Television as culture & communications

Television as culture & communications Jan. 28, 2011 lecture

Agenda COMN 3316 Telveision as culture and communication • Ending class at 3: 35 so that those who wish to go to the Douglas Coupland lecture today, can go. • Paper guidelines • Finish discussing cultural reproduction • Readings

Paper guidelines COMN 3316 Telveision as culture and communication • Papers are ideally submitted shortly after your presentation (1-3) weeks. • This allows you to use your presentation as a “trial” – • Most papers need to be transferred through more than one sensory mode to be done well- Other readers- Reading out loud are examples of this. • PowerPoint slides = backbone of paper

Paper guidelines COMN 3316 Telveision as culture and communication • Papers are ideally submitted shortly after your presentation (1-3) weeks. (this is up to your TA ultimately) • This allows you to use your presentation as a “trial” – • Most papers need to be transferred through “alternative sensory format” to be done well- Other readers or Reading out loud – Accompanying with visual – Presentation helps with this • PowerPoint slides = backbone of paper: Often 1 slide = one paragraph? Or one section? Depending on your style

Paper guidelines COMN 3316 Telveision as culture and communication • Papers are ideally (about) 10 page in length • 1.5 spacing 12 point font • 6 scholarly resources (at least) (At least one journal, at least one book • You can only quote non scholarly resources once per resource – and paper should not depend heavily on non scholarly resources…Should be more dependent on scholarly resources. • This paper must demonstrate a clear connection to Television studies as an academic discipline (it is recommended that your scholarly resources be connected to this discipline) • Like the presentation the paper should have a section (at the very least) that demonstrates your awareness of Canadian Television, and how it is different than other (US) television: you should demonstrate that you understand this difference from varied angles including distribution, production and broadcast issues

Television as cultural reproduction Production and reproduction: • Marx sees that • Industrialism has tremendous suffering • Thus his inquiry was interested in how suffering was produced & reproduced. • Amongst the many aspects his theory produced one was the idea of a dominant culture (Bourgeois), and he then studied the mechanisms by which this dominant culture remained dominant. • His study in turn - used the mechanisms of industrial production as terms/images to discuss the reproduction of suffering.

Television as cultural reproduction • Production and reproduction: Later Marxian theorists would distill his thinking PRODUCTION

Television as cultural reproduction • Production and reproduction: REPRESENTATION PRODUCTION

Television as cultural reproduction • Production and reproduction: Marx REPRESENTATION CONSUMPTION PRODUCTION

Television as cultural reproduction • Production and reproduction: Marx REPRESENTATION IDENTITY CONSUMPTION PRODUCTION

Television as cultural reproduction The idea of watching a caring, well ordered “normal” family = being a caring, well ordered, “normal” family • Production and reproduction: REPRESENTATION IDENTITY CONSUMPTION PRODUCTION

Television as cultural reproduction • Production and reproduction: REPRESENTATION IDENTITY CONSUMPTION PRODUCTION

Television as cultural reproduction • Production and reproduction: How does one idea come to be dominant? REPRESENTATION REGULATION IDENTITY CONSUMPTION PRODUCTION

Television as cultural reproduction • Production and reproduction: How does one idea come to be dominant? REPRESENTATION REGULATION IDENTITY CONSUMPTION PRODUCTION Roseanne: situates a 20 history in US television which represents family with in certain boundaries; womanhood with in certain boundaries: Roseanne (like Madonna) and many of this phase of the 80’s push against those boundaries especially as they particularize in representation of women and family on TV: Also interesting is the juxataposition of Roseanne against the Cosby Show (also working with boundaries of representation of family/ women alongside its work with race.

Television as cultural reproduction • Production and reproduction: How does one idea come to be dominant? REPRESENTATION REGULATION IDENTITY CONSUMPTION PRODUCTION In addition to challenging pictures of the normal family and womanhood that have dominated TV, Roseanne also addresses issues of homosexuality lesbian and gay (one of the first TV shows in US to address lesbianism, L.A. Law and Northern Exposure also address with in same time frame.

Television as cultural reproduction • Production and reproduction: Marx (Foucult, e How does one idea come to be dominant? REPRESENTATION REGULATION IDENTITY CONSUMPTION PRODUCTION

Television as cultural reproduction • Production and reproduction: later Marxist studies REPRESENTATION REGULATION IDENTITY CONSUMPTION PRODUCTION

Television as cultural reproduction • Production and reproduction: Issues of marginalization: what if you are either cut off or else skewed in access to (self) representation? REPRESENTATION X REGULATION IDENTITY X CONSUMPTION PRODUCTION

Television as cultural reproduction • Production and reproduction: Issues of marginalization: what if you are either cut off or else skewed in access to (self) representation? REPRESENTATION X REGULATION IDENTITY X CONSUMPTION PRODUCTION If skewed in access to “accurate representation, develop capacity for “representational substitutes, and vulnerable to resolving this skew through consumption as a substitute for identity production. Glynn Davis and Kay Dickinson discussing Genre, Television and Consumption

Television as cultural reproduction • Production and reproduction: Issues of marginalization: what if you are either cut off or else skewed in access to (self) representation? Is there a kind of Atherosclerosis of identity + power? Does this create stagnant identity ecology? REPRESENTATION X REGULATION IDENTITY X CONSUMPTION PRODUCTION

Lukacs (Georg or Gyorgy) Hungarian Influential adapter of Marxian theory to use in thinking about cultural forms 1885-1971 Observing the rise of technological media in Russia

Lukacs (Georg or Gyorgy) The way in which a system produces a web of ideas which become “reality” And acquire an object like function, such that they are part of our everydayness, like a dresser or a bed

Lukacs (Georg or Gyorgy) The way in which a dominant system produces a web of ideas which become “reality” And acquire an object like function, such that they are part of our everydayness, like a dresser or a bed, so that we do not question or “interrogate” these

Lukacs (Georg or Gyorgy) The way in which a dominant system produces a web of ideas which become “reality” And acquire an object like function, such that they are part of our everydayness, like a dresser or a bed, so that we do not question or “interrogate” these The dominant system through both unconscious and conscious means uses this “everydayness” and “object-like-ness” to reproduce its own power as everyday and object like: (it is real like the object) This reproduction occurs in the way the system mimics objects as a web which codes our world with the feeling of substantiality

Lukacs (Georg or Gyorgy) Must move back and forth between “reality” and its “copies” looking for something beyond its copies (the real, the actual) Must constantly interrogate our systems with this WEBER would call the way copies are inserted for the real “enchantment” Dialectical thinking is essential for a culture to stay awake WEBER would call this process disenchantment

Adorno (Theodore): 1903 – 1969 • Composed music/made music • Thought about music that can be bought “ready-made” - the effect of already produced on the production and reproduction of music

Adorno (Theodore): 1903 – 1969 • How does the ready-made” the effect of already produced produce “enchantment” of cultures • How can we reproduce “disenchantment”

Adorno (Theodore): 1903 – 1969 • The problem of the “right” – critiques culture from a moral standpoint around certain chosen nodes (sexuality, public purity) for example unfortunately these critiques often serve as distractions, as images which become reified in such a way as to become catharsis only. • This moral outrage often serves to redirect efforts to uncover the real issues involved – it often unwitting, serves to maintain the issues – especially when catharsis becomes more central than actual solutions as in Propaganda • Ready made music is often used to underscore moral meaning and thus, to connect them to cultural memory

Adorno (Theodore): 1903 – 1969 • Need a critique • A critique interrogates • It interrogates by dialectic • Movement between enchantment of the surrounding environs and its uses of enchantments • Can only be done through maintaining contact with actual material world and observing this material is “re-enchanted” • “Uses of enchantment” -Bruno Bettelheim: Adorno wants us to analyze enchantments of culture/consumption

Lucien Goldmann (1913-1970) Paris + Romanian • Possibilities of Cultural Action Through the Mass Media (title of his second chapter) • While classical critical theory offers us tools for analysis – it has trouble empowering change: Victimization of those seeking change, only able to empower them through negative process This leaves them susceptible to their own ideology And also to being dualistically over portrayed by those in power and thus contained by “their own portrayals of themselves”

Lucien Goldmann (1913-1970) Paris + Romanian • Locus of power • Plane of action • In Marx: this found through the coordinates of poverty • In modern westernized industrial society the plane of action is different:

Lucien Goldmann (1913-1970) Paris + Romanian • Locus of power • Plane of action • In Marx: this found through the coordinates of poverty • In modern westernized industrial society the plane of action is different: the plane is the psychic structure that permeates at collective & individual level

Lucien Goldmann (1913-1970) Paris + Romanian • Locus of power • Plane of action • In modern westernized industrial society the plane of action is different: the plane is the psychic structure that permeates at collective & individual level • Thus the interrogation that creates action has some challenges – in that it aims at the psyche but needs to make actual change. • This is where Television becomes interesting as it becomes part of a consumer culture • AS this culture becomes skilled at turning inner action into outer consumption

Raymond Williams (1921-1988) • Televisions effects Television and Cultural Reproduction: Essay Review: Michael W. Apple and Jeffrey D. Lukowsky. Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 12, No. 4, Oct. 1978)

Four movies: • This is a recorded message • The Electronic Story Teller • The dish ran away with the spoon • Cultural Sovereignty: Shaping Information • Match to thinker

Five readings • Canadian Idol • Soap Opera/Train 48 • Draupadi’s Disrobing • Sex and the City: Sex and the Citizen • Murphy Brown • Match to thinker

Raymond Williams (1921-1988) 3316 • Begins to study television as a communication technology • As a text (was a literary theorist) • Most of his theorizing is done from England and looks at US television from this angle. • The rhythm of commercialization is very visible to him • Following the path of cultural studies which is developing as he is doing his work

Raymond Williams (1921-1988) 3316 • Murphy Brown: He might ask: How does Murphy Brown interrupt the flow of cultural reproduction?

Raymond Williams (1921-1988) 3316 • Murphy Brown: He might ask: How does Murphy Brown reproduce the flow of cultural reproduction?

Raymond Williams (1921-1988) 3316 • Draupadi's vastraharan (from one version of Mahabharat He might ask: How does Mahabharat reproduce the flow of cultural reproduction?

Television as culture & communications