Hello! I am Logan Lott and today I will be exploring media grammar literacy as a concept, and how it is sometimes played with as it in in the film Man on the Moon. Media grammar is a set of rules or conventions that are employed over a type of media’s content. The literacy part is understanding how these rules work. (Meyrowitz 2). Film, as an example, has many media grammar rules that govern how it is understood by those with the literacy. A very simple example is how one understands that when a scene changes, the story didn’t jump the space/time continuum, time has passed off screen and the story has naturally moved to a different setting. To expand on a more complex example, we look to Miloš Forman’s biographical comedy-drama starring Jim Carrey, Man on the Moon. The story is one of popular entertainer Andy Kaufman, who often messed with his audiences and played with his popularity in ways not done before. Here is the opening scene to the movie:
Clearly, this is not a normal movie. What is happening here is that the film is playing with the viewer’s expectations, the viewer’s media grammar literacy. First, it is presented in black and white. This movie came out in 1999 and covers 1957-1985. This film also had a budget of $82 million. Black and white is not necessary, expected, or applicable to the time period. Further messing with the audience’s expectations, Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman addresses the audience and welcomes them to his movie, but then saying “it is so stupid, terrible, I don’t even like it!” At this point, the audience understands that this movie is purposefully breaking the media grammar rules and is on board with what is happening on screen. Being that it is a biographical film, the truthfulness of it is always being questioned by the audience as we’ve discussed in class about the movie Selma and its portrayal of Martin Luther King Jr. and more widely disputed, its portrayal of Lyndon B. Johnson. So, to play around with that media grammar literacy concept, Jim as Andy says “things in my life are mixed up and changed around for dramatic purposes.” He then explains that he, a now dead person being played by another person, edited the movie to cut out anything that wasn’t true, or as he calls it, “all of the bologna.” Which according to him means that this is now the end of the movie. To bring it home, he plays a record player and what appears to be the end credits play over the screen. A very common and basic media grammar of film is that films have end credits, and by all who are film media grammar literate, it is understood that this means the end of the movie. Films also usually have more concise beginning credits, for which these gag credits serve that purpose. The screen goes back for a long time, and in the voice of a different character, Andy Kaufman as played by Jim Carrey explains that he did that to get all of the people who wouldn’t understand the movie out of the theater. He then starts the movie. This masterful exploitation of the rules of film media grammar literacy fully explains what media grammar literacy is and how it is sometimes implemented in content.
Meyrowitz, J. (1998). Multiple Media Literature. Journal of communication: 48: 96-108
mjc5742 says
I believe that this is a great example of media grammar literacy. I really like that the clip plays with the traditional cues we have come to expect as well as not expect in a movie. Personally, I was never that aware that we took so many cues from movies instead of just simply watching the film for what it was. for example, simple things like Jim Carrey saying that the movie is terrible, or the rolling of the credits are very small simple things, and though they were done in a joking manner, they were still counterintuitive what I would expect from a typical movie, so they were fairly odd to watch. Also, with the film being in black and white and appearing to have such low quality was very strange as well given the year that it came out and the assumption that a major film will have great visuals and video quality.