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| Sometimes you feel boxed in |
Some things don't add up. And when they don't our immediate reaction is to purse our lips and become dismissive. Some things too manifest themselves as a revelation, but seem so obvious that we feel the need to be dismissive.
I encountered both today.
In building a new narrative for videojournalism using established theories, I came unstuck. Then it became obvious. However this revelation lay outside of the discourse of its common established theory within communication.
In History as Art: Art as History, the author's note: Art provides students with new languages and with a new set of visual tools and methods to process and articulate their ideas. (p.6)
There's more, but then as I said it should have been so obvious, but on the other hand in academic journalism studies it might not; purse your lips.
Art offers a powerful expression, less understood in formal circles where genres are rooted. You know its journalism because of its conventions; its objective and impartial. These are powerful forces that have shaped generations.
And the only way we deconstruct genres is by theories. The word theory in academia has a more profound ring to how we use it in everyday parlance.
Because in pedagogy, someone wants proof. Prove it is the retort. You say the web is different, or videojournalism is something else, or multimedia is a new language. Prove it! Critically! Logically!
But then proof itself is abstruse in communication and the arts. There is no right and wrong, but theories more suited, by the theoritician, towards deconstructing their puzzle.
As Robert Stam puts it.. Theories do not supersede one another...and they can be playful, even anarchaic.
The words and songs of artist and pioneers yield fresh ideas, which are absorbed, tested, and verified towards theories, and if they are new are compared with others. But how do you know to give credence to these. Therein lies another conundrum. And that's how circular it is.
How do we report the economy in a manner that articulates more profoundly the implosion about to grip Europe, as Italy sits at the precipe of a massive financial calamity?
