I highly commend the web page 'Nine top tips for Media students'. From the people behind theory.org.uk, its worth a read!

Wednesday 18 September 2013

Zeitgeist terminology1: sexposition

The 1st in an irregular series: as 'Use of Terminology' accounts for 20% of your exam marks (both AS and A2), I'll keep an eye out for any relevant newly-coined terms suming up elements of our new media age, starting with this one: SEXPOSITION, blending sex and exposition (to provide narrative information to an audience).
If you happen to stumble across any interesting new media terms, please pass on as a comment or email!
Here's where I picked it up (the full article is a book review, which sounds promising, and starts with a linked reference to one of the best/most inspiring books on film I've ever read):

In these days of meth-dealing school teachers, it's easy to forget how shocking the idea of a criminal protagonist used to be. The conventional TV wisdom, enforced by advertisers, had always been that Americans would watch films with morally compromised heroes, but that they would never allow them into their living rooms. However, the proliferation of cable TV channels – and later, the introduction of DVD box sets – led to the creation of new, lucrative niche markets. HBO, a pay-TV channel that doesn't take advertising, produced the first wave of these shows as part of a deliberate corporate strategy: it was seeking out a sophisticated, affluent audience, and "adult themes", as they say, were a distinctive selling point. (HBO is of course famous for its use of "sexposition", a speciality of Game of Thrones: spicing up boring exposition with a gratuitous sex scene.) Its executives were famously hands-off and sympathetic to writers. Even so, when the time came to give the go ahead to The Sopranos, HBO's two pioneering bosses, Chris Albrecht and Carolyn Strauss, asked each other: "Should we do this? We should do this! Can we do this?" After shooting the pilot, Chase told his cast and crew: "You've been great. It's been lots of fun. Unfortunately, nobody is going to watch this."