COM10499 - From the Bard to Bart: Media and Popular Culture (2018)

Not currently available in 2018

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.

• 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.

Learning outcomes

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.