But the meaning that youas a spectator take, depends on that engagement – psychic, imaginaryengagement – through the look with an investment in the image or involvementin what the image is saying or doing.
From my understanding, Hall is stating that the meaning of an image to a viewer depends on how the image triggers the emotions of he viewer. Therefore, if the viewer does not care about the image, then the image has no meaning to that viewer.
That idea coincidentally is a veryimportant one: the notion that the production of meaning is not thereforesomething that just happens because the word is already fixed out in itsmeanings which don’t change. The production of meaning means that there isa kind of symbolic work, an activity, a practice, which has to go on in givingmeaning to things and in communicating that meaning to someone else.
Here Hall is arguing that the meaning of words are not a fixed idea and that instead words undergo different meanings and it is how we we are able to exchange thoughts and ideas as humans.
Without language – and I use language here in thebroad sense, I remind you, different media using different sign systems, etc.,but nevertheless without language, no representation; without language, nomeaning.
In my opinion, I feel like this is kind of obvious. Language is literally a form of communication so of course when there is no language, the meaning of many things disappear.
Oursystems of classification are very complex, but without some notion of “thisbelongs with that, that is different from this,” we wouldn’t be able to have aconceptual map, we wouldn’t be able to map out the world in some intelligibleway.
Here Hall is saying that humans base their thoughts on the classification of things. Like the example he used with the map, without the classification of things, humans would be missing a basic foundation of critical thinking.
I think the truth is that in cultural studies now and in a great dealof media studies work, that notion of representation is regarded as too literaland too straightforward; and the reason for that is because we want to ask thequestion of whether events – the meaning of people, groups, and what they’redoing, etc. – whether these things do have any one essential, fixed or truemeaning against which we could measure, as it were, the level of distortion inthe way in which they’re represented.
In this passage he is stating that the media isn't a direct reflection of people or society because it is too complex of an idea to be so easily reflected.
As we have argued, chief among the mean-ings that these programs convey is the view that the police, aligned against crime andcriminals, stand as a moral authority.
In a time where law enforcement is receiving strong disapproval from society, it's nice to see shows like CSI that show the behind the scenes of officers and hopefully shed some positive light.
CSI employs other emotional hooks as well.
Emotional hooks are also really important because it adds a deeper sense of emotion that allows audiences to connect to which pulls them in more into the plot.
the focus on murder is a crime genre staple.
This makes sense because naturally, murder is the type of crime to have a lot of drama behind it which is why I believe audiences like it so much.
In the earlier crimedramas, the hero was a man, usually macho, and likely to be an iconoclastic loner. Thus,gendered identity, the nature of work, and the hero’s moral authority were stitched nicelyinto the narratives of television crime dramas. But times change and so do the narratives.Today, women are featured more in crime dramas, and notions of the ideal cop focus lesson macho displays of strength and more on technical competence,
I believe this shift greatly benefited the film industry and more specifically, Marvel. I think Marvel perfectly incorporated strong women figures into their series by not making it clear that they are adding women purely for publicity.
First, because the producers of televisioncrime dramas seek to attract a large audience, they tend to offer programs that reflectthe cultural beliefs and sentiments about crime shared by the audience (Rapping, 2003).
This makes sense and honestly made me realize how many movies or shows do this same thing. I can understand it from the producer's perspective however, I believe when audiences are opened up to crimes that go against cultural beliefs, the film industry would greatly benefit and possibly society.
While the shift to telefilm production long proceeded the rise of DVD boxes, the arrival of widespread home video completes the shift from the aesthetic values of liveness to recording.
It was necessary for DVDs to be created after broadcasted TV but before streaming services because it proved that audiences value on-demand, recorded media which essentially gave the green light to streaming services to exist.
Cover designs inflect our understanding of the series that they house, allowing the box to emphasize some cultural elements over others, creating a framework for understanding a text even before it is watched.
I think this is very important especially because some people judge a book by its cover. Because DVDs came in boxes, it gave companies another way to advertise their production and make it stand out from other blandly boxed medias.
The internet has become more central to the television medium, with both official and illicit downloadable shows, transmedia narrative extensions, and the rise of sites like Hulu and YouTube as alternative ways to view a wide range of programming.
Of these technological changes, I think transmedia narrative extensions offer the most flexibility to audiences who want to watch on-the-go, which I'm sure many people can relate to.
Segments are bound together into programmes by the repetitiondevice of the series. This constitutes a basic on-going problematic, whichrarely receives a final resolution. This problematic has laid over it anepisode-by-episode incident, often in the case of a fiction series an enigmawhose solution is revealed very early to the audience. These incidents tendto constitute intrusions to the stable normality that is the series format
Shows that are created similar to this format usually are better shows in my opinion. It keeps the audience coming back for more however I understand that viewers don't always want to give 100% focus to whatever they're watching and follow a storyline.
Thedivisions between fiction and non-fiction exist at another level to that ofnarration; they are chiefly concerned with the origin of material used in theprogramme.
I believe this is important and often a characteristic that goes under the radar of viewers. Both fiction and non-fiction could be media that is narrated so therefore the difference between them lies in whether the content is "real-world" or fantasy.
he actually spent most of the bookmeticulously tracing a broader history of the relation-ships between communications technologies and theirsurrounding societies as “a social complex of a new andcentral kind”
This shows that Television is more than just watching Television, but rather something that reshaped the culture of society.
Media studies had rendered flowinto a general description rather than a critical tool;
I believe this is important because generally, obviously TV is continuous however the point of using the term flow was to describe how smoothly producers and broadcasters integrated advertisements or sponsors into broadcasted Television.
Third, there is thereally detailed flow within this general movement: the actualsuccession of words and images.
In my opinion, all broadcasters should aim to do this. I would be fine if there were interruptions, however they must at least continue the flow from film to ad back to film in order to guarantee that viewers won't just stop watching, which I feel many do.
Of course many people who watch television still registersome of these items as ‘interruptions’.
It most definitely is an interruption and I'm sure the producers know it. This is why people purchase ad-free streaming subscriptions because they don't want to be interrupted when watching shows or movies.
The decisive innovation was in ser-vices financed by commercial advertising. The intervals betweenprogramme units were obvious places for the advertising to beincluded.
It is almost as if producers created shows obviously for entertainment, but also do create business. I believe that intentionally putting breaks within shows in order to allow an interval of advertisements ruins the experience for the audience and makes it predictable to know when an advertisement is coming.
Theories of the evolution of film genres have argued that genres such asthe Western and the musical develop by recombining and commenting onearlier instances of their own genre.
This proves that genres don't stay the same because if that was the case, audiences would quickly get bored. Therefore, producers can either create new methods to trigger certain emotions in certain genres or reuse older films and refresh it in a way that confides with today's culture.
The problems involved in applying the theory of film genre evolution totelevision should remind us that genre theory as a whole might work better for film than for TV. Film genres really were mechanisms for the regulation of difference. The genre organized large numbers of individual worksinto a coherent system that could be recognized by the interpretive community. Television has always employed standard program types, but arguably this has not been the main principle of coherence for the medium.Television programs do not operate as discrete texts to the same extent asmovies; the property of "flow" blends one program unit into another andprograms are regularly "interrupted" by ads and promos.
This understandable however I slightly disagree. I believe there are certain shows that could easily be grouped up in the same genres as movies. Breaking Bad for example is a serial where the audience is constantly on the edge of their seats due to the drama and action. On that note, a movie like Inception also has the audience on the edge of their seats due to the action and drama throughout the movie. Both productions deliver the same feeling and excitement which is why I believe they can both be grouped into the same genre despite one being a move and the other being a show.
The idea of character development inevitably moves a genre based onthe episodic series model toward the continuing serial form
I believe that this distinction is a subtle reason why certain audiences favorite some shows over others. Some viewers may value a show where the characters develop thus pushing the show towards a serial format while some viewers want a quick laugh and prefer an episodic series.
n both cases, these shiftsin the film genre correlate to changes in the culture outside. The mostdifficult task of the genre critic is to adequately account for these correlations. Ultimately, genre criticism is cultural criticism.
This puts a new perspective on where the certain trends in movies come from. I think most people would agree that an example of culture impacting movies is the LGBTQ movement. Ever since the LGBTQ movement came to light, romantic films or even action films have incorporated characters who associate themselves within the LGBTQ community. Although mostly a subtle shift, it is something that should be considered which makes sense why critics play an important role in assessing films.
According to Schatz, the film genre represents a tacit contract betweenthe motion picture industry and the audience, whereas the genre filmrepresents an event that honors that contract
This is important because although the entertainment industry promotes producers to expand beyond the barriers of traditional film/cinematography, audiences prefer to confine what they watch into film genre. In other words, audiences want to know what they should expect when they decide to watch something. Therefore genre film honors what the audience will expect.
e efforts of thestudios to build a major presence in TV station ownership and networkoperation were consistently thwarted by the hostile actions of the FCC
In my opinion, I support the FCC's refusal to allow studios TV station ownership and network operation because if not, studios would hold way too much power on Television thus creating a monopoly.
ere were two major allenges to network sovereignty in the earlytelevision industry in the United States the first from broadcasting’seconomic rivals in Hollywood and the second from philosophical nay-sayersand would-be reformers in the public realm.
Clearly the Television Industry attracted business from broadcasting rivals in Hollywood and controversy from society. From my understanding, broadcasting rivals in Hollywood wanted to be included in the profitable opportunity that TV created while society greatly preferred that TV be used for educational and socially valuable programs.
At the same time, networklicensing of prime-time programming reduced the market for independentprogramme producers to three network firms and allowed networks todemand ownership and syndication rights to their shows in exange for anetwork time slot.
One could consider this market monopolistic. Only 3 network firms handled the "prime time" slot which forced independent producers into giving up the rights to their shows just to get airtime. Although nowadays there a many platforms who accept work from independent producers, they still demand almost all the rights to the work.
In 1954, the two major television networks and their twelveowned-and-operated stations took in over half of the total profits of a TVindustry whi included two other network operators and hundreds of localstations.
This is important because in 1954, or around that time, there were few networks which forced audiences to compromise their preferences and choose one network or the other. Compared to now, viewers have numerous networks to choose from which also greater distributes profits amongst the networks, including networks in different languages.
e ad’s mise-en-abyme structure suggeststhat the Crosley console literally contains the domestic scene, therebypromising not just a television set but an ideal reflection of the family,joined together by the new commodity
In an ideal world, television would primarily be used to bring a family together, however, this is not the case. I don't blame society for this especially considering how advanced the film industry has become but it is interesting to see how integrated television has become in everyone's personal lives.
is woman and, I suspect, others like her were beginning to think oftelevision as a replacement for the traditional fixtures of family life.
Although television can be a promising piece of machinery to help bring together a family, I truly believe in certain cultures, musical instruments such as the piano connects a family on a much deeper level than watching television. For that reason, I find it somewhat heartbreaking to see how the television has replaced musical instruments within a home.
In fact, the spatial organization of the home was presentedas a set of scientific laws through whi family relationships could becalculated and controlled.
It is interesting to see the shift in how homes were organized. Televisions have their own space within a home which shows how integrated it has become in everyone's lives.
e introductionof the maine into the home meant that family members needed to come toterms with the presence of a communication medium that might transformolder modes of family interaction.
As television was introduced to families, it created a new way for families to interact, whether it be positive or negative.