Tag Archive for thesis

| May 17, 2012
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The Road Not Taken

UPDATE: If you’ve come to this post looking for information about content analysis, you might be better served looking here.

I have been doing some considerable reading for the last fortnight and I came across one text that has thrown me a bit. The problem is the author writes quite strongly that national identity is “a conceptual chimera not worthy of serious analytical pursuit. It is a concept that is theoretically vapid while also lacking clear empirical referents” (Malesevic 2011: 272-73). Which is fine, as everyone is entitled to their opinion. However, after reading and re-reading this essay, I agree. Which leaves me in a bad position given one of my research questions is “How is American national identity constructed in The Simpsons?”

So, I compared the arguments of this new work with Benedict Anderson’s ideas and found that they’re not incompatible inasmuch as Anderson talks about the construction of nationalism, not the construction of national identity. It also cleared up something I had struggled with about Anderson’s work and that was that he didn’t say much of what tied people to nations. He mostly concentrated on finding why nation and nationalism came to be rather than what they are.

So, where does this leave me?

Well, I’ve re-written some of the draft and altered one of the research questions. On the whole, I think it makes the arguments stronger, makes the use of content analysis easier and more relevant, and narrows the focus of the thesis a little more (because I can avoid questions of whether the characters see themselves as American or whatever, and just focus on how they are positioned).

I hope, however, that I don’t look back forlornly on the decision as Robert Frost’s famous poem would have me do:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Reference
Malesevic, S. (2011). The chimera of national identity. Nations and Nationalism, 17(2), 272-290. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8129.2010.00479.x

Category: Uni | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
| April 13, 2012
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An Analysis of the Content

Coding The Simpsons - Sheet1 (1)

UPDATE: If you’ve come to this post looking for information about content analysis, you might be better served looking here.

A key data collection method for my thesis will be content analysis. Basically (and I could well be shot for simplifying it this much) content analysis is simply counting things in the text. In my case, I’m counting the number of times particular characters appear in each episode and what they appear with. Symbolic items of national identity associated with particular characters will also be counted.

I first conducted a content analysis way back in first year. Then I was looking for simple acts of violence in The Simpsons. I achieved very good marks for that assignment, and it is probably a big part of why I’m still at uni, and still studying The Simpsons. At the time, that task seemed very complex. I only analysed three episodes, and did little work beyond the content analysis. For my thesis, the content analysis is the launching point and will be accompanied by a detailed discourse analysis of selected episodes. I’m only studying the first ten seasons of the show, but that still means I’m planning to do a content analysis of 226 episodes.

All of this is why I’m sitting at my computer at 10pm on a Saturday night writing about content analysis. I’m quite excited at the moment since I just finished my draft coding sheet for my content analysis. I’m even about to conduct my first pilot content analysis of a random episode. For this exercise, I’m choosing an episode outside of the first ten seasons. I’ve embedded my coding sheet below, and would be interested in your feedback*.

*This is probably the single most boring graphic to ever accompany any blog, ever.

Category: Uni | Tags: , , , , , , ,
| April 11, 2012
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Springfield Revealed

The Simpsons fan world is abuzz with the news Matt Groening has revealed the real Springfield is near his hometown in Oregon. This is probably unsurprising news as many people have guessed Springfield, Oregon was where Groening got the name. However, it seems to have been slightly more complex, with Groening telling the Smithsonian Magazine:

The only reason is that when I was a kid, the TV show “Father Knows Best” took place in the town of Springfield, and I was thrilled because I imagined that it was the town next to Portland, my hometown. When I grew up, I realized it was just a fictitious name. I also figured out that Springfield was one of the most common names for a city in the U.S. In anticipation of the success of the show, I thought, “This will be cool; everyone will think it’s their Springfield.” And they do.

Groening went on to say that many other aspects of Springfield are actually drawn from his experience of Portland (which is not new information, for those of you playing along at home), including street names and the names of a whole heap of recurring characters, plus the general layout of Evergreen Terrace with the woods behind it. However, this doesn’t mean the ‘location’ of Springfield has been revealed once and for all, because throughout the seasons there have been hundreds of conflicting pieces of evidence that all add up to Springfield being, literally, stateless. My friends at Simpsonology put it best:

The wide-ranging interview also covered aspects of Homer’s characterisation that I find intriguing. I have written of my observation that Homer is almost never violent to women, and certainly never violent to Marge (though it was a half-developed thought that got smothered by a larger piece). Greoning covers that off:

The only thing he [Groening's father] said was that Homer could never, ever be mean to Marge. He said that was a rule, which corresponds with the way he treated my mother. He was very nice to her. I thought that was a good note. I don’t know if that is a rule that has ever been articulated to people who work on the show, but everyone just gets it.

So, I feel kinda vindicated there. If only my thesis was about violence in The Simpsons…

If you want to read the rest of the article – and you should – it’s available here. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Category: Uni | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
| March 16, 2012
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Embiggening Our Understanding

In his seminal work Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson wrote of the ways nations are constructed – of the common symbols and artefacts that define peoples within national borders. Equally potent are the symbols used to define others within those borders, or to signify they are outsiders. It is the symbols used in The Simpsons to define non-American characters that will be the subject of my thesis.

I thought the term ‘non-American’ was problematic, for a whole range of reasons. And it is. But in the context of Anderson’s theory, it makes perfect sense. His work is all about nationalism and national communities, so it works well in this context.

By studying The Simpsons – a cultural product to which so many have given so much – I hope to discover something about how Americans interpret our (being non-Americans’) place in the world and, by extension, how they interpret themselves. It will not, of course, provide a comprehensive or definitive text by which all American cultural products and attitudes can be judged, but it should contribute something to the overall picture. It is not American exceptionalism that is under examination here, but the unexceptional aspects of one of the most enduring, penetrating and overtly American cultural products that exists. It is the everyday depictions of a particular subset of characters within the show, and I hope to demonstrate something of that culture, and its view of others.

Category: Media, Uni | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
| March 6, 2012
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The Nuclear Family

In the course of reading up to ground myself in Springfield’s esteemed academic circles, I came across a work called Atomistic Politics and the Nuclear Family. The article presents a case – though it has a few holes – that The Simpsons actually presents a strong image of family. The family values are couched in contrast to an uncaring, absent, or overly therapeutic state and institutions. (This argument about the role of the state is based on one episode, in which the Simpsons kids are removed by child services and placed with the Flanders family).

Despite its flaws, I found some interesting ideas in the article, beginning with a reinterpretation of Homer (Cantor 1999, p738):

Many people have criticised The Simpsons for its portrayal of the father as dumb, uneducated, weak in character, and morally unprincipled. Homer is all of those things, but at least he is there.

This astute observation is followed up by another (p739):
He continually fails at being a good father, but he never gives up trying, and in some basic and important sense that makes him a good father.
These observations of Homer line up with one of my own – he is never violent to female characters.
This stuff is a little outside the remit of my thesis, but I nonetheless thought it interesting and worth sharing. Your thoughts are welcome!
Reference: Cantor, Paul A. 1999. ‘The Simpsons: Atomistic Politics and the Nuclear Family’, Political Theory, Vol. 27, No. 6 (Dec., 1999), pp. 734-749, Sage Publications. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/192244 .

 

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