Tools used for the Firefly

Semiotics for Firefly.

The big thing you can notice in the show is the "culture." When a show decides a background for itself, most of them don't have much change. Or usually only one background exist in a show. However, in this show named Firefly, two different culture coexist. Well, that might be considered as "one culture" if the audience considers it as a "mixture of cultures." Then, what do you think is the semiotics or signs of the background in this show? First of all, the main character can speak BOTH Chinese and English. The more interesting thing is that he's not the only person speaks both languages. Also this series is set in the year of 2517. That means in the future, English would be the first language of people which means we need to be fluent, and Chinese would be the second language. If you watch more, you will find that western people are wearing Chinese custumes. They not only just speak Chinese, but they also are used to the culture. That would mean the "mixed culture" will be OUR future. I think I need to start learning Chinese as well. :)

 Genre for Firefly
Well, the genre for this show is SF, and since I don't watch the whole show, I cannot tell there are more genres. I thought this show is very silmilar to the movie Star Wars; the effects, the color of their clotehs, etc. However, I couldn't tell that it was SF drama at first. I thought it as a western cowboy movie or something else. By the holographic window, I was little confused. However lastly, by the spaceship, I could tell that it was a SF show. I think guessing what kind of show was it was kind of fun. But in my opinion, the effect for the spaceship wasn't so good even though the show was filmed in 2002. And the science related words was very hard to understand - this helped me to realize that the show is really a SF drama.




P.S.  Professor I thought I did publish this post, but it was saved as a draft. I'm really really sorry :(....
And you were gone for a week!! I hope everything is fine... I will drop by your office!!

Tools used for the Arrested Development

Narratives about George Micheal Bluth

   For this tool, I decided to talk about not the main narrative. I will talk about a small narrative of George Michael Bluth.
   George Michael Bluth is the son of Michael Bluth. In the first episode that we saw, he reunites with his cousin Maeby. At first they talk about their family's problem and they decide to make out on the boat right in front of their family. George was not so aggressive about it, but after Maeby forcibily kissed him on the boat, he started to have crush on her. However, George's crush on Maeby didn't really revealed in this episode. Only two scenes showed his actual feeling - asking Maeby to kiss him again, and listening to her song nervously while she was taking a shower. This was cute and I could tell that he liked Maeby at once. But in reality, it's gross. I thought about it as if it was the story of mine. Ew...... I'm throwing out. It's like making out with your great grandma!! But it's only a show, and I won't be so serious about this problem. Even though the show didn't focus on George's feeling, he might have worried while we were focusing on his family problem. Or may be he was so frustrated that he was Michael's son. BUT.. WHAT CAN HE DO? He was born that way. So, this is my opinion about the narrative of George Michael in this show.



Ideology in Arrested Development

     In my opinion, the ideology of the show named Arrested Development could be very brief. It shows how a typical family should "look" like, but it also shows the change in American society. In people's ideology, a large family should contain father, mother, one or more daughters, one or more sons, and grandparents. Yes, in the show, they have the exact number of how a large family should have. I think that's all for ideology of a typical family "look." Let's think more seriously then. When you think about a mom, what do you think of? For most of the people, they might think a mother should do houseworks at home instead of running a family business. However, in this show, Michael Bluth's mother takes his fathers position as a president of the company instead of Michael Bluth. That's impressive! Mother running the family business! It borke my expectation. I thought Michael will definately take his father's chair. So, I think it kind of shows the changes in American society. If you go to America, you can see that more women are working than in Korea. Also when the father is in jail, you can tell that the mother is the most powerful person in the family. That means women are becoming more powerful in the society! So, I think this showed the ideology of a large family, but it also broke people's ideology of a woman's job both in family and society.

Semiotics in the Arrested Development

I watched this episode twice to find a secret semiotic in it. Well, it's not very secret, but I did found something. Did you see the scene that the first son, something Bluth, hiding his father from the cops ?

He is a magician and he had a magic box that could "trick" people. And he hid his father in that box.

I think the box was one of the semiotics in this show. The box could meant "jail", and that might already made us to think that thee father will be arrested. 

You might think it was just for fun, because the reporter said "He couldn't hide his smell from the dogs." The way the reporter said was quite funny. So I guess the director tried to show the "jail semiotic", but he didn't want his show to be very serious that put the reporter to make people laugh(or less than laughs). No matter what we thought from seeing that box, father was arrested eventually. Therefore, in my opinion, the box meant jail, and
he was meant to be arrested! Don't you think this can be part of semiotics? :)