TA: ..... dun dun dun.....

Technical Analysis: Analyzing the process of thinking through art.

I've had several classes about analyzing art, film, theatre, etc, and I have to say I rather enjoy it. It usually ends up boiling down to looking at the different technical issues, ie: Intent, emotion, form, style, time period, influences, expectations, method, color/scheme, design, etc. Obviously, the different forms of expression will have different means... paintings will have color, and so will theatre and film, but the eras will change the means available... ie. the old black and white films had only depth and contrast and lighting-type mediums to work with instead of color. They didn't have the means to use that kind of symbolism or influence, so they had to be creative and find other ways to express what they wanted to put across.
Ironically, in live theater, we can't use that alternate method. I'm thinking specifically of the BYU production of Hamlet where they basically made their entire set and costume design solely out of shades of black, grey, white, and red as their symbolic color (bit of trivia, it was symbolic of people who betrayed Hamlet, or were about to. Ingenious, if I do say so myself.) But, if they had wanted to stage a production imitating the black and white film, their natural state would interfere with it... by that I mean skin color, eye color, and hair color. In that regard, film has an advantage that we would not be able to use in live theater. We could go to some very big extremes to create that (ie. black/grey/white makeup and highlights, contacts, hair dye), but it wouldn't be natural. [...actually, that would make a really interesting experimental theater piece. Doing the whole thing in black and white... ooh. Ponderances.]
I find it interesting that we could analyze art even from an English standpoint. I hadn't really thought that was possible. I usually thought of it in the context of using English as a vehicle to write about theater/art through... but that's a cool new medium in and of itself.