 So in our previous video, we started a discussion of what is critical media studies, but I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about that word critical or criticism more specifically and kind of define what it means within the realm of critical media studies. It may be a little different than what you think. So when we think about criticism, a lot of times we define criticism, we think of the expression of disapproval of someone or something based on perceived faults or mistakes. You think of that strict teacher that you had in school who was always correcting you about your English and, you know, back in the old old days wrapping you on the knuckles with a ruler or whatever. That kind of criticism where somebody's kind of knocking us down a little bit and telling us everything that we're doing wrong. That is not what we're doing in critical media studies. That's not the way we're using the word criticism or critical in critical media studies. In critical media studies, when we say criticism, what we mean is the analysis and judgment of the merits and faults of a literary or artistic work. So think about it like you're at a museum and you're looking at a fine piece of art or maybe a not-so-fine piece of art. It's really in your eye. You're analyzing it. You're examining that that work of art. You're examining that painting and thinking about it and thinking about and you're making judgments on the merits and the faults. They did this well. This could have been better. It speaks to me in this way but not in another way or those types of things and we're doing that with any literary or artistic work. That could be a painting but it could also be analyzing a book, a movie, a TV show, a painting, anything at all that we can consider a literary or artistic work. We're examining that through a particular framework which brings us to the next part. We're not telling them what all they did wrong necessarily. We're just examining and analyzing and judgment on the merits or faults of this artifact, what we're going to call an artifact. Any literary or artistic work that could be examined, we're going to call an artifact. When we do that, we're doing so in critical media studies. We're specifically doing so through a particular critical lens. That's going to be an important expression for us as well. A critical lens. My wife is a photographer. I'm not a photographer but my wife is a photographer. She's got all these different lenses for things and I have no idea what they do. She'll say, I need to get this line. I need to change my lens. I need to do this but they all do something different and they all provide different pictures and she's amazing. She's won awards for photography. They all do something different. I don't know what they are but that's what we're doing. We're swapping out these lenses so we can get a different perspective. For someone like me, I'm colorblind so now they have these colorblind glasses which are pretty amazing. Supposedly they totally change your perspective of the world. You see the colors now but we put on these different glasses and we see things differently. Or in the more modern context, I guess, we can think of it like on Instagram. You have different filters that you can use to change the shade of things. We're not going to change the shade of things but we're going to examine things through different perspectives and we're going to ask questions about these things. We're going to try and identify what it is these things mean. What are they getting at by asking critical questions from a particular framework or perspective? We may examine artifacts, for example, through the use of Marxist criticism or the Frankfurt School. Through an economic lens of capitalism versus Marxism, things like that. Or through psychoanalytic criticism where we're looking at the psychoanalysis of the creator and have the viewer and so forth. Or through feminist and gender studies to examine how those things might impact the way somebody perceives something or ethnic and race studies. Again, just providing us a different perspective. We're looking at it and applying the specific framework to these things to ask questions we could do. We could use the same artifact and look at it using all of those critical lenses and come to totally different conclusions because we're looking at it in totally different ways. It's important to remember that in critical media studies, there is no such thing as perfection. We're never going to find perfection and that's not what we're looking for. We're not trying to define perfection or find it. We're not going to find it. There's no sense of finality either. These things exist within a historical context. What's true from a perspective today may not be true next week or next year or so forth. There's no real sense of finality to these things. These are ongoing examinations when we look through these critical lenses. But it's important that we do so. It's important that we change our perspectives and look at it in different ways. As Kenneth Burke said, a way of seeing is also a way of not seeing. When we see something through a particular lens, that means we're not viewing it through another lens. We ought to be able to take off one set of glasses, so to speak. If we have the critical lens glasses of Marxist criticism, when we put on our other glasses that have feminist and gender studies, we're going to see that artifact in a whole new light. That's the whole idea that we'd be able to examine it in these different ways. Not necessarily even agree with it, agree with that perspective, or endorse that perspective, but be able to see it from that perspective. That's critical media studies. What are the different components that we're going to need in terms of being effective in critical media studies? Well, first of all, we have to come in, quite frankly, with a skeptical attitude. We have to see beyond what's obvious, what's beyond the surface level of things, and be able to dig a little deeper into this artifact and not just take things of face value, but look at examining as we're going to talk about some of these questions. Who is this person? What's their perspective in this? What's my baggage? Am I bringing? What perspective am I bringing? How does this fit into this framework? We have to see beyond the obvious and be coming with a skeptical attitude and be willing to view things with a new perspective and in a new light. We also have to be or to take on a humanistic approach, which is grounded in self-reflection. This idea of critical citizenship is inherent with a humanistic approach. There are things in the world that are known. There are things that are known. There are sciences, for example, science, mathematics, all the STEM type things. They know things. These are objective things that they put out these formulas on. These are objective truths and those things exist in some of those areas. But in critical media studies, everything is inherently subjective. We live in the gray. We don't have that objectivity. We don't have the luxury of that objectivity. In fact, we're specifically seeking out the opposite of that. We're living in the gray. Everything is inherently subjective and depends on your perspective and depends on that individual's perceptions. Nothing is ever fully complete or finished. Again, as we were talking about just a moment ago, this is an ongoing thing that, as you grow, it's going to change. As that artist grows, that could change their perspective on things and certainly time will have an impact. Some things age better than others. TV shows and songs and things like that, that age better than others. They were a product of that time. You have to view it in that context. But nothing is ever going to be complete or finished. We're going to examine it differently at a later time. So we have to have this humanistic approach. We can't be totally bound up with objectivity and think, well, I've got it right and there's no other way to see it. And it's this way forever. No, no, no. We live in the gray. We live in the subjective in critical media studies. So we've got to get comfortable with that. We also have to bring a political assessment. We have to identify things with the political, you know, have an eye toward political assessment. Whose interests are being served here? How do those interests create and define and sustain the existing power structure that we have? So we have to come in acknowledging the role of a political framework and political assessment and all of this and not just trying to set it aside because that's not really possible. Everything exists within this kind of political environment. So whose interests are being served and how do those interests create, define and sustain that power structure? So we're going to look at things from that perspective as well. And then finally we have to do so and we engage in critical media studies because we have a commitment to social justice. The end goal of all of this is not to be harsh and not to tell people why things are bad or why things are wrong. Again, that's not our kind of criticism. That's not what we're going for. The end goal here is to to better our social world, to improve our social world, and to enhance and increase social justice in the world by bringing different perspectives and by acknowledging other perspectives. Again, not necessarily endorsing or agreeing with them but being able to see them and to understand them better. Those perspectives better. Right? So we have this commitment to social justice. That's really why that's the core of why we engage in critical media studies to begin with. So those components, let's take a little bit into what are some of the questions that we may be asking. And this is going to change every, as we'll talk about, every perspective, every critical framework and critical lens will have different questions that kind of go along with it or inherent to that. But you know some of the just broader questions, some of the more common questions that we see in critical media studies include things like who created this artifact? Who was it that that made this and not just not just their name and not just you know whatever but who are they? Who are they as a person? Where are they from? What are their beliefs? What are their values? What are they trying to to indicate with this? What kind of baggage do they bring with them that went into creating this? Who is it that created this artifact? Why was it created? What's the purpose of this? What was their intention? What was the idea here? Not necessarily what it did. We know that sometimes things are created and then they're used for something totally different. But what was the intention with which it was created? Why was it why was it created? What's the theme? Is there a theme as you know in the almost always but what's the theme here? What is this person trying to to relate? What are they trying to communicate? What are they trying to accomplish with this? What are we supposed to learn from this? You know what is it that we're supposed to to take away? If we were to ask the artist or just from our perspective what are we supposed to do with this? How is this supposed to impact our lives? So we're going to ask these questions and again much more specific things that relate to those different frameworks they're going to carry with them different questions we're going to discuss each of those questions as we discuss the individual frameworks but but these are just you know to give me an idea there's some broad common questions that come up in critical media studies. A couple things to keep in mind as you start your journey into critical media studies a couple of things that are important first of all we have to separate the personal from the critical. We have to separate as much as possible separate the personal from the critical put up a barrier there and be able to separate you know this is what I believe again some of these perspectives are going to be contrary to what you believe you know if you know if you may think well I don't subscribe to that particular value system or that particular lifestyle choice or that particular whatever it is that's okay you don't have to but we got to be able to separate that from our from our critical perspective right I'm not a Taylor Swift fan I will never be a Taylor Swift fan I just don't understand why people listen to her music I just don't find her to be a good musician at all but if I'm going to examine a Taylor Swift song I've got to as much as possible set that aside I'm examining the artifact through one of these perspectives I've got to kind of remove myself from the personal remove my personal feelings about her as an artist and about the song and so forth and really examine it from as objective away as possible it's not possible to be completely objective I understand that but you know separate the personal from the critical so that we can examine these things more effectively we also got to look for depth you know that our instinct is just to say okay here's what I see here's the surface level as we've talked about it's more than that we've got to go deep in these things we've got to look for depth we've got to get into these things deep who is this person again not just what's their name but where are they from what is their you know what is their current status when or what was their status when they made this what was their perspective what were they living through what when what had they been through what are they carrying with him into that what was their goal what were they hoping to accomplish so all these things we got to go deep into these things and really we willing to dig in and and get into that the deep waters with these things we've got to think on all axes right we got to think on all not axes but axes got to think on all perspectives right so if i show you this picture for example and i ask you what do you see you know this is one of those uh those visual trick type things there's two actual there's actually two images in here um there's one of you may be seeing a younger woman kind of looking away into the distance or you may be seeing what you would describe as an older woman in profile you see the half of her face or whatever maybe you're seeing both maybe you're seeing neither it doesn't matter but this is one of those dual pictures we've got to be able to see both pictures not necessarily in this one but we've got to be able to see things from a lots of different perspectives we've got to be able to take a step back and really look at things from a new perspective so we've got to think on all axes hopefully this has given you a better idea of what we mean by criticism criticism is not just a way of tearing things down and telling people what they did wrong criticism in this respect has to do with thinking critically about an artifact and really digging in and discovering what the intention was and what it means to me what it might mean to others how it's interpreted more broadly all of those different things so it's not about knocking something down it's about really understanding it and as we go through these things understanding it from a particular perspective and laying that framework over top of the artifact to understand it from that specific perspective if you have questions about critical media studies but anything else related to this please feel free to email me and be happy to answer what I can in the meantime I hope that you'll continue on with this with this series as we examine more specific different types of critical lenses and we put on those different critical lenses and try them out and see if we can examine an artifact from different perspectives as we engage in more and more detailed and more specific and more functional critical media studies