CCLA01: Strangers to Ourselves: the Critical Study of Narrative

Week 9 (2): Genre

Read the following texts:

Lisa Taylor and Andrew Willis, "Genre."

Stephen Neale, "Expectation and Verisimilitude."

Review the summary of Hans Robert Jauss and Literary Horizons of Expectations

View the "Fool Monty" episode of Phua Chu Kang via IVLE. First log on, and go to the the CCLA01 IVLE site. When you've reached the site, click on "Videos" under the "Others" subtitle. Again, it's only possible to view this video on a broadband connection, and you may need to download viwer software (you should be prompted about this by your web browser).

If you can't view the video on IVLE, there are two other possibilities. You can obtain the tape and view it in the Digital AV collection in the library. The episode is also available on the Phua Chu Kang Pte Ltd: Money Money Money VCD published by Mediacorp, which you can obtain from MPH Online or other bookstores. We will take some time to see the video in class--running length is about 20 minutes--but you'll need to have viewed and thought about the programme before we meet.

Seminar Preparation

In this class we'll be looking at the issue of genre, of the type of narrative to which any particular narrative belongs. Many readers or viewers have a favourite genre--whether it be fantasy fiction, manga comics, or TV soap operas, and are often have a great deal of internalized knowledge of the conventions of the genre. We'll look today at Phua Chu Kang, an example of the "sitcom" (situation comedy) genre which has been succesful in Singapore. We can certainly say that this programme has become an important cultural icon for Singaporeans. In addition to the issue of genre, you might want to think about how Chu Kang's character is used by various actors in Singapore society outside of the programme--when do advertisers and politicians make reference to him, and for what purpose?

Questions

1. If you're a regular consumer of popular genres (popular music, siitcoms, soap opers, romance novels, etc.)make a brief list of the number of hours you've spent in the last week reading, watching, or listening to your favored shows, books, or videos, and detail what they are. What's your reaction to finding out how many hours you spend on this?

2. Are popular TV programmes such as Phua Chu Kang good or bad for us? Why?

3. What are the features of Phua Chu Kang which are representative of the sitcom genre? If you can, try to be specific by listing events in the Fool Monty episode. Which features are representative of generic verisimiltude, and which of cultural verisimiltude, in Neale's terms?

4. "A media text that is new and generic is therefore very likely to conform to already established patterns. In doing so, it delivers already accepted, identified and controlled pleasures to the viewer" (Taylor and Wilis). Our two writers of the chapter on Genre seem to think most popular genres are very conservative in function, producing an almost robot-like response in the viewer. Is this true of Phua Chu Kang, especially in the episode you've watched?

5. Look at the questions at the bottom of the page on Hans Robert Jauss, and work your way though one or more of them, perhaps with half an eye on what Jauss might think of Phua Chu Kang.