Peripheral Response - Ursula

 A couple of questions I found myself asking after thinking about the readings:

Both articles seem focused on the here-and-now and possible future of production and content. I am curious what their arguments might say about perceptions of television from a different time/ decade? Does the reluctance to address social issues in television/mass media in the 1950s mean that image created of the 1950s in public consciousness today is one further removed from social issues and controversial topics of the time?

How would these readings deal with fans and fandom as active participants whether through magazines, social media, or other forums? ie) how would these authors respond to Henry Jenkin's Textual Poachers?

As others have mentioned in their responses, I am curious how these readings drawing exclusively from a pre-cable American television context hold-up in a current, global setting. If television is being made explicitly for international export, this complicates the idea of an audience and ideological hegemony confined within a nation state. Theres a LOT that can be brought in here: remakes, export of formats vs. exports of full programs, the global spread of  American television programs, the existence of international programs on streaming services, and a plethora of remakes of international formats on American television...

And finally, what would they have to say about reality television? It both beautifully supports and complicates their arguments.

Jensen Core Response 1

The two readings this week, by Newcomb and Gitlin, focus primarily on the inherent relationship between the promulgation of cultural ideology and television. The two both make clear points that television does not create ideology, but merely repeat and reproduce the cultural beliefs of the time. However, both take different approaches in analyzing this aspect of television, concentrating on specific areas of television’s ideological capabilities.

Newcomb first discusses how two popular theoretical viewpoints surround television: one centered around its use as a communication medium to “transmit messages at a distance for the purpose of control”, and another regarding it as an aesthetic object representing a collection of shared beliefs. The author however believes it is more important to view television as a cultural process rather than a product and situates it centrally within other media forms, believing it to act as a cultural forum which speaks most accurately to American cultural beliefs. One note regarding this “situation” is that Newcomb ascribes to the belief of high and low cultural products, with television residing between the two. While the argument could be made that some artistic forms tend to align themselves more with certain economic classes, it is evident especially with contemporary artistic outputs that such a binary is often too narrow.

On the other hand, Gitlen focuses his analysis on how the intrenched bourgeois ideological hegemony is repeated and enforced through television onto the working class. The author showcases this point through the manipulation at the executive level of various television facets, such as format, formula, and genre, and how capitalist ideology permeates through these elements. One interesting area which Gitlen mentions is the effect professional sports programs has on the working class, stating that worldly knowledge is replaced with sports statistics as a showcase of intelligence and contemporary awareness, distracting from the real social issues at hand. 

Core Response #1

 Todd Gitlin’s essay feels incredibly disjointed in its argumentative structure. His introduction and conclusion are concretely focused on the capitalistic production of hegemonic ideologies but his analysis of formula, characters, slant, genre, and solution serves as a disruption, or perhaps distraction, to his thesis. To be clear, I think each component of the essay is well articulated but what is lacking is a sustained analysis of the broader sociopolitical implications of the hegemonic structure that cohesively links each component to one another and to his main argument. I think his argument is so grandiose and complicated that it becomes undone in his attempt to prove every part of it as a viable truth, if not an absolute one. Gitlin, in his endeavor to reveal the foreboding capitalistic monstrosity of hegemony, actually entraps himself within the very matrix he is so eager to expose. His analysis is helplessly repetitive, constantly coming back to the same claim, reference, or time period over and over to achieve very little in terms of furthering his argument. 

It is interesting, actually, to see his criticism unfold in the very manner of the thing he is criticizing (the relentlessly repetitive, cyclical process of television to retain an audience). I felt as though his argument could have been strengthened by incorporating and sustaining a more fruitful analysis of the historical and political events he references. For instance, how does the political environment of the 1950s influence the production of film and television? He says that when the minds of writers, producers, directors, etc change then there is a deviation from the standardization of production. But he only contextualizes that in the context of “slant” in character ideologies/development. I think he has a microscopic view in this case. He misses the opportunity, in my opinion, to not just look at the individuals working in Hollywood, but the massive political and cultural events that influence them to influence TV. How does one discuss 1950s television and film but do not have a parallel discussion or even mention of the Hays Code? Especially when the aim of the essay is to demonstrate hegemonic power within an economic, political, and historical context. I can understand perhaps the point of the paper was to focus on the process of the production of hegemonic ideologies, to explore the actual mechanics of the system. Ultimately, I would agree with Gitlin on many of his assertions, and would even go so far as to say these hegemonic productions have become more pertinent with the rise of social media. While he concedes that the hegemonic system is not definitive (264), I think he lacks a cohesive analysis of how the system is influenced as much as it influences.

Core Response #1: Andrea

 In Heather Hendershot’s essay, “Parks and Recreation: The Cultural Forum,” she writes that the sitcom Parks and Recreation acted as a televisual site of political negotiation during a period of heightened Right-wing political action. While Hendershot examines the ways main characters Leslie Knope and Ron Swanson present conflicting ideologies between liberal and conservative politics, she emphasizes the inherent political contradictions each character embodies, ultimately resulting in a breakdown between the conservative-liberal binary. For example, Leslie embraces liberal ideas regarding gender and sexuality, yet she holds a more conservative ideology about labor and meritocracy. On the other hand, Ron satirizes the extremism of Tea Party conservatism while also remaining an anti-government government employee. The fact that these complex and contradictory political ideologies work inside both of the main characters illustrates Hendershot’s conclusion that “The lesson offered, as Leslie might declare with naive optimism, is that liberals and conservatives can work together within local government,” yet this conclusion enforces the idea that government can overcome division because of some political middle ground (211). As Americans alive during a post-Trump era, clearly, this idea is merely a fantasy, a representation of a world that doesn’t exist.

In his essay, “Prime Time Ideology,” Todd Gitlin writes, “This [liberal capitalist] ideological core is what remains essentially unchanged and unchallenged in television entertainment, at the same time the inner tensions persist and are even magnified,” which accurately summarizes both the positive and negative aspects of Parks and Recreations according to Hendershot’s analysis (265). While the sitcom indeed “suggests that we should respond to the issues it raises,” particularly that of the division the conservative-liberal binary causes, the show still enables hegemonic appeals to neoliberal politics to remain unchallenged. Perhaps, as Newcomb and Hirsch write, Parks and Recreation practices a longstanding tradition in television history where the recognition and questioning of the problem is enough; that “We remain trapped, like American culture in its historical reality, with a dream and the rhetoric of peace and with a bitter experience that denies,” because the show would end if the characters could not move beyond their internal and external clashes in politics. For Pawnee, and America by extension, the government functions because of the recognition that the Right and Left “can communicate and collaborate,” yet Gitlin asks that we be cognizant of the pull towards hegemonic ideology. From what I gather, the show makes no overt political stance, it just “slants” in a liberal direction without challenging the status quo outright, however, I personally have never watched Parks and Recreation. What I know is based on largely positive public discourse (mostly seen in online spaces like Twitter and Tumblr) and the interpretations based on Hendershot’s essay.

In addition to my problems with the centrist ideology put forth by Parks and Recreations (one that, additionally, presents itself as advocating for the activism of "special interest groups," yet denies the dangers of neutral politics for those same groups), I believe that Hendershot's assertions that "the forum idea truly fizzled out" and that people are no longer interested in extremely controversial topics on television no longer applies to this new era of television streaming (206). From my own experience, I see the rise of social media and live-tweeting as a new form of the public forum idea put forth by Newcomb and Hirsch, increasing interest in 'niche' programs and controversial topics as people want to share viral and controversial opinions online more now than ever before.

Core Response #1 _Ann

It was an interesting experience trying to negotiate my own opinions among today’s readings. Newcomb and Hirsch wrote in their 1983 article “Television as Cultural Forum”, “Ritual and the arts offer a metalanguage, a way of understanding who and what we are…in contributing to this process…television fulfills what Fiske and Hartley refer to as the ‘bardic function’ of contemporary societies” (564). While I appreciate their overall optimism in this article, this “bardic function” they referred to is based on the condition that television still functioned under networks instead of cables and, for today, streamings. The American “we”, as Hendershot calls it (204), has diminished after the introduction of cable television. It still exists in niche clusters but a national audience as wide as the one under network television has disappeared. So is the idea of “cultural forum” still applicable to today’s television environment? While I want to agree with Newcomb and Hirsch and say yes, their argument lacks something that Gitlin’s “Prime Time Ideology” has: a focus on the ever-changing hegemony behind television programming. 

Gitlin writes: “hegemonic ideology is extremely complex and absorptive; it is only by absorbing and domesticating conflicting definitions of reality and demands on it, in fact, that it remains hegemonic”  (264). Gitlin also comments extensively on this changing hegemony through the comparison between the fifties’ ignorance of the marginalized culture and the seventies’ domestication of it. In other words, television content changes while the dominant hegemony changes, and this change in TV content can also affect the “cultural forum” Newcomb and Hirsch invoke. However, I think Gitlin’s article also lacks the kind of audience analysis that Newcomb and Hirsch slightly touch upon. In my opinion, to gain a holistic view of American television (whether that is possible is debatable itself), one must have an awareness of the capitalistic hegemony in place as well as pay attention to the different “modes of interpretations” (as Stuart Hall calls it) in audience discourses. I think both Gitlin's and Newcomb and Hirsch’s arguments, although written in the late 70s and early 80s, can still benefit us today if we combine their views. This is exceptionally true when we think about today’s streaming and internet culture. We are in an environment where “cultural forums”, although it doesn’t exist on the national scale, can exist on the internet through communities and social media like Tumblr, Reddit, Discord and so on. These new technologies bring forth a new way to discuss television content and personal opinions. However, this also brings up the question of whether these smaller forums are dividing or unifying. Streaming services have also opened up the possibility for content creators to explore themes that are not possible in the network days. However, I also wonder since the mode of production today is still based on capital and subscription, can the audience actually escape the hegemony that is still embedded, maybe more hidden, in today’s screaming contents? 

Another very interesting and quick point I want to mention is the fact that all three articles today are written on American television, which, as Williams states in last week’s article, started from a commercial mode. So I wonder could we look at, for example, BBC with a different approach than Gitlin’s ideas? What’s more, as someone who grew up in a culture other than American, I also see differences in the trajectory of TV development. The hegemonic nature of this medium of mass communication is evident in where I grew up, but it also intertwines with socialism and colonial history. There is a lot to say there but I’m very intrigued by our discussion on all of these tomorrow. 

Core Response #1-Tiana Williams

    Newcomb and Hirsch’s idea of the forum within television that allows for an exchange of cultural dialogue between producers and its audiences, remains an interesting theorization of cultural encoding and decoding processes within media. As I read this week’s material, I thought of the multitude of ways this forum has evolved overtime, especially considering that Newcomb and Hirsch’s work was produced in the 1980s when the main method of getting in contact with a station to express one’s opinions was by way of telephone or sending in physical letters to the station’s headquarters. In contemporary society, using social media platforms such as Instagram or Twitter, can directly impact the flow of a television series; for instance, the many fans that took to Twitter to address their concerns with the HBO series Insecure, and its failure to display its characters practicing responsible, protected sex. The mild controversy prompted Insecure’s writers and show-runners to ensure that visible condom wrappers were present in each scene displaying sexual activity in the season to follow. In short, it is quite clear that tv’s forum has evolved immensely over the years, to the point where producers find themselves so attuned to the reactions and responses of the audience, that simply tweeting a distaste for the show’s directorial decisions can have a direct impact on the show’s content. 

    Considering this evolution, it brought to mind many questions of the subconscious and television’s impact on the psyche. While Raymond Williams concept of ‘flow’ and his analyses of the disjointed sequences of television provides one possible framework for maneuvering the various subliminal stimuli present within television as a cultural forum—I found myself still anticipating more discussion from other readings on the effect of this forum on its audience. Specifically, my interest lies in examining the factors that allows for television to continue as an accepted stage of contradiction and how it creates replicas of the damaged world in which it functions (all the while posing as something utterly ‘different’ than what the day-to-day gives us). Coincidentally, Todd Gitlin’s work on hegemony in many ways addresses this great paradox I am interested in. By recognizing the “abundant “contradictions” throughout American society, [that] are played out substantially in the realm of “culture” or “ideology” (252) Gitlin complicates the notion of television simply serving as an "escape from reality". While television might often stand in as an escape from reality, it also has direct influence in constructing the realities of its audiences via the subconscious. 

    This brings me to Newcomb and Hirsch’s assertion that television does not put forth solidified ideological conclusions so much as it raises ideological concerns—an argument that facilitates further discussion around measuring a viewer’s psychological ability to come to their own ideological stances after watching television content. But in what form might a firm ideological conclusion present itself and is it possible to properly survey ideological stances taken by each viewer after concluding a show? Especially taking into account the consideration that Newcomb and Hirsch bring forth as they recognize the difficult task that research and critical analysis face in attempting to “define and describe the “inventory that makes possible the multiple meanings extracted by audiences, creators, and network decision makers” (571). In that case, I wonder if television as a cultural forum is more than just the cultivation of discourse around ideology, with viewers being its interpreters. In a sense, it seems that the forum also remains a paradoxical site for the transportation of uncontested ideologies, as Williams points to, where the audience solely interprets the conscious messages, still unaware of those transmitted subliminally.  

Core Response #1 - Laura

What grinds my gears about Todd Gitlin’s “Prime Time Ideology” is that I honestly don’t disagree with its overall argument about television as a reinforcer of capitalist hegemony. But I struggle to get behind the way he builds his argument, and so am going to spend the next 500 words griping about it.

Everything is capitalism. Week-to-week storytelling is capitalism (254). Scheduled programming is capitalism, as is the practice of recording it to watch on your own time (255). Complimenting athletic prowess during sporting events is capitalism (258). Bad acting on contemporary sitcoms is capitalism (260).

Again, I don’t particularly disagree with his main point – it is kind of capitalism all the way down – but Gitlin has built himself a comfortable fortress wherein any counterargument can be refuted, not on the strength of his argument itself, but in the loopholes he has been sure to carve out. If I point out that plenty of television is shaped by artistic integrity as much as it is by network meddling, then I’m just so far deep in the matrix of hegemonic common sense that I’m not understanding it (and look, honestly, maybe I don’t understand it. Lots of things go over my head). If any kind of status quo-disrupting programming finds its way onto network television, that doesn’t mean Gitlin is wrong: just that the industry has sensed the change in audience demand and is shifting accordingly. And no, his claim that sports fans are “out of control of social reality” and “flatter [themselves] that the substitute world of sports is a corner of the world [they] can really grasp” (258) isn’t reductive or condescending, because he already made the disclaimer that he would “not be arguing that the forms of hegemonic entertainment superimpose themselves automatically and finally onto the consciousness or behavior of all audiences at all times” (253). So he’s totally not talking down to the masses.

I have to wonder how he would respond to the current landscape of television programming. Nearly all the elements of television he notes have been disrupted in the current era of niche programming and streaming on demand. Gitlin makes sure to account for this possibility (“the hegemonic system… has continually to be reproduced, continually superimposed, continually to be negotiated and managed, in order to override the alternative and, occasionally, the oppositional forms” (264)), but still I don’t think this world is exactly the one he’s picturing. It seems to me that the contemporary niche/streaming setup offers possibilities for a kind of auteur show-making – what springs to mind first is Issa Rae’s Insecure, though this is by no means the only one.  So much of Gitlin’s evidence for television as a hegemonic force doesn’t apply anymore, yet clearly we have not defeated capitalism. Would Gitlin dismiss Insecure as yet more neoliberal smoke and mirrors?  Or would he acknowledge that perhaps “everything is capitalism” is not a universally satisfactory argument?

In the end, I think that Gitlin falls into the trap he initially claimed he would be able to avoid: “If ‘hegemony’ explains everything in the sphere of culture, it explains nothing” (252).

Core Response #1 - Lilla Spanyi

 

Newcomb and Hirsch’s 1983 essay Television as a Cultural Form declares that television is our “national medium” that is “central to [the] process of public thinking” (563). While this idea certainly seems dated in 2021, when an increasing number of people are cutting the cord, the idea that TV influences public opinion is still very much relevant. Newcomb and Hirsch argue that according to the “transportation view,” TV as a form of communication transmits “messages at a distance for the purpose of control,” “persuasion,” or “attitude change” (562). They even bring up Father Knows Best as an example of a show that seemingly “reproduces dominant ideology” as a way of persuading their audience to stick to the status quo (565). However, they add that while seemingly presenting ideological conclusions, they in fact “comment on ideological problems” (566). Indeed, television has been used as a way to reflect on contemporary society, with audiences eager to consume storylines relevant to their day-to-day. That said, using the fictional, serialized narratives of characters can also be used to embody change.

Last semester, I interviewed Elizabeth Voorhees, the Chief Strategy Officer at Define American, a non-profit that focuses on the representation of immigrants in television. Voorhees argued that television is important due to its nature as popular culture —people reach for it for entertainment, and not for education. Yet when watching something that is popular culture, people let their guard down. This creates an opportunity to create dialogue and introduce audiences to perspectives they would not have otherwise considered, whether it is for political or other reasons. So, in a way, television is used as a method for persuasion and attitude change, but not in the negative way that Newcomb and Hirsch discuss. It is used as a method to combat the increasing polarization of media consumption and introduce storylines such as undocumented immigration, for example, in a humanizing way and related to characters that audiences otherwise care about. So while TV certainly can be used to reinforce dominant ideologies, it is also capable of doing the opposite — by allowing people to let their guard down, it can warm people up to concepts or identities they are otherwise opposed to.

Core Response #1 - Daniela Velazco

     Despite having written “Television as a Cultural Forum” in 1983, Newcomb and Hirsch raised questions about communication that, at least in my work, has failed to be recognized. What really struck me is how little I consider the process when I am so busy critiquing the product. This is not to say that I do not take the process into consideration, but I am so focused on textual analysis that I fail to remember the many ways a television show can be read. More importantly, my brain is so used to seeing things in binaries that I fail to look at the fact that multiple conversations are even happening in the first place.
    One of my favorite things about television is that it is viewed in a setting where you can talk while the show is on, thus allowing for conversation during, as opposed to after, the fact. This allows us to discuss the media as we are digesting it, as opposed to coming to conclusions after having “digested” it. In my experience, the conversations had during digestion tend to be more nuanced than those had after the fact, due mostly to the fact that we don’t know the outcome of the episode or the series because we have yet to experience it. This allows for speculation, or in my household, arguments over how we anticipate the episode might end.
    Last week, for example, I was binging the second season of Big Little Lies alone, as my mother had already watched it without me last year (I have finally gotten over the betrayal). When I watched it alone, I found myself to be more critical of the whiteness of Reese Witherspoon’s character Madeline. When I watched a random episode with my mother, however, we talked not about Madeline, but about the women and their relationships as a whole. We had a more nuanced conversation about privilege, love, and motherhood. I will save you the gory details, but by then end we were both crying and ended up talking about Meryl Streep’s character for days. We even watched The Devil Wears Prada the next day.
    Although I strayed from the point I intended to make, recalling this moment reminded me of the power of the communal aspect of television. As opposed to the more formal setting of the movie theater, the home allows for conversations that my mother and I may not have had for years. Television allowed for “the raising of questions”, which ended up being more important than “the answering of them” (Newcomb and Hirsch 565). Had we read something by Richard Dyer this week , I may have focused on the whiteness and privilege of that show over the conversation I was able to have with my mother. While the former is still important to talk about, it leaves out the conversation had by everyday individual viewers like myself. I know that when Newcomb and Hirsch stated that “ritual must be seen as process rather than as product”, they did not exactly have my mom, myself, and the shedding of tears in mind (Newcomb and Hirsch 563). Regardless, our conversations about television shows during and after digestion show the importance of television as our own little multicultural forum.

Core Response #1

    Using Turner’s conception of television as ritualistic and supplying a metalanguage for processing culture makes room for inputs other than strictly hierarchical ones in message formation. It allows for the entrance of audience reception and the agency of individual writers and producers into our model as more than ideological vessels for power. At the same time, it seems like we have to acknowledge the presence of power within the systems of production and distribution. Perfectly egalitarian societies are probably as rare as rituals free of all power dynamics. When Newcomb and Hirsch write, “We recognize, of course, that this variety works… within the limits of American monopoly-capitalism and within the range of American pluralism. It is an effective pluralistic forum only insofar as American political pluralism is or can be,” (566) it’s important to recognize the scale of the concession. The prescription appears as one of “diversity.” If only the publics and creators were sufficiently “plural,” then television would constitute a real (level?) cultural forum. Not only is this a high bar, but it elides the fact that the structure of the ritual is designed to stabilize a particular configuration of power. The ritual framework seems to obscure this. It’s well and good to say that television (or all of art) is the place where “common sense” can begin to appear uncommon, where “our monsters come out to play” (564) but isn’t it possible that the ritual does little more than stabilize power by presenting its other in an arena carefully demarcated from the “real?” (Reading over this again, I’m unsure of how this applies to the news. I had the TV drama in mind when writing.) 

“Then too, by organizing the ‘free time’ of persons into end-to-end interchangeable units, broadcasting extends, and harmonizes with, the industrialization of time. Media time and school time, with their equivalent units and curves of action, mirror the time of clocked labor and reinforce the seeming naturalness of clock time... duration is homogenized, even excitement is routinized…” (Gitlin, 255)

    The above quote from the Gitlin really got me thinking about the relationship between different forms of television and time. On the one hand, the shift from the time of Gitlin’s writing to the present has seen the rise of streaming TV, which allows many viewers to exit the logic of Williams’s programmatic flow, with its particular rhythms and particular relationship to the school or work day. On the other hand, the move to streaming clearly facilitates its own forms of temporal regimentation, of which the binge would seem an important one. I would pose two questions: first, what is the relationship between the increasing informalization of work (à la Prop 22) and the increasing obsolescence of “flow” as a viewing modality? (You can work whenever you want (you will work all the time), and you can watch whenever you want (you will watch, also, all the time)). Second, transposing Williams’s conception of flow to the most addictive forms of new media (the “feed,” broken up intermittently with related ads), and attuning ourselves to Gitlin’s observations about the regimentation of time, what is different and what is similar about the way that social media regiments time?   

- MB

Core Response #1 (Kallan)

  Something that I often find missing from discussions of hegemonic and dominant messaging in mainstream media is an example of what the imagined alternative or oppositional formations might look like. Gitlin writes that changes in TV programming create the illusion of viewers’ power and choice “while keeping deep alternatives off the agenda,” thereby affirming “hegemonic liberal capitalist ideology” (255). But what are these “deep alternatives”? What might a mainstream, non-capitalist TV show or programming slate look like? And would anyone tune in? The implication that revolutionary non-dominant forms are available if only, presumably, we step up and challenge some authority points to an idealism that is not often borne out by TV/film history (as “the masses” often seem to be alienated by the experimental techniques that are supposed to drive them to collective revolt). At the same time, an author (like Gitlin) might reasonably protest that defining alternatives is not their responsibility and that pointing to the absence of possibilities is a necessary step in opening up new ones. Gitlin also acknowledges the uncertainty involved in imagining radical new forms, as he notes that the “emergent formations” these forms will stem from are themselves not yet known (263-264). He also makes the important point that “there is no reason a priori to expect that emergent forms will be expressed as the ideologies of rising classes, or as ‘proletarian ideology’ in particular” (264), thus tempering the idealism that elsewhere equates the new, emerging, or non-dominant with a given author’s desired revolutionary change.

Taking a different approach, Newcomb and Hirsch work from what is already knowable, exploring the flexibility available within existing constraints. They point to a key element of mainstream-media viewing: even if dominant, conservative, capitalist values are affirmed in a given narrative’s end, these forms often allow room for interesting, challenging, non-dominant ideas leading up to that conclusion. This element of their argument reminded me of Jeanine Basinger’s point that in the woman’s picture, the images of a woman enjoying her career and independent lifestyle (flying planes, chasing a lead, dancing on stage) stay with us long after the film ends, even if she is married off and leaves her job in the final minutes (she said this in a class I took at Wesleyan University, but I believe she also discusses it in her book A Woman’s View). Newcomb and Hirsch’s compelling analysis of the “Betty, Girl Engineer” episode of Father Knows Best similarly points to the fact that not only does the episode raise questions about contemporary gender roles, but it also spends most of its running time depicting Betty determining to be an engineer, producing a strong impression that is not totally nullified by the misogyny and conservatism affirmed in the close. It is not progressive, it is not wholly satisfying, but it is an interesting example of the space that can be found within even the most “innocuous” mainstream media (Newcomb and Hirsch, 565). 

Core Response #1 - Sabrina

 

Though it may be slightly adjacent to the essay’s main ideas, throughout reading the Newcomb and Hirsch piece I found myself curious about where the writers would place the responsibility of the television creator. The paper itself discusses television from a cultural perspective, focusing on its ability to create spaces for multiple interpretations of meaning and conversations, writing, “television does not present firm ideological conclusions – despite its formal conclusions – so much as it comments on ideological problems” (565-566). Their analysis mainly considers the audiences consuming television and the multiplicity of meanings they find.

 

The paper’s consideration of television producers comes up near its end, though it moves quickly onto considering why viewers would choose to consume or not consume certain producer’s work. They write, “the goal of every producer is to create the difference that makes a difference, to maintain an audience… but to move ahead into something that distinguishes his show,” and go onto discuss the way that producers want to include personal ideas and expression in their work. The writers explain this variance as it affects an audience, who will agree or disagree with these producers’ ideas and respond accordingly. This essay, which focuses on the audience, places the responsibility on them in terms of responding and shaping television. If they don’t like something, they’ll speak out, and if enough people don’t like something, presumably it would affect change. This isn’t dissimilar from how viewing practices happen today; if anything this practice has grown with the ease of social media to make causes go viral. Where I struggle with this, is where it feels close to a “don’t like it, then don’t watch it” mentality, which I feel doesn’t solve the ultimate problems. While much of the power ultimately rests in the audience to watch and respond to things, as Newcomb and Hirsch advocate for, I feel the allowance of producers to create whatever they like leaves the responsibility in the hands of the audience and potentially reduces the quality of the media being created by discouraging critical thought in its creators.

 

Core Response #1 - Sebastian Wurzrainer

     During our last class, we discussed how Marshall McLuhan and Raymond Williams, though engaged in a public debate about television, were actually in agreement when it came to many of their theoretical stances. It seems to me that the core difference has less to do with baseline beliefs and more to do with priorities; McLuhan emphasizes television as a technology system at the expense of all else, whereas Williams emphasizes the social, cultural, political, and economic factors that shape television. I see a similar paradigm at play in the relationship between Todd Gitlin’s “Prime Time Ideology: The Hegemonic Process in Television Entertainment” and Horace Newcomb and Paul M. Hirsch’s “Television as a Cultural Forum.” Gitlin emphasizes the notion that television content will always be ideologically limited by capitalist hegemony. Newcomb and Hirsch are more optimistic, emphasizing television’s potential as a “public forum,” yet they acknowledge that this public forum must still operate “within the limits of American monopoly-capitalism and within the range of American pluralism” (566). Likewise, Gitlin acknowledges that “the forms of hegemonic entertainment [do not] superimpose themselves automatically and finally onto the consciousness or behavior of all audiences at all times” (253). By conceding that television spectators aren’t innately dupes to capitalist ideology, he allows for the possibility of the public forum notion, even if in a somewhat limited capacity. 

    Crucially, though, these essays were written in the late-1970s/early-1980s and reflect what American television was at that time. Both essays conceive of television as: a) dominated by commercial interests, and b) manifesting in only a few options, thereby ensuring that people who watch television are more or less consuming the same content. The former characteristic is more important to Gitlin’s analysis, whereas the latter characteristic is more important to Newcomb and Hirsch’s analysis, but both characteristics coexist and are, in many ways, interconnected. Neither of these assumptions ring as true in our current age of streaming, bingeing, and “Peak TV.” I do imagine that commercial interests inform television production, distribution, and exhibition just as much if not more than they did in the 1970s and 1980s. But, as I understand it, because there are now so many options in terms of networks and streaming services, a new television show doesn’t need to appeal to everyone to be successful; it need only be extremely popular with a niche audience. Theoretically (although perhaps not always in practice), this allows contemporary television to explore more experimental and controversial themes and formats. In “Prime Time Ideology,” Gitlin targets the formulaic nature of episodic television because it doesn’t permit characters to grow; instead, it maintains a state of constant stasis, thereby reinforcing a status quo that is inevitably aligned with capitalist hegemony (256). But many of today’s most popular shows are highly serialized and depend on the growth and development of the protagonists. This, in turn, facilitates some of the experimentation that perhaps would not have been feasible when Gitlin was writing.

    While this might mean that television is capable of addressing a wider range of topics, it also probably means that television audiences are more modular. As such, television can no longer create a shared base of cultural knowledge in the way that Newcomb and Hirsch conceive. There are simply too many options aimed at all sorts of different audiences. Ultimately, I wonder if this is the inevitable trade off when it comes to television that is so influenced by capitalist incentives. You can foster a multitude of forums that encompass a diversified set of topics, or you can appeal to as wide a public audience as possible, but you can’t do both. Of course, it’s nice to imagine a de-commercialized television that could function as a public forum in the truest sense. But even if we could achieve that, I remain suspicious of the public part of the public forum. After all, even in its most expansive form, one has to wonder who is being excluded from any definition of “the public.” 

Response 1-- Michael Feinstein

 While reading the early chapters of Williams’s book I kept forgetting that these thoughts about television were compiled nearly 50 years ago. While certain aspects of television have certainly changed, the writing is evidence of how much has remained static. However, in the third chapter, as Williams discusses the influence of “arguments and discussions” within the news on television it became rather obvious to me that this work was written before the founding of CNN and the 24 hour news cycle. The TV news at this time, as described by Williams, seems so much less invasive and all-consuming. I wonder what Williams would have thought of our pundits— the unelected “television intermediaries” (44)— whose mediation of current life has become some people’s only connection to the outside world. Could Williams have predicted the rise of figures like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, who supply their viewers with a perspective on American politics and culture that is filtered more by their own ideology than it is by facts? He seems to indicate towards such a possibility when he wrote “In any large and complex society this mediation of representation is especially important, since in its speed and general availability it tends towards monopoly of the reactive process, and is no less a monopoly when it includes an internally selected balance and differentiation of opinion” (45). When he writes balance my mind of course goes to the Fox News slogan fair and balanced and perhaps the balance described here by the network was one that was always meant to be implicitly understood as “internally selected”. Additionally, his words seem to almost hint at the the particular power of Fox News to overwhelm its’ audience into submission when he describes television’s “monopoly of the reactive process.”

However, as many have noted, the true skill of Fox News is their ability to tell their audience exactly what to think while still creating the impression that the viewer has come to these thoughts on their own. To paraphrase from the alt-right, Fox News viewers believe they have done the research simply by taking everything that their network of choice has told them at face value. Williams understands television’s power to “shape responses” (44) but could he have guessed how deeply that shaping could penetrate the human psyche? Yes, television news programs have always had the insidious ability to “simulate a representation by their own criteria” (46) but perhaps its’ capacity to simulate thought processes and to confuse and rupture how its’ viewers engage with the world that exists outside of their television screens is a relatively new trick— or a recently heightened one at the very least.  

Teach-in Today

 

Democracy Under Threat: A Teach-in on the U.S. Political Environment

Make Reservations »

January 22, 2021, 2:30-3:30 p.m.

Virtual

The United States currently faces strong threats to our democratic ideals. From unsubstantiated claims of broad election fraud to the recent storming of the U.S. Capitol, democratic principles are under attack. How can we understand this turn of events, and how might we address it? What kinds of laws, policies, and norms best support the goals of a democratic nation? This panel will provide historical, legal and cultural contexts to help illuminate and explain the current moment of crisis. By placing the events of the past several months in a larger framework, we can both learn from history and better grapple with our present. Panelists will include U.S. historian Ariela Gross, German historian Paul Lerner, media scholar Ellen Seiter, and XXX, with moderation by digital media scholar Tara McPherson. Our conversation will be far ranging, including topics such as authoritarianism, populism, media policy, free speech, and the role of social networks in public discourse. Each panelist will present brief opening remarks, followed by conversation and audience questions.

Panelists: Ariela Gross is the John B. and Alice R. Sharp Professor of Law and History. Her research and writing focus on race and slavery in the United States; she teaches Contracts, History of American Law, and Race and Gender in the Law.

Paul Lerner is the Director of the Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies and a Professor of History who studies Modern German and Central European history, European-Jewish history, the history of psychiatry, and fascism.

Ellen Seiter is the Nenno Endowed Chair in Television Studies and a Professor of Cinema and Media Studies. Her research and writing include topics such as media industry studies, audience ethnography, and digital media studies.

Tara McPherson is the Hefner Endowed Chair of Censorship Studies and a Professor of Cinema and Media Studies. Her research interests include digital media studies, race, gender and technology, and extremist online media.

Core Response #1 -JAE-

 *I went way over the word range, and I'm rusty. My apologies.*

    I feel compelled to try and explore McLuhan and Feuer’s examples of space, intentionality, and bodies. I believe that spaces impact the opportunities one may access as well as inform one’s own identity. This week’s readings made me think of the work of Sara Ahmed (2006) who argues in Queer Phenomenology that spaces orient as well as disorient people. Additionally, McLuhan loses me at a few points that bring to mind Edward Said’s (1978) Orientalism in which Said deeply explores the danger, injury, and dehumanization that is present when agents of Western societies lazily conflate the cultures of the Arab peninsula, Asian continent, and South Pacific into the exotics and fetish for the Western imaginary. Yet, both works are poignant and insightful provocations that largely remain powerful in the 2021 mediascape to use Arjun Appadurai’s term. Yet, where McLuhan is intentionally spectacle-driven and ranting theory on a feverish macro-level, Feuer is precise, straightforward, and empathetic.     

    Jane Feuer and Marshall McLuhan approach TV as a site of conflict, where the medium penetrates, impedes, envelopes, and engages its viewership. Both McLuhan and Feuer assert that spaces thought of as “environments” and “anti-environments” (McLuhan) or the “viewing situation” (Feuer) impact the mobility of ones within the spaces. Beginning with McLuhan, he writes that 

“environments are active processes...where the ground rules, pervasive structure, and overall patterns of environments elude easy perception. Anti-environments, or counter situations made by artists, provide means of direct attention and enable us to see and understand more clearly” (69).

I am understanding this passage as implying that environments are formal, normalizing, and yet elusive spaces, while anti-environments are conspicuously creative or provocative spaces. In other words, assessing potential dangers will be more difficult in an environment than in an anti-environment. Furthermore, McLuhan reinforces the image of formality discrepancies between an environment and an anti-environment by asserting that “professionalism is environmental. Amateurism is anti-environmental” (69). And TV is not only made in a professional environment, but it is also a tool of the professional environment.  McLuhan states that, “in television, images are projected at you. You are the screen. The images wrap around you. You are the vanishing point. This creates a sort of inwardness, a sort of reverse perspective which has much in common with Oriental art” (125). While I find the mention of a wizened Oriental art fetishistic and Orientalizing, I cannot shake the powerful imagery of just how pervasive professional TV when it intercepts a body. Beyond this, Jane Feuer also investigates dynamics of space, media, and the bodies that intercept them. 

    Whereas, Feuer explores relatable spatial concerns through how the TV/radio flow, or chronologically mapped itinerary of a TV or Radio time block, intercepts bodies. She asserts that flow extends beyond the TV throughout the “viewing situation” (15). The viewer can intercept or be intercepted by the flow at any given time within the boundaries of the viewing situation. The flow is a product of professional environments, whereas the viewing situation, per her example, is the viewer’s living space, which is arguably an amateur space or anti-environment. Additionally, Feuer asks “is the spectator positioned by the apparatus, or is the spectator relatively free, and if so, what permits us to analyze texts in the way I have done above, and why is Good Morning America so successful?” (21). The formal, normalizing, and pervasiveness of TV flow are flavored by the effects of history. Feuer posits that a medium’s essence and history are “inexorably linked”(13). TV, like all other media, is designed with an audience in mind. Through research campaigns various points of a target audience’s standpoint can be identified and weaponized in the structuring of TV programming as well as flow. Furthermore the delivery tactics of TV, or as Feuer terms it “mode of address” are honed to penetrate the target audience’s standpoint. Which, in this case, is realized through the conduit and paradigm of the “idealized nuclear family” (19-20). Yet, Feuer notes that this paradigm is a fantasy, and one that can inculcate as much as they can alienate viewers. The media is targeted and their effectiveness is intertwined with how history and space have socialized the viewer.        

Welcome to 587: TV Theory

THIS COURSE EXAMINES VARIOUS METHODOLOGIES AND THEORIES THROUGH WHICH SCHOLARS HAVE ENGAGED TELEVISION OVER THE PAST SEVERAL DECADES. WE WILL CONSIDER TV THROUGH A VARIETY OF LENSES: AS TECHNOLOGY, AS CULTURAL EXPERIENCE, AS TEXT, AS IDEOLOGY, AND AS INDUSTRIAL PRACTICE. WE WILL FOCUS PRIMARILY ON U.S. TELEVISION, BUT WE WILL ALSO CONSIDER THE MEDIUM’S GLOBAL CONTEXTS AT KEY JUNCTURES. OUR GOAL WILL BE TO CONSIDER NOT JUST TELEVISION AND ITS MYRIAD FORMS BUT, FIRST AND FOREMOST, THE HISTORY OF ACADEMIC ENGAGEMENTS WITH THIS POPULAR MEDIUM.