There are two things to master when writing criticism. How to summarize and how to analyze. Here is a comparison of the two ways.
Now that your final project is to revise what you have written in your previous essays for this course, you may return to it with a fresh outlook. During the revising process, you will reread your work carefully at least twice—once during the first part of the process, when you are evaluating your previous work and putting the best of it into your final project, and once during the second part, when you are polishing and paying attention to details.
Use the following questions to evaluate your drafts. You can use your responses to revise your papers by reorganizing them to make your best points stand out, by adding needed information, by eliminating irrelevant information, and by clarifying sections or sentences.
Find your main point.
What are you trying to say in the paper? In other words, try to summarize your thesis, or main point, and the evidence you are using to support that point. Try to imagine that this paper belongs to someone else. Does the paper have a clear thesis? Do you know what the paper is going to be about?
Identify your readers and your purpose.
What are you trying to do in the paper? In other words, are you trying to argue with the reading, to analyze the reading, to evaluate the reading, to apply the reading to another situation, or to accomplish another goal?
Evaluate your evidence.
Does the body of your paper support your thesis? Do you offer enough evidence to support your claim? If you are using quotations from the text as evidence, did you cite them properly?
Save only the good pieces.
Do all of the ideas relate back to the thesis? Is there anything that doesn't seem to fit? If so, you either need to change your thesis to reflect the idea or cut the idea.
Tighten and clean up your language.
Did you use all the relevant concepts from our course? For example, to write that a show is 'relateable' ignores that we learned a much better concept called "Identification" that you should use instead.
Do all of the ideas in the paper make sense? Are there unclear or confusing ideas or sentences? Read your paper out loud and listen for awkward pauses and unclear ideas. Cut out extra words, vagueness, and misused words.
Eliminate mistakes in grammar and usage.
Do you see any problems with grammar, punctuation, or spelling? If you think something is wrong, you should make a note of it, even if you don't know how to fix it. You can always talk to a Writing Lab tutor about how to correct errors.
Switch from writer-centered to reader-centered.
Try to detach yourself from what you've written; pretend that you are reviewing someone else's work. What would you say is the most successful part of your paper? Why? How could this part be made even better? What would you say is the least successful part of your paper? Why? How could this part be improved?
INADEQUATE: The Fosters deals with alot of social issues, almost a new one every week. They deal with sex, race, disability and gay relationships. And the show is really relatable.
ADEQUATE: While the show deals with lots of social issues, I'm going to focus on what it has to say about immigration. In the episode Sanctuary (Season 5, Episode 10) Ximena and Callie take refuge in a church to avoid ICE. By demonstrating the injustice and trauma caused by ICE, the show arguably makes a case for a more humane immigration policy and sides with the undocumented against our government. The show does the following things to lead the audience to empathize with the plight of undocumented immigrants who are driven into hiding by aggressive immigration police tactics. Ximena is a very sympathetic character... (and you go on to analyze what the
During a plot summary, you'll give one defining trait to a character to explain their place in the plot.
When analyzing a character, your goal is to explain how the illusion of a real person is achieved. To analyze means to break something down. You need to know what elements to use when you break something down. I ask you to break down a character using Pearson's taxonomy of character
In her case study of CSI's Gil Grissom, Pearson presents a six-part taxonomy of elements that construct the character: psychological traits/habitual behaviors; physical traits/appearance; speech patterns; interactions with other characters; environment (the places the character inhabits); and biography (character's backstory)
When analyzing it is important to be thorough. Come up with a statement and example for each element in the taxonomy of character. You will be graded down if you skip some of the required elements.
psychological traits/habitual behaviors;
physical traits/appearance;
speech patterns;
interactions with other characters;
environment (the places the character inhabits);
biography (character's backstory)
When analyzing it is important to be accurate and nuanced. Test your statement to see if you can find instances when it is not true.
Evaluate the character as an imaginative creation. What elements made the character believable? Why was the character funny? What was unique about this character?
The full title of your essay should have the name of the show, your main concept, and it should describe something about your essay. For example:
Hegemonic masculinity in Breaking Bad
The value of friendship in Friends
Latinx culture as represented in Jane the Virgin
When the title is shortened in APA, it should still have the name of the show and your main concept
The wrong way to do it is to copy the internet address of the web page where you found the information or watched the show on a streaming site. DON'T DO THIS.
The right way is
google the name of the show on wikipedia or imdb (internet movie data base)
write down the names of writer, director, producer, production company, full show title, episode title, FIRST date the show aired or became available to the public (NOT the date you watched the show), city/state/country of origin
using the format required by APA, type the complete reference for the television show episode. Here is an example
CORRECT: Korsh, A. (Writer & Director). (2019, September 25). One last con (Season 9, Episode 10) [TV series episode]. In D. Liman & D. Bartis (Executive Producers), Suits. Korsh Company; Universal Content Productions; Open 4 Business Productions.
INCORRECT: Suits, Season 9 Episode 10: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6489158/
Move on from the questions in the cultural analysis assignment, those questions were to get you started.
Instead, turn the answers you came up with in the cultural analysis into observations and evaluations about the show that you can support with evidence.
For example: if you asked the question "Who is represented and who is not? Is anyone represented as the other? Is anyone classified with the loss of individual differences? Are there stereotypes?" for the show The Handmaid's Tale, an
INADEQUATE: Yes, men and women are represented but women are classified with a loss of differences.
ADEQUATE: In the fictional world of the show, women are reduced to different categories including Handmaids, Marthas, Econowives, Aunts and Jezebels. While these categories are meaningful in the fictional world, they also correspond to stereotypes about women in our society. Jezebels, for instance, are recognizable as sex workers by their costumes and behavior. As a whole, the entire population of women are turned into 'the Other' in the sense that they are disempowered and quite literally enslaved. Again, the fictional world of the show is meant to be read at least in part as a projection of our society if certain conservative, patriarchal ideologies and groups actually got their way.
Here is an example of a student essay that over-uses the poorly defined concept of 'relatability'.
This essay will examine a specific episode of the television series The Good Place for its story, genre, and organization. I will also go more in-depth revolving around individuals’ morals and how that helps the audience relate to the characters in a more personal way in which relates to them. The audience is involved with the storyline not because they can relate to what is happening to the characters, (because it is fictional), but because of the characters traits and how it is viewed as relatable. These are the main points we will cover throughout the essay but will also expand on more ideas regarding The Good Place. (Pardo-Lopez)
I put the R-word in bold type to demonstrate how freely it is used, and how little it actually tells us. As a reader, I don't know who 'the audience' is, and I don't have a clear idea of what the R-word means in the different ways that it is used.
When claiming something is relatable, students usually mean one or more of the following:
"This show is relatable to people because there are situations and characters in the show that the audience will recognize"
"The show is targeted at your demographic group, so you will relate to it"
The problem with this idea of a show being 'relateable' is that it reduces individuals to demographic categories and assumes that audiences will relate to whatever content is targeted at them.
"This show is relatable to people because it has real life situations incorporated into the show" however many of us have different life experiences than those assumed to be universal by TV show creators. This notion becomes more interesting when the critic writes about life situations that are specific to particular cultures.
"The show is targeted at your demographic group, so you should relate to it" even if, personally, you don't care about the issue. Don't assume individuals actually interpret texts based on their demographic characteristics.
Burke's concept of Identification (in Ch. 6, rhetorical theory) assumes that individuals are unique and alone, but termporarily experience identification. Identification is used to explain what specific things are put in the show with the hope of causing the audience to identify with it. What is the 'common substance' put in the show to encourage viewers to identify? By common substance I mean all the situations, characters, emotions etc. that may or may not produce identification. You'll need to define what demographic groups within the audience might be affected; and what specific elements are likely to get them to identify with what they see.