Over the past few days in Media Studies, we have viewed an episode of Smallville entitled ‘Precipice’. This program follows the daily life of the young Clark Kent, who is just realizing all his powers. This essay will attempt to analyze the construction of reality, the codes and conventions and some of the ideologies and values among other things. This television program constructs reality in the way of a a regular small town with the Kents (a normal family unit, with a normal middle class house). The farming town is a good setting for this show because it could be any town across America. It shows normal teens doing normal teen things like working at a coffee shop or hanging out with friends. It does however, include a supernatural aspect to it. With Clark being an Alien with super powers that was adopted by his human parents. Smallville also uses its own codes and conventions. For example, there are a lot of facial close-ups so the viewer will know the characters moods. This is especially apparent with Clark, every time something bad happens, he gets a sort of eyebrow crunch-twist that lets you know he is concerned. They also use over the shoulder shots to include both characters in dialogue. This is used in the conversation between Lex Luthor and Lana in the coffee shop after her incident with the frat boys. Most front shots of the characters are from the waist up. police officer showed Clark that even heros aren’t above the law Smallville also impresses upon its audience a strong set of ideologies and values. Just to name a few they had the value that families should stick together in stressful times. Another one is the importance of girl power in a male dominated society. The
