 This video I'd like to start a discussion of what we mean when we say Criticism whether that's literary criticism or criticism of a media artifact or whatever What do we mean when we talk about critical analysis and criticism so initially when we hear the word criticism We may go to this kind of definition where we think about Expression of disapproval of someone who thinks we've done something wrong or have some sort of perceived faults mistakes We think about the teachers over the years who have come at us and said no that's wrong. Don't do it that way That's criticism that's that's one definition of criticism, but that's not the definition of criticism that we're talking about We're not talking about discussing whether somebody's done something right or wrong or we're expressing approval or disapproval or something We're talking about a different type of criticism Specifically we're talking about the analysis and judgment of the merits and faults of a literary or artistic Work so what we're doing here, you know, you may think and this is truly criticism in some sense But you may think of somebody Standing in front of a beautiful work of art in a museum or something They're being critical of that of that work of art. They're trying to understand What it means or trying to understand what the good is here what the bad is here And so we can do that not just with art though We can do that with all kinds of artifacts literary media artifacts things happening in the real world We can we can have a critical outlook and use criticism to define those things One way we do that is through, you know, examining art in that way or examining some sort of media in that way Another is through text analysis. We're reading literature We'll be reviewing it through a particular lens as we're going to talk about and and analyzing the text of that So there are a variety of ways that we can be critical consumers of these things and perform critical analysis So one broad way to describe this as I just mentioned is thinking about it through the use of different lenses I don't know if you know anything about photography I really don't know anything about photography. My wife is a photographer and she has all these different lenses And she's always when she's taking pictures She's swapping out the lenses to get different perspectives on things, right? Some are as you see here wide angle and some are telephoto for distance shots and things So we can use this kind of analogy from different lenses and photography We can view different artifacts through different lenses and we can provide different perspective One way I think of it too is I happen to be colorblind So you may have heard about these colorblindness classes that people would see and they take you from these real kind of dull colors or Whatever colors you're normally seeing which would be normal for me Interviewing what other people are seeing and around the world and the different colors that they're actually, you know seeing that the real colors Real-time colors, but provides a different perspective and we see things through these different lenses maybe a more contemporary example would be the use of filters for example in in snapchat for example or Another Instagram or something like that the use of those kinds of filters Where they provide just a slightly different coloring slightly different perspective of that thing except instead of you know looking at different pictures necessarily and Providing different filters in that way We're going to be viewing different artifacts through different lenses and asking ourselves Questions instead of literal lenses. We're going to use questions as to how we Examine these artifacts and how we look at them, right? And so these different lenses are going to provide us with different perspectives And so we'll take a look at a few of these over the course of this series and and look at some different lenses But examples are for example, you know Marxist criticism or what's referred to sometimes as the Frankfurt school Where people are looking at different class designations and things as they look at an artifact They're looking at it through the lens of how is this impacted by class? What perspective does this represent in terms of class another type of school or Critical analysis that we can use is psychoanalytic We're looking at the psychology of a person and trying to understand that aspect of things We can also look at feminist and gender studies and try and view it through the the lens of that particular That particular gender that particular genre the same with ethnic and race studies We can try and view things for how does this how was this written from a perspective of a particular ethnicity or race? Or how does this impact somebody reading this in in in a particular ethnicity or race those types of things? So these are all different lenses that we can put on to view particular artifacts so there is a process to criticism and just In the vaguest sense here in the most basic sense Let me just run through the different types of steps involved in the criticism process first To read or to examine that artifact if it's a literary process then then you're going to be reading it If it's a piece of media, then you're going to be examining it watching it reviewing it Multiple times and looking at it for the piece of art. You're going to be looking at it multiple times spend time examining it really really really Taking it in really in a true sense taking it in so whether it's reading whether it's watching whether it's looking at these things That's the first step of the criticism process is to really engage with that artifact and truly try and understand it Then we come up with a thesis we come up with the idea of what is it that we think we want to say about this? What what does this mean to us? How do we want to approach this? So we we write our thesis we come up with our thesis then we do our research based around that thesis We've come up with this idea that we're researching so we go out and find what material there is to find about it We do our research on the on the author of that piece on and of the or the you know the creator of that piece We do the on what was going on at the time understanding in the larger context Understanding the smaller context of who was that person and what might they be trying to indicate with this and and then also understanding What is this critical theory that we're using to examine what lens are we using and let's understand that as well The different perspectives involved in that and the different questions that are related to that So lots of research involved here then we come in with our support. We have our thesis We have our main idea then we come in with supporting materials supporting details and try and prop that up, right? If we're gonna have a stool you can't have a stool with two legs It's not very comfortable right wouldn't be very practical So you need the all the legs on that stool and that's what we need with supporting ideas We need all the different supporting ideas to to support our thesis and to support, you know What we're finding here and then finally if we're going to Present this information to other people we need to edit it thoroughly so that it can be taken seriously That's a big part of this as well we need to be sure our writing is on point and and Expressing what it is it needs to Some of the common questions you may come across as we're engaging in Critical theory and critical examination critical analysis of different things Some common questions we may ask as part of this process first who created this artifact Who was it that created this that'll tell us a lot about about the intention and about a lot of other things But we need to know about that person for examining a book We need to know who wrote this book not just by name, but what was their perspective? What was their experience in life? You know what was going into this in their mind when they created this? So we need to know who created this artifact We need to know why it was created what compelled this person to to create this work to write this book to create This piece of art to create this piece of media Why was it created? What's the purpose do we think for the from from the audit from the author's perspective the creators perspective? Why was it created next? What's the theme here? What's the overarching theme here? What's their purpose? What's their intention here? And then finally, what are we supposed to learn from this? What do we think the creator was trying to to do with this? What's their end goal here a? Few things to keep in mind as we're as we're examining things critically and engaging in critical analysis First we have to be able to separate the personal from the critical We can't get you know to emotionally or personally involved in in these these types of things We have to maintain some separation From that item so we can look at it as objectively as possible not the pure objectivity is not really possible but as much as possible we want to separate ourselves from whether or not we like this this song or this this movie or this TV show or this book whether we'd like it personally is not as relevant as What this person again go back to those questions? What's this person trying to say who created it? So forth we need to separate our personal feelings from this piece of this artifact in this piece of work from The critical aspects and the criticism of this so so we need to be able to separate those things Well, I don't want to look for depth. We're gonna go deep here This is not this is not the time to be you know a mile wide an inch deep and just get to the surface level information This is time to dig in. This is time to get to know this creator This is time to to get to know this piece. What's the background here? When was it created in what you know what aspects so we need to dig deep into some of these areas It's the time to do a deep dive into into the different aspects of this artifact And then we also need to think on all of these axes right not axes like like hatchets Axies is in different aspects of this thing We need to we need to come at it from a lots of different perspectives and think about this from all different axes, right? So this may be something you've seen before this is kind of one of those optical illusion type things But but there's two pictures here, right? You know some of you when you look at this you're seeing the young woman kind of looking away into the distance, right? Some of you and see it when you see it you're seeing what you would describe as an older woman and like a big fur coat and you're just seeing her face and And you know, so there's actually two images here and that's that's the whole point This is one of those dual images But we and we need to be able to see all of these We need to be able to see all the different perspectives as they relate here again Separating ourselves personally from what we think about this this artifact We need to be able to think across all of these different axes and think about it from all of the different perspectives In the end criticism involves a great deal of thought and a great deal of analysis And so so first we're posed with these questions We pose these questions and then we we think about them We let them kind of a kind of ferment in our mind and we think about what does this mean? We dig deep and then we come to conclusions and To be clear we're not coming to facts about these things We're still coming to as objective an opinion we can get as we can get but still it's an opinion about what this What this art means what this piece means what the meaning behind this is and what the intention behind it is But we're thinking about these things We're examining things critically through different lenses and how they may affect or appeal to to people in different Different genres and mindsets and things so critical analysis really is about that kind of deep thought and that deep dive Into getting behind What's behind this particular artifact and what's behind the person who created it and so forth and really trying to understand things on a deeper level in that regard and Understand them through the different lenses provided by these different perspectives that we will talk about So in the future we'll be talking about these different types of schools of thought in different perspectives And how we apply them through critical analysis, but hopefully this has given you an overview of what we mean when we say criticism or critical analysis If you have any questions about critical analysis about criticism about anything that we're gonna be talking about here Please feel free to email me. I'm always happy to respond to email otherwise begin the process of wrapping your mind around what it means to be to Conduct critical analysis and to be kind of a critical consumer of these things and start to put yourself in the mindset of Being able to see things from those different perspectives And we'll look forward to exploring each of these areas with you even more in the future You