Narrative, Media and Genre

Narrative means the story telling and basically it is a mental construct which describes a sequence of real and unreal event. According to literary theory narrative may be spoken, written or imagined story or a part of a story. Narrative is consisting of signs that are combined into codes to transmit messages. A narrative must have a form and also content. Great philosopher Aristotle said that a narrative has a beginning, middle and an end. Some formalist like Vladimir Prop, he identified the functional components and analyzed the plot of narrative. Another formalist Victor Shklovsky analyzed the relationship between composition and style. A narrative must have a structure and the structure can differ from one country to another country. Every country has fictional and non fictional stories but the structure of the story are not always same. For example, in our country we have popular fictional story. The structure of the narrative is – there is a king, a prince and his flying horse, princes poisoned by a giant and the prince rescue him and at last they marry and start living happily. To tell the narrative need a narrator. To disseminate narrative we use media. The media can be transmissive or semiotic. The transmissive media means radio, TV, internet, film and the semiotic media are sound, image, language etc. we transmitted narrative through the media and sometimes media define the shape of narrative like what kind of story can be told or not. As far as I have said, narrative has a form and content. Whatever the form is but the content is depending on social conventions and media decide what kind of content can be transmitted. Non fictional contents are concerning the real life events and peoples. Sometimes a single story can use many medium. For example, a person is telling a story of a book through the TV or radio. Genre is the way of telling story and genre is defined by the conventions chosen for both cultural and personal reason. We choose particular genre to tell the narrative.

Cyclone Sidr

Sidr, now this word has a fearful and horrible meaning toward the whole Bangladesh. The whole country went through a terrible experience on 11/15 night. In a couple of hour, cyclone Sidr left a trail of death and destruction of unbelievable proportions. It was said to be that Sidr was fiercer than Hurricane Katrina. The actual death is hard to estimate as many people have washed away by the sea and rescue efforts are facing problems in the many hard to reaches places. According to newspapers and television news, 23,000 acres of crops completely wiped out and more than 10,000 people believed to be dead. The most affected beings are domestic animals. According to information, nearly two and half lakh domestic animals are eradicated. It is important to mention that after two or three days of Sidr, I have seen news on ntv that in ‘Dublar Char’ there is only one buffalo alive. All the animals are died there. Sidr caused a trail of devastation in the whole south area of Bangladesh. The mostly affected areas are Sundarban, Dublar Char, Patharghata, Barguna, Khulna, Bhola, Sharonkhola and Mongla port. Most of the houses are destroyed completely. We can not imagine the actual situation and no statistics cannot do justice to the actual human sufferings caused on that fateful night. With wind speeds up to 240 km/h and a tidal surge of up to 20 feet high at some places and everything in the path of Sidr was flattened to the ground. In one night Sidr robbed people’s possession which they ever owned. Sidr first hit on Hiron Point of Sundarban and then in Dublar Char. Sundarban is the pride of Bangladesh but it is badly damaged by the cyclone and the devastation is beyond our imagination. One fourth of the forest area has been completely damaged and the exact loss of flora and fauna is yet to be calculated. Dhaka was not the path of Sidr but the whole city was awake through the whole night and felt the power of the storm as windows rattled as well as the ominous sound of the wind. The whole country immersed into darkness for 24 hours because of the failure of national power grid. There was no electricity in Dhaka on Friday. So, at first I could not imagine the situation but in Saturday when I saw TV, I was totally surprised. Every family of affected areas lost many relatives and member of their family. My grandfather’s houses are in Barisal and many relatives of mine live there. They said that that night was really very fearful and cyclone destroyed there many trees cost of lakhs. Now relief work is going on the affected area. Donations are coming from home and abroad. Media have given huge coverage on it and playing a great role till now. But the very sad thing is that many NGO’s are trying to impose the peoples to pay their weekly loan. Thousands of the poorest of poor people are living under the open sky. Rehabitation program is very necessary for them and it is going on now. People of the affected area want work and we have to take some steps on it. We cannot stop the natural disaster but we can reduce the losses. To protect this, we have to make good and suitable shelter houses, raise awareness among the people. Every year all the disasters come to poor people and destroyed them. But they pick themselves again and start a new life and smiles come back on their faces. It’s really a wonder to us.

Viewing Photography As A Text

I have always found a great interest about photography. I love to see good photographs and like the photographers. I think they are very intellectual person because they are capturing time, emotion, etc many things in a frame. The most wonderful thing about a photograph is- it has a very descriptive situation in only one frame. We can bring out thousands of word from a single photograph. When I was in school, I used to think that I would be a photographer in future. Then I have changed my mind, but there was a wish ' I will take photography as my hobby'. Few days ago, I won the first prize for a photograph in my university. When I gave my photographs to the media club, I did not imagine that my picture would be first. The most interesting thing is that one of my peer said me ' don't give this photograph, it doesn't has any good subject' but that picture placed the first position. It was a great experience to me, I know that my photographs were not so good but I am not a professional photographer and I have very few experiences about this. As we, all know people have many wishes in their mind from the childhood and I am not an exceptional. I was a student of an art school for three years and I love to work with silent media. The cause is to me that silent media are more powerful than the other is and photography, painting these media needs high involvement. In the last semester, I worked for a multimedia production under a course. For that project, I visited some places and our subject was working people below the poverty line. For that, I have taken some pictures of construction worker. Then I submitted those photographs to the media club and three of them were selected. The first one was ‘Durashar Drishti’ it means an eye without any hope. The second one was ‘Narrow Life’; the interesting thing about this is when I took the picture I did not imagine about the concept. After taking, when I saw I observed it has enormous meaning. To clarify this I want to give some information. The denotation of that picture is – a woman is working and I am focusing her from back through two rickshaws. It means her life is continuing with narrow facilities like the narrow portion of two rickshaws. Therefore, I mentioned that picture as narrow life. Third, one was ‘Dahon’ means burning. The main cause to write these things is the course ‘Reading Media Text’. This course is encouraging me to look the world differently. In past my observation or viewing power was very different but now I can read a photograph as a text. It is a great and different kind of experience. Now I can tell many words by viewing media. The photography exhibition is encouraged me a lot. Now I want to work seriously on photography and I want to mention another thing that is Brian sir’s comments has inspired me a lot.

Representations..........?

Representation is so ambiguous to understand. Obviously, it has denotation but it has number of connotation's meaning both positive and negative. A single thing can represent a number of other things. It is not so easy to get a particular meaning about this. Before doing the 'Reading Media Text' course, I had a common concept about representation. Now I am felling great to say that I completely have different ideas about this word. For example, if I talk about a simple word like 'Rose', what doest it represent? Well the answer is that very first thing about the word rose- it is a kind of flower, then it represents beauty, love, affection, adore and so on. Now if I add some other words before rose as if red rose represents love, yellow rose represents friendship, white rose represents peace etc as far as I know. As I am observing the various function of representation, I am getting more interest about this. Now take another example, 'Bangladesh', this word represents as many things that we cannot imagine. First, it represents a very small country, and then it represents a country that got its independent through a liberation war. It represents a part of colonialism then a group of people with different culture, natural beauty, a country with fighting spirit people. These all are positive connotation’s meaning. It also represents some negative meaning toward the whole world like natural disaster, corruption, economically weak etc. Why does representation so critical in its meaning? Because sometimes a thing, object or a person represents a meaning on behalf of something but at the same time it also represents its own identity. Therefore, these two things are happening simultaneously. I think it is going to be very critical, to make it simple I want to give another example. Political leaders of a country represent the whole countries need, want, achievement, development etc. in parliament. Nevertheless, at the same time they are representing their personalities, attitude and behavior as well as their social class toward the whole nation. Now I want to consider this topic with myself. If I ask a question to me – ‘What am I representing? Indeed, I am representing a number of things. As a person I am identify with human being then Bangladeshi then women and also my gesture, way of talking, educational level, attitude, behavior all these things are representing my family background, social class, economical level and many other things. Well I will love to add another thing that is somehow a person or an area represents some myths or other superstitious belief. If we talk about media, we will see different kinds of media represent different things. Like a 200 years ago novels represent the time, people, and their behavior, culture and so on. Print media are representing society’s culture, difficulties, achievement, changes and many other things as well as other media are doing it. Therefore, I cannot say, I represent a particular thing. At last, I want to say it is very interesting to analyze this issue in different connotation and I am getting surprise to think about it.

Feminism in Bangladesh

Like the whole world, woman’s, are dominated by the man in Bangladesh. As we all know that woman’s are not physically strong like a man. In Bangladesh through the decades women are dominated by the man for man's own interest. Man want to show their power and authority toward a woman and for this cause they are doing this using religious values and beliefs. The concept of feminism has been rising in Bangladesh since last 20 years. Most of the women are illiterate in Bangladesh and our social system doesn't treat a girl like a boy. From the beginning of a woman's life she is facing many obstacles in her family. Family is the very first thing of our education and social activities. Unfortunately, family is creating the discriminations between boys and girls. For this cause and to show their power man’s are behaving very negatively toward the woman. For all these cause and to protect women from physical and mental harassments, feminists are working in Bangladesh. Indeed, we can’t say that feminists are working very well in Bangladesh. There are lots of problems; the main obstacle is our social system, though it is our creation. I have an opinion that sometimes feminism concept is creating some kind of assumptions in our society. Men are very used to think that there is no need to have a concept like feminism. But the fact is that to ensure the rights and respect of a woman, the feminism concept has risen. We agree or not, woman has lots of problems to survive in the world, our world is not so easy to live particularly for a woman. In Bangladesh, wife beating, throwing acid, torture for dowry, sexual abuses etc are very common problem for a woman. Now we can imagine why feminism is so important in Bangladesh? Feminism concept creates the concern and tries to show the actual facts among the people about woman. In our country we have many seminar, conversation, campaign to protect woman, but is it actually working? Well we couldn’t give a positive answer. Women in urban area are facing many problems rather than city area. But the feminism concept is not known to them, they don’t know their rights. So it is very important to make aware them about their rights. There are lots of debates about feminists in our country. I think it is not a issue to debate, we have to take some step to ensure the rights of women.

Knowledge, power and Education.

To me knowledge, power and education are interred - related. These three words have different denotations and connotations as well as they have signifier and signified meaning to understand. Knowledge means what we are learning everyday through our environment. But in a sense, education has different meanings. When we talk about knowledge we see we can achieve knowledge from everywhere and in every part of our life. Basically it doesn’t have any boundary but when we talk about education, it means it has some structures and it runs on a particular system. The word 'Power' really has very powerful meaning. The concept of power comes from our beliefs about power. Well it is very complicated to understand. If I ask a question toward myself 'What is power?' I don't have any specific answer. May be I will say, to me power is what I really believe that it is power or he is powerful. Power is our own construction and it is similar with the concept of reality. The definition of power is varying from person to person perception. Power for a political leader and power for a daily labor is totally different. Usually a person is become powerful for only those people who really think he or she is powerful. For example, father is more powerful in his house but when he is in his office his boss become more powerful than him. Every person is powerful in his or her own sector. Now come to the relation among knowledge, power and education. To me an educated person is not always knowledgeable and it is not mandatory to want to be knowledgeable you have to be educated. It is true sometimes education and knowledge increases our power but sometimes an unknowledgeable or illiterate people may become more powerful than others. In reality now a day’s people with money weapon etc become more powerful. I think that we define who should be powerful and who should be not. I do believe that if you have knowledge it must increase your mental or thinking power and we can ignore many things but we can’t ignore the knowledge of a man. Power is variable may be today’s power is not for tomorrow but the today’s your knowledge will increase your tomorrow’s knowledge as well as it can give us the higher prosperity in life.

Women in Bangladesh

Women’s are always neglected all over the world and Bangladesh is not except one. This country has a very old and well known history. It was a part of Indian sub-continent and from that time gender discrimination has been going on till now. The complete scenario has changed a little bit through the decades but not very remarkable. In this 21st century if we think about a woman’s position, we will see everyday she is dealing with a lot of social problems and obstacles. Being women in Bangladesh is not so easy to survive. Women’s are always tortured by man in all class of the society. The main fact of this issue is most of the people in our country are illiterate and they think that a boy can bear them in their last age. So, they always want boy rather than girl. From the birth time a girl child is starting to face problems. Then in educational level, boys always get the priority, many parents are not interested to send their girls to school. Every year many young woman’s are became the victim of acid and rape. In also many educated family women’s are physically and mentally tortured by man. Dowry is a common factor of wife beating in Bangladesh. Early marriage is a big issue to concern in our country. Many young girls have been getting married in early age and facing problem of early as well as risky pregnancy. Not only are these, in job sector woman facing a lot of problems like- sexual harassment, low salary than a men and other facilities. Indeed, our social system has created this situation. After completing graduation many woman’s can not any job because of their husband and in laws family. The most common thing is gender discrimination is happening in upper class simultaneously in lower class but the way is different. To prevent this problem many organizations are working and they are doing campaign, seminer and other programs. Now a days media are becoming more conscious about this issue. Television channels are showing different programs and newspapers are publishing extra page based on women issue on a regular basis. Except all of this woman have great success in Bangladesh. The Grameen Bank is made successful by women and another very successful part is our garment sector in there maximum worker are women. Nevertheless, we can not ignore the woman’s contribution in our life and we all have to respect them.