Reflection on Genre Project
Research Proposal
I presented my research proposal specifying that my research will center on the fan and critic reviews of the seventh season of the TV series ‘The Walking Dead’ before the class. Since am a fan of the film and had watched most episodes of the season already, in my proposal I was only to collect information by reading. Among the materials I set out to read were the comic books, journal articles about the comic books of ‘The Walking Dead,’ and websites with fan and critic reviews on the film.
My classmates and my instructor asked me a few questions about my proposal. They mainly wanted to understand why I chose ‘The Walking Dead’ as my genre sample, why I chose to use reviews, and what I was expecting to get by comparing fan and critic reviews. In answering these questions, I reiterated my desire to include a drama series in my study and that being a fan of ‘The Walking Dead’ made it a suitable sample. Further, the dip in the number of viewers for the seventh season made it a suitable one to include in the research. I chose to use reviews in my research since I wanted to make the research people and their reaction to the show. Fan reviews would guide me to understand the entertainment aspects of the film more and to realize the fans’ understanding of the plot of the series. Critic reviews would help me to gather information about the screenplay and presentation of the film.
Research Talk
For my research talk, I prepared a Microsoft Office PowerPoint presentation that summarized the plot of the film and gave the audience just a preview of the reviews I expected to get. I summarized the plot of the film in a drawing that represented the main characters of the show and the number of zombies that each one of them killed before eventually falling victim to either a zombie or a fellow human. I organized the picture summary in a chronological fashion to reveal the zombies that the humans trounced every season and to reveal their decreasing numbers as the season progressed.
I showed the audience a short film of a fans reaction to the trailer and their reactions to the death of some of their favorite characters. The show makes the viewer get attached to certain characters and thus their destruction by zombies stimulates great emotion in the viewer. This attachment explains the devastation and grief that a fan experiences when certain characters are killed brutally by the zombies. At the same time, the viewer develops negative emotions for the villain characters and hence their jubilation when the characters die. The high level of suspense in the show leaves the fans eagerly waiting for the next episodes or seasons hence their excitement at the release of the trailer. Further, the video revealed the expectations of some fans before the release of the seventh season. These expectations were mainly predictions of the next characters to die.
Moreover, I showed the audience a sample of what I was expecting to get as reviews. The fan’s review revealed that even though the fan had found some parts of the film boring, they loved the entire film and were excited about a zombie apocalypse. On the other side, the critic review considered the quality of the screenplay and the effectiveness of the writing and plot rather than the entertainment part only.
Actual research and final report presentation
The school library was very instrumental in the study. From the school library and accessed comic books for ‘The Walking Dead’ and various review journals. Apart from the library, Google played an important role in my search for resources. Using Google as a database, I recovered numerous works that contributed positively to my research process. Of these, I encountered numerous blog posts about various seasons of the series. Some blog posts also compared the TV show with the comic books for the seventh season of the series while others. There were also numerous blog posts with a deep analysis or a critique of the season.
Apart from the journal articles, comic books, and blog pages that I reviewed, a big part of my research focused on critic and fan reviews of the TV show, ‘The Walking Dead’ which appears on AMC. I found these reviews on various websites which rate TV shows. The most instrumental website for fan reviews was Netflix.com. The website served as a database for comparing the reviews of season 7 with those of the other seasons and for comparing the reviews before the season began, after the season trailer release, as the season progressed, and those at the end of the season. For critic reviews, rottentomatoes.com and metacritic.com were highly instrumental websites. Most critic reviews came at the end of the season. On the subject of the suitable age limit for the TV show, commonsencemedia.com was crucial. On this website, I found reviews about the TV show by young people who had watched it. From the reviews, it emerged that the TV show has large amounts of violence, alcoholism, cigarette smoking, and bad language and it would be wise if parents considered limiting their children’s access to it; this view is congruent with Sommers though that the film is unfit for young children and is like a zombie which consumes them (4).
Using the information gathered, I have compiled a final report on ‘The Walking Dead’ genre. I will present this report in the final class.
Difficulties
Being a foreign student, English is not my first language. I, thus, struggled to articulate my points clearly while presenting my research talk and proposal. Further, I could not get real-time reviews since most of my friends follow ‘The Game of Thrones’ and not ‘The Walking Dead.’
Work Cited
Sommers, Joseph Michael. “When the Zombies Came for Our Children: Exploring Posthumanism in Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead.” The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship, Vol. 6, no. 1, 2016, pp. 1-6. Science Open, DOI: 10.16995/cg.40. Accessed 21st November 2017.
