Rockler interpreted Samantha's responce on page 19 as an example of ritual paradigm analysis. Rockler wrote, "From a ritual paradigm perspective, communication is not linear...the receiver may interpret the message in multiple ways" (8). From this definition, I see why Rockler classified this piece of Samantha's argument as ritual paradigm because Samantha acknowledges that the role and position of an audience member affects the way they view a film. She points out that because she is in the white majority, she is able to take her ability to relate to the lions for granted, and not even consider the way a person of another race might view the film. Ritual paradigm holds that the messages transmitted by the media are complex and can be interpreted in different ways by the audience, which parallel's Samantha's observations.
However, I do see a slight problem with classifying this analysis as ritual paradigm. Rockler further defines it as "a ritual through which the ideology of a culture is reinforced and taught symbolically...emphasiz[ing] the ideological power of communication to maintain order" (8). It seems to me then that in order for Samantha's analysis to truly fall under ritual paradigm she would have had to go a step further to say that even though she wasn't actively aware of the race messages in the film and "wasn't looking for that" because of her majority status, they were still affecting her and reinforcing our culture's racist ideology.
That being said, Rockler did say at the beginning of this section that most students struggled with the concept of ritual paradigm, so it still seems fair to classify Samantha's analysis in this way as she did touch on a more dynamic analysis of the relationship between audience and media.
No comments:
Post a Comment