The US military and US television represent US similarly, and the presence of the TV crew in the "third" world is, in the operation of power, identical to the presence of the soldiers ....
I agree with this statement. Having soldiers stationed somewhere doesn't always mean that they are fighting in a war. They could have a role similar to UN Peacekeepers, or in an advisory role. I think that the presence of a TV crew is similar to this.
The "third" world is a "hell hole" of inadequacy: The US provides both the spirit and the means to "develop" it.
I think at least part of this can be attributed to an almost arrogant mentality, where we think we are the best, and therefore it is our duty to help others; but more for ourselves than their benefit.
and then rotary press accelerated printing from 150 copies per hour in 1814 to 12,000 by 1848,
Technology plays a massive role in the spread of knowledge and news. With these upgrades to the printing press, the printing rate increased by roughly 100 times. With the Internet, I would argue that the 'printing rate' could be even more crazy.
This was not an unusual occurrence, but what was unusual about it was, first, that a nearby resident video-taped the event, and second that local and then national TV played and replayed the videotape so that it became one of the most widely heard Black statements of the year.
I think it's interesting how much power just a rather simple camera or smartphone has, with the ability to record and show the world what atrocities are being committed by whom and where.
Feeling the squeeze on profits, production companies and the networks initiated a series of cost -cutting strategies that translated into an attack on labor, mainly on below-the-line workers such as technicians, engineers, and extras.
I understand the reasoning behind these specific cuts is due to the fact that these roles are more 'unseen' by audiences, but I strongly believe that even the best of actors won't be able to perform well if the show itself is lacking.
Greater demand for stars created an artificial labor shortage and inflated salaries for the lucky few.
Was there too much risk involved with hiring less known actors? The way to fix the artificial labor shortage would be to increase the labor force, thus hiring more and new actors.
The star system for above-the-line labor became especially pronounced,
I learned about the star system in a film class. Interestingly enough, it was a mainstay in Hollywood till about the 1960's, while here it starts to ramp up in the 1980's.
how this dilution of advertising spending created pressure on broadcasters and cablecast-ers to cut per-program production costs.
I'm curious to see why none of them pushed for an increase to spending to produce better quality shows in order to get more viewers watching and therefore more profit. Maybe there was too much risk involved.
Couldry cites YouTube videos as an example of an “expanded zone of self-display,” which epitomizes neoliberalism’s impetus to commodify the human, to the extent that “page views and positive commentary on people’s postings of themselves performing or simply ‘being themselves’ can literally be counted and monetized as part of the process of self-branding”
But if their main purpose is to use the platform for their voice, what's the problem if an afterthought is commodity or profit?
Still, there is no deny-ing that reality entertainment has greatly expanded social representation on television, and that some reality TV participants have become celebrities who actively participate in their constitution as TV characters.
But has this been beneficial for these groups? I don't think that negative stereotyping for profit is good representation for minority groups.
Whereas earlier forms of documentary were motivated by civic aims such as public education and social critique, documentary as diver-sion is driven by commercial ambitions.
This seems to mirror the evolution of media and news we studied last week.
The word learning was dropped, and real-ity entertainment revolving around unusual or exotic people and families (Acuna 2012) became its stock in trade.
I find it amusing that they just dropped 'learning' from their name, and didn't try and claim that they were teaching people about 'excotic people'. Probably for the best.
The subject must remain a determinative force in historical processes. It "may be a fiction, but, as those of us engaged in critical analysis should realize, a fiction is not merely a falsehood."32
I believe that this statement is correct, in that fiction does not equate to falsehood. Fiction can be based on the past, and even represent it in a new way.
As my model of subject positions will demonstrate, each subject position changes in the televisual and personal history of the individual.
I find this to be an interesting point, relating the subject to the individual through personal history.
As the media, and television in particular, more and more present culture as "natural," and are perceived as "natural," rather than as mediated, the structures of the discursive subject will alert us to that dominance
I think the use of the word 'natural' is very important in this situation. If the media portrays a culture that would be deemed 'natural' and intrinsic to a population, it would be much more dangerous than the media showcasing 'common' culture.
Television, more than cinema or any other form of the mass media, is constructed to re-present images of social reality and the subject's place in it
I disagree. I don't think that any form of mass media represents culture of a certain time and place more than another. Just because mediums have structural or technological differences, it doesn't mean that one is better at showcasing culture than others, in my opinion.
It trivialized the threat, and sent the subliminal message that our government really didn't want us participat-ing in their business too closely.
I've learned in economics classes that the government wanted us to "go shopping" was due to the effects on the economy a sharp decline in demand would have. I don't think that the government would want to trivialize the threat, and rather stressed the importance the attack could have had on the American economy.
Koppel was talking about Rwanda and the Congo, and the public listened. Tom Rettag, the show's executive producer, found to his own surprise that the show got a "terrific re-sponse": the ratings went way up.
I strongly believe that if done with passion, a piece of media will be viewed positively by public, even if director level people think otherwise.
They Kurds were being gassed be-cause they were an ethnic minority being punished by Sad-dam for aiding his enemies, the Iranians. "Too confusing," was the Euening News verdict. "No one knows who the Kurds are." That sort of thinking wcndd have reduced the Iraqi Kurds to permanent status as non-persons on CBS News, had they not figured so prominently in subsequent events in Iraq.
I think that the news should inform viewers about events, not just report events. If a topic is considered to be "confusing," the news should educate viewers on what is happening in order to help the viewer have a better understanding.
Remember the Gulf \X'ar, Somalia, the Balkans war, not to mention vicious little conflicts in the old Soviet space such as Nagorno-Karahagh and Chechnya?
I find it fascinating that even my own knowledge of these conflicts is massively lacking when compared to arguably more reported wars like the World Wars. I've sadly never heard of the Nagorno-Karabakh War before.
Ratings are the new standards that have replaced the old code of public responsibility in the networks' mindset.
I find it interesting that Fenton claims that the old code for public service that the news used to hold was directly replaced by a drive for better ratings. Before reading Fenton's work, I assumed that an emphasis on ratings was common in modern day news, but I never realized that it led to the decline of the standards that the news used to uphold.
In the 1980s, under intense lobbying by the networks, the Fed-eral Communications Commission, which is supposed to rep-resent the public's interest, began to deregulate broadcasting.
The problem with lobbies that become all-too-powerful is when legislation like Citizens United is enacted, it allows for corporations to hold political power that used to be reserved for real people.
When I first went to work for CBS News in the Rome Bureau in 1970, nobody talked about news making a profit. The news helped fulfill the requirements of the f:ederal Communications Commission that, in return for free use of the airwaves, televi-sion stations should air programs providing a public service.
This point is such a far cry from what I've been taught about how the news runs today, I find it astounding, especially the part about the airplanes.
The threat or memory of invasion has never much shaped our thoughts, informed our songs or myths. Others have had to learn the hard lessons of geography and history firsthand.
While I agree with this statement as a historical concept, I don't think that it can be so fully applied to American history without counter-examples, like the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Monroe Doctrine (to a lesser extent).
All historical novds.lH;gin-with those of Sir Walter Scott himself. no doubt in one way ur another involve a mobilization of historical gnner-acquired through tht~ schoolbook histurv manuals ckvisud fur what-legitimizing purpose this ur that national tradition
I like this point, and I think that the idea of mobilizing previous historical knowledge can be manipulated by how biased/unbiased one's knowledge of history truly is.
it is, for example, well known that the source of many of the characteristic effects of Camus's novel The Stmnger can be traced back to that author's willful decision to substitute, through-out, the French tense of the passe compostj for the other past tenses more normally employed in narration in that language.
This might be the case, but I'd argue that the main characteristics of The Stranger revolve around it's philosophy, like absurdism and existentialism.
·rhis tlrst terrible postmodernist war cannot be told in any of the traditional para-digms of the war novel or movie-indeed, that breakdown of all previ-ous narrative paradigms is, along with tbe breakdown of any shared language through which a veteran might convey such experience
I agree with this periodization of the Vietnam War, but I think that veterans of any war have a hard time conveying their experiences in a known narrative paradigm. I believe that the experience of war is so different to the rest of the human experience, that it is impossible to truly capture it through our current understandings of narrative design.
In this new machine. which does not, like the older modernist machinerv of the locomotive or the airplane, represent motion. but which can onl~ be represented in motion, something of the mystery of the new posi-modernist space is concentrated.
I think that in this comparison of "machinery", postmodernist machinery is data or information, which always seems to flow and be in motion.
Simon’s goal in his longer works was tounderstand and depict the deeper workings of the culture by seeing theworld from a specifically located informant’s point of view.
I think that his works gave him good experience and a format to create a show that showcased to audiences what he learned from experience.
The twenty-something Simon hung out with selected shifts,drank with the detectives in many bars, followed the progression or im-passes of both heartbreaking and mundane cases
I think that a critical piece of creating a good story is to either have personal experience with the subjects, or learn and study about them.
hen it is notsurprising that what usually follows is the adjectivenovelistic.
I think describing a show as novelistic is a huge compliment. It means that the show is able to have a good cast of characters and a story that audiences enjoy.
the fiction ofThe Wireis able to “deftly weave together therange of forces that shape the circumstances of the urban poor while ex-posing deep inequality as a fundamental feature of broader social andeconomic arrangements”
I think that it was easier for The Wire to showcase all of this, because its medium (television) allows it to showcase the lives of people who deal urban inequality, rather than an academic paper which could come off as dry.
For this viewer, Bill Cosby transcended race-he was neither black nor white.
I think this just goes to show how good of a job Cliff Huxtable was written and acted, being able to transcend race and even a viewer's dislike of the show.
We ·have already suggested that l3iU_Q<;>s.by, .. the.aGt.or1"''.and . .,ClifLHY!t~he s,b~r~L-" .. o~ .. U!S:.!SS ... m!!?..Jl-,..§,W&Lc;,,jj;lc;mi~: For many, Bill Cosby is Cliff Huxtable.
This is similar to Charlie Sheen as Charlie Harper in Two and a Half Men, even beyond the name. The actor and character are very much alike, and the concept is a cornerstone of the show.
united by coriiinonahties· rather than divided by race.
This is a very powerful way for the show to approach race in my opinion. I wish more shows and other mediums followed this ideal.
;"tiie'ratl.ngs'success'6flhe series has unleashed a host of black upper middle class characters across prime-~ime television.
I think it's interesting that networks were afraid to televise the show at first, but after its ratings were good, they were happy to jump aboard.
The respondents are not only commenting on the fact that the youngest Huxtable daughter is not as cute as she used to be; they explain why this might be.
A show is at its best when viewers are willing to analyze the show on their own terms, and derive their own reasons to why things occurred.
Once again, the realm of speculation goes well beyond the fictional confines of the script. This respondent's comments reveal quite a remarkable degree of engagement with the messages of television.
I think that television and other similar mediums can be very engaging through their stories alone, regardless of the level of interaction with the audience.
their egular visits create a sense of familiarity that is hard to resist.
I disagree with this statement based off of regular or serial interaction. I believe that audiences can effectively connect with characters regardless of regularity. An example would be films that aren't part of a series.
discovered that this response does not depend on our having economic or cultural characteristics in common with our televisual visitors.
I think an important part of what makes a character or show impactful, is that it has the ability to connect with people who don't identify with it.
The Huxtable family, like its creator, has attained a level of wealth, comfort, and success shared by only a tiny minority of black people in the United States.
Therefore the show is representative of this small group. Which in and of itself is not an issue, but only if the show is marketed as a representation of a larger group like all Americans.
The anti-apartheid sign made no intrusion into the plot, and many viewers probably did not even notice it.
I don't think that a part of the show has to be embroiled with the plot to have an impact. Even a sign gives insight into what the characters think and how they feel about an issue like apartheid.
This bottom line gives a TV program very little room to maneuver.
The economics behind television are just as important as the medium itself in changing and shaping what shows audiences watch and enjoy.
After decades of degrading media images of black people in other shows, the Huxtable family presented black characters that black and white audiences could relate tQ
I think that this focus on relatable-ness is essential to the show transcending race.