Anatomy of the Fairy Tale: Essay Draft

Nicole Dreste


Dr. Sally Chandler


Research in Lang. And Lit./Research Essay


3 December 2011


Anatomy of the Fairy Tale


In a hypertext essay I've very recently written, I expressed my sincere feelings for the folktale. “Ever since I was a child, I have wanted to be a storyteller of epic proportion,” I said. “I would lie awake far after my parents assumed me to be asleep and, gazing up at the dark blank ceiling, I would conjure up silhouettes of heroes, twist dark shapes into dragons, and make up stories to fall asleep to. There is a 'something' about the imagination from which all humans want; it is this ache, this rippling sensation that we might contain within ourselves a sense of past and unknown future and reality from the very start to the finish.”


I've always been a lover of folklore since I was a child, reading the books available in my library and watching the Disney movies that put color and voice to be favorite characters on the page. I have been ever fascinated by the idea that stories are told and passed down from generation to generation for a variety of reasons—to teach lessons, to establish morality, to entertain, and to reflect on culture and human value. It's greatly affected who I am as a person and as a writer, and as I looked upon those myths and fables and tales and found meaning in them, I also want to create something that someone can find meaning from in their own way—I want my stories to change the way someone else sees the world—something I think all good stories should and must do.

I want to write this heart-tugging story about magic and adventure, of friendship and sacrifice, something that lends the reader a transcendence from reality and everything they know about the fairy tale. I have a handful of characters in mind when I think of the manuscript I've draft-dubbed Enfabled; the honest and unlikely hero in Darby, the wise and flightless fairy Bel who both drags him into and helps him on his journey, and the ice-hearted villain that I've dubbed Adela, who because she was seen as a monster by those she loved, decided to become one. I even have an idea of how those characters and many others interact with each other, and the world dynamic, and all this wonderful nonsense. I will admit I have some fairly arrogant aspirations.

What I am going to do with all of it, however, is the question.

I have a handful of glitter and a piece of paper, but like always, I don't have any glue. I have nothing to stick it to. Then I realized it: I want to write this piece that showcases the heroic journey, the folktale in all its many forms, but I really don't know how that organism works.

So my question is, what composes a folktale? It's not quite the same as what makes up the mechanical elements of a story, and that's where I've been making mistakes. I don't necessarily need to know how to foreshadow or how to write a compelling character or scene (for right now). I need to know the origin.


I began looking into this more deeply surmising that I might borrow knowledge from the classics. Vladimir Propp has proven himself an excellent resource with his essay Morphology of the Folk Tale, featuring thirty one functions a tale can pass through through beginning to finish, no matter what 'tale type' it may be. And while the subject of his study was specifically for the Russian folktale with its own unique complexities and flavor, upon studying the material his thesis can easily apply to folktales from all walks of the world.


For example, the very first function of his 'Dramatis Personae' is thus: “One of the members of a family absents himself from home”--and he goes on to explain it can either be someone close to the hero that becomes absent or the hero himself—such as Miguel and Tulio from The Road to El Dorado leaving Spain to find the lost city of gold—or in a better known and more drastic example, the brutal murder of his aunt and uncle leading Luke Skywalker to leave Tatooine.

While Propp leans towards this universal notion, Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson delved into the nitty grit of classifying the folktale essentially by the plot to which it belonged. For example, the well known tale of Aladdin is ATU 561, ranked within the category 560-649, “Magic Items”, because the tale features a magic lamp with a djinn inside.

These two philosophies will be the backbone of my scholarly resources, and using them as a premise I plan to evaluate several different works including my own. I've been recommended to look into Estes's Women Who Run With the Wolves and Grave's The White Goddess to add to my backboard as well, especially since they are a little more recent (Propp's work was published in 1958).

So my first methodologies would be the textual analysis of the premises I've described and the literary/textual analysis of the works I put under my microscope. A concern remains with what exactly I want to evaluate; as mentioned before, my knee-jerk instinct was to turn to the tried and true. In my preparatory writing, I resolved to seek out answers in Aesop, Andersen, Grimm, and others, but now I feel differently about my initial decision. Not to give them anything but the highest credit due, of course, but analyses of their work has been done into the ground and I've been seeking fresher material that's relevant to the kind of writing I'd like to do.

The first thing that came into my mind is—well, just about everything Hayao Miyazaki has ever written, directed or produced as an animator, but more specifically his 2001 film Spirited Away. The animated film's story shuddered through me in a way only books from my childhood had. So with that in mind, I imagine visual analysis of the fairy tale turned to film could be an important research method as well. The Last Unicorn (which, by the way, was produced by Topcraft, where Miyazaki used to work) was also a profound story that I loved.

The last phase of my research will be evaluating my own work through creative writing. With the information I have accumulated, I will write a detailed synopsis of Enfabled and then do an analysis of that using my premise research. This phase, I expect, will be repeated several times until frankly, I'm happy with the results.

I haven't really anticipated any ethical concerns, aside from the fact that it will be necessary to be prudent about the integrity of my creative writing phase. While every tale type might be born from the same gene and common elements, it is not my wish to plagiarize and usurp the very authors I adore. Also, as noted above, I am attempting to introduce a broad range of generations both aged and current into my research to keep it relevant (Propp's work, while insightful and wise, was written nearly a century ago even though it was published in 1958).

This is an undertaking of a greater proportion than I have ever attempted before, but I do think it is more than feasible. As a writer and a student of life, this research will never end.. However, I do think that laying down the tracks I have described can be easily completed within six months. Once I have the glue, I can start putting things together.

Anatomy of the Fairy Tale: Research Notes

1. Choice of method will reflect what you want to accomplish with your project.

• Choice of background scholarship (Propp, Aarne Thompson, Graves, etc=> also text resources in previous blog)
• Choice of research method: textual analysis, creative writing

2. Feasibility:  Initial report (due when the paper is due), detailed analysis overall the next six months and throughout senior writing seminar.  This is the setup for the manuscript I'll be writing in my senior year so the more focused a premise I can develop for it now the better.

3.  Essay Organization:

Identify research problem
State what you are doing differently (that is essential to your project)
Reflections

• Part I: Literature review of background scholarship on the anatomy of the folktale;
• Part II: Literary analysis of existing folktale example;
• Part III:In depth literary analysis of manuscript (Enfabled) synopsis=>how it coincides with research=>i.e.,does it follow Propp's 31 functions or does it align with one of Aarne and Thompson's 2000+ folktale or archetypes/motifs.  What does it follow/what does it deviate from, is that conformity/deviation constructive or flimsy for the given piece (is it archetypal or merely "cliche" ), etc.

(Blog17) Research

As I said before, for my senior seminar I plan to be writing a fantasy novel manuscript heavily based on elements of folklore.  I've always been a lover of folklore since I was a child, reading books in my library and watching the Disney movies that put color and voice to be favorite characters on the page.  I have been ever fascinated by the idea that stories are told and passed down from generation to generation for a variety of reasons--to teach lessons, to establish morality, to entertain, and to reflect on culture and human value.  It's greatly affected who I am as a person and as a writer, and as I looked upon those myths and fables and tales and found meaning in them, I also want to create something that someone can find meaning from in their own way.

However, I came to a barrier in my grandiose ideas of putting this together.  I want to write this heart-tugging story about magic and adventure, of friendship and sacrifice, something that makes you transcend reality and everything you know about the fairy tale.  I have a handful of characters in mind; the honest and unlikely hero in Darby, the wise and flightless fairy Bel who both drags him into and helps him on his journey, and the ice-hearted villain that I've dubbed the Blue Fairy, who because she was seen as a monster by those she loved, decided to become one.  I even have an idea of how those characters and many others interact with each other, and the world dynamic, and all this wonderful nonsense.

I just had no idea what I was going to do with all of it.  I have a handful of glitter and a piece of paper, but I don't have any glue.  I have nothing to stick it to.  And then I realized it: I want to write this piece that showcases the heroic journey, the folktale in all its forms, but I really don't know how that organism works.

So my question is, what composes the anatomy of the folktale?  What makes up that everchanging element so damned compelling that its used again and again and again in storytelling and we are fascinated every single time? The answer at this moment is, I'm not really certain.  It's not quite the same as what makes up the mechanical elements of a story, and that's where I've been making mistakes.  I don't necessarily need to know how to foreshadow or how to write a compelling character or scene (for right now).  I need to know the origin.

When speaking during the conference--and often, everyday--I come to find how limited my knowledge is of the same genre I love with my whole heart and the hands that have participated in both the telling and the exploring.  Dr. Chandler turned me on to this amazing book from Vladimir Propp called The Morphology of the Folktale, and it is a treat to read (I just love how he implies that folktale is akin to botany).  He himself also criticized another classifcation system of the folktale anatomy done by Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, which is also very interesting but unfortunately I've been unable to find it in much detail anywhere but Wikipedia.  But looking into the research they did, it opened the gates to many other texts on the matter.  I've really been having quite the scholarly high from it all.

You'll find the resources I've found that I'll be looking through below.  As far as the methods I'll be using, I have a couple of directions I would like to take this.  Essentially, I'd be doing textual analysis of not only Propp but then comparing his findings to stories excerpted from Aesop, Grimm and Andersen--taking note of the similarities of the functions within.  I will also go back through the Disney movies I used to watch--even adapted as they were to suit the big screen and accomodate the family friendly atmosphere--and take note of what process those films go through from beginning to end, the roles they use and how they use them, etc.

I want to research the anatomy of the folktale and then map out a route of my own using what I've learned through freewriting and then composing a synopsis of the story I want to tell.  Then I will go back and dissect my own process.

--

Ashliman, D. L.. Fairy lore: a handbook. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006. Print.
Bulfinch., Thomas. "Folktexts: A library of folktales, folklore, fairy tales, and mythology, page 1 ." University of Pittsburgh. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2011. <http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/folktexts.html>.

Garry, Jane, and Hasan Shamy. Archetypes and Motifs in Folklore and Literature a Handbook.. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 2005. Print.

Grimm, Wilhelm, Jacob Grimm, and H. C. Andersen. Folk-lore and fable: Æsop, Grimm, Andersen,. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909. Print.

MacCulloch, J. A.. The childhood of fiction: a study of folk tales and primitive thought. London: John Murray, 1905. Print.

Propp, V. Iï¸ A︡. Morphology of the folktale,. 2d ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968. Print.
Thompson, Stith. One hundred favorite folktales. Chosen by Stith Thompson. Drawings by Franz Altschuler. Bloomington, London: Indiana University Press, 1968. Print.

DA Final Draft

Nicole Dreste

Research in Language and Lit, DA Essay

Dr. Chandler

1 November 2011

Gaming Literacy Analysis

What is the difference between talking to close friend and, perhaps, a police officer? How does one greet a young girl celebrating her third birthday as opposed to a mourning widow? What does one tell their sister about an altercation as opposed to what one would say in court before a jury?

There are many factors that come into play when discourse is involved. In general, we have been socialized to honor what has come before us and celebrate what we presently are as the optimal state of being. More often than that, we unconsciously mandate ourselves to respect overarching powers and to establish under-arching powers beneath ourselves as well as raise awareness to powers equal to our own.

In the analysis of the Gaming Literacy transcript, several traits rise to notice. It sounds like a pretty one-sided conversation—because in all actuality, it really is. Ch's questions are met with short, to the point answers and her comments are replied to by B with acquiescent reflections, merely regurgitating to clarify the truth of her assumptions. In the end, Ch's questioning style seems made to become aggressive—putting a bias on his answers, but at least then he's taking a position in the conversation.

Why was the discourse between Ch and B so slanted? There are—at the very least—two parallel underlying relationships to explore here. With the reader knowledge beforehand that Ch is a teacher, we can assume that B is a student or at the very least within a student mindset solely based on how he manages discourse in the conversation. Also, we are led to assume through the dialogue that not only is B a member of the Internet generation, but he himself assumes Ch to be of the Print generation—although Ch never implies one way or another which generation she belongs to. B is responding the way students are socialized to respond to figures of academic authority as well as articulating himself in such a way that he could relate to someone of that authority who happens to be of the Print generation, implying that students often assume that teachers in this generation are not Internet culture-savvy.

Ch I wanted to talk a little, you talk about your self as a hardware expert, you said software novice, although I bullied you into being competent, what software do you know how to use?

B you know, what everyone else knows how to use, word, frontpage, powerpoint, excell, spreadsheet things

Ch so it's interesting, games aren't really considered software are they?

B they are -

Ch so you know lots of software

B yeah, but it's just games (laughing)

We already gather the assumption that previous to the interview she's already 'bullied' him into taking more credit for his skills than he has let on—expressing an authoritative role over him. When she asks him what software he knows how to use, he responds in a list style the majority of Microsoft Office products—staples in the academic environment—without listing any others.

Ch confronts B with the question of games not being software and he rises to agree, saying that they are indeed considered software. Therefore, Ch concludes that he must know lots of software. To a friend or other Internet generation non-academic authority, he might have recalled several software formats for games that he's familiar with, because there are many—XBOX360, Playstation console software and PC gaming just being a handful. Instead, he responds in a way that understates his experience as a hardware expert—that they are ''just games”, drawing an invisible boundary in the conversation that he doesn't seem to want to cross—beyond which lies an area of expertise he may feel Ch might not deem academically noteworthy or might be confused by.

Ch so what kind of crossover did you find between learning the games and learning the software everyone needs to know? Obviously it wasn't real hard for you to learn, frontpage

B I think it's because I had ah, background exposure

Ch what background?

B Well, just in learning how to learn a program, I just see buttons, tool tips and ah I make a go at it, the scissors mean I can cut in here, and I can just cut and drag and drop - these a simple things everyone knows, I guess the only reason I can pick up learning a program is that I just have that knack, no other way to explain it.

Ch that's literacy - you have the basic tools, the right basic set of assumptions for how to read, understand, interpret a program.

Something interesting happens here relating to the student/teacher power relationship and it leads into the next dialogue set.

She asks him about the “crossover” between learning games and learning software “everyone needs to know”—she's set up a bias for his answer to lean into describing in detail the workings of Microsoft Office functions as opposed to describing learning from game software because it's already been established by the academic authority that such things are “needed” to be known, perhaps implying accidentally that game software knowledge is secondary.

His background exposure is never really explained in this set. Once again, he leans towards the academic and simplistic descriptions of these programs, as though she is a teacher authority of the Print generation.

Then, when he expresses that he cannot find the words to explain something, Ch once again steps out of the interviewer role and takes an authority role and explains to him what it is he is trying to say. Unconsciously, she seems to be participating in his assumption of her academic authority as a teacher.

Ch (cont'd) –And so what I'm looking for is the connection between all the gaming experience you have and your ability to do that with the applications - the academic applications

B well like a lot of games, in the beginning, there's menus. You don't just start playing. There's menus, you get to customize your decal your spray, clothes,

laughing

It's not all playing the game it's a lot of process to prepare for it, there's like box, scripts, you practice it, and you're not playing with other people, you're just like fooling around.

Ch OK so all those things - same kinds of processes, same kinds of moves - so navigating menus is something you learned from games that can carry over - anything else?

B I think that is the main thing, I can't connect a First person shooter with Microsoft word, that would be a real stretch

Ch how about file systems and gaming spaces?

B you know, you're right, because the game, the games are still software, and they're still files, so there are certain organization of a game that is different from regular files

Ch then takes a more aggressive interviewing approach to getting specific information out of him beginning with “And so what I'm looking for—“ as though this entire conversation were leading up to this moment. It's almost an ultimatum; “and so” implies the coming of a conclusion to something, inviting him to say his peace before the interview is over. To B, it may seem she has almost given him an assignment with these words, an assignment with a due date, and this prompts him to go into further detail as he rises to assume the student role.

This is the first and only time in the interview that B utilizes 'you' into his word choice. Up until this point, he has expressly kept to himself, with “I” and “everyone”, keeping the two separate, and never taking authority over the “you” that is Ch or the general “everyone” in which Ch is included. Now that he has been implicitly assigned by Ch to represent his knowledge, he responds as per the idiom—taking the 'teaching' role students might take when they are regurgitating information in class with “You don't just start playing”/”you customize”/”your decal””your spray””It's a lot of process to prepare for it/you're not playing with other people, you're just like fooling around.”

“OK”. Ch implicitly rewards his information with a “grade”, and then further reinforces that grade by reflecting back to him what she understood. “--anything else?” offers him the bonus credit to further explain what he wants.

However, he's satisfied with her general satisfaction, and returns to identifying with “I” and commenting how something from gaming culture can't really be connected to academic technology. He is now just a little looser with his terminology, classifying a “First Person shooter,” but he doesn't go as far as to specify exactly which (for example, if he compared Bioshock with not being connected to Microsoft Office—both products, by the way, were released by the Microsoft company).

At the end of this set, after Ch presses the likenesses between files and gaming spaces, B relents that she is right and justifies why she is right—assuming his role again as a student who should be open to a teacher's experience, even if so far his opinion has been to keep the two areas of technology separate.

Ch - so what's another thing - so playing those games when you were a little kid set you up to be able to disentangle that DOS system more easily than your stepfather, so what were you doing?

B like I was navigating through menus

Ch you got used to trial and error

B I wasn't being graded - there's no - all right man, let's pass this class you've got to

Ch so you're completely comfortable with messing it up and starting over.

B Oh yeah

Ch I think the print generation has a lot of hangups with that - what's something else

B there's a song by Natasha Ben ? I hear it on the radio - it goes like, she says in her song, that we're taught not to make mistakes, we really can't live that way

Ch's questions as the interviewer at this point have evolved more into statements (“you got used to trial and error”/”so you're completely comfortable” )—feeding into him in a way that she has learned will provoke a productive response. B's answers still revolve around academic discourse (“I wasn't being graded”).

In the last two lines of the interview shown, Ch expresses what might be a concern for the print generation being unwilling to make mistakes—she still doesn't imply to which generation she belongs. B responds with a short anecdote about a song on the radio about how “we” are taught not to make mistakes, that “we” really can't live that way.

The song in question is “Unwritten” by Natasha Ben, which actually goes “I break tradition, sometimes my tries, are outside the lines/We've been conditioned to not make mistakes, but I can't live that way”. It is interesting how he takes the song where the artist is referring to her inability to live without making mistakes in a population where the “we” is conditioned not to do so and converts her inability to apply to the “we” in his dialogue. In the last few moments of the recorded interview, he seems to approach Ch differently—taking the teacher role and the student role, the print gen and the internet gen, and applying them to equal grounding when it comes to the philosophy of a lyric of music. He may be making this connection on the foundation that the radio and music, unlike software, is a universal language understood across social roles and tech generations.

Overall, the interview showed signs of bias—both because of the teacher/student power roles and the Internet/Print gen assumptions explained above, and the implied prior knowledge of each other that the reader is not informed about directly. The interview is insightful for a start, but lacks potentially useful information about gaming literacy that could have been generously supplied if both parties had not assumed these roles unconsciously.

Post Draft Thoughts

It was an interesting experience to write this essay on gaming literacy.  As for how I'm going to revise it, I am certainly going to address the issues pointed out by both the professor and my classmates as far as tigthening my focus and starting with a more informative introduction.  After the discussion in class about privacy in reference to particpants in interviews, I've revised my posted draft already so it doesn't contain anything it shouldn't.

All in all, it shouldn't be too hard to correct.  I made the mistake of going through line by line and analyzing every part of it, even the parts that were repetitive in pattern.  The benefit of doing it the way I did is that I can probably just take out the parts that don't need to be there and tighten up the areas that remain.

DA Essay

Nicole Dreste

Research in Language and Lit, DA Essay

1 November 2011

In the analysis of the Gaming Literacy transcript, several traits rise to notice. It sounds like a pretty one-sided conversation—because in all actuality, it really is. Her questions are met with short, to the point answers and her comments are replied to with acquiescent reflections, merely regurgitating to clarify the truth of her assumptions. In the end, Ch's questioning style seems made to become aggressive—putting a bias on his answers, but at least then he's taking a position in the conversation. 

Why was the discourse between Ch and B so slanted? There are—at the very least—two parallel underlying relationships to explore here. With the reader knowledge beforehand that Ch is a professor, we can assume that B is a student or at the very least within a student mindset solely based on how he manages discourse in the conversation. Also, we are led to assume through the dialogue that not only is B a member of the Internet generation, but he himself assumes Ch to be of the Print generation—although Ch never implies one way or another which generation she belongs to. B is responding the way students are socialized to respond to figures of academic authority as well as articulating himself in such a way that he could relate to someone of that authority who happens to be of the Print generation, implying that students often assume that teachers in this generation are not Internet culture-savvy.

Ch I wanted to talk a little, you talk about your self as a hardware expert, you said software novice, although I bullied you into being competent, what software do you know how to use?

B you know, what everyone else knows how to use, word, frontpage, powerpoint, excell, spreadsheet things

Ch so it's interesting, games aren't really considered software are they?

B they are -

Ch so you know lots of software

B yeah, but it's just games (laughing)

Let's take a look:

• We already gather the assumption that previous to the interview she's already 'bullied' him into taking more credit for his skills than he has let on—expressing an authoritative role over him. When she asks him what software he knows ho to use, he responds in a list style the majority of Microsoft Office products—staples in the academic environment—without listing any others.
• Ch confronts B with the question of games not being software and he rises to agree, saying that they are indeed considered software. Therefore, Ch concludes that he must know lots of software. To a friend or other Internet generation non-academic authority, he might have recalled several software formats for games that he's familiar with, because there are many—XBOX360, Playstation console software and PC gaming just being a handful. Instead, he responds in a way that understates his experience as a hardware expert—that they are ''just games”, drawing an invisible boundary in the conversation that he doesn't seem to want to cross—beyond which lies an area of expertise he may feel Ch might not deem academically noteworthy or might be confused by.
• He then laughs, although there is nothing incredibly joking or humorous about the dialogue; he may be diffusing tension. This pattern repeats in the following sets of dialogue.

Ch so what kind of crossover did you find between learning the games and learning the software everyone needs to know? Obviously it wasn't real hard for you to learn, frontpage

B I think it's because I had ah, background exposure

Ch what background?

B Well, just in learning how to learn a program, I just see buttons, tool tips and ah I make a go at it, the scissors mean I can cut in here, and I can just cut and drag and drop - these a simple things everyone knows, I guess the only reason I can pick up learning a program is that I just have that knack, no other way to explain it.

Ch that's literacy - you have the basic tools, the right basic set of assumptions for how to read, understand, interpret a program.

Something interesting happens here relating to the student/teacher power relationship and it leads into the next dialogue set.

• She asks him about the “crossover” between learning games and learning software “everyone needs to know”—she's set up a bias for his answer to lean into describing in detail the workings of Microsoft Office functions as opposed to describing learning from game software because it's already been established by the academic authority that such things are “needed” to be known, perhaps implying accidentally that game software knowledge is secondary.
• His background exposure is never really explained in this set. Once again, he leans towards the academic and simplistic descriptions of these programs, as though she is a teacher authority of the Print generation.
• Then, when he expresses that he cannot find the words to explain something, Ch once again steps out of the interviewer role and takes an authority role and explains to him what it is he is trying to say. Unconsciously, she seems to be participating in his assumption of her academic authority as a teacher.

However, in the next set, the conversation takes an unexpected turn.

Ch (cont'd) –And so what I'm looking for is the connection between all the gaming experience you have and your ability to do that with the applications - the academic applications

B well like a lot of games, in the beginning, there's menus. You don't just start playing. There's menus, you get to customize your decal your spray, clothes,

laughing

It's not all playing the game it's a lot of process to prepare for it, there's like box, scripts, you practice it, and you're not playing with other people, you're just like fooling around.

Ch OK so all those things - same kinds of processes, same kinds of moves - so navigating menus is something you learned from games that can carry over - anything else?

B I think that is the main thing, I can't connect a First person shooter with Microsoft word, that would be a real stretch

Ch how about file systems and gaming spaces?

B you know, you're right, because the game, the games are still software, and they're still files, so there are certain organization of a game that is different from regular files

• Ch takes a more aggressive approach to getting specific information out of him beginning with “And so what I'm looking for—“ as though this entire conversation were leading up to this moment. It's almost an ultimatum; “and so” implies the coming of a conclusion to something, inviting him to say his peace before the interview is over. With the teacher role in mind, she has almost given him an assignment with his words, an assignment with a due date, and this prompts him to go into further detail as he rises to assume the student role.
• This is the first and only time in the interview that B utilizes 'you' into his word choice. Up until this point, he has expressly kept to himself, with “I” and “everyone”, keeping the two separate, and never taking authority over the “you” that is Ch or the general “everyone”. Now that he has been implicitly assigned by Ch to represent his knowledge, he responds as per the idiom—taking the pseudo-teacher role students might take when they are regurgitating information in class with “You don't just start playing”/”you customize”/”your decal””your spray””It's a lot of process to prepare for it/you're not playing with other people, you're just like fooling around.” (Again, he laughs to diffuse tension or confusion)
• “OK”. Ch implicitly rewards his information with a “grade”, and then further reinforces that grade by reflecting back to him what she understood. “--anything else?” offers him the bonus credit to further explain what he wants.
• However, he's satisfied with her general satisfaction, and returns to identifying with “I” and commenting how something from gaming culture can't really be connected to academic technology. He is now just a little looser with his terminology, classifying a “First Person shooter,” but he doesn't go as far as to specify exactly which (for example, if he compared Bioshock with not being connected to Microsoft Office—both products, by the way, were released by the Microsoft company).
• At the end of this set, after Ch presses the likenesses between files and gaming spaces, B relents that she is right and justifies why she is right—assuming his role again as a student who should be open to a teacher's experience, even if so far his opinion has been to keep the two areas of technology separate.

Ch - so what's another thing - so playing those games when you were a little kid set you up to be able to disentangle that DOS system more easily than your stepfather, so what were you doing?

B like I was navigating through menus

Ch you got used to trial and error

B I wasn't being graded - there's no - all right man, let's pass this class you've got to

Ch so you're completely comfortable with messing it up and starting over.

B Oh yeah

Ch I think the print generation has a lot of hangups with that - what's something else

B there's a song by Natasha Ben ? I hear it on the radio - it goes like, she says in her song, that we're taught not to make mistakes, we really can't live that way

Ch's questions as the interviewer at this point have evolved more into statements (“you got used to trial and error”/”so you're completely comfortable” )—feeding into him in a way that she has learned will provoke a productive response. B's answers still revolve around academic discourse (“I wasn't being graded”). However, something happens.

In the last two lines of the interview shown, Ch expresses what might be a concern for the print generation being unwilling to make mistakes—she still doesn't imply to which generation she belongs. B responds with a short anecdote about a song on the radio about how “we” are taught not to make mistakes, that “we” really can't live that way.

The song in question is “Unwritten” by Natasha Ben, which actually goes “I break tradition, sometimes my tries, are outside the lines/We've been conditioned to not make mistakes, but I can't live that way”. It is interesting how he takes the song where the artist is referring to her inability to live without making mistakes in a population where the “we” is conditioned not to do so and converts her inability to apply to the “we” in his dialogue. In the last few moments of the recorded interview, he seems to approach Ch differently—taking the teacher role and the student role, the print gen and the internet gen, and applying them to equal grounding when it comes to the philosophy of a lyric of music. He may be making this connection on the foundation that the radio and music, unlike software, is a universal language understood across social roles and tech generations.

Overall, the interview showed signs of bias—both because of the teacher/student power roles and the Internet/Print gen assumptions explained above, and the implied prior knowledge of each other that the reader is not informed about directly.

Blog 11

Since we've done so much work on the chat essays in class, although I really did enjoy picking them apart, I think I'm going to explore the gaming literacy transcript for my essay.

I really have to read these things a few times over before you start noticing little things that aren't quite obvious. I start to hear the voice of the conversation and imagine what it sounded like. The dynamic between Ch and B seems a little one sided on Ch's end in the beginning, and at first the interview at hand doesn't seem all that interesting at all because B isn't very forthcoming. Then I started looking at his language and the way he chose what words to say, and that made me curious.

It's sort of like what I said in class over the chat room interview with the girl who had spoken to the older man on the phone. At first it doesn't seem like much, but if you throw in the knowledge that Ch is a teacher and the careful assumption that the people she's interviewed are students or of general student age, the game changes. To be specific, I notice that the way B chooses words towards someone he assumes not only is of the print generation, but someone who he ranks as a higher academic authority of the alleged print generation is much different than the way he would address the matter with an older relative or friend.

So I suppose the question I would like to explore for now is what is the power relationship between Ch and B and more specifically, how does B in his conversation with Ch try to assume the role of Internet generation student trying to relate to an assumed Print generation teacher model?