Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer:
Paper Instructions:

Please discuss in general, based on our discussions, articles and videos, the over-arching ideology that exists with women and science and how it influences norms in education, employment and work culture. Then please critique/discuss the film Hidden Figures. Go to Folder 3 to remind yourself how to do a media critique.  This is your first time, so try your best.  Discuss Production and Political Economy, Textual Analysis (the film itself is the text) and reception and use.  Just try your best.  Lastly, do you feel that the media (like Hidden Figures) is effective as a tool of resistance towards ending stereotypes and recreating ideologies? 

Folder 3 notes: 


TEXT:  In our world text can be actual written articles or research, audio/radio, television shows films and even some kinds of media artwork.

NORMS:  Things we have come to accept as “normal” in our society.  The way we are used to doing thing.  Unspoken rules. ex: All little girls wear pink.

IDEOLOGY: An ideology is a set of normative beliefs and values that a person or other entity follow that rely on basic assumptions about reality that may or may not have any factual basis.  ex: patriarchy 



CRITICAL ANALYSIS APPROACH - This is the lens that we will use in examining the depiction of women in media:

Media Expert, Douglas Keller sites a three-prong approach to cultural media analysis and ultimate literacy:  Production and Political Economy, Textual Analysis and Studies of Reception and Use 

A.) Production and Political Economy:  We must always examine the source of the media.  Who is behind the creation?  Is it a media conglomerate?  If so, what is the positioning of this company and how does this positioning effect the texts produced. Is the text created in the form of what will be most marketable?  Make the most money?  How does this aspect play into the creation of the cultural text?  Does the creation play into the existence of already established cultural norms in order to create the most money or strengthen/resist cultural norms for political or class ideologies of the media producers?

B.) Textual Analysis: When analyzing texts it is important to look at dominant messaging and sub-messaging of the text?  What are the codes and ideologies being affirm or resisted in the text?  What is the Qualitative Analysis versus Quantitative Analysis?: (Qualitative: What does the text speak to in regards to gender, race, sexuality, class, nation) and (Quantitative: How many times is a particular code or device repeated in the text for effect of the qualitative messaging)

C:) Reception and Use:  How audiences internalize the media culture they consume?  Most people do it passively depending on how manipulating and persuasive the media is... most times, audiences fall in line with the dominant norms portrayed or re-established at the end of most text. The different ways or perspectives of audience reception, depends on the audience (race, class, gender, sexuality, etc).  And in some cases, there is audience push-back or appropriation and even redistribution. This redistribution is a sense of use by the audience -- memes is a good example -- This used distribution occurs to make larger cultural statements that sometimes go along with the films societal messaging and sometimes pushing back depending on the audience and their beliefs.