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.