Narrative analysis of Dan in Real Life

Last Friday night I went with my family to see the new movie Dan in Real Life, starring Steve Carell, Juliette Binoche and Dane Cook. After reading chapter 16 and discussing narrative structure in class, I decided to take a closer look at the movie and analyze it according to the lessons in the textbook.

Dan (Carell) is the main character who is an advice columnist and a single parent of three daughters. He lost his wife four years ago and is doing a fine job of raising a family alone. This is the stable situation of the narrative. It sets up the story for what is to come next.

Dan takes his daughters on a trip to the family cabin for a weekend with their relatives. Dan ends up meeting an attractice woman named Marie (Binoche) at a bookstore and gets her phone number after spending an afternoon together. This is the first woman that Dan has had such strong feelings for since his wife passed away. He is feeling pretty good on his way home. Back at the cabin, Dan's brother Mitch (Cook) is excited for Dan to meet his new girlfriend that he is crazy about. Enter Marie and our disruption of the stable situation.

Now the narrative has its plot line. This disruption has the viewers making predictions about what happens next and how the film will end, which is just what the director wants to keep the audience involved. Understably, this conflict makes for some awkward and humerous scenes between Dan, Marie and Mitch. I don't want to give away the end of the movie, but there are other minor conflicts and a few smaller plot lines going on before the eventual resolution (stable situation 2).

Dan also goes under a character growth pattern that is outlined in the textbook and parallels the narrative structure. We see Dan as somewhat of a flawed character in the beginning, even though he is in a stable situation. Then his character experiences a problem, which is the same as the disruption. Next, Dan undergoes a series of tests a growth, which in the end makes him a better character during his stable situation 2.

Overall I thought this was a good movie. It followed narrative and character structures in a logical way that kept me as an audience member interested in the story. I really started to feel for Dan's character by the end. I would classify it as a romantic comedy. Carell and Cook excelled in their roles showing versatility beyond just comedy.

Breaking down American Beauty

"Look closer" is the tagline of the movie American Beauty. This phrase fits the movie very well. When you look closer at each character in the film, you discover something they are hiding or another side of them. For example, when Angela is around others she acts like she is better than everyone because of her looks. She makes fun of others and bosses people around, even her own friend Jane. However, in the end we find out the reason she acts this way is because she is insecure. She feels the need to put others down to feel better about herself.

Ricky is another character who we find has a deeper side to him. Angela and Jane see him as a creep at first because of the way he acts, mainly saying strange things and videotaping Jane from a distance. But Jane sees something interesting in him when she says, "He's so confident." She eventually gets to know Ricky very well and they start dating. She discovers he is very emotional and has a very demanding military father. Jane is also drawn to Ricky because she is also seen as somewhat of an outcast.

By the end of the film we see a new side of all the main characters. The deconstruction of these ideologies is a major theme of the movie. Each character of has their own system of ideas that goes through a transformation when they learn something about theirselves by the end. What is the American Dream? This is what Lester and his family ask themselves. They have a nice house in a nice neighborhood and the parents have nice jobs; their lives are fairly normal. This is exactly the problem. Lester, Carolyn and Jane all feel like they are stuck in a normal, average life that isn't going anywhere, up or down. They all have different ways of coping. Lester starts working out to impress Angela, Carolyn has an affair, Jane has a relationship with Ricky. In the end they all realize that their life is fine the way it is. This is examplified by the plastic bag that Ricky videotaped. It is a simple object floating in the wind. It is a metaphor for the way the family lives material lives. But it is empty, and Ricky thinks this is beautiful. This suggests that their lives are beautiful without the material things in them. All they need is each other.

Culture jamming and advertising

Looking for an idea this week, I decided to further explore culture jamming after we talked about Zach's blog on Wednesday and because the idea intrigued me in terms of how meanings are changed in texts. I eventually entered a website that was all about culture jamming. The site's opening statement explains that, "Most people still function under this rationalist model: 'Change will come if enough people understand the problem rationally and intellectually.'"

The site then argues that rationality and itellect are no longer adequate tools by themselves and that it is a struggle to understand meanings of texts. The site has a very negative opinion of the media calling it "poisonous, symbolic system," and focuses mainly on the advertising aspect of the media. Something that really made sense to me was it's view of how advertising has evolved. The site states how, in the beginning, the simple goal of advertising was to inform people about the product. However, it evolved into what it is today. The focus of advertising today is portraying the people who use the product and not the product itself. Advertising has become so much more that what is on the surface.

I agree that advertising is now a very complex way of sending a message. If one digs deep enough into the text, they will likely find numerous ideologies presented. Adveritsers do this on purpose. They spend a lot of time and money into developing an ad until they feel it demonstrates what they want it to. There are subtle things that are directed to get consumers to buy their product. But I feel like advertisers are selling themselves or a lifestyle more than they are selling a product. That's how advertisers approach it, I think. I am not a professional advertiser or makereter, but these are the ideas if have come to understand through many of the communication classes I have taken thus far.

Back to culture jamming...The site describes this as the introduction of radical ideas. We defined it as taking pleasurable texts and reworking them to send a new message. The site is dedicated to taking some popular ads and messages in today's corporate world and reworking them to have new meanings that are often comical but also catch your attention and make you think about what is really behind the ad.

Black music exploited for hundreds of years

I want to expand on an idea we talked about in class on Monday, Oct. 8. Our discussion that day was centered on dominant ideology and doing ideological work. I believe it was Brian who gave us an example to illustrate the point. He said something like hip-hop music was created by African Americans as a form of their own entertainment but has since been exploited as mainstream culture by the media. by That was all that was said Monday; I made a small note of it in case I wanted to turn it into something bigger for a blog idea. My wish was granted when Wednesday we analyzed three different songs and their meanings. We noted again how hip-hop music was initially a way for blacks to talk about things they dealt with growing up: poverty, bad neighborhoods, crime, drugs, sex, etc. This was their way of expressing themselves through their own form of music.

Somewhere along the line, someone got the idea that this type of music could become popular and make someone rich. So hip-hop became more and more popular and became mainstream culture. On page 174 of our text it reads, "Althusser wanted to understand how ideology was transmitted socially, how it was that people took and accepted the values of the dominant groups even if these views might not be in everyone's interests." I think this applies to hip-hop because it wasn't accepted in social culture by the dominant groups at first. But once the media said it was ok, it was like the rest of society felt it was ok to accept it.

This topic overlapped a little bit with my African American Literature class. We talked about how blacks created other types of music in the same way that they created hip-hop. Even as far back as slavery, blacks would sing songs of the struggles. This would eventually become the first wave of blues music, which like hip-hop was eventually accepted by others, in this case whites. Whites then dominated the blues genre, while blacks kept creating new ways to express themselves. They also came up with soul and jazz music. Whatever type of music African Americans come up with for their own uses, they eventually are taken over, controlled, and tweaked by the media and the rest of society.

Young people becoming desensitized to news

My journalism class recently discussed our thoughts about why statistics show that most teenagers and 20-somethings pay hardly any attention to what is going on in the world. This group of people are receiving less news than ever before in history, despite having the most access to news ever in history.

In class we are reading a book called "Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News," by David T.Z. Mindich. All types of news, print, broadcast, and internet, are all in decline in young audiences. Mindich gives several reasons for this change in news consumption. One reason is because of the internet and it's easy access to news and entertainment of all types, it is easy for people to become "selective consumers" of news. In other words, it makes it easier for people to only read what they want to read, selecting topics that interest them and shutting out news that doesn't. The problem is often people shut out the news that is most important.
This problem concerns many people because these young people will someday be leading this world we live in. The group of people that pay the most attention to news, according to Mindich, are wealthy, white, educated elderly. However, this group has the most reason to be complacent. This is what news companies refer to as the Catch-22: Why cover young people if in your news if they don't watch you? But why should they watch you if you don't cover them?

The areas of news that are most avoided by young people are politics and national conflicts. An idea came to me in our class discussion about "desensitization," a term in which we have also discussed before in our class. Desensitization is the concept that long term exposure to media can make audiences progressively less sensitive or responsive to images and messages that made a strong impression when first encountered. I think that young people have become desensitized to news about the was in Iraq because of constant, daily coverage. Every time we arepresented with something about Iraq, we become less and less interested and caring. We are now at the point where we are totally desensitized from it having any impact on us whatsoever.

Another reason for declining numbers is negative news. There is a saying that "if it bleeds, it leads." This refers to news giving negative stories, such as deaths, more coverage than others. They think that this will grab the audience's attention but in my opinion people tune out to negative news.

I admit that I don't pay as much attention to news as I could or should. I read the headlines on the front page of a newspaper and generally go right to the sports section next because that is what interests me. In class we agreed that in college, students have so many things going on that it is hard to keep up with the news. After college we thought we would all pick it up, however statistics show that we won't because of the habits we are creating now. Maybe we will, maybe we won't. Only time will tell.