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.