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.