TIPRR 3

The reading led me back to my undergraduate days in theatre production. The new guys would start out with every word becoming a weapon. As they learned “information” and the necessary jargon and “metalanguage” they would attack texts, and especially attack students’ work without mercy. It was ridiculous, to be frank. And, as Buckingham puts it, they really tried very hard to socially “one up” each other by how harshly they could pick things apart and thus show their “superiority.”

Then, there was the transition phase for the students. We all started doing projects, producing theatre, and it was an interesting phasing out of those who were serious about continuing their major and those who thought it only about playfulness. It was the productions that made some say (and I recall distinctly someone saying this): “I never knew it would be so hard,” and then they left the major. Why it was so hard may have caused some to leave the major but, important to our discussion of Buckingham, those who stuck around suddenly began to have discussions that regard “pleasure” in the works. There was (albeit not for everyone) a more general attitude of acceptance in the works of others, even in their flaws, because we began to appreciate the difficulty it takes to create a work.

On the other hand, though there was a great deal of discussion about what texts mean and making sure we are communicating clearly what we meant to communicate, but what we were missing from our discussions was the intent concerning the audience and talking about how well we were accomplishing our intent with that audience. Instead, we practiced the purity of theoretical principles in practice more so than commercial viability. In other words, “creativity is seen in individualistic terms, as the emanation of some kind of ‘personal vision’ – a matter of an authentic ‘self’ finding its ‘expression’” and not as much taking into consideration the needs/wants of our audience; thus, we were not productively prepared but boy did we know how to dissect a piece of work!

I bring this up because, in order to truly understand something, the intent toward the audience has to be taken into account just as much as the personal expression that comes in production. As theatre students we developed a natural experience that went from the power play of cynical theory to greater appreciation for the efforts and creativity of others’ work by doing the work. Buckingham reminded me that going beyond theoretical and “critical” discussions was necessary to really understand and appreciate a media production, and doing a production with that in mind is far more valuable than doing parodies or emulating someone else’s work, and especially just producing your own vision. In teaching about media, I wholeheartedly agree with the need to do production and to discuss production, and I definitely believe that it has to be more than about pleasing the teacher or one-up-manship. As Buckingham concludes at the end, “it is vital that students be encouraged to reflect upon those processes, and to understand the conditions under which their own meanings and pleasures are produced…”