As a third-year History major, I know fuck all about media. I took the subject in high school, but that was four years ago and I’m pretty certain we just watched movies. So, when I walked into a MEDIA100 tutorial at 2pm a few Fridays ago, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I immediately made a couple of observations. One: the class was full. Like really full. I’d never been in a class of that size and it made me realise that my chosen subjects—History and Political Science—weren’t actually that popular. Shocker. And two: the class was rather diverse. I guess I’m used to Dr Martens wearing, too-woke-for-their-own-good girls and “um actually, true communism has never been tried” guys, so it came as a welcome surprise.
A few minutes of people-watching and polite chatter later, the class began. The tutor introduced themself and provided their qualifications to teach the class in the form of their Letterboxd Top 4. As a keen user of the platform myself, I appreciated the sentiment, but Ladybird felt like an obvious choice for winged eyeliner, button-up shirt clad, possible queer in front of me. They then began to explain the focus of the lesson: ekphrasis. While it sounds like a complex concept, or perhaps an exotic, flesh-eating bacteria, the term is really just a fancy way to say ‘describe what you see’. After attempting to tell us why such a big word meant such a simple thing, the tutor told us we’d be putting ekphrasis into practice by taking notes on famous paintings. This activity took us to the end of the class.
Overall, my experience in a MEDIA100 tutorial was pleasant, and only kind of tainted by the fact it took place on a Friday afternoon. It was nice to take a break from discussing the Holocaust and the current economic and political state of the world to describe Frida Kahlo’s boobs in vivid detail. I’ll definitely be back.
Notes:
Ekphrasis:
The background is formed through messy colour-blocking, the top half is white and drips of paint are running onto the bottom half—a small red column on the left, a larger yellow form on the right, and an orange blob-like form floating on the middle-right of the canvas. The subject is a black figure-adjacent form that is both bordered and characterised by rough, sketchy lines and words. It has a yellow face, black slit-like eyes surrounded by a white stroke, a bulbous red nose, and an open, offset mouth with visible teeth. White scribbles fill space on the black body, drawn seemingly without meaning or care. A pink snaking line is layered above the white scribbles—it’s intestinal in construction and focused from the figure’s neck to torso.
