Blog Reflection

Prior to taking TV and American Culture, I’d never written a blog before and really never read others’ blogs either. Writing the first blog was somewhat difficult because I tend to want to summarize and/or ramble, but the more I blogs I wrote, the easier they became. Portraying a good sense of voice in my blogs was a bit challenging in the beginning as well. So those aspects of blogging were a bit tough, but the more blogs I wrote and read the easier finding voice, avoiding summary, and incorporating much more commentary became. Also, reading other’s blogs got me interested in other shows I probably would not have tuned into. I think writing these blogs forced me to delve deeper into the shows I was watching. I had to really think about what I was watching and what the bigger meanings were and then apply that to my blogs. I enjoyed writing about shows I really liked but found that I was harder to criticize them. The shows I thought were terrible were a lot easier to write about though, because there was so much to pick apart and criticize.

Blog writing was different from the writing I’m used to doing, in that it’s not as formal and inherently incorporates the author’s opinion. In formal writing, it’s shunned to use “I” or state your opinion outright, but that is the whole idea with blogging; it’s entirely opinion. Also, cursing would probably not go over so well in academic writing, whereas there isn’t any censoring with blogging; one’s free to say whatever they please. It was nice to be able to write more informally and in a sarcastic and witty tone.

As far as revision of the blogs in general, I took out the irrelevant, omitted too much summary, combined really short paragraphs, and corrected spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. For my first blog, pertaining to the season finale of Community, I revised based on feedback given in class and corrected a few grammatical errors. I omitted the last paragraph as it was kind of irrelevant to the subject of the blog. I included a brief paragraph about how typical season finales play out and how Community mirrored that set-up. After re-reading my second blog about the season premiere of the new ABC Family show Pretty Little Liars, I realized it was actually a lot of summary and very little commentary. I added in my two-cents at the end of a few of the character descriptions. My third blog, critiquing the wedding show Four Weddings, was in need of a few changes in word choice and some editing in the opening paragraph, as two of the sentences were contradictory. For the fourth blog, Mall Cops, I combined smaller (two, three sentence) paragraphs and changed the order of certain paragraphs. I also added in bullet points to the list of events from the show for aesthetic purposes. My final blog was is need of some grammatical corrections. I think from the first blog to this one, I’ve improved from just summarizing to less summarizing and more commenting on and critiquing of the show. I think this last blog got to the jest of my point quickly, didn’t have any irrelevant sidenotes, and was fairly concise.

I think the prospectus project changed my view of tv in that I’m more aware of advertising and to what population commercial is trying to appeal to. The blogs made me more cognizant of stereotypical characters in tv shows. I’ve been paying attention to the different types of camerawork and camera shots while watching tv too. Now I know the purpose of all the different kinds of shots and how they are used.