Podcast

The podcast assignment requires a group of students to work together and produce a podcast that analyzes how Disney movies construct gender roles in the current society. We had two weeks to finish the podcast along with with the creation of its microsite. It was a very productive two weeks for me in terms of my understanding of the class topic and course objectives.

In order to make a podcast, I had to basically combine everything I had been annotating in the past 4 weeks or so and in addition add some new information, that includes: movies, articles, videos as well as a podcast. I have to understand them and convert them into my script. Besides, a podcast requires multiple people, which means collaboration. It is hard in the beginning to work with strangers, especially when some of us are in a different time zone. But later we found the right pace and was able to be efficient.

This podcast assignment is perfect showcase of the 8 habits of mind.

Curiosity: To find answers toward the topic of the podcast
Openness: To consider new source to better explain my argument
Engagement: To actually understand my text as well as others
Creativity: To keep trying new things and make a better podcast
Persistence: To keep revising until I am satisficed
Flexibility: To be able to modify my own script to fit with the entire group
Responsibility: To know my role and complete my job for my group
Metacognition (reflection): To look back on what I have learned so far and find out the correct direction to the answer.

Pre-Production: Preparation and Planning

Here are 3 screenshots about the annotations I did for my pre-production, from left to right: Masculinity, Marvel-Style, What is Toxic Masculinity? and Avengers: Endgame. They are all very related to Marvel and masculinity, which is choice I made between superheroes, princesses and Star Wars. These 3 assignments are extremely helpful to my understanding of male's gender roles as they introduces me what is toxic masculinity and what Marvel is trying to say about males. From here, I started to figure out that I want to focus on good masculinity in the Marvel Cinematic Universe for my podcast and Thor is the character I will be talking about.

Production--Creating the Podcast and Microsite

Script

The screenshot above is a part of my final script that covers what I talked about my superhero Thor. It was pretty hard to decide which characteristics to focus on for Thor because there has been changes on his personality through so many movies. And because of that, I actually tried many different ways of approaching. Writing this script definitely is a good and brand new experiences for me because I never paid too much attention to podcasts. In the same time, digging deep into superheroes is also something I never did before.

Hosting

The screenshot above is a part of my final script that covers my hosting. I was never good at hosting before so I consider this assignment as a good practice as well as a challenge. The two main elements I focused on are being natural and be engaged with other group member during the podcast. I did some research and listened to some podcasts to make sure my scripts isn't too formal. To engage with my classmates, I reached out to them to know about their heroes and characteristics. And when I write my scripts, I tried to connect them with the similarities they share.

Transition and Overall Structure

The screenshot above are some ideas I came up with when thinking about the transitions between each heroes and what the overall structure should be like. Besides collaborating with groupmates, another thing I feel important in this part is leadership. Because everyone has their own idea and it is hard to find one that everyone agrees on. We had some conflicts in the beginning, and they were quickly resolved once everyone explains their full idea.

Looking Ahead in Three Paragraphs

The biggest mistakes or challenges I faced during the production of the podcast is the disagreement on which gender roles we should focus on and how we should analyze them. I think the conflicts we had slowed down our overall process. One thing I feel that our group can do to prevent this issue is that everyone should pay attention to other group members' outlines and annotations and give a thoughtful feedback. If the disagreement is not mentioned until we finished our script already, it certainly will cause a lot of conflicts. If there is another podcast assignment, I will not only focus on my own podcast and my replies to others, but will also take a look at the communication between others to make sure everyone is on the same page.

This time, there was a little conflict in our group collaboration, and I will conclude its cause with lacking of three elements: pace as a group, idea sharing and engagement. Idea sharing, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph, is lacked because everyone didn't pay attention to others until we start combing our scripts. I also think the entire group should have the same pace, which means that instead of trying to finish the podcast before the deadline, we should set a deadline for each step we took and we will know what to focus on next. Lastly, I believe is engagement is very important when working as a group. I think more communication, even when it is outside the topic, can increase the engagement for everyone. And when we are all engaged with others into the topic, the whole group is more efficient.

Creating this podcast really helped me understand what it means to construct a gender role. The main topic of this podcast covers two things: gender roles and social construction. While I do understand what traits belong to which gender, I had a hard time understanding how the genders are being constructed. Thanks to my character Thor, who has so many traits to write about, I begin to realize if some traits are related to gender roles as I went through all of them. For example, being respectful isn't a special trait, but when you added the background of being powerful and privileged, it then becomes a good masculinity trait. And that is how exactly I will be writing for my essay. I will writing about how Thor's action in contrast to his background makes him a good representation of good masculinity.