Globalization and cultural imperialism

Globalization is cultures from all over the world becoming closer to each other and losing distinction. They blend together into something similar to, but different than its parts.
Cultural imperialism is when the strongest of the cultures in the mix dominates the others and more of its influence is shown. The influence of the weaker cultures are less obvious and are smothered by the stronger culture.
Some example I can think of is from the showing of Slumdog Millionaire. The actual show Who Wants to be a Millionaire obviously isn't from India, it's from the U.K. While the questions asked were Indian questions, the format and even the language spoken was English. Also in the movie the characters wore mostly western style clothes, indicating a the strength of western culture. Also luxury was depicted as with a western style of living with western goods as depicted by the gangster's life.

Advertising Appeals

At first, I couldn't think of any ads I thought were particularly persuasive recently and that I would actually have to look for one. Well I found one almost at random while web surfing.
The ad was for a remake of an old video game based on the James Bond movie Goldeneye. Now to most people, that means nothing, but to me and many like me, Goldeneye (the game, not the movie) was the source of days of entertainment. The reason the ad hit me strongly was because I enjoyed the original product and the ad made sure to closely link the new game to the old one and emphasize what was so fun about the game.
In terms of the lecture I guess the closest appeal was nurture. This was one of the earliest games I played and because of this I have a great deal of nostalgia for my time playing it. This game nurtured me into a gamer, and I still remember that today. Nurture is what you grew up with and I most certainly grew up playing Goldeneye.
The nostalgia invoked by this ad almost made me want to buy it. If you think that's not much, consider the fact that I usually ignore ads entirely, which is why I had to choose this ad to write about.

The Three Act Structure

Well the best film I know for a three-act structure is the movie Inglourious Basterds. Admittedly the acts are pretty much spelled out for the viewer, but I still think it's a good example to use. Ironically Professor Ramirez-Berg pointed out Tarantino as using a lot of alternative plotting in other movies in his article.
While keeping spoilers to minimum, I will try to explain the acts and the events in them. The first act is the standard story setup. A girl's family is killed by the SS and their commander, and the Basterds are formed setting up both groups of protagonists. It also sets up beginning of the conflict that the main characters have. The climax of the act is when the Nazis plan to have a film premiere in the theater owned by the girl with the murdered family. Because of this, she now can take her revenge.
The second has the complications. The girl decides to implement a plan to assassinate the Nazis on her own. The Basterds learn of the premiere and want to kill the Nazis themselves. Their plans go awry in a shootout, but they decide to continue because of who is attending the movie, escalating the stakes. This decision  is the climax of the act.
The final act is the climax of not just the movie, but of the twin assassination plans. Two of the Basterds, including their leader, are captured by the SS commander while the rest of the team put their plan into action. The girl's plan also works and together the two groups kill all the Nazis in the theater. However, the climax of the movie, and act happens later, when the leader of the Basterds makes a deal with the SS commander to escape with him.

Episodic Sitcoms

Well first off, in all honesty, I don't watch sitcoms and never have. I dislike them. Unfortunately this means I don't have any personal experience with the things that have been discussed really.
However I do have some knowledge of an episodic way of storytelling, even if it's more from childhood cartoons. When a series is set up episodically, it is less a connected story and more a collection of events that happen to a group of people. At the end of every episode, all is normal, and nothing's changed. The audience is taught a lesson, but the characters don't seem to learn anything, and are back to their normal selves the next week. Things are fixed and unchanging from one story to the next going as far as having characters that never seem to age. A story is set up and resolved all in one episode and is never mentioned again.
A show that seems to be very episodic (in what I've watched of it) is The Simpsons. At this point I think all the kids; even Maggie the baby might be older then me but they haven't aged a day. Similarly, Homer seems to get in some trouble every episode but in the end it's all solved and life continues unchanged from one week to the next. This works for the show because they have found what works for them and episodic writing allows them to stay with that. Sitcoms aren't very serious and audiences don't expect deep characters or situations. They just want something amusing and predictable. If they had to have serious development, it wouldn't be as funny, which would go against the point of a sitcom. Maybe the shallowness is why I don't like sitcoms. Or maybe they aren't funny to me.

Camera Shots in Lord of the Rings

Well I admit that I have never watched a movie and paid much attention to the difference between long, medium and close up shots. As a consequence the only ones that have made an impression on me is the really obvious changes between them.  The best example is in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.
The one sequence I remember best is the battle for the city of Minas Tirith in Return of the King. During the battle they had extreme long shots to very close in shots.
For instance multiple times the camera would zoom out and show the entire battlefield and the armies on it. This shot served to give the viewers a sense of a giant battle happening as well as highlight the differences of the armies; Mordor huge and cloaked in darkness, and the humans in bright armor.
The camera would zoom in more for a detailed medium shot after this normally. this served the purpose of showing the viewer more details of the unfolding battle; who was winning. It also allows us to track our heroes as they perform their heroic deeds while still allowing us to see some of the general battle. You could see Gandalf killing the evil orcs but still see that there were many more behind them.
Finally the camera would zoom close up and give us a better idea of what our heroes were feeling at that moment. You could see the loss of hope from the individual human soldiers during their final stand, the determination of the cavalry riding in to save the day and Aragorn's confidence when he appeared leading the army of the dead. The close-ups reminded us that the heroes we were watching in battle had emotions we could relate to, or in the case of the orcs, that they were evil and vicious.

The Star System

I think the star system was particularly important to how classical Hollywood functioned. How it worked kind of reminds me of sport franchises today. The Dallas Cowboys got Tony Romo and associated him with their brand and whenever you hear his name you think of the Cowboys. Similarly, the movie studios tied their fortunes with the abilities of their stars. When their stars were well known and performed well, the studio made money. People went to the movies to see their favorite actor or actress. Since those stars were tied to a studio, this translated into those people going to see the studio's movies.
Since the stars were so important, the movies had to be tailored to the stars' strengths. The movies were written in such a way that the stars were front and center at all times. while it might be kind of odd for people to dance and sing in a movie, if Judy Garland was good at dancing and singing, dance and sing they would. Also, things would tend to repeat themselves. A star was discovered to be good at playing a certain type of character such as Bogart's hardboiled detective, and would play that same character over and over again, with only the name changing. The typecasting of stars still happens today and is really obvious in the case of actors like Michael Cera or Will Ferrell.
The Wizard of Oz is a good example in which a star dominated the movie. It was originally adopted from a book and was changed quite a bit for Judy Garland. All those musical numbers weren't quite there in the original story, but Garland could sing beautifully, so they were added in to fit the movie to her talents. Also as was brought in lecture, not many people know the director or most of the supporting cast, but everyone knows the star, and that's just how the studio wanted it.

All in the Family

All in the Family was pretty different from most family-comedy shows made today. First off, Archie's bigotry is something that would never make it to the final product. Today, Archie's actions, even to make a point on how bigotry is bad, really isn't acceptable. Another point of disconnect is the fact that the entire show is based around the message the author is trying to deliver. Shows today wouldn't repeat the same lesson over and over, they try to branch out more.
However, some things haven't changed since All in the Family. First of all, comedy is first and foremost. Writers then and writers now know that in order to get an audience to listen to your point, you have to grab their attention with good, funny writing. Another thing they have in common is the conflict within the family. In most episodes of shows like this, they get into an argument, and by the end of the show, it's resolved, and somebody's learned something.
All in the Family deals with quite a few issues that don't get so much airtime anymore. Things like race, gender identity, and bigotry don't often make appearances on family comedies anymore. Part of the reason for this is that the issues involved  have been worked out. There aren't many Archies around anymore, and minorities for the most part have equal rights that used to be a subject with so much controversy around it. Another reason we no longer bring up such issues is that people have gotten much more sensitive about them. No one wants to offend anyone, and writers are under pressure to not make anything to stir up controversy.

Evolution of the Radio Industry

Government regulation of the radio industry in its earliest years allowed radio to become the medium today.
When a new technology becomes available, the U.S. government (or the government of any nation) will examine it to determine how it will affect the nation. From its analysis the government can decide if it needs to take action to regulate the new technology. Indeed, some technologies, like the internet, are derived from government projects. The purpose for regulation is to maximize positive effects and minimize negative ones and also to ensure that one person's use of the new technology does not adversely affect anyone else. Technology can generally expand in a more orderly way and with less negative effects with government intervention than if it was allowed to expand unchecked.
In the case of radio, the government had great effects on the beginning of radio. Straight off, radio was commandeered by the Navy for use in the First World War, which at least brought it some publicity and at most found it improved by the Navy. When it came back into the public domain the government had other effects as well. Firstly, they mandated that American radio stations must be owned by Americans, which prevented more established foreign interests from smothering the first American radio companies. Later the government stepped in again, this time to prevent AT&T from having too large a monopoly over the radio, which allowed for more variety in the future. Another important government action was the Radio act of 1927, which standardized frequencies, among other things. This prevented stations from interfering with one another. It also set standards which the radio industry followed for many years.

The connection between violent video games and violent behavior as explained by the cultivation theory

Many people have expressed concern about the effects of violent games on children. While initially I didn't understand what their arguments were based on; I now realize that their logic was grounded in the cultivation theory.
The cultivation theory is the idea that as people are exposed to an idea and have it reinforced, that idea greatly effects them. Even though the idea might be untrue, the person will take it as truth. For these people, unrealistic ideas and stereotypes become the norm and they expect them to be the truth. This can obviously adversely affect behavior if the person is exposed to violent and otherwise unacceptable behavior.
Nowhere is unacceptable behavior closer to people than video games, or so some people argue. Since people are themselves acting badly, they see these acts as something that they can do themselves. Now I'm a gamer myself, and I don't really agree with these conclusions, as I haven't been affected by playing violent games over the years. I never understood why people thought video games could affect behaviors. How ever the cultivation theory makes a fairly good argument as to why they could. If an impressionable child plays a lot of video games they could come to believe that the behaviors presented in games as normal, as opposed to only acceptable in the virtual world. The cultivation explained the other side of the argument to me in a logical way. I still don't agree, but at least I can better understand the argument.
link to an article on the controversy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversy

Hegemony and internet censorship

The concept of hegemony and the need to maintain it in order to maintain it explains the actions of China and its censorship of the internet.
 Hegemony is the ability of the upper elements in society to keep power over the lower elements. Hegemony is basically the amount of control the rulers have over the ruled. It is especially important if the rulers wish to implement policies that do not benefit the majority and instead only benefit the ruling class. The better control the upper class has over media, the better the hegemony, and the easier it is to maintain. Once hegemony takes effect, it must be maintained, otherwise it will be refuted, and in time, will cease to function. In today's world with the ability of the internet to reach many more people, much tighter control over the media is required.
A good example of of tight control is the argument between Google and China over internet censorship. China puts fairly strict control over the content its citizens can access, which Google disagreed with. With a bit of thought it is not hard to realize why China censors its citizen's internet access. The status quo in China benefits the upper class of China at the expense of the majority of the population. The only way the current situation is allowed to continue is because of the upper classes hegemonic control over the lower classes. Free and unrestricted access to the internet would show the lower class a better life and help wear and eventually destroy the hegemony of the ruling class of China and lead to a situation much less beneficial to them. So this why they wish to censor the internet, to maintain an unequal status quo. This is a very obvious example of hegemony and the need to maintain it.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8582233.stm

Why RTF 305?

Well first off, I'm pretty different from most people in the class in that I'm not a RTF major or anything close to that. Right now I'm a freshman in Undergraduate studies but I want to get into the business school.I decided to use this year to get as many of the required classes finished so I can concentrate on my major later. Looking through the VAPA courses, I was very depressed about my options, as I didn't see much I wanted. However, that was until I saw this course. I figure I know more about (and enjoy) radio, television and film than Art history or something like that. Right now I'm pretty confident I made the right choice. When I looked through the book, I saw topics about which I was fairly familiar with. More than that, the list of movies that would be screened for the class includes several movies that I really like, and several more that I have heard lots of good things about. In fact as I am writing I am looking at the poster of The Godfather hanging on my wall. It looks like this one:
http://www.easyart.com/art-prints/Celebrity-Image/The-Godfather-%28Red-Rose%29-331505.htmlI wanted this one, signed by Brando but it was most certainly out of my budget.
http://www.antiquitiesca.com/products/index.php?_a=viewProd&productId=445
In terms of what blogs I follow, I'm afraid I don't really, at least in a traditional sense but sometimes I use
http://gizmodo.com/ ever since I heard that it had pictures of the new iPhone when they shouldn't have. I found it to be pretty up to date on new tech.
Anyway I hope I'll do well in the class regardless of my intended major.