Pentadic Criticism

Ni Hao, Kai-Lan

5 Elements




Agent-Kai-Lan


Act-She teaches toddlers and pre-schoolers the Mandarin Chinese language, culture, and values


Purpose-To create a fun and easy way for children to learn


Scene-The Nick-Jr. channel


Agency-Playfully

Ratios

The ratios that I discovered from this artifact is Purpose-Act. I chose this because the show creates a fun and easy way for children to learn the Mandarin Chinese langauage, culture, and values.

The Lion King

From my three artifacts, I chose to analyze the Disney film, The Lion King. The Lion King is a anaimated film released in 1994 about a young lion prince, Simba, who becomes next in line to be the king after his father. His uncle, Scar, becomes jealous that he will not be king, so he kills his brother and tries to kill Simba. Simba is left thinking that it is his own fault that his father died, so he flees the Pride Lands. After years and years of exile, Simba's friends encourage him to return and overthrow his uncle and claim his title as the king. This film has been criticized for subtlety referring to racial, gender,homosexuality and class issues.

Although the characters in this film are protrayed by animals, it is evident that their voices show raicial stereotypes. For example, the hyenas who are protrayed by African American and Hispanic voices, live in the ghetto part of the Pride Lands. Some have argued that these characters are racists because they are colored darker, the accents that they have represent negative aspects of minorities, while the brighter colored animals represent the superior race. In addition to the race, the movie also displays the Pride Lands after the king's death. The lionessess are shown as being weak and in desperate need of a male hero to make the living conditions of the pride better. They are unable to protect themselves from Scar and the hyenas until years later when Simba returns. This goes with the notion that women need men to do things and that they cannot do them on their own.

This film suggests many things about our culture. Some people may feel that this these are not true, but I think that these are underlying things that the creators of this film purposely including in order to stir up it's audience. As I mentioned in my previous blog, because we were children when we first watched this film, many of the hidden messages in this film go unnoticed to us. I believe the ideology that is used in this film is that certain people are superior to others; that there is a superior class/race and a superior gender.

3 Artifacts.

One artifact that I would choose to analyze would be the movie "The Lion King." I think this would be a great thing to analyze because it's a movie that many people have seen as children and as adults, we would look at the theme and be able to see some of the hidden messages that are embedded in the movie. The characters in "The Lion King" all represent real kinds of people in society. Many of the characters represent gender, class, and racial issues that occur in everyday life.

The second artifact I chose to analyze is Internet dating sites. They have rapidly increased in popularity in the past decade, and I find it interesting that still, some people don't find it to be an effective way for others to meet. We could analyze how affective this form of dating is and why people do it.

The last artifact that I chose is the television show, "To Catch a Predator" on Dateline NBC. This program displays stories that are done on people who are looking for sex online with underaged people. Sting operations are formed in order to catch Internet predators who come to a home in order to pursue young children. They are then confronted on camera and later arrested. We could analyze what makes these people do these things and how affective the method used to catch these people.