Working through a Media-Specific Analysis

I’ve gotten many questions about the media-specific analysis so I thought it might be useful for you to see how I would approach the assignment.

I’ve worked through how I would approach the assignment using Frankenstein film adaptations. I hope this is helpful and that you can see how the focus on the medium is different than a typical research essay or literary analysis or criticism. The goal is that the media-specific analysis draws attention to the way that the medium impacts how a text is received, understand, viewed by its audience and the meaning that is made from it. This is complex because textuality (as we are learning) is layered. We have source texts, iterative texts, adaptations, paratexts and intertexts all inside of various media. So, if you feel a bit overwhelmed and in over your head, that’s totally okay. In fact, I anticipated it but that’s also kind of part of the process of learning and writing in new ways.

Mcluhan reminds us there is a message that lies in how any message is conveyed. Read that again. There’s an idea that part of what is being displayed to the audience, the very meaning and message of a text is the medium itself.

So if you took a Wikipedia entry, for example, McLuhan would argue that the real effect on those reading an Wiki entry comes through the way the ideas (some background, initial description, further links, and resources) are conveyed and not necessarily the ideas themselves. And so the nature of a wiki- its ways of conveying content, of linking, of the kinds of writing and reading experiences it emphasizes and enforces, is the message. You don’t have to agree with Mcluhan, of course, but I hope that shows you how examining the media form helps to deepen our understanding of texts and textuality.

The link to my rough outline is here.