Fall 1998 Final Exam Questions

The final exam is scheduled for Thursday, December 17, from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m., in the Athletic Center. The test is open-book and open-notes. There will be two sections on the exam: identification terms and an essay question.

Part I: Identification

Twelve of the following twenty-one terms will be included on the exam. You will be asked to identify ten from the final selection.

(Please note: The list includes a combination of terms and comparisons. Each of these has equal weight, which means, if only one term is present, it needs to be discussed in greater depth and detail than when we are asking for a comparison of two terms.)

1. Amateur Radio
2. Technological Utopianism
3. Cinema of Attractions
4. Aaron Copland on Film Music
5. Annette Kuhn's portrait
6. Warners Communication, Inc.
7. Vicki Lester
8. Genius of the System
9. Barbie Liberation Army
10. Slash
11. "The Medium is the Message"
12. "Zoot Suit Riot"
13. Folios
14. Antitheatrical Prejudice
15. Linear versus Non-linear Narrative
16. Manhatta
17. British Detective vs. American Detective
18. The Funky Squad
19. Localization
20. "South Pacific"
21. ID Cards

Part II: Essay

Close your eyes and remember back, back, back into the past. For lab number one you brought in an item from your life that represented your relationship to media. For this essay, you are asked to return to that object and discuss it in terms of what you have learned in this class.

Choose three (3) different approaches from among those we have read or discussed in class and apply them to your object. You may discuss each approach individually or you may attempt to combine them.

In your essay, you must describe your object and its relation to you; you must explain the main points of each of the three approaches you choose; you must explain how each approach relates to your object.

You are strongly encouraged to use your original object, but if you wish to choose a different object than the one you presented in lab (or you missed the first lab), please describe it in detail and explain why it relates to you and what it has to do with media.

Some possible approaches are:

• Marshall McLuhan's conception of media as extensions of man
• The concept of Popular Culture underlying Cultural Studies
• Janet Murray's aesthetic principles of interactive media
• David Thorburn's concept of "consensus narrative"
• Bernt Widdig's account of propaganda
• Christina Klein's account of the links between "the national imaginary" and popular culture
• Bill Mitchell's discussion of truth and photography
• Walter Benjamin's account of the impact of mechanical reproduction
• Susan Sontag's discussion of photography
• Henry Jenkins's discussion of textual poaching
• Tom Gunning's account of "cinema of attractions"

  mehopper@mit.edu