Last semester I read Deborah Appleman's Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents for a course on teaching literature to adolescents. It focuses on applying these approaches to traditional canonical texts and I highly recommend it.
A summary of the critical approaches we covered this week follows.
1. Rhetorical: This was funny to me because rhetorical criticism is just that, CRITICISM. So, if you take that approach you're just looking at the text to formulate an argument. In my opinion, a good argument from any of the other schools of thought should draw upon these elements. 'Nuff said.
2. Semiotic: In short, the study of symbols. In a film: identifying the symbol, what it signifies, and to whom. From there, its implications. I'm thinking phallic symbol. I can't help it. Semiotics is tied to the school of Structuralism, which focuses on the unchanging meanings and structures found in language.
3. Narrative: Applying the plot structures of a particular film genre (i.e., Romantic Comedy) to critically examine how we understand texts and/or how those texts reflect cultural norms. We do this all the time with written texts; it simply mean studying a genre, Sci Fi perhaps, within another genre such as the Short Story.
3. Postructuralism: So, if Structuralists are all about finding this stable language/structure that defines meaning regardless of the particular text, a Poststructuralist argues that's totally impossible because there is no real consistent meaning in words. The argument is that the meanings held by these symbols (words or objects) is culturally-based.
Beach seems to simplify Poststructuralism in the classroom. Although I do think that examining the false dichotomies presented by the media is a worthy classroom exercise, I wouldn't exactly define that as Poststructuralist criticism, even at the high school level.
4. Postmodernism: As described by Beach, we can use this approach to examine the truth/reality of the media texts. Postmodernists would say that the only truth/reality is in the text itself, therefore contradictions found in the text can be used to "deconstruct" the text. Or something like that. I don't know. Maybe. If you know for sure please email me.
Postmodernism is closely related to the school of Deconstruction. Sadly, even proponents of these schools of though have difficulty defining themselves clearly. Are they doing that on purpose to prove their point? How annoying.
If Postructuralism is like stubbing my toe, then Postmodernism is like having it chopped off. By an ugly French man named Jacques Derrida. To me it's freakishly DEPRESSING. Also, this school of thought is associated in my mind with the "this poem means whatever you say it does" movement, which I DESPISE.
That being said, I think some films can lend themselves to a Postmodern/Deconstructionist reading. We talked about the movie Pleasantville in our group meeting last week. I think this is a one example, as the movie is set in an unreal "reality."
Critical Discourse Analysis
Beach makes a distinction between some of these critical theories on the basis that they deal not only with the use of language and symbolism, but also explicitly address specific political ideologies. Among these he includes:
1. Race Discourse, aka, Ethnics Studies
2. Class Discourse aka, Marxist Criticism.
Schools of critical theory I think should also be among this group include:
1. Postcolonial: Sort of self-explanatory; deals with after-effects of colonial rule. This school seeks to include works of marginalized populations in the literary canon. But, beyond that, it also questions the portrayal of colonization in canonical literature, etc. Supports efforts to write about indigenous cultures, which is seen as an effort at "decolonization." Similar to Ethnic and Feminist schools of criticism.
2. Feminist: See other blog entry.
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