Yamaha ad now on Youtube: Media Studies

Here is the original gumboot song of the Fred Dagg 70s. I see that it comes from a Billy Connolly number but the Yamaha Grizzly ad definitiely riffs on the kiwi version (although John Clarke aka Fred Dagg has now lived in Oz for decades and the ad has an Australasian feel.

More info about Dagg

See the light: representation of national identity

Take a look at the new TV ONE promo which uses the Evermore song "I see the light surrounding you" - it appeals strongly to our sense of national identity. Click here to go to the TVNZ website where you can watch it online.

Below is an article about the cost of it. Good for audience studies too.

$1m, batteries included

www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=260&objectid=10435768

Television New Zealand paid about $1 million for the new TV One promotion, the one where people are shining torch lights hopefully into the sky looking for ... well, something. Some media suggested it cost $300,000. In fact, that is what TVNZ paid Sydney consultants Ink, effectively to change the colour for the One logo from blue to orange, setting it against a blue sky. One million sounds a lot for a new commercial but, as any advertiser will tell you, branding television commercials always cost an arm and a leg. The channel promo is screened a lot and TVNZ desperately needs to sell TV One. A lot of people in the advertising industry are snitchy, saying the aspirational, cast of thousands imagery was ostentatious and the refrain from the young girl not unlike Saatchi's ads for Telecom. The new ad is like previous TV One campaigns - Welcome to Our World, the Monty Pythonesque animations - appealing and necessary but ultimately wallpaper. As for the $300,000 paid to change the colour of the One logo, from blue to orange, one contact was bemused. Couldn't you change colours by pushing a couple of buttons on the office PC?

The Lovely Bones Student Guide

I have just finished a rough copy of a guide to The Lovely Bones. It's about 20 pages long so I converted it to a PDF.

Writing correctly - especially for year 13

Here is a wonderful site about grammar, punctuation and language techniques.

From the same site is George Orwell's useful list of writing rules

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Orwell was a famous novelist whose works include Animal Farm and 1984.

Mdlwembe by Zola (Tsotsi)

This is the hit tune from Ghetto Ruff in South Africa written by legendary Soweto hip hop artist Zola. It plays in the film when Tsotsi walks through the township with his gang giving the fingers to his tormentors.

The music video is very vibrant and available on the internet and itunes.

Tsotsi's Soundtrack

News at SoundtrackCollector

Paul Hepker/Mark Kilian Tsotsi
25-Mar-2006 - Milan Records has released Tsotsi, a gritty and moving portrait of an angry young man living in a state of urban deprivation. Set amidst the Johannesburg township of Soweto, Tsotsi traces six days in the life of a young gang leader who ends up caring for a baby accidentally kidnapped during a car jacking. This dramatic event will drive Tsotsi into an unexpected relationship with this baby where he will discover the true meaning of adulthood, love and life. The soundtrack features several tracks by South African Kwaito (South Africa's hip-hop) legend, Zola, including his most acclaimed hits Mdlwembe, It’s Your Life, Bhambatha as well as other Kwaito/hip-hop musicians. Tsotsi also features an atmospheric score composed by Paul Hepker and Mark Kilian.
Buy from Amazon.com.

Narrative technique

The Lovely Bones has an unusual method of narration. It is told in the first person; this is a common method. What is uncommon is that the first person narrator in this book is "omniscient". That means she is all seeing and all knowing. She can see into the minds of all the characters. Usually a first person narrator is limited to his/her own point of view. Omniscience usually goes with the third person "eye of God" technique so common in novels in the19th century. The third person eye of God method is when the author is all seeing and all knowing.

The method used in this book is not unique though. A book I am reading at the moment "The Book Thief" is narrated by Death. Death, ot the Grim Reaper, is telling the story of a young girl who is experiencing the Holocaust in World War Two Europe and can't quite make himself kill her. (It's a good book so far and not as grim as it sounds.)

Since the early days of the 20th century, novelists have been experimenting with different ways of narrating. The last few decades have seen the post-modernist era where a more self-conscious style has often been adopted. It's no longer always fashionable to make the book totally realistic but to use distancing techniques which force the reader to accept it is a work of fiction and apply more thought or awareness to the process of reading.

How does the first person ominiscient work in The Lovely Bones? It enables Susie to trace her whole family over a period of 8 years which is obviously the whole point of the book. It also enables us to look at a tragedy like what happened to Susie in an imaginative and fresh way. We see the victim's point of view as well as the survivors'. As an imaginative exercise I think it works very well.

Another question is: does Susie maintain her omniscience or does the narration simply slip into third perosn from time to time, such as when we read about Harvey's background? does it matter?

Coming of age novels or the "Bildungsroman"

Bildungsroman

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A bildungsroman (IPA: [ˈbɪldʊŋs.roˌmaːn]/, German: "novel of personal development") is a novel which traces the spiritual, moral, psychological, or social development and growth of the main character from (usually) childhood to maturity.

Among the components of a bildungsroman are the following:

• Growth from a child to a man or woman
• To spur the hero onto his or her journey, some form of loss or discontent must jar him or her at an early stage away from the home or family setting.
• The process of maturing is long, arduous, and gradual, consisting of repeated clashes between the protagonist's needs and desires and the views and judgments enforced by an unbending social order.
• Eventually, the spirit and values of the social order become manifest in the protagonist, who is then accommodated into society. The novel ends with an assessment by the protagonist of himself/herself and his/her new place in that society.
• The character is generally making a smooth movement away from conformity
• Major conflict is self vs. society or individuality vs. conformity
• Theme of exile or escape

Within the genre, an Entwicklungsroman is a story of general growth rather than self-culture; an Erziehungsroman focuses on training and formal education; and a Künstlerroman is about the development of an artist and shows a growth of the self.

Many other genres include a bildungsroman as a prominent part of their story lines; for example, a military story frequently shows a raw recruit receiving his/her baptism of fire and becoming a battle-hardened soldier. A high fantasy quest may also show a transformation from an adolescent protagonist into an adult aware of his/her powers or lineage.

Another book like The Lovely Bones

In 2003, Gary Soto published The Afterlife, a young-adult novel that bears some striking similarities — a male protagonist hangs around the world after his murder, watches himself mourned and missed, and then gradually finds his way to heaven.

Book reviews of The Lovely Bones

Some publications can be relied on to write thoughtful reviews. Here is one from Salon magazine.

Below is a bad one from a reader on the Amazon site

Reviewer:

Jennifer M-R (Duluth, MN USA) - See all my reviews

Sebold demonstrates a stunning capacity to combine all the worst aspects of American culture into a single novel - materialism, cheap religion, shallow psychotherapy, and a vigilante obsession with rare and violent crimes. The literary conceit is that 14-year-old Susie Salmon is raped and murdered, at which point she enters the perfect consumer heaven - untroubled by God or the unfathomable soul, in Sebold's heaven, we must merely say what we want and it appears. From this vantage, Susie exhibits a mind-boggling lack of curiosity about her sudden new ability to spy on her earthbound loved ones, opting instead to relate the cloyingly transparent activities of her family as they grieve her death and hunt down the man they know killed her, even though they have no evidence to suspect him. From the moment Sebold describes a character's smile as "like stars exploding," I knew this would be a monumental work of emotional [...].

Here is a link to an article from the Guardian in the UK

Abigail Salmon in The Lovely Bones: character arc

If you trace the development of this character very closely through the book, you have to admire Sebold's skill and sensitivity in conveying the emotional rollercoaster this character endures.

Abigail is not as likeable as some of the other characters. She cannot grieve in understandable ways like Jack who does all he can to seek justice - to the point of obsession it seems - and who is totally committed to the emotional needs of his remaining children.

Abigail is plunged into a depression and anger that makes her deflect her real sadness and pain into "merciful adultery" - a quotation from the book - and then actually flee from her family and look into the "hopeful unfamilar" for relief from her unresolved grief.

Because Susie as a narrator has such an "Eye of God" advantage, she can range backwards and forwards in time to show us the factors in Abigail's life that predisposed her to this sort of reaction. Susie remembers capturing her on her new Kodak camera as a person, not a mother. A former masters student who never really accepted the limitations of motherhood and being a 70s housewife, she was always somewhat lost. We see her as totally different from her ultra-feminine mother with whom she had to fight "tooth and nail" to go to college and have an academic career. She says to her mother before she goes away: "Do you realise how alone I've always felt?"

There is a link here to other aspects of women's lives which run through the book: the rape of Susie; Harvey's attacks on other women; the principal's inappropriate thoughts about Lindsey.

More importantly I feel, is the character "arc" that Abigail experiences and the way Sebold has created this. A character arc is the status of the character as it unfolds throughout the story, the storyline or series of episodes. Since the definition of character arc centers on the character, it is generally equated as the emotional change of the character within the narrative. Characters begin the story with a certain viewpoint and, through events in the story, that viewpoint changes. Often this change is for the better, but it can also be for the worse or simply different. (from Wikipedia)

The Lovely Bones: ending and resolution; Peter Jackson

Once again, the book doesn't end with a big dramatic plot twist but gently and with a sense of resolution of the twin strands of the plot:

1. Susie's coming to terms with a life cut short and all the life experiences she has missed out on
2. The family's coming to term with the loss of Susie

I suppose another connected strand is the fate of Harvey. We need him to be found guilty and put away and he is in a manner of speaking but quietly and gradually.

As one student said in class, having the capture of Harvey as the climax would be too predictable. This book is not about revenge and restitution but about resolving the emotional conflicts and griefs everyone suffered as a result of Susie's murder. The unusual storyline is one some of you struggled with but, remember that this book made millions when it came out because we all have to deal with loss and grief at some stage and the book nails it in so many ways.

It encapsulates the 4 stages of grieving identified by psychologists

Denial
Anger
Depression
Acceptance

As another student said, Lindsay is the sort of "keystone" to the rebuilding of the family. The old house she restores with Samuel symbolises this and of course, there is her daughter.


Here's some more about the book from Peter Jackson

Though "The Lovely Bones" is not on the order of a major fantasy trilogy, Jackson said the book has its own complexities. It was passed on by studios when first shopped; the book opens with the revelation that 14-year old narrator and main character Susie Salmon was raped and murdered. From heaven, she watches how the people left behind handle her tragedy.

Jackson and Walsh, eager to make a small-canvas movie like his early hit "Heavenly Creatures," sparked to it immediately.

"It's the best kind of fantasy in that it has a lot to say about the real world," Jackson said. "You have an experience when you read the book that is unlike any other. I don't want the tone or the mood to be different or lost in the film."

The most perplexing problem, said Jackson, is how to convey Susie in heaven.

"It's cleverly not described that well in the book, because Alice wanted your imagination to do the work and decide what Susie's heaven looks and feels like," Jackson said. "We will have to show something on film. It has to be somehow ethereal and emotional, but it can't be hokey."

Media Studies, the Kiwi Bloke again

Do you really think that the blokes on Game of Two Halves are representative? Who made the programme? What audience are they making it for? How does this affect the representation, messages and values found in the programme?

What messages are being sent by the programme? What values are shown?

Read this article from the Herald for a good discussion on Ellis and Ridge and co.

Some comments are that the guys, while "playing the bad boy role" are:

• reinforcing traditional male chauvinist attitudes to women.
• treating women as mere "eye candy

A feminist commentator said that the programmes made "new lad masculinity" seem quite okay, and women seem "marginalised" or second best, "while masking its messages in boyish humour."

Something to think about isn't it?

There's no denying that it is very amusing for some but also that the guys are playing "roles" and that the exaggerated behaviour they indulge in misrepresents the ordinary kiwi male whose female partner would almost ccertainly not tolerate sexual banter about her love life for the whole nation to hear.

So, the whole thing is a construction for the entertainment of a certain audience and it reflects only a small portion of NZers. Would you agree with that? (However, it does influence the way we see ourselves.)

Remember that no representation is innocent.

Level 2 Media Studies: the good keen bloke

Here are some deeply academic comments about kiwi blokehood which I have tried to simplify for you. Worth a look. I can't find a good image of Barry Crump but here is one from a recent Toyota ad in which the bulls have taken on the kiwi bloke persona. Link to here for a description of the ad.


In media studies terms, the Kiwi bloke is a representation. Media do not simply reflect reality; they represent it through codes and languages which are socially constructed and privilege certain points of view. Discourses of the Kiwi bloke do not arise "naturally" from our pioneering past – they serve a hegemonic function (that means they suit the people in power in society.) They have a history, which is anything but a "natural evolution". Benedict Anderson argues that nationhood as we understand it today is an "imagined community" constructed through mass media. Media do not simply reflect the nation that is; they also help bring it into being, by reproducing ideas of identity, for example the Kiwi bloke.

Hence it was to advertising that the Kiwi bloke migrated. Corporate interests have associated themselves with Kiwi masculinity and its association with national identity as a way of normalising their activities, through sport, for example (brewer Lion Nathan and the All Blacks, financiers Fay, Richwhite and the America's Cup) . Multinationals such as Toyota, McDonald's, Sky and TV3 (CanWest) use representations of Kiwi blokes to naturalise their products in a local setting, as for example Barry Crump's notorious 1980s Hilux ads for Toyota. Crump is well known in New Zealand as a modern exemplar of the pioneer tradition, having written numerous novels of male hunting exploits, such as A Good Keen Man. The Hilux is a "ute" (utility vehicle), such as pakeha working men often use. The ads contrast an urban and naive character played by former Playschool presenter Lloyd Scott, who is gushingly enthusiastic about the product, with "bloke" Crump - a sardonic, laconic rural type who establishes his domination by verbal sarcasm undercutting Scott, and physical accomplishment, in the form of his hair-raising driving exploits.

Clearly viewers are expected to identify with Crump. But this gives rise to a paradox: that rural masculinity is being used to sell products to a largely urban audience. A key to understanding how these ads negotiate such a contradiction is in their over the top tendencies, for example, Crump driving his Toyota up an almost vertical incline. They self-consciously highlight an mismatch between their rural heritage and the urban audience they are selling to.

An idea of rural masculinity is being used as a way of legitimising the market: selling cars and other products to city dwellers - the final irony is that the vast majority of Toyotas sold here are not "utes", but ordinary family cars. The ad is a branding exercise that employs the normalising tendencies of the rural myth to enforce its own hard sell. The Good Keen Man is complicit with the good keen manager. So the Kiwi bloke now serves new masters – not colonial, but multinational.

Toyota has since conducted at least two more "local" advertising campaigns: "Welcome to Our World" (1990), which featured the Jim Reeves' song and shots of iconic New Zealand landscapes, and the "Bugger" campaign, which featured comic mishaps of rural farm workers and their "utes", each ad ending in the swear word. Ironically, Toyota closed its last local assembly plant in 1998, so the ads' matey rhetoric was precisely the opposite of what was occurring at the everyday local level.

It suggests that global capital's employment of representations of working men and appeals to local nationalism in its sales talk are not underlaid by any commitment to such groups. Moreover, if, as I have argued, the "bloke" as a representation of locality was to some extent created by New Zealand's historic position in the global economy, then it should not be surprising that he and his related symbols have continued to be relevant in the "branding" of New Zealand.

Plot turning points in The Lovely Bones

Some students complained of nothing much happening in the plot; or that it was difficult to engage with the text, hard to keep reading.
I have a few theories
1. It may be a little hard to really get into it because there is a sort of flat, matter of fact tone. It isn't colourful, passionate and vibrant because it is about the sad narration of loss and recovery. It is in fact very similar in its tone to The Reader the novel we studied last year. That is because both books are narrated by a character who is trying to sort out and come to terms with devastating events that cannot be easily "solved".
2. A lot of the events are emotional not physical; thoughts and feelings rather than exciting events.

But look at the things that DO happen. Both Lindsay and Abigail plunge into a love affair to numb the pain of Susie's death

Susie's father attacks a young couple in the cornfield, thinking they are Harvey. He almost becomes the baddie in the eyes of the police while Harvey can play the innocent. The injustice of it makes your blood boil.

Lindsay breaks into Harvey's house to find evidence. This is a dramatic event. Just imagine what it would be like (and the tension that Peter Jackson will be able to put into the scene when he films it)

On the other hand, even this turning point is narrated by Susie in heaven so we don't really get such a direct insight into Lindsay's feelings. After she jumps out the window to escape Harvey, Susie narrates:
"But she was not hurt. Gloriously not hurt. Gloriously young."
We as readers are "positioned" to see Lindsay through Susie's eyes. This is the whole purpose of the book: to give us a bird's eye view of the impact of tragedy on a family.

It also helps to remember that Sebold herself experienced 10 years of pain and chaos in her life after her own rape. You can feel the commitment she has to observe the effects of one person's trauma on those around her.

Another interesting bit is Harvey's back story. This starts on page 187 or Chapter 15. I think Sebold does a very good job of building up a picture of his sorry past. However, I find the previous page, 186, a little corny when Susie meets all his other victims in heaven. That is very intolerant of me though because Sebold has every right to point out that sexual predators often have multiple victims - how do you tell their story? WHAT DO YOU THINK?

The meaning of the title and the question of religion

The "lovely bones" of the title have to do with what Sebold describes as "the architecture of loss" - - the often hard-won connections between people that are built around the absence of someone after they die.

Is it a religious book?

While reviews for "The Lovely Bones" here have been overwhelmingly positive, critics in the United Kingdom, where the book was also published last summer, have been less effusive. The Guardian newspaper scoffed that the book provides Americans with "Christian comfort."

Sebold begs to differ. "I haven't heard that from any reader. People have said it provides them with comfort, but I haven't heard anybody qualify it as 'Christian,' " she says. "You write a book about Heaven, you're gonna get it from both ends. I get people who say, 'Why isn't God in the Heaven?' who are coming from that direction. And other people are like, 'Oh, you're talking about Heaven? You must be Christian.' There's no hope. I can't do anything about that."

Sebold, who was raised in what she calls "the wishy-washy Episcopalian religion," says she hasn't been to church since she was a teenager. "My major religions are my dog and gardening."

Alice Sebold's Previous Book, "Lucky"

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
When Sebold, the author of the current bestseller The Lovely Bones, was a college freshman at Syracuse University, she was attacked and raped on the last night of school, forced onto the ground in a tunnel "among the dead leaves and broken beer bottles." In a ham-handed attempt to mollify her, a policeman later told her that a young woman had been murdered there and, by comparison, Sebold should consider herself lucky. That dubious "luck" is the focus of this fiercely observed memoir about how an incident of such profound violence can change the course of one's life. Sebold launches her memoir headlong into the rape itself, laying out its visceral physical as well as mental violence, and from there spins a narrative of her life before and after the incident, weaving memories of parental alcoholism together with her post-rape addiction to heroin. In the midst of each wrenching episode, from the initial attack to the ensuing courtroom drama, Sebold's wit is as powerful as her searing candor, as she describes her emotional denial, her addiction and even the rape (her first "real" sexual experience). She skillfully captures evocative moments, such as, during her girlhood, luring one of her family's basset hounds onto a blue silk sofa (strictly off-limits to both kids and pets) to nettle her father. Addressing rape as a larger social issue, Sebold's account reveals that there are clear emotional boundaries between those who have been victims of violence and those who have not, though the author attempts to blur these lines as much as possible to show that violence touches many more lives than solely the victim's.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Sebold was raped as a college freshman, but the police said she was "lucky." At least she wasn't murdered and dismembered like the girl before her. Now a journalist, Sebold here details the aftermathAposttraumatic stress syndrome, heroin addiction, and, finally, some measure of understanding.

More on Lovely Bones

Looking at the opening pages: a compelling beginning with a startlingly matter of fact tone and a certain amount of irony. Notice the sentence patterns to emphasis her feelongs.

Why set the book back in 1973? Sad that American put pictures of lost children on milk cartons. Does the distant setting make it more poignant because such crimes were less common, more shocking back then?

Media Issues including representation

Here is a great link to a Canadian site which looks at how various groups are represented

Links for The Lovely Bones

For some interesting information on the book, click here

Another site gives info on the film version

Beware of spoilers in wikipedia if you have not finished the book!