All Media Texts Tell a Story
Media Texts “All Media Texts Tell a Story”
In most broadcast programs, language is primarily used to tell the story, whether it is to promote a product or gain a job promotion, to make one laugh or cry, to ask for forgiveness or convict a criminal, to get married or divorced, to convince our children to do one thing versus another.
We don’t need to get stuck in any particular story. That’s where Cowen gets it wrong, or even right; He presents a list of types of stories that is mixed up and incomplete. We’re not limited to battles or journeys. And to say stories are novels or plays mixes up the metaphors. As Cowen himself admits, stories get us out of bed, but again, we’re not stuck with any one story, we can change our story patterns and contents easily, in fact, we do that all the time. The combinations are probably close to infinite. After all, the tremendous success that popular movies and the great stories enjoy is a testament to the possibilities, not to the limitations of story-telling. We should embrace our need to make sense of the mess, not embrace the mess.
Whether you are writing or reading a book, a script, a blog post, a training class, or just like telling stories or watching movies, take this “therefore or but”, not only how to identify the entertainment value of a story, but how to revisit them in order to understand them and solve structural problems. South Park especially, as well as The Simpsons and Family Guy ignored this old, forced, and actually useless pyramid method of story-telling and consider taking the “therefore and but” lesson even further.
The Simpsons has broken the mould for television production. When we first saw it on our screens, it stood out from everything else as an exciting and dynamic program. It showed that primetime television could be witty and incisive. The Simpsons is intelligent entertainment. As social satire, it makes us laugh at ourselves, using humour intelligently to undermine our beliefs. Apart from all
In most broadcast programs, language is primarily used to tell the story, whether it is to promote a product or gain a job promotion, to make one laugh or cry, to ask for forgiveness or convict a criminal, to get married or divorced, to convince our children to do one thing versus another.
We don’t need to get stuck in any particular story. That’s where Cowen gets it wrong, or even right; He presents a list of types of stories that is mixed up and incomplete. We’re not limited to battles or journeys. And to say stories are novels or plays mixes up the metaphors. As Cowen himself admits, stories get us out of bed, but again, we’re not stuck with any one story, we can change our story patterns and contents easily, in fact, we do that all the time. The combinations are probably close to infinite. After all, the tremendous success that popular movies and the great stories enjoy is a testament to the possibilities, not to the limitations of story-telling. We should embrace our need to make sense of the mess, not embrace the mess.
Whether you are writing or reading a book, a script, a blog post, a training class, or just like telling stories or watching movies, take this “therefore or but”, not only how to identify the entertainment value of a story, but how to revisit them in order to understand them and solve structural problems. South Park especially, as well as The Simpsons and Family Guy ignored this old, forced, and actually useless pyramid method of story-telling and consider taking the “therefore and but” lesson even further.
The Simpsons has broken the mould for television production. When we first saw it on our screens, it stood out from everything else as an exciting and dynamic program. It showed that primetime television could be witty and incisive. The Simpsons is intelligent entertainment. As social satire, it makes us laugh at ourselves, using humour intelligently to undermine our beliefs. Apart from all