Ultimate Analysis.

I will be using Sara M.'s recap of the Survivor: Nicaragua episode "This is Going To Hurt" in this blog entry. It can be found at TelevisionWithoutPity.

How did the individual responses in your group vary? Which differences are examples of polysemy, and which are example of polyvalance?

My response differed from Sara's in that there were different players that I like. She seems to favor Chase, who I absolutely detested throughout the season. Other than her views on each character, her recap is objective enough not to question. I believe that this makes our differences an example of polyvalence. What we are given to decode is the same, and we tend to break down the actual events in a similar way, but our views on the characters themselves and their moral outlooks differ quite drastically. Sara defends Chase's moves within the game of Survivor, siting moves that I myself would call wishy-washy or pathetic.

How did the individual responses in your group converge? Identify possible shared interpretive communities that could explain this similarity.

In general, Sara and I have responded to the events in the later half of this season of Survivor in quite a similar way. Each character is given certain traits that are hyperbolized for the audiences, and it seems that Sara has picked up on this as much as I have. "Merry Jane" is a statement to Jane's character, while she knows that Holly is neurotic, and Fabio has a lot more going on inside of his head than a lot of the other castaways seem to think. This is what makes me believe that polysemy is not taking place, as we often walk away with the same general memories and interpretations of the events from each episode. I believe that Sara and I converge so strongly on our general outlook towards each episode because we are from the shared interpretive community of, well, Survivor fanatics. While this may seem like too obscure a demographic to deem a cultural category, I believe that Sara and I are able to look at episodes in a similar way because we have both watched Survivor for so long. In doing so, we have gotten used to its conventions, over-looking the predictability at times to see what each new season has to offer.

Which group members used dominant codes for interpreting the video? Negotiated/Oppositional codes? How do you know these things?

I believe that both Sara and I used negotiated codes over oppositional and dominant. Despite our differing opinions, neither of us is seeking to directly oppose Survivor itself. Instead, we both use our own believes in combination with the conventions of the show itself to interpret it week to week. I am honestly a little rusty on what dominant codes is referring to, but I don't believe that either of us follow this thought process based on my understanding of dominant coding.

While the same message may have been encoded, "Sara M." and myself clearly decoded much different things.

JAC..