- Dec 2019
-
Local file Local file
-
It is not surprising, then, that those nations whose power-blocs have promoted scientific and rationalistic ways of knowing have come to dominate and exploit the world, just as, within those nations, those same power-blocs have used those same ways of knowing to dominate and exploit other social formations within their own nation.
Knowledge is power and when you have knowledge you have the power to control who also has that knowledge. Therefore those countries who have the most knowledge can maintain the most power through their share or withholding of information.
-
American power was the power of knowledge as well as of heavy armor and high explosive.
We were painted as the hero. When the US arrives they are saving the day. Nothing can go wrong when America is here. That's the picture that we painted.
-
Maps are pow-erful discourse, for they bring together science and representation to function as explicit instruments of control.
Maps paint a full picture of an area. If we control the picture of a place we control the narrative that goes along with it. If we control the narrative we can direct the response to the narrative.
-
he Dutch doctors have had people lining up to the only medical care in the camp.
This is one example of the use of a word to represent a group of people, "the whole". "The Dutch" did this_. They are grouped together. This grouping together under this name gives the audience the feeling that any of the Dutch people, even those not in the refugee camps, would do these things.
-
The intellectual, ethical, religious discourses of power may well tend towards high art (great representations), and their more economic, pragmatic ones towards· industrialized art (mass representations), but both rely on their ability to produce representations of the world and, more importantly if less explicitly, of themselves in the world ..
The art needs to say something about the world. About who is in it and what they see.
-
-
Local file Local fileUntitled5
-
utside the USA, the audiences are even smaller, In the UK, in the first quarter of 1998, the ITC reported a viewing share of 0.1 percent for CNN. Everywhere, the terrestrial broadcasters have experienced an crosion of their audiences at the hands of cable and satellite, but it has not been to any significant extent caused by the rise of a global news service taking the viewers for their national products as part of the growth of a global public sphere.
Is it at all possible to reach everyone everywhere? Are we only making impact (in the news) to our areas close by?
-
We would expect to find media organization, and regulatory structures, migrating ‘up’ to global forms or ‘down’ to local forms. We would expect the audiences for state-oriented media to decline relative to those for local and for global media,
They are either honing in on local media and becoming very specific to the area or going broad into what is more globally recognized.
-
In this kind of theory, the process of globalization is one which destroys the local, at whatever level it is manifested, and replaces it by a single, standard, and usually US-inspired, society.
If globalization is happening the local cannot happen? The local is replaced by the global in this instance. There is no degree of separation
-
Local,’ here, means ‘state:’
While some would say that local refers to a town or an area close to you that you can easily interact with, this is saying that local refers to your nation state. Bigger area than I would initially have thought
-
Many contemporary discussions of the relationship between the media and democracy have been conducted in terms of the public sphere. Despite numerous debates, however, the term remains deeply problematic. Part of the problem is that historical investigation has shown that what Habermas called the ‘bourgeois public sphere’ of cightcenth-century England and France never existed, and what did in fact exist differed systematically from the kind of communicative space that the theory requires, indeed in important respects reality was directly contrary to the claims of theory
How is the "public sphere" affected by media and how is our knowledge of media affected by the public sphere. Clearly it is not what we thought.
-
- Nov 2019
-
Local file Local file
-
n addition, many Reali-TV producers recast broadcasters' "public service" and "educational" responsibilities to champion the civic value of their programs.
They made a balance between a lower quality of production by making their pieces valuable to families and viewers.
-
In the same year, one-hour dramas and 30-rninute sitcoms often lost $1oo,ooo to $3oo,ooo an episode. At a time when dramas routinely cost over $1 million per episode, and half-hour sitcoms cost $5oo,ooo to $6oo,ooo apiece, Reali-TV pro-grams offered considerable savings in production costs,
Reali-TV made more sense economically. It does not really make sense to create something at a loss if your goal is to better yourself economically.
-
128 CHAD RAPHAEL prerogative to hire more nonunion labor (the extras, bargaining position was hurt by SAG,s refusal to merge with the less-powerful union or even to support its position in contract negotiations).
I never realized how much the unions brought on the need for cheaper production. Because SAG required more than production companies wanted to provide they sought their resources elsewhere.
-
Reali-TV emerged as a cost-cutting solution in this new economic environment of the late 1980s,
This relates to what the last article said about hiring cheaper performers. Speedier production, cheaper performers, etc.
-
Although my focus here is on political economy, rather than on textual or audience issues, I do not want to imply that these programs' cultural significance can be reduced to their relations of production and distri-bution.
Acknowledging that this is only one view of these texts. Their significance is not boiled down to just these things.
-
-
Local file Local file
-
the impoverished black contestant on FromG’s to Gents who attempts to perform whiteness and class as demanded by lifestyle experts, but who shares an account of growing up poor and black that—even in its edited form—exposes the violence of this self-enterprising strategy
Even though some deem reality television to simply be exaggerated difference there can still be worthwhile content within it.
-
The performance of white trash—a racial qualifier that names whiteness only when white people violate the dominant codes of white-ness by acting “trashy”—is a case in point. According to Grindstaff, white trash (or trailer trash) can be performed as a “television persona by virtually anyone willing to adopt its codes,” regardless of whether or not they are actually “poor, white, and/or living in a trailer park,
Being "trailer trash" is not literal. You are taking on the qualities associated with that socioeconomic status. You are fulfilling a stereotype.
-
The audience is not expected to identify with the characters, but to enjoy their difference from afar, partly as a means of assuring their own superiority
The audience is able to judge them and make themselves feel better. This art consumption allows the audience to feel better about themselves. "Well at least I am not like them"
-
Indeed, ordinary peo-ple have become integral to a business model that values free (or cheap) talent, and flexible and “speeded up” production cycles
By using non-professionals you are able to pay them less for content that is just as valuable to the consumers.
-
The new reality formats were opening up new spaces for expressing identity, and performing and displaying difference. Suddenly, he observed, television was bursting with a wide range of ordinary people
Could this be that because we examine so much difference wide find that there really is no normal? That to be different is to be normal because normal does not exist.
-
-
Local file Local file
-
What it does mean, emphatically, is that entertainment, celebrity gossip, mere scandal, and easy ratings coups must take a back seat on news broadcasts or on the front pages.
We have to make sure that our priorities are straight. What have to know what should take our time and money. Is it what so and so was wearing on Thursday night? Or is it that a foreign leader is in talks with our president?
-
the Euening News producer in charge of foreign news told me to take out the fact that the thousands of victims were all Kurds. But that's what it's all about, I shouted into the phone. 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.
There are too many characters. The media is supposed to paint America as the hero and if citizens knew of this other group of people who were victims we would be in trouble. Because what were we really doing to help them?
-
as a result of inadequate resources and in-competent coverage, the news media's credibility gap \Vas even worse.
Was this the beginning of our mistrust of the news and what they have to tell us? Or was this simply the proof that was needed to corroborate that idea?
-
And it has just begun to dawn on us that our country re-mains ill-equipped to handle any of these challenges.
The fact is that we have not experienced any of these things as a nation yet and so we do not know how or what to prepare. We are so focused on other things that wedo not know how to prepare ourselves.
-
-
Local file Local file
-
like many other CEOs he defined winning as maximum profit with min-imum possible outlay, and the highest payoff for shareholders. As simple as that. The news business, as a tiny part of the whole, got fed indiscriminately into the formula.
This sounds like the news is as much subject to standard capitalism as any other market.
-
Some of the best foreign correspondents I know are women, but the ones I admire the most were chosen for their smarts, not their looks.
This is a tricky line to walk. To say that a woman is not smart because she is pretty. This is like saying "I am not sexist because I think women can be smart too."
-
I need covers-and CBS Reports is not a cover. NBC White Paper is not a cover. Mike Wallace's face is a cover. Harry Reasoner's face is a cover. And it took off.
When you give something a face you allow the audience to make an easier connection with a person instead of an object.
-
America the safe haven and America the self-absorbed, even the self-righteous America that assumes the right to impose enlightenment on foreign nations
America was the place you ran to. We were base in a life or death game of tag. We have also been the country with the biggest "stick" for so long that it almost seems laughable that someone would try to take over our country. Americans have this hero mentality and a good guy complex.
-
-
Local file Local file
-
but instead thnt following the who connotation as the ng of imaginarv and stcn:otvpical idealitJ()S;
We have a set standard in our minds of what a period looked like. We day something feels like a period but it does not actually represent the period itself.
-
u the well-nigh
I have had many thoughts recently about this idea of originality. Pastiche seems to me that nothing is truly original. Personal style is not something original, because it is sim[;y unavailable.
-
surface which seems to be unsupported by any volume, or whose putative volume (rectangular? trapezoidal"?) is ocularly 4uite undecidable.
Depth is not clearly visible to the outside viewer. Volume is an interesting world because it gives me the distinct feeling that something should be filled up with something.
-
What happens is that the more powerful the vision of some increasingly totHI system or logic ·-the Foucault of the prisons book is the obvious example-the more powerless the reader comes to feel. Insofar as the theorist wins, there-by constructing an increasingly closed and terrifying machine, to that ve,ry degree he loses, since the critical capacity of his work is thereby paralyzed,
He is saying that he does not seek to make a flawless theory because then those he wishes to dialogue with will have nothing to say and is work becomes pointless. He is seeking a dialogue.
-
new expn~ssionism"; the moment, in music. of john Cage, but also the synthesis of classical and "popular" styles found in composers like Phil Glass and Terry Riley. and also punk and new wave rock (the Beatles and the Stones now standing as the high-modernist moment of that more recent and rapidly evolving tradition); in t11m. Godard. post-Godarcl, and experimental cinmna and video. but also a whole new tvpe of commercial tllm (about which more below); Bur-roughs. Pvnchon, or Ishmael Reed,
It seems that we are ever building and combining. He seems to be basically saying that these mediums are not just making new things but also making things new mixed with old. Nothing is entirely new by itself. That idea that nothing exists in a vacuum.
-
-
Local file Local file
-
For white respon~ents to .see ihtHuxtables as "just like white people" (as most of them d1d) reqmres first distinguishing them as black before assimilating them into their own (white) cultural milieu.
"This kind of life is usually only achievable by typically white people. Therefore if a black person reaches this level then they have reached the same level as white people." This hot garbage is the an example of currently existing racism. "They are not like the other black people."
-
It is, rather, an easy realism that people desire arid not the sort that reminds them of the unpleasantness of ordinary life.
It is the reality that we wish we had. Not the one that actuall exists. This is what I believe a lot of people crave about television.
-
It)s a perfect image . of a working mother. She stands for what she thinks and all that stuff. Doesn)t take any back talk.
She is a shining image that a working mother can be just as good as a stay at home mom. For the working mothers who watch the show that is a beacon of hope that they yearn for. If she can do it, they can too.
-
The Cosby-Hti~ was specifically identified, by almost all of our white interviewees, as a significant part of the show's appeal.
It helps to make him more real. We felt like we knew him. He was no longer an actor playing someone else but he was this person. There was more truth to him. (Or so we thought)
-
And why The Cosby Show? The Cosby Show deserves this attention not simply because of its tremendous and enduring popularity but because it has influenced the way black people are repr.~§_ented on prime~time. teleV1s1on. generiiTy:
It is important to examine the things that are popular. Why are they popular? Who makes them popular? What legacy do the leave behind? What ripples do they make?
-
-
Local file Local file
-
The whites' statements often amounted to observations about black people in general, observations that their actual experience of black people did not equip them to make.
It is very common for all humans to group people together and assume that we know everything about them. Our experience of a different group of people must explain all people like them right?
-
I don't see him as a doctor. You never see him as a doctor. . . . He's not going to be home that much. . . . You never see him in his office; he's home all of the time, and he's essentially home more than his wife is. . . . He's a house husband, that's what he is. Um, so as a working man that's supposed to be a doctor and all of that,
Does this analysis stem from the old troupe that a father in a family was really never supposed to be home because they should always be at work. That the man's place in the family was in the office not in the home. I would find it completely reasonable for him to be at home if that is a priority for him.
-
There appear to be two reasons for this: middle class viewers feel a greater obligation to be critical of television (as a form of intellectual display), and they are in a better position to judge what is, for a professional family, realistic.
Being able to critically analyze this thing we watch is a source of pride for a lot of people (myself included).
-
A good example is The Cosby Show, which is about a professional family whose social class makes it unusual in the real world but decidedly average among the privileged populace of television.
Those that watch this show can identify closely with the characters in the show because they share the same if not close to income level as the Huxtables. Or they aspire to be them and have what they have.
-
In this instance the viewer was intermingling her experiences as a schoolteacher with what she saw on her periodic visits to the Huxtable household and creating a complex web of motivations to explain Theo's behavior.
I see this so much as an actor. We, as people, want to explain why someone does something because of what we have experienced. But the truth is no one else thinks the way we do. And the problem is we cannot explain anything without putting our own feelings and baggage on them.
-
in a voice whose clarity is brief and discontinuous, with the ankle-deep profundity of unrelated epigrams
I know people who think exactly like this. They trust in what they see on the television screen but seem to distrust so much else in the world. How do we learn to separate television? Should we separate it?
-
as attitude and opinion
I believe that these things are fluid. They never stay static and that is why they are so hard to observe.
-
-
Local file Local file
-
white groups were interviewed by white interviewers and black groups by black interviewers,
I am curious if they analyzed transcripts where they did the opposite. White interviews worked with black groups and black interviewers worked with white groups. I wonder what the results would have been in those instances. Especially when compared side by side.
-
As it turned out, the ·two discussions were often very different; when analyzed together, the differences were often extremely revealing.
This I believe correlates to what we are trained by our parents, society, neighbors, culture, peers, etc to see. What we think we see is often what we are trained to look for.
-
Our respondents came from Springfield in western Massachusetts.
This makes me immediately question the validity of their results. Did they only collect data from one state in the US? That would not be nearly enough of a net for accurate data.
-
The social vision of "Cosby," however, reflecting the miniscule integration of blacks into the upper middle class, reassuringly thi..ows the blame for black poverty back onto the impoverished
This is that boot-strap menatlity. That anyone can be anything. If you work hard enough and continue to try you will always be able to "make it". Therefore the impoverished are only that way because they were not good enough.
-
to applaud Bill Cosby's creation as not only a witty and thoughtful sitcom but also an enlightened step forward in race relations
This makes me raise my eyebrow because the discussion of race really does not happen in this show. They very rarely bring up race, especially when this show was first beginning.
-
established a modest and respectable place in the history of North American popular culture
This does not necessarily contribute to our discussion of television, but I find it still astonishing that this man was so adored by many in our country. And how quickly he fell from grace (b his own decisions I might add)
-
- Oct 2019
-
Local file Local file
-
there is no mistaking the white middle-class “us” upon whomthose ants are feasting.
This is a major call out to the racism or classicism of Simon's article. It seems as though Simon feels like the people are being attacked, that they are at war. There is clear separation between "us" and "them"
-
Now, a good afternoon’s work can be dragging a pair of250-pound radiators for12blocks in the hot summer sun. But still, that’s$10. And $10will get you a vial of heroin and a cap of cocaine to go ontop.
The metaphor of the ants shows us just how important this work is to them. For ants taking the food back home is a matter of life or death. These drugs addicts feel the exact same way. That is to say that the radiators hold the same weight to them.
-
the site of a city government whose efforts at reform are effectivelycontrasted with reforms undertaken by the drug kingpins—who form afunctioning cooperative
This show has such an interesting juxtaposition between cops and drug dealers (which I realize is the point) but I find the more interesting aspect to be about the systems that they portray. We can see the systems in both worlds and compare them to each other.
-
Even the most scrupulously factual of ethnographers must presume thatthe microworlds of (say) cops or drug corners exist in a larger system.
Can you truthfully analyze a small world of people if you do not take into account the larger role that they fit in. Can you analyze Boston Massachusetts without also including in the dialogue that Boston sits within The United States.
-
Williamsis in many ways the foundation of the character of Avon Barksdale,
I have often found that the most profound and effective characters are based on people who inspired the author in real life. By using these real life people we can create characters that are truer to real life people.
-
-
Local file Local file
-
Negotiation was what the Spice Girls were all about: between sexual objectification and feminist politics, between female bonding and pur· suing male approval, between self-respect and self-display. They tried to look like Barbie and sound like Gloria Steinem. They insisted that girls could have it both ways, to capitulate to-and even embrace-male fan· tasies about how young women should look and dress and, at the same time, defy and even conquer the dismissal of women as serious, in de· pendent beings that the Wonderbra-short shorts look typically evokes. They were the Roman candles of girl power, their message that feminism was necessary and fun sparkling through the culture before fizzling out. In their wake, young women are still struggling to finesse how to have respect and love, achievement and relationships, work and family, and the media continue to give them contradictory answers
I think that what the Spice Girls were trying to do is important. We cannot fix the system from outside of the system. We have to understand it, and then use it to deconstruct the structures of power that it contains. I do not believe that the Spice Girls could have ended sexism on their own but I do believe that they were on to something.
-
a renewed emphasis on women's breasts (and a massive surge in the promotion of breast augmentation)
Here I have a problem. Yes, there is a fascination in the world about women's breasts. But I do not believe that talking about them or enjoying them is an issue. To ignore the fact that they exist would be ridiculous. To ignore that men and women enjoy them would be naive. Now to say that all a woman is good for is her breast, that would be a problem. But women are sexy and men are sexy. It would be silly to ignore the bodies of either of the sexes.
-
Or Buffy the Vampire Slayer letting us pretend, if just for an hour, that only a teenage girl (and a former cheerleader to boot) can save the world from fang-toothed evil?
Many women saving the world. Is this author trying to say that these shows are false? That they should not be out? Because I think the very opposite is true. i believe that they are empowering. No I do not believe that the sexes are equal yet but I do believe that we are still working on it and making some progress
-
Now, the media illusion is that equality for girls and women is an accomplished fact when it isn't.
Many women are shown on television as equal to their male counter parts when in fact that still hasn't been happening in reality. Some women are paid less on the grounds that they have to go to the bathroom more than men and ridiculous things like that.
-
-
Local file Local file
-
Thus Notorious was remolded in Lifetime's image and industrial practices, becoming an emotional tale of love found, briefly suspended for patriotism's sake, and then reconfirmed.
They reaffirms the idea that Lifetime presents. You are not complete until you have found love.
-
Lifetime may conceptualize its working women as eco-nomically independent, but not as emotionally independent from men.
They focused primarily on the relationships between cis-gendered men and women. I have seen a few of their movies in which the lead female is a corporate CEO but is not happy until she falls in love with a man.
-
ABC revamped the genre, introducing more adult themes, sexually explicit representations, more action, outdoor shoot-ing, and faster plots.
They were allowed creative freedom because they did not have too much power given to those outside of the studio.
-
culture industries target gendered audiences
They ask themselves "What are we good at?" They attempt to become a master at one thing so that they can capitalize on it.
-
-
Local file Local file
-
The TV-addict housewife became a stock charilcter during the period, particularly in texts aimed at a general au-lliencc >vherc the mode of nddress \vas characterized by an implicit male narrator who clearly blamed women-not television-for the untidv hou~e.
This is hilarious when you compare it to the episode of "The Honeymooners" that we watched. The wife was going to be too distracted by a tv set. But funnily enough it was the husband whose work and daily life was more consumed by the set.
-
Coffin characterized the average viewer as a "modern active woman" with a kitchen full of "labor-saving devices," an interest in her house. clothes, and "the way she looks."
They were finding out their audience so that they knew who and what to market. If you know that a woman in this time period will be doing chores while watching television, than you know she might realize that the vacuum she is using is not as good as the one that they could advertise to her.
-
Unlike the single sponsor series. which was usually produced through the advertising agency, the magazine concept allowed the network tore-tain control and ownership of programs.
If one organization payed for all of the advertising thwy had a big share of money invested in the show. Therefore they got a say in what was happening. if many corporations are involved no one company has too much power
-
Indeed, the networks put enormous amounts of money and effort into variety shows when they first began to compose daytime program schedules.
Judy Garland had one. She invited many different singers to come on and sing with her. I actually just watched a video of her and Barbara Streisand singing Happy Days.
-
-
Local file Local file
-
The eye is a text, and in the gentle jolt of a scen
I have never thought of these rhythms as so similar between books and shows, but it absolutely makes sense. It goes back to the discussion of flow. That the audience or reader needs to be able to take even a second of a break from what they are seeing.
-
nothing more than an aural translation of the visuaL a mere appendage to the images, not an expression of intention, thought, but rather a clarification of gestures, a commentary on the directives emanating from the image.
We see images and the characters tell us what we are seeing. For instance in criminal minds we see a dead body and then the characters tell us how they died, who they are, etc. They will say that the dead body belonged to a woman even though we can see that to be true, they want to make sure that we know.
-
the life deceptively programmed for thern--witl-the solidarity they are so ncutely deprived of.
We see these people whose lives are wrapped up in nice shiny bows. This is something that we lack in our lives and by seeing it in a tv we can be distracted from the fact that we do not have it ourselves.
-
It is hardly too far-fetched to suppose that, inversely, reality is viewed through the filter of the television screen, that the meaning given quotidian life on the screen is reHected back upon everyday life itself.
We are distanced from the television screen. We like it so much because we are separate from it. Are we starting to do that with reality? Are we starting to distance ourselves? Are we starting to merely see things and keep ourselves away from it.
-
Prologue to The sociaL technical, and artistic aspects of television cannot be treated in isolation.
We have to work under the guideline that nothing in this world happens in a vacuum. This means that even thought it may not seem like it, everything was influenced by something else that is going on in the world around it. We have to take into context the political and social aspects of the time.
-
-
Local file Local file
-
. If a science that does not stultify or con-tent itself with administrative surveys but instead takes up the research of ideology would give its support to those artists kept in check then they would a better chance against their bosses and the cen-sors
If we supported those who are more focused on breaking down ideologies and finding a more true sense of life, then we would see much less of those who would continue to perpetuate this norm.
-
The psychotherapist resembles the hypnotist, and the heroine resembles the cliche of the "split ego." Sometimes she is a noble, loving person, who represses her own feelings only because of certain unhappy experiences, and other times she is a hussy, pretentious and in love with herself but exaggerating her caprices far too much for one not to know from the outset that her inner loveliness will ultimately emerge.
There is a bad part of you that you must overcome. And if you listen to this person who is trying to tame you , you can overcome it
-
there still lurks the old pernicious idea of the taming of the shrew
A Shakespeare play. The notion of taming a woman is still present. The uniform woman ideal has not gone away.
-
The dramaturgical necessity of concentrating lengthy and elaborate psy-chodynamic processes into a half-hour episode, a necessity the producers then use as a pretext, harmonizes all too well with the ideological distor-tion the show diligently cultivates.
In shoving all of this change into a half hour episode we tell the audience that change comes quickly. That someone will become better in a short amount of time. However, that simply isn't true. That sort of change of character requires an immense amount of time and work. And yet we shove that story into a 30 minute show with commercials.
-
The farce says to the viewe when you have humor, when you're good-natured, quick on the ball, an charming, then you don't need to get so worked up about your starvatio wages; all the same, you remain what you are.
A way to placate the masses? Even though your situation sucks, if you have humor you will be fine. If you can see the bright side of things you will be fine. This art can be an aesthetic evaluation of life but not a conscious will to change it. (an idea that came from Erwin Piscator)
-
This supposed! y technological necessity, itself dic-tated by the commercial system, favors the stereotypes and the ideologi-cal rigidity the industry in any case justifies on the basis of consider~tion for a juvenile or infantile public.
Ideologies are easily maintained because characters have to be set up immediately. You essentially have less time to tell a story. Therefore if what you have to say about a character is easy to grasp you have to spend less time on it. This is part of what allows stereotypes to continue.
-
- Sep 2019
-
Local file Local file
-
I can exer-cise my freedom to change the channel
America=Freedom. We have the "freedom" to watch whatever we want to. This has affected our minds in so many ways. Politically and socially.
-
The medium is commonly used to achieve numbness or even narcosis in hospitals, airports, and geriatric institutions.
I wonder if anyone has done studies on the effects of television in hospitals, nursing homes, etc. I cannot even imagine how different it would have been for patients and their loved ones if cable did not exist. I am sure that people were just fine living that way, but I wonder how drastically it changed. I wonder which hospital was the first to put a television in a patients room.
-
Each was displaced from its preeminent position by its own techno-logical offspring
Out with the old in with the new. It almost seems as if these systems were "taken out" by what it created. It was a natural progression for the medium that could only be avoided by avoiding progress.
-
In the cable environment, however, The Ed Sullivan Show is no longer possible
The Ed Sullivan Show was such a cultural phenomenon at that time. being on the show was an honor. However with cable we see those celebrities all the time and it is not a novelty anymore.
-
630 Overpiews association as members of a single audience, and adding the security of phys-ical isolation from each other in the bargain
It brought all of these people together in the comfort of their own homes. You no longer needed to leave your house to learn about someone else's experience.
-
closed circuit delivery systems (e.g., cable) and self-programming options
I always forget that cable did not appear in telekinesis for quite a while. The for a long time you had one program that operated for just this certain amount of time and it only happened once.
-
-
Local file Local file
-
I saw that if I was ever going to have my park," he explained, "here, at last, was a way to tell millions of people about it-with TV
It was the easiest way to inform people about it. Sure you could put up posters and billboards, but you cannot talk to people about it through those forms. In television you can actually show children how fun it is and explain to parents that it will make their children happy.
-
Speaking directly to the camera, he leads the viewer through a discussion of dinosaurs, using illustrations from enor-mous books to punctuate his presentation
In today's society this representation of intellect would have been laughable. Because we have seen this very thing so often. However, in this time it told the viewers that he had done the research and he knew what he was talking about. He was an authority.
-
"Disney always enjoyed showing people around his studio and explaining to them exactly how the exotic process of creating an animated film proceeded."
I can remember in the previews leading up to Sleeping Beauty we saw how the animators worked. We saw their sketches.
-
reassuring viewers that they inhabited a position of privileged knowledge that was available only through television
He brought the content to everyone and still made people feel special for having it.
-
was that it allowed the studio to participate in TV without surrendering control of its precious film: library
And we all know how the Disney corporation feels about the vault. Back then it may have just been a library but now it is a vault. I think that it is a great business move on their part. It keeps their films fresh every time they release them
-
. It is only a slight exaggeration, therefore, to claim that Disney mounted an entertainment empire on the cornerstone of this first television series.
I would say that this was not an exaggeration at all. That empire that he built is still going and growing. He did start an empire that I believe is continuing the work that he believed in.
-
television was the beacon that would draw the American public to the domain of Disney
Disney brought his products to the home. I think this move was genius. He made Disneyland accessible to everyone. It was for everyone. It was a place that even adults wished to go. It was all about family and in post war America that was what mattered to people.
-
One Hour in Wonderland
While sound is a beautiful and diverse medium, I can see why Disney was not interested. His market required the visual and I applaud him for seeing the possibilities in television.
-
The first to link production for the two media,. the~e producers sparked the full-scale integration of movie and TV productton m Hollywood during the second half of the 1950s.
They produced both. I have always thought of television and cinema to be in the same family. That they happened and people were doing both. However, it seems that the more I read the more I see that they were incredibly different in the beginning.
-
-
Local file Local file
-
And yet in another way it is not like that at all, for though the items may be various, the television experience has in some important ways unified them.
A Tide commercial, and infomercial, and an advertisment to stop smoking are all very different subject and products. However, they are all a part of the television experience. We may think these are out of place next to a football game. However the act of all of these things together makes the television experience.
-
insatiable demand for reality in modern societies.
We do seem to have this overwhelming desire for reality tv shows. People are obsessed with all of these different reality shows. There are always new ones being thought of. "The Great British Baking Show" spin offs of "The Bachelor"\ etc. We truly are insatiable.
-
In film, reminding the audience of the presence of a camera at the scene where something is filmed, as when instable or badly focused images demonstrate that a hand-held camera is being used, has the effect of assuring us that what we see actually took place
It helps the audience to believe that this really happened. You see this in some films like Paranormal Activity where they want you to think it actually happened. They make it seem like everything was recorded by the person who was experiencing it.
-
Bertolt Brecht thought that revealing the technical machinery 'behind' a theatrical play would break the illusion of 'reality' and produce the effect of 'estrangement' (Verfremdungseffekt) which would make the audience reflect on the constructed-ness of what they had experienced as 'real'
How much we want the audience to see relies on what we want to audience to thin about. In a lot of Brecht's work, Three Penny Opera for instance, the goal is to have the audience think about what they are seeing and if they can trust it. It shows beggars being trained by a man to be beggars. Thus taking away the idea that they are helpless. So if we want to make sure people are thinking about the content , and not whether or not we trust the content, we want to make sure that they believe the content in true and authentic.
-
But the telegraphed message might have been written by hand hours or days before its transmission. And as :soon as recording techniques for sound were developed, the voices or musical< instruments heard at a distance might have been recorded even years before they were transmitted.
The amount of work that goes into this before it is actually sent is quite large. And the actual moment that the show or text is transmitted to its audience happens in seconds.
-
s an all-encompassing concept, it makes us think of all kinds of television as being basically the same thing, t~us possibly obscuring important differences.
Yes, yes, yes! There are so many different forms of television. Especially these days when watching on cable is not your only option. That is part of why I think it is important to be sepcific.
-
which compares language to some kind of container that can be 'filled'
I never realized just how much metaphor sinks into our lives. That much of what we talk about is somehow related to an idea that we have within our society. Perhaps that is why language is so hard to translate. I wonder what translation issues happen within television, I am positive if I looked I could find some.
-
-
Local file Local file
-
e for television and there were very important advances in the productive use of the medium, including. as again at a comparable stage in radio, some kinds of original work.
Was it originally that people were producing work that was already made, they were just putting it on a 2d image? And then they started to create new work that centered around the technology? The artists then began to learn the technology and test its limitations.
-
large-scale capit.alist distribution carne much later, as a way of con trolling and organising a market for given production
If you can control what they are seeing and the information they are receiving you can control what they are thinking. At least that is the idea.
-
church and school could not meet.
Church and school were the sources of entertainment for them before this technology was available. The Quem Quaeritis is a perfect example of Church being the entertainment for the masses. Church provide pageants for the people.
-
As a powerful medium of cummunlcallon and entcrtamrnent it took its place with other factors-such as greatly increased physical mobility. itself the result of other newly invented technologies-in altering the scale and form of our societies
I wonder if this is referring to the pursuit of knowledge that is so prevalent in our society today. Television allows us to gain knowledge faster. For example news broadcasting and weather channels. We are more in tune with what is happening around us.
-
If the technology is a cause. we can at best moclify or seek to control its effects. Or if the technology. as used. is an effect, to what other kinds of cause. and other kinds of action. should we refer and relate our experience of its uses
This is fascinating. The idea of whether or not television is the cause or the effect. I think it is both. Television definitely causes things to happen in our society. We are heavily influenced by what comes in on our screens. However I know that television, like most other art forms, is also an effect. What is created is driven by what is happening in our world. artists are inspired by what they see and what they feel.
-
about necessary institutions or particular and changeable institutions
We cannot begin to dissect the culture that we live in. Is it toxic or helpful? Do we need to change it or is it serving a specific purpose?
-
-
Local file Local file
-
For the fact is that many of us do sit
We sit and we watch. And I have to believe that we do not just glaze through the commercials that interrupt our programs. I think that is part of why we love streaming services so much. It allows us to not get pulled out of the story that we have escaped into. I am sure that the author was not thinking about Netflix or Hulu when they wrote this but what they're saying heavily impacts how we watch television today.
-
\vatc:hing televh:ion
This is fascinating. And totally true! When people ask us what we did over the weekend we will say things like " I cooked a new recipe, spent time with my mom, and watched television." Sometimes we are specific in what television we watched, but very rarely. I would say now we are getting more specific about what we are watching due to the nature of streaming services, but when we still often generalize.
-
But the flow effect is sufficiently widespread to be a major element in programming policy.
This idea that you have to catch the viewers attention and keep it so that they do not leave you channel. I have seen moments in television where this flow is "bad". I remember thinking "There was another commercial just five minutes ago!" and then there was another one. They did not allow my brain enough time to become hooked on the program again.
-
It is subdivided into course-programmes for schools, colleges and universities
I have always thought of educational television as being directed at children who are bellow the age of six. I am not sure why this was always my assumption. However it is interesting to me to find out that educational television can be directed at colleges and universities as well.
-
-
Local file Local file
-
But "~~em~in~ s!len~ on the. question of how to change a sign syst~ Stub~o!nly I"estnctmg itself to the text,
It is not a tool for the system, it is a tool with the system. It is merely a way for us to understand the system.
-
Characteristically, a structuralist analysis proposes binary oppositions such as individual/community, male/female, nature/culture, or ,, mind/matter and argues that every element within the system derives its meaning from its relationship to these categories
In my Gender, Women, and Sexuality studies we often observe the gender binary and its negative effects on society and individuals. I often wonder at what magnitude television has played a roll in sustaining this binary.
-
Can we ignore the commercial breaks when writing about the experience of watching a television program?
This a fantastic question. I have always been curious at what point are the commercials for a certain tv show chosen? mid filming? Post-production (most likely option)?
-
a meal can be thought of as a syntagm
There is a certain system to the word "meal"
-
It represents the smallest complete television picture umt. Bu~ images already are combinations of several different signs at once and mvolve a complex set of denotations and connotations. Further-more, if we use the frame as the smallest unit of meaning, we ignore the soundtrack, where ½o second would not necessarily capture a meaning-~l sound and where speech, sound effects, and music may be occurring simultaneously.
Television is complicated! There are so many variables to break down at any given moment. I think this offers us a sort of break. That to any one person one frame is packed with information. And then when you add all of the frames with even one 20 minute show you have a mound of information to digest now. Analysis of tv is hard but so worth it.
-
social convention and cultural aru>.I'9J>riation that a dark, cloudy sky becomes a sign for "impending storm?'
I am guilty of this one. Whenever the wind picks up outside or the sky darkens, I automatically imagine that some witch somewhere just got really angry.
-
what makes TV distinctive as a communication medium, as well as how it relies on other sign systems to communicate.
TV itself does not define these things that it communicates to us. It instead, uses definitions from other social standards to communicate with us. For instance if a character is seen with a big mac wrapper instead of a china plate and silverware, we know something about their economic status because of our culture.
-
-
Local file Local file
-
"sold" to advertisers, viewers themselves become commodities in the act of watch-ing television.
The station sells its viewers to advertisement companies so that the advertisers will pay for the airtime. Those who consume shows directed towards females will be "bought" by companies trying to market to women.
-
In these cases, the viewer is addressed as a potential consumer for the station itself and its services.
Trailers for tv shows work to have the audience "buy in" to their network. More viewers watching is better for the station therefore they advertise to gain more viewers.
-
having more control over their own productive work might be more fulfilling than an evening watching television and might yield more concrete rewards than drinking a particular brand of beer, driving a certain car, or using a specific brand of lipstick.
This medium tells us that happiness can be found in what they are selling. That their product will fill that whole you have been feeling. When the reality is that perhaps your time is better spent with you family, or pursuing something to further your career.
-
e iefs that are taken as "natural" when in fact \ they perpetuate the status quo and continue the class system of oppres-,I sion.
Adds targeted at women were only talking about beauty tools and better ways to maintain a house. While adds targeted at men could have been about a new car or a snazzy work suit.
-
nor do they admit the importance (in some cases even the possibility) of alterna-tive or counterreadings on the part of the mass audience.
The audiences were primarily white, and so the commercials targeted a white audience and their needs
-
the dominant class owns and operates the televi-sion industry-including production and programming-it is assumed that other sets of meanings and beliefs are rarely, if ever, given a full public airing
White America controlled television in the beginning (and still much so today), so we only see the white families, white couples, and white heroes stories.
-
many places within television where someone could play a doctor and to recognize this particular spokesman as a likely "doctor type?'
Stereotyping within commercials. I never realized that the practice you so commonly find in casting for T.V. also happens on commercials. "Yes but do they look like a teacher?"
-
educe cough and flu symptoms---::-_bllt · in how they structure their appeal to potential consumers
"This brand works faster. ' "This brand keeps the symptoms away for longer. The idea is that they both treat the same ailment but how is their product more effect for this type of consumer.
-
-
Local file Local file
-
the kitchen and bathroom" inter-missions
This is an interesting facet of television that I had forgotten existed. I have a copy of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang that still has an intermission built into the DVD.
-
Another principle of most television schedules is that each text must. accommodate interruption.
Only partially true now. For shows that are premiered on cable first yes. But for those that are made by streaming services that is not the case.
-
Television narra-tives are unique in the fact that all texts are embedded within the metadiscourse of the station's schedule. A viewer can circumvent some of the extrinsic consequences of this embedding by using a videocassette recorder; one can, for example, watch a show at a more convenient time ' or watch it again, or fastforward through commercials. But this embed-ding has also led television narratives to make certain intrinsic adjustments.
How had this shifted since we no longer require cable to watch these shows. I wonder what the author would think of "binge watching shows and what that means for narratives" I thin perhaps it has required that the shows hold our attention longer. It can be easier to get bored of something when you have been watching it for an hour already.
-
examining the temporal distortions can help us characterize television narrators.
I had never examined this before. That how time is shifted can help us to understand what story they are trying to tell.
-
Music videos often enact the storyline of ~he ~o~g's lyrics.
At the time of this articles publication that may have been true. However now I do not believe that music videos are mostly about the narrative of the song. Take a look at artists like Sia or Billie Eilish. Music may have also changed drastically since this time as well.
-
but rather have other goals such as description, education, or argumentation, tend to use narrative as a means to their ends.
is this one of those instances in which the categories are mutually exclusive? It seems hard for me as an artist who studies performance creation to believe that any piece on television or onstage has one goal and one goal alone.
-
penny dreadfuls,
There is a show Called Penny Dreadful. It is very interesting. I still have not decided whether or not I like it.
-