Blog Post 2

Sherlock has become one of my all-time favorite shows. The very first scene involves john Watson, a soldier who appears to have serious PTSD. His therapist recommends that he begins to write a blog to help him transition into civilian lifestyle but Watson seems reluctant, he claims that “nothing ever happens to him”. Soon after we are introduced to the drama of the show, multiple deaths that appear to be suicides have become to appear. The police, including the character Lestrad, who has a connection to Sherlock Homes, so far has found no leads to the murders. Finally, we are introduced to Mr. Holmes himself. An eccentric man whose first introduction as a character is him beating up a corpse with a whip. While to most people Sherlock comes off as rude, he really means well he just happens to be a high functioning sociopath. Most trivial social formalities escape him due to his curiosity and high deducting skills. Sherlock’s methods are a lesson in semiotics, by findings signifiers in people’s behaviors, simple details as well as items that belong to that person help him deduce what kind of person they are. The problem with Sherlock is that he must find ways to occupy himself, otherwise he has the kind of personality to do drugs to occupy his mind. Watson, after being in the military has also developed an addictive personality. It turns out Watson does not have PTSD but instead likes to be in the action, just like Sherlock he has to find a way to occupy his bored mind. Their personality types complement each other in ways that help them be constructive members of society instead of being ostracized.     

Blog #3

Ever since I started taking this class, watching shows has become a lot more fun. Looking for the hidden details in a show is like a mystery. Findings the connections between characters and their motivations to do the things they do is what makes a show good. Ideas in a story become clearer to me the more times I watch an episode. The show Sherlock has become one of my favorite shows to analyze. Simple things like a comment a character makes or just a simple facial gesture can actually be a signifier to something deeper. The writing structure in each episode becomes more fluid and almost predictable. At times, knowing what kind of person each character is helped me to predict what they would do next. While sometimes I am wrong, there have been plenty of time where semiotics has proven to help me predict character development.

Besides helping me to better understand writing structure in shows, I’ve also learned to look at media through Marxist lenses. By doing so I feel as if it is easier to pick out which advertisements are meant for different social classes. A commercial for something like an apple watch, or a Ferrari is meant for the hierarchical elite. While a McDonalds commercial is meant for somebody in middle or lower class. What is interesting about these two commercials is that they are both run on the same channel. If you look at it from a Marxist perspective, you realize that this is a form of false consciousness. Commercials meant for two completely different types of people played on the same channel so that they appear to appeal to everyone instead of the intended audience.

Marxism

The Marxist lens of analysis is used to understand the dynamics of power in a media artifact. Marxism is a very interesting topic, it makes you question your reality and the society that you live in but in a good way. Marxism has three main concepts that make up the whole theory: ideology, hegemony and false consciousness. An ideology is simply the shared ideas and beliefs of a society. Hegemony is part ideology and also part culture, each culture has a different ideologies which lead to hegemony. The final concept, false consciousness is an idea that the higher elite brainwash the masses into believing whatever they want and convince them to be complacent of what they are given.  Just knowing about Marxism can help you analyze your society and find hidden meanings in media. Much like an episode of a TV show most people think has no intellectual value. From a Marxist point of view however, just one episode can teach you a lot about class conflict, and the downsides to working too much and how it can lead to things like alienation. An easy way to analyze a show is to start with finding the different hierarchical levels of each character. If you look at a show like how to get away with murder we can see s classic hierarchical structure with all the main characters. There is the elitist, professor Keating, who is in the highest standing amongst the main characters. From there, we have Bonnie and Frank, who work for Annalise, and have power over the students who work below them. Finally there are the students Wes, Michaela, Asher and Laurel who are at the lowest level and have to work the hardest to make the elite look good. As Marxism explains, the lowest class always works hard to make the higher up look good.              

Psychoanalytic Theory

To understand what psychoanalytic theory is, we must first introduce the man who came up with the theory. His name was Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist who is known as the father of psychoanalysis. Freud theorized that behavior is the result of the interactions among three component parts of the mind. The three components are: the id, ego and superego. These three components of the mind work on a structural basis and are all working on a mostly unconscious level. According the theory, personality develops during childhood and is shaped through a series of psychosexual stages oral, anal, phallic, and genital. Each psychosexual stage conflicts with the id, which is a person’s biological urges and superego, which determine their social and moral conscious. A good example of this theory can come from the show Wilfred, a show about a very depressed man who has an imaginary friend that looks like a man in a dog costume. While everyone else in the show sees Wilfred as a regular dog, the main character, Ryan sees Wilfred as a man dressed up as a dog that tries to help him become a happier person. Wilfred is Ryan’s id, he does what he wants when he wants without thinking and hardly ever considers of the reproductions. Ryan represents both the ego and superego, he holds himself to a certain moral standard and usually argues with Wilfred on what they should be doing together. When Wilfred wants to do something dangerous like steal a marijuana plant from Ryan’s neighbor, Ryan stops to consider what could happen and tries to argue that stealing is wrong. In the end Ryan is the one that stole the plants. Since Wilfred is just a figment of his imagination, in reality Ryan is having an internal conflict between all three of his components that make him who he is. Just like psychoanalytic theory explains, these conflicts are what determine what kind of person you become.