I’m not sure that I have any particular response to any specific ideas presented in this week’s readings; I thought that they all were fairly comprehensive accounts of the transition from analog television to digital web-based interfaces (although I was very much intrigued by Lotz’ concluding distinction between describing YouTube as a television technology versus a screen technology, I’m not sure that I have much to add to that idea other than noting it), but as is the case of many of this semester’s readings, I wonder how they would change if they were written even just 8-10 years later. Lotz talks about how theatrical technologies such as HD screens are being integrated into television – how different would this argument be in the wake of Game of Thrones and other high-budget visually prestigious series that aim for that level of cinematic quality?
The other response I had to these readings was that I wonder how the kind of mass fracturing and dispersal of content effects the way audiences approach media. No matter where a show is platformed or aired, clips and pieces, (and sometimes entire episodes) of it will end up on YouTube almost immediately, either officially or unofficially. Over the break, I heard a lot of good things about AppleTV’s show Ted Lasso. However, I did not have an AppleTV subscription and I try to avoid piracy when I can, so I went to YouTube to first see if this show was worth my continued interest. I watched many clips and compilations of scenes from the show, without context and oftentimes in low quality or with Russian subtitles or some such quirk. I had no idea which episodes, plot beats, or even chronological order each isolated scene pertained to, I was simply led from “Ted Lasso Funny Moments (1 / 8)” onwards by a recommended tab. After watching many of these videos, I got a free week’s trial for the service and me and my family watched the show over the course of two days, before cancelling the trial.
Perhaps not these particular circumstances are consistent across audiences, but YouTube and other video sharing sites facilitate the dispersal of content from television shows – compilations of favorite character moments, fight scenes, “funny moments”, easter eggs. There is an entire genre of videos of just “_______ character out of context”. I’ve been watching many video edits along the lines of “Adora being a dumb lesbian for 13 minutes” showing clips from Netflix’s She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. Video sharing sites mean that platforms no longer control the content of their television shows; at best, they can only control their context and presentation.
Dan, I'm really intrigued by the path this post took since it was so different from where I thought you were going. As soon as you said "mass fracturing and dispersal" of content, my mind immediately jumped to the proliferation of streaming platforms. I remember such a huge draw of Hulu when it originally launched was that it could bring you shows from across cable networks without having to pay for cable plans and was free (funded by add revenue). Still devastated that the platform no longer has a free option. Netflix had a similar impact on media talk, everyone became so excited (and somewhat terrified) by the notion that we might not need cable anymore when we just had a 10 dollar a month subscription to almost-all-the-TV. But when the first rumblings of Disney, Paramount, and Apple + made the rounds, CBS and CW getting their own platforms and all the studios pulling content to stock their own streaming shelves, managing your subscription bill became nearly as daunting as a cable bill.
ReplyDeleteBut your thoughts on the literal fragmentation and dispersal of the actual TV content is ... for lack of better immediate words, so dope! How does splicing, rearranging, and selecting the best moments of what is supposed to be a cohesive linear narrative change how audiences consume narrative content? I've gone in fairly deep with Twilight and Hannibal compilations, which blend the dominant narrative of those texts with various memes, creating this weird intertextual collage. But I've seen both of those films/series, and that fuels my enjoyment to an extent. But given their viewership numbers, these compilations MUST be pulling from a wider audience than the established fans of the original texts. Anyways, that's a cool path to go down for sure!
End-of-semester response because I've been thinking about this: I think that "collage" is a really good way of thinking about the way we approach media; it's all stitching together from disparate sources, cut-and-paste consumption. It's also almost fractal in a way -- on my browser I have a long list of bookmarked websites, and each one leads to some portal or platform that has its own long list of categories, channels, services, algorithm-generated recommendations, and each of those has hundreds or thousands of titles, videos, posts, whatever. The YouTube home page, the scrolling Twitter feed, Netflix's shelves of titles, all behave almost synonymously with those collage videos themselves, it's all stitching together content from proximal locations. Consuming media has become like an investigation via a microscope: you choose your desired level of detail, whether thats the macro form of the television series or the micro form of the Vine compilation or "best of" fan edit.
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