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.