Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Rockler Analysis p. 12 -DeLuca

Rockler Analysis
In this article, Rockler interviewed a variety of college students and analyzed their responses to the childhood classic, The Lion King.  Rockler criticizes The Lion King for having controversial ideologies pertaining to race, gender, and social class.  Alex, a student, argues that “[The Average Joe] will probably see a bunch of animals running around the screen, enduring the difficulties of life” (Rockler, 2001, p. 12).  This is an example of what Rockler refers to as the Transmission Paradigm, a linear form of communication where the messages from a Sender must be explicit and intentional to be understood by the Receiver (Rockler, 2001).
Rockler counters that the student’s defensive reactions are due to an ignorance of the effect of convoluted ideology on American culture.  Idea expanded, the effects of movies like The Lion King are “ideological, [and] not immediate” (Rockler, 2001, p. 12).  Similar to the evolution argument, the general population believes that ideology (or genetic change) must be explicitly visible to have an effect on a culture (or species, to follow the analogy.)
I genuinely do agree with Rockler’s analysis of the students however I find her analysis has an unintentional bias as she wrote it.  While using transcripts is an effective route to convey your point, a quote of an 18-year-old undergrad never sounds as good as something written down, read over, and edited by an older college graduate.  So no matter what, the student’s sound like idiots with all of the spoken grammatical errors which sways the perspective of the reader.  Nevertheless, her subjects were undergrads and I believe that Rockler found the data she was looking for.

-Christopher DeLuca


Rockler, N. (2001). Messages between the Lions: The Dominance of the Transmission Paradigm in Student Interpretations of the Lion King. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 25(6), 12-12.

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