May 31st
Ja Kyung & Yoo Jin – on the sermon (on page 44-45), and the relationship between Church and State

June 5th
Cheol Woong, Yeong Chul, Sun Jae – on “The Vendetta” (page 79-86) and on Almond and his wife (ps. 65, 71, 76-78)

June 7th

Sae Kwang, Sun Hee, Yu Min – on differences between Evey in the film and in the book (pgs. 126-135 — her relationship with “Gordon”– & 143-147 — her relationship with her father)

Jae Won, Ju Yeon, Myung Hee – on torture (pgs. 148-172) and its current topicality

Sun Mi, Min Kyeong me – on Finch’s visit to Larkhill (pgs. 206, 210-216)

On other class dates, I’ll be leading discussion in a similar fashion, and we’ll be especially comparing the video to the book.

Remember that June 12th is the due date for your final projects, which we will collectively enjoy in class on June 14th!

Copyright, Remix, Piracy, and Mashups

Hi there. I promised some materials for you to explore the idea of remixes and mashups, as well as links about copyright.

The best book I’ve seen on the subject of copyright and culture is Dr. Lawrence Lessig’s book Free Culture. It’s available FREE online here, as a PDF, as well as in audiobook format — also free, and legal — at the Internet Archive.

The lecture on which it’s based, and which we looked at (or will look at), is available here. Feel free to listen to the presentation more than once to review and deepen your understanding!

REMINDER: Listen to THIS LECTURE before our next class!

Here are some examples of remixes or “mashups”:

• Trailer remixes at iFilm
• Remixes of Super Mario game songs (and more) at Overclocked Remix
• Bjork remixes website
• The Wikipedia page on the history of remixing, with some useful links to related topics
• The CCmixter website, where you can access a stream or podcast of remixes of Creative Commons music
• The Wikipedia page for Danger Mouse’s Grey Album
• An example of some machinima made using the World of Warcraft game
• Another site with some machinima, called Machinima.com
• An excerpt from the documentary Before the Music Dies
• A satire of the Bush Administration

Weeks 3 and 4 (and 5)

I’m catching up again.

So, in week 3 and 4, we did the following things:

• Watched and discussed the Pilot Episode of Smallville
• Had student presentations on the history of Superman as a character, and a discussion of Nietzsche’s idea of the übermensch or “superman”.
• Had a presentation by me on the history of depictions of Superman, and about some adaptations (in comic books, books, and TV) of Superman to different places and times in history.
• Completed a group exercise where you adapted Superman to East Asia, specifically into a historical place and time in Korea, Japan, or China.
• Assigned homework: students are to prepare a presentation on the adaptation they or their group made last Friday. Your presentations will be on Thursday/Friday, Week 5.

In week 5, we’re going to discuss remixing, adaptation, and copyright, and look at your own “remixes” of Superman.

Day:

On Tuesday, a group of students will present on “remixing” and “copyright” on Tuesday afternoon. We’ll discuss the presentation, I’ll show you a few interesting clips, and give you some questions to think about. (As well as some reading/listening to do.)

On Thursday, you’ll present your adapted Superman characters, and then we’ll return to the discussion of copyright, remixing, and adaptation.

Night:

On Wednesday, we’ll meet at my office and talk about copyright and remixing. Since our group is so small, everyone is expected to have done a little reading and research on the subject. I’ll show you some interesting clips, we’ll talk about the history of copyright, and I’ll give you some reading/listening homework to do.

On Friday, we’ll meet at my office and you’ll each present the Superman that you’ve adapted to Korean history. Each student will have a maximum of ten minutes to tell us about this new version of Superman.

Weeks 1 & 2

Welcome to the new semester and to Media English 2007.

We’re going to be looking at adaptations in media, and because the subject of the “super-hero” is one I know something about, and have been thinking about a lot lately, that’s going to be one connecting theme in this course. But the deeper connecting theme is of adaptations — how stories change when we adapt them from one medium to another, say, from comic book to film, or from film to cartoon, or from novel to radio play, or from radio play to film. But we’ll also look at how stories, and meanings, get changed by media, and how stories and meanings change over time as a result of the media.

I’m teaching two sections of this course, one in the daytime (on Tuesdays and Thursdays) and one in the evenings (on Wednesdays and Fridays). These classes will be called DAY and NIGHT from now on.
The beginning part of this semester, we’re discussing the idea of the super-hero, looking at how it has developed over time, and examining closely the character of Superman. Don’t worry, we’ll move on to more interesting subjects soon, but this is important background. So some lecture, and some discussion of Superman as a character will be followed by a viewing of the pilot episode of the TV show Smallville, which is the newest of the adaptations that have been made using Superman.

Our schedule for week 2 is as follows:

DAY:

Superman discussion on Tuesday, March 13th.

Smallville Pilot viewing/discussion on Thursday, March 15th. (Print this script, read through it, and prepare for the viewing on Thursday afternoon.)

NIGHT:

Smallville viewing/discussion on Wednesday night, March 14th. (Print this script, read through it, and prepare for the viewing on Thursday afternoon.)

Student presentations on assigned subjects and associated discussion will begin on Friday evening, March 16th.

Here is a copy of our course syllabus, and of the student information paper I need you to fill out and bring to me. See you soon!