The Three Episode Taste

Over the next few months, I will be exploring the world of nerd culture and its media through the lens of gender studies. It goes without saying that this is quite a feat. So, in order to weed through the media easier, I decided to take a page from my undergraduate studies.

It's what I like to call "The Three Episode Taste"

When I was an undergraduate, I took a class where we would have to watch many television shows. However, because a semester is as long as it is, we didn't have that much time to put into watching a multi-season show. So, what our professor had us do was this: watch three to five episodes of the show and give our opinions.

They told us to watch that many episodes because it allowed us a few things:
     1. Gave us a feeling for the characters and setting of the show
     2. Allowed for some relationships between characters to develop
     3. Gave us a feeling for the narrative and the direction it was going
     4. Gave us a taste of the art direction (cinematography, art style for animated shows, costume and set design for live action shows, etc)
     5. Gave us an opportunity to get us interested in the show in case we wished to go back and watch some more

Most of the time, I often did go back and watch more of the show. But there were still those times where I was happy when the experience was over. 

Over the next couple of months, I will be using this exercise to help give me a taste for a form of nerd culture media in order to judge whether or not pursuing an analysis of the media is worth it. I mean, why go through watching five seasons of a show to find out that it was a complete waste of time. If I think that the show, film, or game is worth the pursuit, I will be doing an analysis of the selected media.

The 'taste' is to see if it's worth pursuing.

The another difference between what I will be doing here and what I did in undergraduate is that I will be including all forms of nerd culture media. I will be looking at video games, Japanese animation shows and films, and live action and animated Western television shows and movies.

Now that I've given a bit of an explanation, keep an eye out for the first Three Episode Taste post!