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Media Culture
The structural model of the contents of audiovisual media texts on school and university topic *
Prof. Dr. Alexander Fedorov,
Rostov State University of Economics, B. Sadovaya, 69, Rostov on Don, 347902, Russia
1954alex@mail. ru
Dr. Anastasia Levitskaya,
Taganrog Institute of Management and Economics, Petrovskaya, 45, Taganrog, 237900, Russia [email protected]
Dr. Olga Gorbatkova
Rostov State University of Economics, B. Sadovaya, 69, Rostov on Don, 347902, Russia gorbatckova. olga@yandex. ru
* This research was funded by the grant of the Russian Science Foundation (RSF, project No. 17-18-01001) at the Rostov State University of Economics. Project theme: "School and university in the mirror of Soviet, Russian and Western audiovisual media texts". Head of the project is professor A. V. Fedorov.
Abstract. Based on the results of a comparative hermeneutic, anthropological and gender analysis of audiovisual media texts on the theme of the school and university, their classification, content models, modifications of the genre, ideology and stereotypes, the authors synthesized a structural model for the content of audiovisual media texts on the theme of the school and university:
The historical period of events in a media text: can be any time period but mostly is contemporary to film production.
Location, environment, everyday items: as a rule, the action takes place in the country where the media text is created; furnishings, household items (of varying degrees of quality) are school classes, university rooms, hallways, students' and teachers' homes.
Representation modes: generally, realistic, without grotesque (in TV series, drama, melodrama, detective, thriller); grotesque and/or caricature (in comedy, fantasy / horror genres).
Positive characters, their values, ideas, clothing, vocabulary, facial expressions, gestures: teachers and students with humanistic (socialist - in Soviet media texts) values, usually neatly dressed, good-looking, artistic in facial expressions and gestures, possessing rich vocabulary.
Negative characters, their values, ideas, clothing, physique, vocabulary, facial expressions, gestures: teachers and students with anti-human inclinations; clothes, appearance, vocabulary in this case can be any, although for students, the rough vocabulary and evocative appearance predominate.
A crucial change in the characters' life: a) a new teacher / student comes to school / university and faces opposition (including physical) from class / group of students, parents of students, other teachers; with lies, blackmail, aggression, authoritarian domination; b) in an ordinary learning environment, an unexpected event occurs (authoritarian domination, non-ordinary behavior, an act of violence, aggression, deception, suicide, blackmail, including sexual, etc.); c) a teacher has an affair with a student; d) students begin love relationships.
The problem that has arisen: reputation, health (and sometimes life) of a teacher / a student is under threat; a pupil/ a student becomes an outcast in a class / group, is alienated; characters feel uncomfortable because of certain characteristics of love relationships.
The search for a solution to the problem: the teacher / student struggle (often with colleagues and friends) with non-ordinary behavior, opposition (including physical) from the student, class / group of students, parents of students, other teachers; with lies, blackmail, aggression, authoritarian domination; an attempt of the teacher / student to establish good relations with other participants in the educational process and parents; an attempt by a teacher / student to hide his/her love feelings from outsiders (if it is a school context) or an attempt to adapt to each other (if it is a university).
Problem solutions: teachers / students (often with the help of colleagues and friends) win in the struggle against antagonists, class / group of students, parents of students, other teachers (relatively rare option: positive teachers / pupils lose in this fight); educators / students (often with the help of colleagues and friends) expose lies, blackmail, on the part of the student, class / group of students, parents of students, other teachers; teachers / students manage to establish good relations with other participants in the educational process and the parents of students, as a result of which they improve their academic performance; the relationship between a teacher and a high school student is usually broken up; in a teacher / university student's love relationship, harmony is possible, as well as, in the relationships between two students.
Keywords: media text, school, university, teacher, student, education.
Introduction
In our previous studies [Fedorov, 2017; Fedorov & Huston, 2017; Fedorov & Levitskaya, 2017; Fedorov et al., 2017] a comparative hermeneutic, anthropological and gender analysis of audiovisual media texts on the topic of school and university was made. Further on, we have classified, structured content models, genre modifications, ideology and stereotypes of Soviet, Russian and Western audiovisual media texts related to the treatment of the subject matter of the school and university.
Materials and methods
The material of our research is audiovisual media texts on the theme of school and university; the main method is a comparative hermeneutical and genre analysis of media texts (including: stereotype analysis, ideological analysis, identification analysis, iconographic analysis, plot analysis, character analysis, etc.); theoretical modeling. We have also analyzed academic works on the stated subject. Regarding the genre specifics, we have analyzed 1107 audiovisual media texts related to the subject of the school and university.
Discussion
An analysis of audiovisual media texts on the subject of the school and university showed that good teachers are often shown as outsiders using personal-oriented instruction, a dichotomy of inspiration / content, an emotional, aesthetic view of "good" learning. They not only teach, but learn, have a lasting influence on the lives of students. Moreover, these good teachers usually do not agree with the policy of the school administration and adapt the curriculum to the needs of their students. Good students in a similar way demonstrate creative inspiration, responsibility and creative attitude to learning, competitive spirit and friendly support [Chang-Kredl & Colannino, 2017; Dalton, 1995; Gregory, 2007; Marcus & Stoddard, 2007]. A devoted teacher can even sometimes sacrifice one's family interests or health for the sake of his/her students, and often uses non-traditional means to achieve his/her teaching goals.
Bad teachers in audiovisual media texts are portrayed as unpleasant, authoritarian, heartless, strange, boring, unfriendly, unfair, incompetent, corrupt, evil, manipulative. The media images of bad students are built on the deviant behavior, propensity to lie, sexual challenges, and often in the total absence of any cognitive interests [Chang-Kredl & Colannino, 2017; Delamarter, 2015; Dalton, 1995; 2013; Gregory, 2007; Marcus & Stoddard, 2007]. Of course, in the Soviet media texts, the images of good and bad students had their own peculiarities associated with accentuation of their commitment to communist and socialist values, atheism (for positive characters) and, on the contrary, ignoring them (for negative characters, for example, school bullies).
Results
Comparison of media texts on the subject of the school and university in the USSR (from 1922 to 1991), Russia (1992 to present) and Western countries (from 1922 to the present) shows that in the 1920s their genre difference was very strong. While in the 1920s the comedy dominated (84%) in the West, in the USSR drama did (90%). Apparently, the political and economic situation in the country (associated, in particular, with class contradictions, the struggle against religion, homelessness and illiteracy, etc.) did
not give the creators of Soviet media texts on school reasons to smile, while American and European film industry clearly preferred entertaining genres.
The genre situation began to change somewhat in the period 1931-1955. On the one hand, the sound that was introduced to the cinema made it possible for Western audiovisual media to generously endow the comedic genre spectrum of school and university subjects with music, and on the other hand, it gave rise to the emergence of dramatic stories saturated with dialogues (which began to form about a third of the genre field). In the USSR, the Stalin regime, since the 1930s, began to allow cheerful twists within the framework of the school theme, as a result of which about 12% of audiovisual texts from 1931 to 1955 can be attributed to the comedy genre (which, of course, was four times less than in the West, but dramatically more than in the 1920s).
The strict Hays Code, which operated in the United States since 1930, for a long time did not allow media structures to use such spectacular genres as science fiction, thriller and horror within the school framework. However, in the mid-1950s, the censorship frames were weakened, and the world's first entertaining works, based on the synthesis of a fantasy and a horror film: I Was a Teenage Werewolf, 1957 and Monster On The Campus, 1958 came out on screens.
Almost simultaneously, with the dominant comic genre (58%) in the western media texts of the 1950s, dramatic key was intensified in stories about school life (The Blackboard Jungle, the USA, 1955). The share of drama genre significantly grew: from 1956 to 1968 about 63% of western audiovisual media texts on school theme were dramas, that is almost the same quantity as in the USSR during the period.
The thaw period (1956-1968) in the USSR caused an influx of not only comedies (17%), but also melodramas (10%), the first detective story also appeared, which was set in the boarding school (Shadows of the Old Castle, 1966). The stagnation period (1969-1985) consolidated this trend in the USSR: the number of comedy audiovisual texts on the school/university theme was 22%, melodramas - 10%.
Sexual revolution, of course, almost did not affect the Soviet sociocultural context, caused in the West 1970s a surge of erotic comedies; in any case, they (mainly Italian) accounted for at least a third of the then comic spectrum of audiovisual media texts on the school topic.
The revelatory pathos of "perestroika" (1986-1991) led to a dramatic increase in the level of dramas (92%) on the theme of school and university in the USSR, entertaining genres became marginal. Whereas in the West, on the contrary, the share of media texts about the school / university in the genres of a thriller, fantasy and horror increased significantly (and comprised in total 26%).
While in the USSR since the 1970s there were media texts on the school theme belonging to science fiction or fantasy genre (The Secret of the Iron Door, 1970, The Adventures of Electronics, 1979), then there were no horrors during that or later period. But in the post-Soviet era school theme in Russia, though rarely (3%), was still adapted to the genre of the thriller. But more importantly is that in the Russian period (from 1992 to the present), the number of comedy media texts on the school/university theme (40%) for the first time in history has exceeded the corresponding number of western media texts (35%), where, on the contrary, coverage of school realities became more dramatic.
Data on the genres of the 1107 audiovisual media texts analyzed in the study are presented in
Table 1.
Proceeding from the results of a comparative hermeneutic, anthropological and gender analysis of audiovisual media texts on the theme of school and university, obtained in our previous studies [Fedorov, 2017; Fedorov & Huston, 2017; Fedorov & Levitskaya, 2017; Fedorov et al., 2017), the classification content models, modifications of genres, ideology and stereotypes of Soviet, Russian and Western audiovisual media texts dealing with the subject of school and university, we synthesized a structural model for the content of audiovisual media texts on the theme (see Scheme 1) as follows:
The historical period of events in a media text: can be set in any time period but mostly is contemporary to film production.
Location, environment, everyday items: as a rule, the action takes place in the country where the media text is created; furnishings, household items (of varying degrees of quality) are school classes, university rooms, hallways, students' and teachers' homes.
Representation modes: generally, realistic, without grotesque (in TV series, drama, melodrama, detective, thriller); grotesque and/or caricature (in comedy, fantasy / horror genres).
Positive characters, their values, ideas, clothing, vocabulary, facial expressions, gestures: teachers and students with humanistic (socialist - in Soviet media texts) values, usually neatly dressed, good-looking, artistic in facial expressions and gestures, possessing rich vocabulary.
Table 1. Data on studied genres of audiovisual media texts related to school/university theme
Time frames and countries Total number of audiovisua l media texts related to school/ university Media texts' genre distributioi (as % to the total number of media texts in the si oecific time frame)
Drama Comedy Melodrama Detective/ Thriller Science fiction Horror Other
1922-1930
Western countries 13 9 84 7 0 0 0 0
The USSR 10 90 0 0 0 0 0 10
1931-1955
Western countries 79 35 58 7 0 0 0 0
The USSR 33 88 12 0 0 0 0 0
1956-1968
Western countries 44 63 27 2 0 6 2 0
The USSR 46 71 17 10 2 0 0 0
1969-1985
Western countries 152 46 38 7 4 1 4 0
The USSR 127 67 22 10 0 1 0 0
1986-1991
Western countries 66 35 29 9 4 9 13 1
The USSR 42 92 2 2 4 0 0 0
1992-2018
Western countries 401 39 35 7 7 3 8 1
Russia 94 37 40 17 3 3 0 0
Total 1107
Negative characters, their values, ideas, clothing, physique, vocabulary, facial expressions, gestures: teachers and students with anti-human inclinations; clothes, appearance, vocabulary in this case can be any, although for students, the rough vocabulary and evocative appearance predominate.
A crucial change in the characters' life:
- a new teacher / student comes to school / university and faces opposition (including physical) from class / group of students, parents of students, other teachers; with lies, blackmail, aggression, authoritarian domination;
- in an ordinary learning environment, an unexpected event occurs (authoritarian domination, non-ordinary behavior, an act of violence, aggression, deception, suicide, blackmail, including sexual, etc.);
- a teacher has an affair with a student;
- students begin love relationships.
The problem that has arisen: reputation, health (and sometimes life) of a teacher / a student is under threat; a pupil/ a student becomes an outcast in a class / group, is alienated; characters feel uncomfortable because of certain characteristics of love relationships.
The search for a solution to the problem:
- the teacher / student struggle (often with colleagues and friends) with non-ordinary behavior, opposition (including physical) from the student, class / group of students, parents of students, other teachers; with lies, blackmail, aggression, authoritarian domination;
- an attempt of the teacher / student to establish good relations with other participants in the educational process and parents; an attempt by a teacher / student to hide his/her love feelings from outsiders (if it is a school context) or an attempt to adapt to each other (if it is a university).
Problem solutions:
- teachers / students (often with the help of colleagues and friends) win in the struggle against antagonists, class / group of students, parents of students, other teachers (relatively rare option: positive teachers / pupils lose in this fight);
- educators / students (often with the help of colleagues and friends) expose lies, blackmail, on the part of the student, class / group of students, parents of students, other teachers; teachers / students manage to establish good relations with other participants in the educational process and the parents of students, as a result of which they improve their academic performance;
- the romantic relationship between a teacher and a high school student is usually broken up;
- in a teacher / university student's love relationship, harmony is possible, as well as, in the relationships between two students.
Conclusions
The synthesis of this model led us to the conclusion that, despite the differences in ideological orientation, it is generally characteristic of most Soviet, Russian and Western audiovisual media texts on school and university theme. However, the concept of a "good" character (a teacher, a student) has significantly different ideological coloring in Soviet and Western audiovisual media texts.
Certainly, the above structural model of the content of audiovisual media texts on the school and university theme is a broad generalization. In fact, the content of media texts can include certain nuances, exceptions. For example, in the finale of a media text, unconventional students may remain holding their convictions, as they are not amenable to pedagogical / parental influences. In extreme cases in the finale, a teacher may risk death at the hands of aggressive students (of course, in Soviet media texts such a plot twist was not allowed). Nonetheless, the common aspects outlined are noticeable in over a thousand media texts analyzed.
Scheme 1. Structural Model of the Contents of Audiovisual Media Texts on School / University Topic
The historical period of events in a media text:
can be set in any time period but mostly is contemporary to film production
Location, environment, everyday items:
generally, the action takes place in the country where the media text is created; furnishings, household items (of varying degrees of quality) are school classes, university rooms, hallways, students' and teachers' homes.
Representation modes:
generally, realistic, without grotesque (in TV series, drama, melodrama, detective, thriller); grotesque and/or caricature (in comedy, fantasy / horror genres).
"Good" characters, their values, ideas, clothing, vocabulary, facial expressions, gestures:
teachers and students with humanistic (socialist - in Soviet media texts) values, usually neatly dressed, good-looking, artistic in facial expressions and gestures, possessing rich vocabulary.
"Bad" characters, their values, ideas, clothing, physique, vocabulary, facial expressions, gestures: teachers and students with anti-human inclinations; clothes, appearance, vocabulary in this case can be any, although for students, the rough vocabulary and evocative appearance predominate.
A crucial change in the characters' life:
- a new teacher / student comes to school / university and faces opposition (including physical) from class / group of students, parents of students, other teachers; with lies, blackmail, aggression, authoritarian domination;
- in an ordinary learning environment, an unexpected event occurs (authoritarian domination, non-ordinary behavior, an act of violence, aggression, deception, suicide, blackmail, including sexual, etc.);
- a teacher has an affair with a student; d) students begin love relationships.
The problem that has arisen: reputation, health (and sometimes life) of a teacher / a student is under threat; a pupil/ a student becomes an outcast in a class / group, is alienated; characters feel uncomfortable because of certain characteristics of love relationships.. ,
-1--
The search for a solution to the problem:
- the teacher / student struggle (often with colleagues and friends) with non-ordinary behavior, opposition (including physical) from the student, class / group of students, parents of students, other teachers; with lies, blackmail, aggression, authoritarian domination;
- an attempt of the teacher / student to establish good relations with other participants in the educational process and parents; an attempt by a teacher / student to hide his/her love feelings from outsiders (if it is a school context) or an attempt to adapt to each other (if it is a university).
Problem solutions:
- teachers / students win in the struggle against antagonists, class / group of students, parents of students, other teachers (relatively rare option: "good" teachers / pupils lose in this fight);
- educators / students expose lies, blackmail, on the part of the student, class / group of students, parents of students, other teachers; teachers / students manage to establish good relations with other participants in the educational process and the parents of students, as a result of which they improve their academic performance;
- the romantic relationship between a teacher and a high school student is usually broken up;
- in a teacher / university student's romantic relationship, harmony is possible, as well as, in the relationships between two students.
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