod states that melodramas can work on viewers in many ways, her focus being emotionality. Are there other ways in which melodramas can affect individuals lives? Or do melodramas not affect its audience?

4. Television drama in Egypt is seen not simply as entertainment but as a means to mold national community.  This seems to be in stark contrast to the agenda of the Western soaps which seem to possess little or no political or social agenda that is discernible.  Is capitalism (ie. the fear of losing advertiser’s support) the main obstacle to Western soaps involving more personal, political, and social messages like in the Egyptian Melodrama? Why are Western soaps so seemingly vacuous when it comes to content?

Additional Questions

1. Are there positive or negatives to putting programs based on religious/epic narratives on television? If so, what are they? Are there ways to avoid these positive or negative aspects?

In the article it talks about the epic of AbuZayd al-Hilali where the narrative poetry is portrayed differently compared to when it is put on TV. Does this take away from the legitimacy of the original? If so, how and why?

Please see the below video clip related to the epic of AbuZayd al-Hilali from the article.

http://youtu.be/w633dcg2b-g)

This clip is in Spanish, but in the beginning of it it shows how the epic texts it old through song (i.e., another medium). It is interesting how the melodrama chooses to focus on the birth of the hero (only six lines in the original) and the drama that followed the birth. In the article, Lila Abu-Lughod argues that it is because of these features that this episode was one of the first of the series in order to draw people in.

Can we think about any religious stories that we are familiar with in North America that could be portrayed in the same way? Would some aspects of the melodrama need to be emphasized for people to be “drawn in”?

Please see the below video clip related to the birth of the baby at 10:43 into the clip from the Egyptian melodrama:
http://youtu.be/rtTVdYFA7Pc

Show clips from Shomuni and Sarariman Kintaro. 

1. What differences do you notice in the portrayal of the workplace and the worker in these two clips? 
 
2. Japanese television producers injected a social responsibility discourse into popular media by way of social-realist dramas. Do we see the same in North American television programming? Why or why not? Can you think of any notable examples of shows that reflect our own economic situation, currently or in the past?
 
3. In North America, do you think devices like mockery and parody are used as stand-ins for social responsibility discourse? What might this say about our culture?
 
(And…. if we have time:
 
4. The social responsibility discourse in media is not new, but it emerges in new ways context-dependently. Do you think Japanese workplace dramas reflect changing attitudes towards the “freeter” lifestyle, or is the other way around – lifestyles changing in response to what is on television?

5. Lukacs talks about the feminization of men as a reason why Shomuni is popular in the young male demographic. What do you think these shows are portraying about gender?)