My original critical question was, "In what ways does American culture shape the gendered expectations and identities of young people?" I would like to address the new subquestion of, "What effect does queer representation in American fictional media have on queer youth?"
I want this piece to make people think about the queer representation in American shows, books, movies, etc. I want them to notice how little queer representation there is, and maybe think about what existing fiction could potentially have queer characters in it. I hope that, if young people with a passion to create fictional media see this piece, it will inspire them to add more queer characters to the content that they create.
I want the audience of my text to be young, tech-savvy people that use a lot of social media, specifically the teens that frequent the blogging platform Tumblr. The young people on Tumblr have a high concentration of creative thinkers that like to create stories, art, and other types of media content. They are also mostly liberal thinkers, a lot of them being LGBT allies or queer people themselves. These people are all over the world and all different ages, but the greatest usage of the website is American and European young adults.
I am going to be making a video with multiple modes within it. In the video, I will talk to the camera like a vlog, and when I talk about certain examples of queer representation in media I will show images or clips of the shows/series in question. I will also, if I have time, try to compose a song with lyrics about not being able to see myself in the world around me that I would like to play in the background of the video. In addition, I would also like to create a short comic about a character I have created that is queer talking about how hard it is to relate to other cartoon characters because they aren't queer, and then I will bring in characters from other cartoons that are commonly used in "queer headcanons." These "headcanons" are created by people who can see a character being transgender or bisexual or some other identity/orientation without it ever being explicitly stated as being queer.
I'm not sure I understand the question regarding the "conventions of [the] genre." I understand how vlogs work, as I have watched quite a few vlogs of people making satire of or discussing important social issues. I have also written quite a few comics, and I read many comics so I understand how it needs to be written.
I might use other vlogs about social issues as model texts for my video, such as Youtuber Hart's video about being a butch lesbian or David Levitz's video on being gay in college. I think they are both definitely in the style that I want to use, lighthearted and directly addressing the viewer, and they talk about important social issues. As for the comic, I would probably model it after other short comics such as this one about being a pet owner or this fancomic. I want it to be somewhat amusing to read with a simplistic but attractive art style that makes it approachable and inclines the reader to actually look at it instead of scrolling past it.
Skylar,
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you have a pretty clear sense of what you want to do. From the clear model texts you chose, I think you have an implicit sense of what a convention is. A convention is the thing that all cartoons like that do or all vlogs d (so music, talking to the camera, etc.). You sound like you have a pretty clear sense of how to use a model text and construct your work based on that model. My only concern is that you might be taking on too much with he video and the cartoon. Do you have time to do both? And would both have the same audience and purpose or slightly different ones?
If necessary I can make the time to do both. I'm just very concerned with being able to fit all 6 required modes into one comic or one video. I don't think I'll be able to meet the requirements unless I do two separate genres. And both would have the same audience as I would be posting both to Tumblr, though they would have slightly different purposes; the video would be about queer representation in media, and the comic would be about how queer people have to make up queer headcanons just to have that representation.
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