O'Shaughnessy, Stadler & Casey — Media & Society
The Australian media studies textbook. The closest thing on the shelf to the wiki's own framework, in a VCE-shaped vocabulary.
- book
- reel
- textbook
- australian
- reference
O'Shaughnessy, Stadler & Casey, Media & Society (6th edn, Oxford University Press Australia & New Zealand).
Good for
The one book on the shelf written for this curriculum. It is an Australian textbook in an
Australian vocabulary, and chapter 14 is called, almost exactly, what this site is about:
"Genres, Codes and Conventions" (mas 211). Where *Film Art*
gives the formalist definition of a code, Media & Society gives the media-studies one, with
the audience and the institution already in the frame. For anything student-facing, this is
usually the better citation.
It is also the strongest source on the shelf for the context forces, which Film Art leaves thin by design:
| For | Chapter | Page |
|---|---|---|
| Values — representation | ch. 5 Mediation and Representation | mas 69 |
| Values — ideology | ch. 11 Discourse and Ideology | mas 159 |
| Values — hegemony | ch. 12 Dominant Ideology and Hegemony | mas 177 |
| Values — resistance | ch. 13 Culture Jamming and Counter-Hegemony | mas 195 |
| Iconography, Formula, Themes | ch. 14 Genres, Codes and Conventions | mas 211 |
| Structure | ch. 16 Narrative Structure and Binary Oppositions | mas 235 |
| Commerce — stardom | ch. 23 Stars and Celebrities | mas 375 |
| Commerce — globalisation | ch. 25 Globalisation | mas 415 |
| Audiences | ch. 6 Texts, Meanings, and Audiences | mas 89 |
| Semiotics | ch. 8 Semiology | mas 123 |
Chapter 15 is a full worked reading of American Beauty (mas 225) — a model of the method
at student length, and a useful comparison piece for the close readings here.
Handle with care
The chapter map above was derived from running heads, not from a table of contents, so chapters 4, 10 and 20 are missing from it and the page numbers are chapter starts as the OCR found them. Good enough to navigate by; check before citing precisely.
As a textbook it is also synoptic rather than deep — it will tell you what hegemony is and give you a paragraph of Gramsci, where Hall will give you the argument. Use it to frame and to teach; go to the primary texts to think.
In the library
Held in Reel, the local research library of scanned and indexed film books. 143 parts, 4,826 indexed passages. Page numbering is auto-checked.
Cite passages from this book as mas <page> — for example mas 214.
Strongest on
Measured, not guessed. Each figure is how much denser this book is on a concept than the library average — so common words don't crowd out real specialisms.
- Themes — 2.0× the library average (304 passages)
- Printed language — 1.5× the library average (44 passages)
- Values — 1.5× the library average (349 passages)