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Unit of Study COM10499 - From the Bard to Bart: Media and Popular Culture (2014)

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Unit Snapshot

  • Enrolment information

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Unit description

This unit uses a range of popular culture forms such as TV shows, films, literature, advertising and contemporary music.  Students will study media and genre as well as advertising, music video, Disney and Pixar animation, kinder culture, and popular mainstream literature, and film, as well as interpretations of Shakespeare live performance, in order to examine how identities and ideologies are constructed and disseminated in society today. It will also explore the cult of celebrity, the role of genre and the power popular culture has to both uphold and challenge the status quo.

Unit content

  • The reality of TV: Introduction to popular culture and media
  • The desperation of soap opera: Codes, conventions, genre and generic hybridity
  • Honey, I've lost the plot: The evolution of TV drama
  • Comedy companies: Seinfeld, The Simpsons and situation comedy
  • Disney and the commodification of cultural values
  • Semiotics and signs in advertising
  • Strategies for reading film: Genre, gender and ideology in American Beauty
  • Muscles and masculinity … where have all the good men gone? James Bond versus Zoolander and The 40-Year-Old Virgin
  • The proud and the prejudice: Bridget Jones's Diary
  • The Bard meets Quentin Tarantino - two houses: Romeo and Juliet
  • I hate the music: Gender and sexual stereotypes in contemporary music.

Availabilities

Location Domestic International
Online Session 3 N/A

Learning outcomes and graduate attributes

Unit Learning Outcomes express learning achievement in terms of what a student should know, understand and be able to do on completion of a unit. These outcomes are aligned with the graduate attributes. The unit learning outcomes and graduate attributes are also the basis of evaluating prior learning.

On completion of this unit, students should be able to:

GA1: Intellectual rigour, GA2: Creativity, GA3: Ethical practice, GA4: Knowledge of a discipline, GA5: Lifelong learning, GA6: Communication and social skills, GA7: Cultural competence
Learning outcome count Learning outcome description GA1 GA2 GA3 GA4 GA5 GA6 GA7
1 identify different genres within popular culture and the constructedness of these
2 debate the significance of diverse popular cultural forms and their reception within the broad mediasphere
3 analyse the socio-historical development of the media and popular culture
4 examine the relationship between a variety of media (TV shows, films, animation, music, brands and advertising etc.) and analyse the impact of media upon the individual and global culture, in particular, the way different forms of media have changed patterns of consumption
5 reflect upon the socio-cultural impact of popular culture as a form of communication technology
6 analyse the relationships between media, popular culture, cultural transformations and psychosocial and politico-economic processes.

On completion of this unit, students should be able to:

  1. identify different genres within popular culture and the constructedness of these
    • GA1:
  2. debate the significance of diverse popular cultural forms and their reception within the broad mediasphere
    • GA2:
    • GA6:
  3. analyse the socio-historical development of the media and popular culture
    • GA1:
    • GA6:
  4. examine the relationship between a variety of media (TV shows, films, animation, music, brands and advertising etc.) and analyse the impact of media upon the individual and global culture, in particular, the way different forms of media have changed patterns of consumption
    • GA1:
  5. reflect upon the socio-cultural impact of popular culture as a form of communication technology
    • GA1:
    • GA2:
  6. analyse the relationships between media, popular culture, cultural transformations and psychosocial and politico-economic processes.
    • GA1:
    • GA6:

Prescribed learning resources

Prescribed Texts
  • No prescribed texts.

Prescribed Learning Resources may change in future Teaching Periods.