ILikeDeathNote wrote:I almost refuse to believe that. There are so many things wrong with this essay: the convoluted language is one of the better things going for it, but the structure, the apparent nebulous thought processes,
It's a little less nebulous when you're familiar with the style of writing in question. Still could be written more concisely and directly, yes. Perhaps could be cut to ten pages single spaced if approached carefully.
The field the critique is being published in matters a bit, too. You could write a reasonably similar paper as a cultural anthropologist, a sociologist, a philosopher, or a literary analyst, but they would all read quite differently.
To a professor in communications studies, of whatever branch talks about postcolonial critiques of television media, it would probably seem almost clear, and might seem perfectly normal quality-wise.
the clear lack of understanding and comprehension of the source material,
See, this is where you might have an argument, if you were to bring up examples from the text (i.e.,
Stargate) where it contradicts the authors' claims about what happens within the text, as I believe Mr. Oragahn is regarding Teal'c:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Teal'c is more like Spock with muscles and a cool tatoo. He favours reflexion and meditation.
Regarding the authors' claim that Teal'c is most likely to hit or shoot something. And this is where I'm least prepared to examine this essay critically, personally, since I have very little familiarity with the SG television series.
the lack of understanding and comprehension of basic television tropes
See, here's where you seem to be displaying a lack of understanding and comprehension of what the authors are really getting at. They're not saying "Oh, look, Stargate is bad because is displays X properties," where X are in fact common TV tropes.
As mentioned repeatedly in the paper, the themes are not unique to Stargate, e.g., the problem of everyone speaking English (except aliens, who speak it awkwardly). The fact that these things
are tropes is part of what relates the general argument for first world (and especially American) popular media products supporting neocolonialism. The argument of the paper is that Stargate happens to be a specific instance of such a media product.
It's not even really saying that Stargate is a
bad show so much as that Stargate happens to display and affirm certain current cultural characteristics or behaviors.