Fiske, John, and John Hartley. Reading Television. London: Routledge, 2003. [2nd Edition]
Originally published: 1978
Argument
Fiske and Hartley begin their explanation of how to read TV with semiotics. They also use Barthes and Mythologies to acknowledge the importance of myths in television. They discuss the audience theory of Stuart Hall.
Their conclusion is that television is best understood as a bardic and oral medium, rather than a literary medium. Examining the images portrayed on the TV is not enough to reveal its full meaning.
Bardic role of television:
1. Articulates dominant understanding of reality
2. implicates members of culture into the dominant value system by endorsing ideology
3. Celebrates individuals who adhere to the dominant ideology
4. Assure the culture of the adequacy of the dominant ideology in facing an unpredictable world
5. Exposes inadequacies in the culture's sense of itself for a potential ideological reorientation
6. Convince audience that their status and identity is guaranteed by the culture as a whole
7. Transmit a sense of cultural membership (security and involvement)
Showing posts with label Television criticism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Television criticism. Show all posts
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Lotz - Television Will Be Revolutionized
Lotz, Amanda D. The Television Will Be Revolutionized. New York: New York University Press, 2007.
Argument
Television has moved from the Network stage (1952-81), to the Multi-Channel Transitional Stage (1981-2000), to the Post-Network Era. Lotz argues not that networks will disappear or even won't remain the most important channels, but rather will have to evolve to their rapidly diminishing place on television. Similarly, she argues that television won't go away as a cultural concept but rather that the meaning of television has changed.
Ex. The answer to "What's on television?" Network stage: 3 scheduled choices designed for mass appeal. Multi-Channel Transitional Stage: multiple cable "flows" to surf through. Post-Network Era: liberated from schedule, what's on television might mean what is literally recorded on the DVR (or DVDs, or YouTube, or VOD, etc)
Lotz's discussion is interesting though not surprising for someone who has taken two BT courses on TV post-1980. This would make an excellent book for a television history course. It's chapters cover changes in technology of TV (2), changes in production (3), changes in distribution (4), changes in advertising (5), changes in measuring audience (6), and changes in storytelling possibilities (7).
Connections
One of my favorite thing Lotz does is briefly recognize how media theories about television have had to continually evolve as the medium itself has evolved. Raymond Williams's "flow" is no longer applicable when commercials are so easily skipped. Television as a mass medium has been fractured into niches. Still, at the close, she holds that Horace Newcomb's conclusion that "intimacy, continuity, and history were the elements that distinguished television and earned its status as popular art" still holds true, in transformed but somewhat more pronounced ways. (265)
Argument
Television has moved from the Network stage (1952-81), to the Multi-Channel Transitional Stage (1981-2000), to the Post-Network Era. Lotz argues not that networks will disappear or even won't remain the most important channels, but rather will have to evolve to their rapidly diminishing place on television. Similarly, she argues that television won't go away as a cultural concept but rather that the meaning of television has changed.
Ex. The answer to "What's on television?" Network stage: 3 scheduled choices designed for mass appeal. Multi-Channel Transitional Stage: multiple cable "flows" to surf through. Post-Network Era: liberated from schedule, what's on television might mean what is literally recorded on the DVR (or DVDs, or YouTube, or VOD, etc)
Lotz's discussion is interesting though not surprising for someone who has taken two BT courses on TV post-1980. This would make an excellent book for a television history course. It's chapters cover changes in technology of TV (2), changes in production (3), changes in distribution (4), changes in advertising (5), changes in measuring audience (6), and changes in storytelling possibilities (7).
Connections
One of my favorite thing Lotz does is briefly recognize how media theories about television have had to continually evolve as the medium itself has evolved. Raymond Williams's "flow" is no longer applicable when commercials are so easily skipped. Television as a mass medium has been fractured into niches. Still, at the close, she holds that Horace Newcomb's conclusion that "intimacy, continuity, and history were the elements that distinguished television and earned its status as popular art" still holds true, in transformed but somewhat more pronounced ways. (265)
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Burns and Thompson - Television Studies
Burns, Gary, and Robert J. Thompson. Television Studies: Textual Analysis. New York: Praeger, 1989.
Most of this collection of essays dealt with analysis of specific TV programs or types of programs. The more interesting articles were the first two (debating each other) and the last one, although it's not particularly brilliant (a bit of audience research). Let's quick hit essay...
Mike Budd and Clay Steinman - "Television, Cultural Studies, and the 'Blind Spot' Debate in Critical Communications Research
Rather Marxist. Criticizes television analysis that is purely cultural study which leaves out the political economic factors of television. The final sentences sum up the argument nicely: "When cultural studies, like film/TV studies, abstracts texts from the social and economic institutions of consumer capitalism, it imitates rather than critiques their decontextualizaion, their commodification of experience. Blinded to the socioeconomic, media studies all too easily slips into celebration, missing the urgent critique of domination's newest forms."
John Fiske - "Popular Television and Commercial Culture: Beyond Political Economy"
Post-Marxist. (One-upmanship!) Fiske (explicitly critiqued by Budd and Steinmen) counters with an accusation of a blind spot on their side: the audience. He begins with a simple yet intriguing chart that combines political economy (he calls it financial economy) with what he calls cultural economy.
The first circulation of TV's financial economy: (PRODUCER) Production Studio produces a (COMMODITY) Program which is sold to a (CONSUMER) distributor.
The second circulation of TV's financial economy: (PRODUCER) Program produces a (COMMODITY) audience which is sold to a (CONSUMER) advertiser .
[The Marxists, like Budd and Steinmen, would stop there. But Fiske insists on the importance of studying a second economy.]
The cultural economy: (PRODUCER) audience produces a (COMMODITY) meaning/pleasure which is sold to (CONSUMER) itself.
Here he sounds just like Frith (in Sound Effects), Stu and others, emphasizing that "the people are not cultural dupes and are not readily manipulable, either by the greedy barons of the industry or by benevolent paternalists who claim to have their interests at heart." (31)
Building his argument, Fiske uses Stuart Hall (Encoding/Decoding) and discusses polysemy - the capacity for signs (in this case, TV texts) to have multiple meanings depending on the audience. In fact, Fiske emphasizes, "Popular texts, then, in order to be popular, in order to meet the diverse needs of a diversity of audiences, have to be polysemic." (31) Fiske also complicates Hall's theories of dominant, negotiated, oppositional readings (expanding on this in a footnote on p.36) by suggesting that since people occupy different social positions from moment to moment (even within one session of viewing TV) their social alliances are constantly shifting. (26)
He ends with a swipe at the erosion of Marxism..."Those of us who wish the broaden and extend the range of cultural products in our society...have more to learn from the cultural industries..than we do from many traditional academic and economic theories whos ecentral position in academia is now being challenged." (35)
"Dallas" Refigured - Marsha Cassidy
refiguration - as the Dallas soap opera unfolds serially, the problems and the character development are subject to a constant transformation in the minds of the audience. This relies on the audience's memory of the story's history. The most dramatic example: Bobby's death turning out to be a dream, thus forces a refiguration of everything that happened on the show during that dream. The cliffhangers of the show make Dallas particularly notable as an example of refiguration. (I kept thinking of Lost as a more recent example, and one that plays with refiguration almost consciously.)
Cassidy also notes how refiguration allows characters to move from being good/sympathetic to evil/detested.
Flatulent Conceptions: "The Young Ones," Inoculation, and Emesis - Murray Smith
"The Young Ones" is a British sitcom that was (as I understand it) a borderline sketch comedy show because of its sharp, surrealistic plot turns. It was subversive because instead of confronting small doses of acknowledged evil and thus inoculating against it (Barthes) as most sitcoms would, TYO vomits (emesis) anarchistic behavior. This provides the intense pleasure of the show. Smith's larger aim is to complicate the sources of pleasure from TV from Fiske's suggestion that "pleasure always involves some form of resistance to (rather than complicity with) the ideological codes offered by any given cultural product." (72)
(American parallel...Perhaps...Sunny??)
Collective Blindness and American Television - THE Robert J. Thompson
Thompson marvels at the failure of audiences, even the most educated, to pick up on the subtle bathroom humor of Hill Street Blues (as well as St. Elsewhere). He compares it to "Three's Company," a critically panned show which similarly played with obscenity and filth just below the surface. He suggests audiences are just not used to watching/listening for the scatology etc. that Hill Street Blues revels in. BT suggests reasons: artistic (reflects the filth of the city), ratings (related to T&A TV), pleasure of an inside joke.
"He's Everything You're Not...": A Semiological Analysis of "Cheers" - Arthur Asa Berger
Cheers is a fairy tale: a story filled with signs containing multiple meanings (start with the names) built on semiological oppositions (elites v. middle class and lower).
And Justice for All: The Messages Behind "Real" Courtroom Dramas - Wende Vyborney Dumble
Court TV shows aren't realistic, and may dampen an audience's desire to use the justice system.
The Ratings "Sweeps" and How they Make News - Meg Moritz
During sweeps, local news coverage tends to become ratings-driven and horrible.
The Graphication and Personification of Television News - Herbert Zettl
The graphics of TV news tend to make the space look flat, and may the emphasize the anchor as more "personified" and "real."
Representations of Race in Network News Coverage of South Africa - Wendy Kozol
Simplified news reduces complexities to stereotypes. Representations of protesting blacks in South Africa is problematic, but it does give them an important voice on TV, thus enhancing their status towards a more equivalent position to whites.
Propaganda Techniques in Documentary Film and Television: AIM vs. PBS - Martin J. Medhurst
Emphasizes documentaries are NOT meant to be unbiased "documents" but rather reflect the perception and opinion of the author. Thus, a critic should analyze whether they are good or not by how well they act as propaganda.
TV's World of Sports: Presenting and Playing the Game - Jimmie L. Reeves
Sports tend to have conservative values, thus a crisis in the world of sports signals an "ideological rupture."
Invisible Fictions: Television Audiences, Paedocracy, Pleasure - John Hartley
Begins by addressing the comments of John Ellis (in his preface to Visible Fictions, first edition) that one nation's TV is incomprehensible to observers to other nations. Ellis says that "Broadcast TV is the private life of the nation-state." (quoted on 224) Ellis would later point out the value of approaching the unfamiliar, as demonstrated by Raymond William's famous observation of the "flow" nature of the TV medium.
From here, Hartley engages with Benedict Anderson, suggesting TV is one of the most powerful forces of national identity.
paedocracy - The TV industry imagines itself as a regime addressing its viewers as children, with childlike preoccupations and actions. Programs attempt to appeal to the "playful, imaginative, fantasy, irresponsible aspects of adult behavior." (234)
Hartley also clumsily uses Said, suggesting that the industry "orientalizes" the audience because it exists as an other "almost wholly within the imagination and rhetoric of those who speak on their behalf."
Most of this collection of essays dealt with analysis of specific TV programs or types of programs. The more interesting articles were the first two (debating each other) and the last one, although it's not particularly brilliant (a bit of audience research). Let's quick hit essay...
Mike Budd and Clay Steinman - "Television, Cultural Studies, and the 'Blind Spot' Debate in Critical Communications Research
Rather Marxist. Criticizes television analysis that is purely cultural study which leaves out the political economic factors of television. The final sentences sum up the argument nicely: "When cultural studies, like film/TV studies, abstracts texts from the social and economic institutions of consumer capitalism, it imitates rather than critiques their decontextualizaion, their commodification of experience. Blinded to the socioeconomic, media studies all too easily slips into celebration, missing the urgent critique of domination's newest forms."
John Fiske - "Popular Television and Commercial Culture: Beyond Political Economy"
Post-Marxist. (One-upmanship!) Fiske (explicitly critiqued by Budd and Steinmen) counters with an accusation of a blind spot on their side: the audience. He begins with a simple yet intriguing chart that combines political economy (he calls it financial economy) with what he calls cultural economy.
The first circulation of TV's financial economy: (PRODUCER) Production Studio produces a (COMMODITY) Program which is sold to a (CONSUMER) distributor.
The second circulation of TV's financial economy: (PRODUCER) Program produces a (COMMODITY) audience which is sold to a (CONSUMER) advertiser .
[The Marxists, like Budd and Steinmen, would stop there. But Fiske insists on the importance of studying a second economy.]
The cultural economy: (PRODUCER) audience produces a (COMMODITY) meaning/pleasure which is sold to (CONSUMER) itself.
Here he sounds just like Frith (in Sound Effects), Stu and others, emphasizing that "the people are not cultural dupes and are not readily manipulable, either by the greedy barons of the industry or by benevolent paternalists who claim to have their interests at heart." (31)
Building his argument, Fiske uses Stuart Hall (Encoding/Decoding) and discusses polysemy - the capacity for signs (in this case, TV texts) to have multiple meanings depending on the audience. In fact, Fiske emphasizes, "Popular texts, then, in order to be popular, in order to meet the diverse needs of a diversity of audiences, have to be polysemic." (31) Fiske also complicates Hall's theories of dominant, negotiated, oppositional readings (expanding on this in a footnote on p.36) by suggesting that since people occupy different social positions from moment to moment (even within one session of viewing TV) their social alliances are constantly shifting. (26)
He ends with a swipe at the erosion of Marxism..."Those of us who wish the broaden and extend the range of cultural products in our society...have more to learn from the cultural industries..than we do from many traditional academic and economic theories whos ecentral position in academia is now being challenged." (35)
"Dallas" Refigured - Marsha Cassidy
refiguration - as the Dallas soap opera unfolds serially, the problems and the character development are subject to a constant transformation in the minds of the audience. This relies on the audience's memory of the story's history. The most dramatic example: Bobby's death turning out to be a dream, thus forces a refiguration of everything that happened on the show during that dream. The cliffhangers of the show make Dallas particularly notable as an example of refiguration. (I kept thinking of Lost as a more recent example, and one that plays with refiguration almost consciously.)
Cassidy also notes how refiguration allows characters to move from being good/sympathetic to evil/detested.
Flatulent Conceptions: "The Young Ones," Inoculation, and Emesis - Murray Smith
"The Young Ones" is a British sitcom that was (as I understand it) a borderline sketch comedy show because of its sharp, surrealistic plot turns. It was subversive because instead of confronting small doses of acknowledged evil and thus inoculating against it (Barthes) as most sitcoms would, TYO vomits (emesis) anarchistic behavior. This provides the intense pleasure of the show. Smith's larger aim is to complicate the sources of pleasure from TV from Fiske's suggestion that "pleasure always involves some form of resistance to (rather than complicity with) the ideological codes offered by any given cultural product." (72)
(American parallel...Perhaps...Sunny??)
Collective Blindness and American Television - THE Robert J. Thompson
Thompson marvels at the failure of audiences, even the most educated, to pick up on the subtle bathroom humor of Hill Street Blues (as well as St. Elsewhere). He compares it to "Three's Company," a critically panned show which similarly played with obscenity and filth just below the surface. He suggests audiences are just not used to watching/listening for the scatology etc. that Hill Street Blues revels in. BT suggests reasons: artistic (reflects the filth of the city), ratings (related to T&A TV), pleasure of an inside joke.
"He's Everything You're Not...": A Semiological Analysis of "Cheers" - Arthur Asa Berger
Cheers is a fairy tale: a story filled with signs containing multiple meanings (start with the names) built on semiological oppositions (elites v. middle class and lower).
And Justice for All: The Messages Behind "Real" Courtroom Dramas - Wende Vyborney Dumble
Court TV shows aren't realistic, and may dampen an audience's desire to use the justice system.
The Ratings "Sweeps" and How they Make News - Meg Moritz
During sweeps, local news coverage tends to become ratings-driven and horrible.
The Graphication and Personification of Television News - Herbert Zettl
The graphics of TV news tend to make the space look flat, and may the emphasize the anchor as more "personified" and "real."
Representations of Race in Network News Coverage of South Africa - Wendy Kozol
Simplified news reduces complexities to stereotypes. Representations of protesting blacks in South Africa is problematic, but it does give them an important voice on TV, thus enhancing their status towards a more equivalent position to whites.
Propaganda Techniques in Documentary Film and Television: AIM vs. PBS - Martin J. Medhurst
Emphasizes documentaries are NOT meant to be unbiased "documents" but rather reflect the perception and opinion of the author. Thus, a critic should analyze whether they are good or not by how well they act as propaganda.
TV's World of Sports: Presenting and Playing the Game - Jimmie L. Reeves
Sports tend to have conservative values, thus a crisis in the world of sports signals an "ideological rupture."
Invisible Fictions: Television Audiences, Paedocracy, Pleasure - John Hartley
Begins by addressing the comments of John Ellis (in his preface to Visible Fictions, first edition) that one nation's TV is incomprehensible to observers to other nations. Ellis says that "Broadcast TV is the private life of the nation-state." (quoted on 224) Ellis would later point out the value of approaching the unfamiliar, as demonstrated by Raymond William's famous observation of the "flow" nature of the TV medium.
From here, Hartley engages with Benedict Anderson, suggesting TV is one of the most powerful forces of national identity.
paedocracy - The TV industry imagines itself as a regime addressing its viewers as children, with childlike preoccupations and actions. Programs attempt to appeal to the "playful, imaginative, fantasy, irresponsible aspects of adult behavior." (234)
Hartley also clumsily uses Said, suggesting that the industry "orientalizes" the audience because it exists as an other "almost wholly within the imagination and rhetoric of those who speak on their behalf."
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Seldes - The Public Arts
Seldes, Gilbert. The Public Arts. New Brunswick, N.J., U.S.A.: Transaction, 1994.
Argument:
"Popular Culture can be both democratic and distinguished." - (Lynn Boyd Hinds, Reviewed work(s): The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism by Michael Kammen Pennsylvania History Vol. 64, No. 1, Regional Perspectives On Early American History (Winter 1997), pp. 133-134)
Seldes's short, sweet chapters are best touched on one at a time:
Introduction: Arthur Asa Berger credits Seldes as one of the first scholars to take popular culture seriously. He also summarizes the two paradigms of cultural studies in Stuart Hall's aptly named "Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms." 1. Culturalism-does not see the economic system as fundamental but rather defines culture as encompassing "both the meanings and values which arise amongst distinctive social groups and classes" based on conditions and relationships, as well as the "lived traditions and practices through which those 'understandings' are expressed..." 2. Structuralism - Out of anthropologists like Claude Levi-Strauss, de Saussure, semioticians, and linguistics. Culture is read as a text with structures people were generally unaware of but which nonetheless shape their behavior.
1. The Revolution: Loosing defining the start of the revolution as late summer 1929 when Americans chose to listen to Amos n Andy for free on the radio. Thus public arts began to control and direct the actions and behavior of the people consuming it.
2. The Lovely Art: Movement: The lovely art is film. Movement was its first quality that amazed people.
3. The Lovely Art: Sound: writing ascends in importance, dialogue becomes critical.
4. The Lovely Art: Magic: He is primarily talking about the importance of animation, particularly Disney, in dazzling the audience.
5. The Lovely Art: Space: Larger movie theaters, 3D experimentation try to enhance the space within which the audience experiences a film.
6. The Useful Art: Radio. Differs from film in the way it can be a constant source of communication: information and/or entertainment.
7. Sounds and Echoes: Audience has a different, more intimate relationship with radio characters than the distant awe they feel towards move stars. For example, they have shown a propensity to respond to radio characters in writing. Also notes that both radio and TV suffer from the human instinct to appeal to a broader public through a lowering of artistic standards.
8. Personality Business: The struggle artists go through to remain true to their vision in the midst of a business that has numerous gatekeepers undermining their efforts based on preconceived notions of economic gain.
9. The Threshold of Entertainment: Case studies of panel shows (talk and game) that succeed and fail.
10. The Anatomy of Misery: The audience identifies with the contestant in game shows like $64,000 question, in victory and defeat.
11. Domestic Manners in the 49th State: People on TV (AK, HI not in yet!) Notes the different type of programming in daytime compared to night (prime-time programming/sitcoms)
12. "What a Work is Man!": Murrow as the pinnacle of host, delving both into the news AND into the life of famous guests (Person to Person).
13. The Incomparable Bing: Raves about Bing Crosby's success in radio and TV, which does not translate to film because of his more laid back personal style. (See Ch. 7)
14. The Prevalence of Comedy: Emphasizes the personality of the star comedian as the carrier of a very prevalent genre. "Comedy is the axis around which broadcasting revolves." (133)
15. The Good-Bad Berle: "Uncle Miltie" a.k.a. "Mr. Television" pushed the envelope of his popular show too far from rowdy to bawdy. He managed to dial it back and more or less regain his position at the top of the pack.
16. Ave, Vale, and Wait: Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, succeeding in sketch comedy.
17. Mr Benny: Jack - the professional comedic host
18. The Gleason Case: Jackie - the mass-appeal comedian. Broad experience and talents, but not a particular genius.
19. "Me and the Camera and the Folks...": Jimmy Durante - the most lovable comedic host.
20. "What'll we do for Laughs, Celeste?": Begins with a question (173) "Does the prevalence of comedy prevent us from having as much of other entertainment as we might be getting?" Yup. More potential for art and information than just comedy.
21. "The 52-Minute Hour": The ongoing decline of dramatic works, and the threat of Hollywood taking over production. (See: Boddy - Fifties Television)
22. The Consequences of Time: The importance of scheduling in TV
23. Blessed Necessity: The disconnect between the criticisms of the critics and the fulfillment of public need by TV networks who put on shows that the public does indeed watch. This is a prelude to the final section, which attempts to offer guidance for the future of TV
24. The Stiuations of Edward R. Murrow: Discussion of Murrow's role in McCarthyism, which is praises as important and good but cautions against the precedent of directly attacking someone without equal time.
25. A Primer of Problems: Notes economist Harold A. Innis's observation that "whenever you have a far-reaching change in the means of communication, a social change of equal consequence must occur." (230)
26. Rights and Duties I: Freedom of the Air: Balancing the right to broadcast with the duty to broadcast.
27. Rights and Duties II: The Right to Persuade: Editorials are OK.
28. Rights and Duties III: The Limitations of Freedom: Cautions against aggressive censorship of crime and violence.
29. Problems of Power I: The Politics of Color: The wranglings between NBC and CBS over when to mandate a change to color TV.
30. Problems of Power II: The Ultra-Highs: Balancing anti-monopoly efforts with the need for TV signals to reach certain places.
31. Problems of Power III: Programs for Pay: The dangers of charging the public for TV.
32. Problems of Power IV: The Educational Nexus: Should there be separate channels for educational programs.
33. A New Approach: Broadcasters must be open to public opinion, and be open with the public.
34. The Trinity of the Arts: Older forms of arts are all imports. Popular arts are American-made.
35. The Public Arts: The cultural institutions belong to its inhabitants.
Argument:
"Popular Culture can be both democratic and distinguished." - (Lynn Boyd Hinds, Reviewed work(s): The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism by Michael Kammen Pennsylvania History Vol. 64, No. 1, Regional Perspectives On Early American History (Winter 1997), pp. 133-134)
Seldes's short, sweet chapters are best touched on one at a time:
Introduction: Arthur Asa Berger credits Seldes as one of the first scholars to take popular culture seriously. He also summarizes the two paradigms of cultural studies in Stuart Hall's aptly named "Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms." 1. Culturalism-does not see the economic system as fundamental but rather defines culture as encompassing "both the meanings and values which arise amongst distinctive social groups and classes" based on conditions and relationships, as well as the "lived traditions and practices through which those 'understandings' are expressed..." 2. Structuralism - Out of anthropologists like Claude Levi-Strauss, de Saussure, semioticians, and linguistics. Culture is read as a text with structures people were generally unaware of but which nonetheless shape their behavior.
1. The Revolution: Loosing defining the start of the revolution as late summer 1929 when Americans chose to listen to Amos n Andy for free on the radio. Thus public arts began to control and direct the actions and behavior of the people consuming it.
2. The Lovely Art: Movement: The lovely art is film. Movement was its first quality that amazed people.
3. The Lovely Art: Sound: writing ascends in importance, dialogue becomes critical.
4. The Lovely Art: Magic: He is primarily talking about the importance of animation, particularly Disney, in dazzling the audience.
5. The Lovely Art: Space: Larger movie theaters, 3D experimentation try to enhance the space within which the audience experiences a film.
6. The Useful Art: Radio. Differs from film in the way it can be a constant source of communication: information and/or entertainment.
7. Sounds and Echoes: Audience has a different, more intimate relationship with radio characters than the distant awe they feel towards move stars. For example, they have shown a propensity to respond to radio characters in writing. Also notes that both radio and TV suffer from the human instinct to appeal to a broader public through a lowering of artistic standards.
8. Personality Business: The struggle artists go through to remain true to their vision in the midst of a business that has numerous gatekeepers undermining their efforts based on preconceived notions of economic gain.
9. The Threshold of Entertainment: Case studies of panel shows (talk and game) that succeed and fail.
10. The Anatomy of Misery: The audience identifies with the contestant in game shows like $64,000 question, in victory and defeat.
11. Domestic Manners in the 49th State: People on TV (AK, HI not in yet!) Notes the different type of programming in daytime compared to night (prime-time programming/sitcoms)
12. "What a Work is Man!": Murrow as the pinnacle of host, delving both into the news AND into the life of famous guests (Person to Person).
13. The Incomparable Bing: Raves about Bing Crosby's success in radio and TV, which does not translate to film because of his more laid back personal style. (See Ch. 7)
14. The Prevalence of Comedy: Emphasizes the personality of the star comedian as the carrier of a very prevalent genre. "Comedy is the axis around which broadcasting revolves." (133)
15. The Good-Bad Berle: "Uncle Miltie" a.k.a. "Mr. Television" pushed the envelope of his popular show too far from rowdy to bawdy. He managed to dial it back and more or less regain his position at the top of the pack.
16. Ave, Vale, and Wait: Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, succeeding in sketch comedy.
17. Mr Benny: Jack - the professional comedic host
18. The Gleason Case: Jackie - the mass-appeal comedian. Broad experience and talents, but not a particular genius.
19. "Me and the Camera and the Folks...": Jimmy Durante - the most lovable comedic host.
20. "What'll we do for Laughs, Celeste?": Begins with a question (173) "Does the prevalence of comedy prevent us from having as much of other entertainment as we might be getting?" Yup. More potential for art and information than just comedy.
21. "The 52-Minute Hour": The ongoing decline of dramatic works, and the threat of Hollywood taking over production. (See: Boddy - Fifties Television)
22. The Consequences of Time: The importance of scheduling in TV
23. Blessed Necessity: The disconnect between the criticisms of the critics and the fulfillment of public need by TV networks who put on shows that the public does indeed watch. This is a prelude to the final section, which attempts to offer guidance for the future of TV
24. The Stiuations of Edward R. Murrow: Discussion of Murrow's role in McCarthyism, which is praises as important and good but cautions against the precedent of directly attacking someone without equal time.
25. A Primer of Problems: Notes economist Harold A. Innis's observation that "whenever you have a far-reaching change in the means of communication, a social change of equal consequence must occur." (230)
26. Rights and Duties I: Freedom of the Air: Balancing the right to broadcast with the duty to broadcast.
27. Rights and Duties II: The Right to Persuade: Editorials are OK.
28. Rights and Duties III: The Limitations of Freedom: Cautions against aggressive censorship of crime and violence.
29. Problems of Power I: The Politics of Color: The wranglings between NBC and CBS over when to mandate a change to color TV.
30. Problems of Power II: The Ultra-Highs: Balancing anti-monopoly efforts with the need for TV signals to reach certain places.
31. Problems of Power III: Programs for Pay: The dangers of charging the public for TV.
32. Problems of Power IV: The Educational Nexus: Should there be separate channels for educational programs.
33. A New Approach: Broadcasters must be open to public opinion, and be open with the public.
34. The Trinity of the Arts: Older forms of arts are all imports. Popular arts are American-made.
35. The Public Arts: The cultural institutions belong to its inhabitants.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Newcomb - TV: The Most Popular Art
Newcomb, Horace. TV: The Most Popular Art. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press, 1974.
Argument
As the title suggests, this is an early attempt to apply a critical lens to television as an art, rather than merely dismiss it as low because it is popular. I don't think he uses the term, but Newcomb breaks television down, chapter by chapter, into genres.
Genres (with chapter noted)
2 - Situation Comedy - A group of characters, usually a family, is placed in some zany set of circumstances. Each week the star of the show navigates a problem to solution. Ex. The Beverly Hillbillies, Bewitched
2 - Domestic Comedy - Built more specifically around a family, with a more heartfelt conclusion. Less slapstick, less hysterics, deeper character, a touch more seriousness. Ex. Father Knows Best, My Three Sons
3 - Westerns - Similar to its film and radio predecessors, but Newcomb argues television has come to make the Western into a lens to view contemporary culture, thus complicating the code of the West. (82) Ex. Gunsmoke, Bonanza
4 - Mysteries - The tension of the mystery drives a story that presents a united pattern of contemporary values enforced by the policeman or the detective. Ex. Dragnet, Police Story
5 - Professional Shows (Medical and Law) - Centered on a series star, these shows deal with human issues as they solve medical or legal problems. Ex. Marcus Welby MD, Perry Mason
6 - Adventure Shows - A character or set of characters (loners in the U.S. and explorers in space) confront a complication, extricating themselves by the end of the episode. Note that these series tantalize the audience with continuity (although they fall well short of current shows!). Ex. The Fugitive, Star Trek, Route 66.
7 - Soap Opera - Newcomb is especially defensive of this oft-maligned genre. He discusses how the flimsy sets are actually part of the genre's feel. He also emphasizes their serialization as allowing them to be the most realistic of any genre.
8 - News/Sports/Documentary - Present reality, but in a way that is more similar to fictional shows than might be expected because these shows emphasize the star - newscaster, sportshero, etc.
9 - The New Shows - Newcomb partly forsees but could not possibly fully predict the changes television would undergo in the next decade. He notes the serialization of primetime dramas, and the social consciousness of Norman Lear's shows. He does not, however, envision the great blending of genres that would come far into the future.
Also Note
Chapter 1 is a decent historiographical essay of "Responses to Television" from its early history to the early 1970s.
Argument
As the title suggests, this is an early attempt to apply a critical lens to television as an art, rather than merely dismiss it as low because it is popular. I don't think he uses the term, but Newcomb breaks television down, chapter by chapter, into genres.
Genres (with chapter noted)
2 - Situation Comedy - A group of characters, usually a family, is placed in some zany set of circumstances. Each week the star of the show navigates a problem to solution. Ex. The Beverly Hillbillies, Bewitched
2 - Domestic Comedy - Built more specifically around a family, with a more heartfelt conclusion. Less slapstick, less hysterics, deeper character, a touch more seriousness. Ex. Father Knows Best, My Three Sons
3 - Westerns - Similar to its film and radio predecessors, but Newcomb argues television has come to make the Western into a lens to view contemporary culture, thus complicating the code of the West. (82) Ex. Gunsmoke, Bonanza
4 - Mysteries - The tension of the mystery drives a story that presents a united pattern of contemporary values enforced by the policeman or the detective. Ex. Dragnet, Police Story
5 - Professional Shows (Medical and Law) - Centered on a series star, these shows deal with human issues as they solve medical or legal problems. Ex. Marcus Welby MD, Perry Mason
6 - Adventure Shows - A character or set of characters (loners in the U.S. and explorers in space) confront a complication, extricating themselves by the end of the episode. Note that these series tantalize the audience with continuity (although they fall well short of current shows!). Ex. The Fugitive, Star Trek, Route 66.
7 - Soap Opera - Newcomb is especially defensive of this oft-maligned genre. He discusses how the flimsy sets are actually part of the genre's feel. He also emphasizes their serialization as allowing them to be the most realistic of any genre.
8 - News/Sports/Documentary - Present reality, but in a way that is more similar to fictional shows than might be expected because these shows emphasize the star - newscaster, sportshero, etc.
9 - The New Shows - Newcomb partly forsees but could not possibly fully predict the changes television would undergo in the next decade. He notes the serialization of primetime dramas, and the social consciousness of Norman Lear's shows. He does not, however, envision the great blending of genres that would come far into the future.
Also Note
Chapter 1 is a decent historiographical essay of "Responses to Television" from its early history to the early 1970s.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Hall - Encoding/Decoding
Hall, Stuart. “Encoding/Decoding.” From Durham, Meenakshi Gigi, and Douglas Kellner. Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers, 2001, 163-173.
Argument
Television communication theory can best be understood through a consideration of the relationship the viewer (decoder) has to the media apparatus (encoder).
Rooted in Marxism, Hall begins with an extensive discussion of semiotic theory, also using Eco and Barthes.
Specifics/Key Terms
Argument
Television communication theory can best be understood through a consideration of the relationship the viewer (decoder) has to the media apparatus (encoder).
Rooted in Marxism, Hall begins with an extensive discussion of semiotic theory, also using Eco and Barthes.
Specifics/Key Terms
- It is important to recognize the inequality of the positions of encoder and decoder. Thus, the meanings produced by the encoder are not necessarily the meanings understood by the decoder.
- Misunderstanding - a result of this lack of equivalence
- The televisual sign is complex, in part because it is composed of both visual and aural signs.
- iconic sign - a sign that has some of the properties of the thing being represented (Charles Peirce), because it reproduces the conditions of perception in the viewer (Eco).
- visual sign - an iconic sign, such as the image of a cow on television. It is important to recognize that visual signs are arbitrary to varied degrees.
- linguistic sign - the word "cow," a much more arbitrary sign.
- denotation - generally understood to mean the literal meaning of a sign
- connotation - generally understood to mean less fixed meanings associated with a sign
- HOWEVER, Hall stresses that this distinction (denotation/connotation) rarely happens in real life
- Finally, he comes to the climax of his essay: the three hypothetical positions which television discourse is decoded:
- dominant-hegemonic - operating inside the dominant code, the viewer is able to take the full and straight meaning. i.e. Members of the ruling elite, members of the profession able to understand professional code.
- negotiated position - Most audiences understand what is being signified, acknowledgin the legitimacy of the hegemonic discourse while making exceptions for local conditions. i.e. Corporate positions, laborers who approve of a legislation for national interest while opposing in their own case.
- oppositional position - retotalizing of the message in an alternative framework. Don't identify with the message.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Boddy - Fifties Television
Boddy, William. Fifties Television: The Industry and Its Critics. Illinois studies in communications. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990.
Argument
Boddy's stated aim "is to suggest that the development of American television, and specifically the era of network hegemony which stretched from the mid 1950s to the mid 1970s, was not "natural" or inevitable, but indeed the result of specific economic and political forces and structures with complex determinants." (8) In thematic chapters, arranged in a rough chronology, Boddy explains these factors. He claims to be one of the first to bring together more specialized research into 50s television with broader social science perspective. However, his discussion is mostly focused on the effects of networks, studios, advertisers, the government and the FCC on the transition out of the "Golden Age", and the critical response to this transition. Other than critics and passing mention of ratings as they were being understood by networks and advertisers, he leaves out audience reception. The actual programs are mentioned only in passing. (see Critique) To his credit, Boddy takes a neutral - even contrarian - position to the standard narrative that television got worse in this period (typified by the work of Erik Barnouw).
Key Points
Chapter 2 - Early hopes for television were that the medium would not be "corrupted" by advertising as radio had been.
Chapter 3 - NBC, owned by RCA, tried to block attempts at opening up the UHF bandwidth as its produced televisions were exclusively VHF. CBS, the second largest early network, wanted the UHF bandwidth opened to allow for more stations.
The Freeze - between Sept 1948 and April 1952 the FCC suspended license approvals (50-51). This was the result of an earlier ruling to narrow station separations, which resulted in disastrous station interference and a flood of license applications. At the same time, the number of stations on the air exploded (50 to 108), as did the number of television sets (1,200,000 to 15,000,000). The result was a firming up of network control over the industry. NBC and CBS benefited hugely, while ABC and DuMont were (respectively) almost critically and critically effected.
Chapter 4-6: The Early 1950s - To the approval of critics, networks avoided Hollywood-produced content intent on reaping the rewards themselves of produced shows. Live television tended to be single-sponsor. Programs were created in New York in the dramatic theater style rather than the "lower" Hollywood style.)
Chapter 7-10: Eventually, networks (led by ABC which charged back from behind) found it cost-effective to buy Hollywood studio-produced content. Live broadcasts, which were praised by critics as the epitomy of the artistic possibilities of the medium, faded away. Multiple sponsors moved in, and the prestige of writing for television declined, ex. Rod Serling. Meanwhile, the FCC did its best to break up Network control of too many stations and too much of program creation, further incentivizing the network search for programs created by Hollywood studios.
Chapters 11-14: 1958-60 - The Quiz show scandal, followed by Newton Minnow's "Vast Wasteland" speech led to a public relations crisis for the networks. Boddy argues the Minnow speech had less of an effect than the Quiz show scandal. Advertisers blamed networks, networks blamed advertisers. Network presidents changed the way they talked about their programs, turning towards an argument that "mass audience indicates serving the mass public interest." Critics screamed, but at the same time the newspaper TV column disappeared accross the country, as critics had less serious drama to comment about and were left mainly criticizing the medium as a whole over and over.
Critique
This book has to be read along with Castleman and Podzrazik's "Watching Television" to get a sense of what the networks were actually putting on, because Boddy barely does that. He merely describes the type of show on TV rather than the actual show. Without examples, the prose is terribly dry. It was a fast read, quickly digestible, but largely because it is written plainly with little attempts at argument and insight. Perhaps Boddy takes his claim at being a neutral observer of the decade too seriously. This is yet another book about television that I feel could be written much better.
Argument
Boddy's stated aim "is to suggest that the development of American television, and specifically the era of network hegemony which stretched from the mid 1950s to the mid 1970s, was not "natural" or inevitable, but indeed the result of specific economic and political forces and structures with complex determinants." (8) In thematic chapters, arranged in a rough chronology, Boddy explains these factors. He claims to be one of the first to bring together more specialized research into 50s television with broader social science perspective. However, his discussion is mostly focused on the effects of networks, studios, advertisers, the government and the FCC on the transition out of the "Golden Age", and the critical response to this transition. Other than critics and passing mention of ratings as they were being understood by networks and advertisers, he leaves out audience reception. The actual programs are mentioned only in passing. (see Critique) To his credit, Boddy takes a neutral - even contrarian - position to the standard narrative that television got worse in this period (typified by the work of Erik Barnouw).
Key Points
Chapter 2 - Early hopes for television were that the medium would not be "corrupted" by advertising as radio had been.
Chapter 3 - NBC, owned by RCA, tried to block attempts at opening up the UHF bandwidth as its produced televisions were exclusively VHF. CBS, the second largest early network, wanted the UHF bandwidth opened to allow for more stations.
The Freeze - between Sept 1948 and April 1952 the FCC suspended license approvals (50-51). This was the result of an earlier ruling to narrow station separations, which resulted in disastrous station interference and a flood of license applications. At the same time, the number of stations on the air exploded (50 to 108), as did the number of television sets (1,200,000 to 15,000,000). The result was a firming up of network control over the industry. NBC and CBS benefited hugely, while ABC and DuMont were (respectively) almost critically and critically effected.
Chapter 4-6: The Early 1950s - To the approval of critics, networks avoided Hollywood-produced content intent on reaping the rewards themselves of produced shows. Live television tended to be single-sponsor. Programs were created in New York in the dramatic theater style rather than the "lower" Hollywood style.)
Chapter 7-10: Eventually, networks (led by ABC which charged back from behind) found it cost-effective to buy Hollywood studio-produced content. Live broadcasts, which were praised by critics as the epitomy of the artistic possibilities of the medium, faded away. Multiple sponsors moved in, and the prestige of writing for television declined, ex. Rod Serling. Meanwhile, the FCC did its best to break up Network control of too many stations and too much of program creation, further incentivizing the network search for programs created by Hollywood studios.
Chapters 11-14: 1958-60 - The Quiz show scandal, followed by Newton Minnow's "Vast Wasteland" speech led to a public relations crisis for the networks. Boddy argues the Minnow speech had less of an effect than the Quiz show scandal. Advertisers blamed networks, networks blamed advertisers. Network presidents changed the way they talked about their programs, turning towards an argument that "mass audience indicates serving the mass public interest." Critics screamed, but at the same time the newspaper TV column disappeared accross the country, as critics had less serious drama to comment about and were left mainly criticizing the medium as a whole over and over.
Critique
This book has to be read along with Castleman and Podzrazik's "Watching Television" to get a sense of what the networks were actually putting on, because Boddy barely does that. He merely describes the type of show on TV rather than the actual show. Without examples, the prose is terribly dry. It was a fast read, quickly digestible, but largely because it is written plainly with little attempts at argument and insight. Perhaps Boddy takes his claim at being a neutral observer of the decade too seriously. This is yet another book about television that I feel could be written much better.
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