Transcript Presentation 3

Epistemology
 the
study of the nature, origin, and limits
of human knowledge.
 How do we know things?
 How do we understand something to be
the truth?
Media as Epistemology
 Epistemology
is concerned with the origins
and nature of knowledge
 Definitions of truth and the sources where
such definitions come
 Resonance: metaphor is a generative
force—that is, the power of a phrase, a
book, a character
There is no universal way to know truth, but rather
that a civilization will identify truth largely based
on its forms of communication.
primitive oral culture
 great
stock in a man who
remembers proverbs, since
truth is passed on through
such stories
 What is your experience of
hearing a story told
through spoken word?
Proverb
A
proverb (from Latin: proverbium) is a
simple and concrete saying, popularly
known and repeated, that expresses a
truth based on common sense or the
practical experience of humanity. They
are often metaphorical. A proverb that
describes a basic rule of conduct may
also be known as a maxim.
culture of the written word
 The
rationality of written arguments would
be considered superior to a proverb in a
culture that values written word
 Perhaps, rationality and reasoning can
override “common sense”
Television
 limited
our discourse to where all of our
serious forms of discussion have turned
into entertainment. Television has
influenced the way we live off the screen.
 How has TV and other forms of
entertainment influenced the way you
live off the screen?
Metaphors that Resonate
 Athens=intellectual
excellence
 Hamlet=brooding indecisiveness
Media as Metaphor
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A medium has the power to fly beyond its
material context into new and unexpected
ones, because of the way it directs us to
organize our minds and integrate our
experience of the world
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Different media resonate in different ways
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Resonance is metaphor writ large
Medium of TV
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Creates new forms of truth-telling
According to Postman, the epistemology of
TV is inferior to a print based one
Amusement (and pleasure) is how TV
communicates
Ironically, in the late 90’s David Simon turned
away from print journalism and to TV,
because the former had gone the way of
entertainment (as Postman predicted)
Emotional Power of TV
 Postman
does not deny the emotional
power of TV, because it could arouse
sentiment against the Vietnam War or
against racism.
 “We must be careful in praising or
condemning a medium because the
future may hold surprises for us”
 (enter The Wire) Superior Serial
Melodrama and multi-sited ethnography
Simon
 Uses
emotional resonance to inform
people of the negative systemic issues of
the American inner-cities
 Melodrama as a means to communicate
and possibly persuade
 Multi-Sited ethnography
Literate Culture
 Common
Sense by Thomas Paine
published 1776
 The popularity of that book at the time is
close to an event like the Superbowl
 Different classes were all interested in
reading about a variety of subjects
 Printed matter was all that was available
 America was founded by intellectuals
Literate Culture
 Approaches
the world from a rational
perspective
 based around a series of rational
propositions that challenge a reader or
audience to judge them as true or false,
the entire society was founded around
the idea of rational discourse.
 (Going back to the telegraph) “Peek a
Boo world”
“The Age of Exposition"
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defined Typographic America
Exposition: a comprehensive description and
explanation of an idea or theory.
replaced by a spectacle that prizes flash and
entertainment over substance.
The message itself is less important than the
entertainment value of its delivery.
The Wire is all about exposition
The Wire addresses its subject matter in a
complex multi-sited way
TV
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demands rapid-fire editing, non-stop stimulation,
and quick decisions rather than rational
deliberation
Also, the pleasure of an ending that ties everything
up into a bow
No spoilers either! The pleasure of a surprise
ending.
The Wire has shorter beats, but its editing is quiet—
allowing the viewer to experience the naturalism
of each location
The Wire, uses no flashy effects or even a musical
score
Conventions
 Conventions
are the generally accepted
ways of doing something. There are
general conventions in any medium, such
as the use of interviewee quotes in a print
article, but conventions are also genre
specific.
Story Conventions
Closure, Safety, Discourse
Structure of CSI
Structure of Law and Order
What do those shows mean?
What are they saying?
Causal Connections
 People
are less likely to keep events
straight if a story is not causal and merely
sequential
 Many times when causality is not part of a
sequence of events—it will be supplied by
the viewer/reader
Canonical Story Format
 Introduction
or Exposition: Explanation of
setting, basic character attributes,
equilibrium
 Complication Action: Introduction of
conflict, obstacles,
 Ensuing Events dealing with conflict
 Conclusion, outcome, ending.
Crime
 Cause
of Crime
 Commission of Crime
 Concealment of Crime
 Discovery of Crime
Investigation
 Beginning
of investigation
 Phases of investigation
 Elucidation of crime
 Identification of criminal
 Consequences of identification
The detective film justifies its
gaps (delayed story
development)
 Controls
knowledge
 The genre aims to create curiosity about
past story events
 Suspense about upcoming story events
 Surprise with respect to unexpected
disclosures about the story
 We learn what the detective learns when
he or she learns it
Ethnography
A
method of nuanced qualitative social
research “in which fine grained daily
interactions constitute the life blood of the
data being produced
 Simon’s work from back to the Baltimore
Sun could be described as ethnographic
from the beginning
Methodology for The Corner
 Long-term,
one year stay in the field
where a particular set of social relations
can be observed
 The observer learns the visuals and the
habits of the culture by following selected
individuals in their work and daily lives
 Police culture and drug culture
 Stand-around-and-watch-journalism
George Marcus
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Inherent problem with the ethnographic method
Concentrates on a specific location of study
“single site” ethnographers have recourse to a
larger whole that has not been studied in so deep
a systematic fashion
Researchers do not have data for the whole
This amounts to an abstraction: “the state,
capitalism and so on.
Enables some sort of closure
He and others developed an ambition to
undertake a multi-sited ethnography
One that can approach the system as a whole
The problem…
 No
single ethnographer has enough
knowledge of enough worlds or enough
time to map this constantly evolving world
system
“ethnographic imaginary”
 World
enough and time
 Simon’s
unique fabrication of
ethnographically informed serial television
melodrama speaks to this according to
Williams
 Makes
arguments, sets up contexts that
could not be managed in journalism
alone
 Serial
television melodrama, according to
Williams, makes possible the larger canvas
of the ethnographic imaginary
 Combined
factual, ethnographically
observed, and detailed worlds of cops and
corners into one converged fictional world
 With
the exception of Spike Lee’s 1995
adaption of Richard Price’s novel Clockers
there had never been a film that had
given equal time to both sides of the law
Season 1
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Breaks crime story conventions
Introduces a crime
A cop who pursues solving the crime
Higher ups who have no interest in solving the
crime
Doesn’t stay with the cop, but moves to the
complex world of the committer of the crime
Humanizes that character as well
Equally important procedures of cops and
dealers are introduced
Comparison between two
microsites
 Cops
who want to be good and cops
who just want to bust heads
 Competent drug dealers vs. ones who
lack the discipline to avoid capture
Complexity of the Series’
microsites (plotlines)
 Politics
 Different
police details
 Education
 Co-ops
 War on drugs and “Hamsterdam”
 Etc.
 The
vivid and interlocking stories from so
many concrete ethnographic sites is what
fiction affords, what ethnography aspires to,
and what newspaper journalism can rarely
achieve
 Multi-sited
ethnographic imaginary that no
longer needs to depend on allusions to
abstract ideas of “the state,” “the
economy”, or “capitalism” as its “fiction of
the whole”
 The
many sites reveal a vivid picture of that
“whole”
 Simon
had to quit the business he loved
and turn to television
 Hasn’t fully embraced the form
 Hence the comparison to Greek Tragedy?
John Carroll and Bill Marimow
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From Baltimore Sun (criticized “The Metal
Men—1995”
Said it was too much like “The Corner” and
that it wasn’t hard enough on the thieves
Simon believed that newspapers should
adopt a wide sociological approach to the
city’s problems
His editors thought he should be more clear
and focused on right and wrong
Rifle-Shot Journalism
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One story is small and self-contained and has
good guys and bad guys
The other is about why we are where we are
About who is being left behind
Harder to report
Carroll and Marimow saw them as performing
a public service that can’t reach for the
larger ethnographic complexities
Rifle-Shot vs. Multi-Site
 Rifle
shot is like a half hour of episodic
television whose world is necessarily
narrow and whose time is limited to a half
hour or hour
 In contrast, Simon’s reporting presented
an expanded world view
 Transforms a social “type” to a human
being
White Middle Class
Editorializing
 In
The Corner, his editorializing has an
identity
 In The Wire he shows instead of telling
 (Which is more truthful?)
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In place of the five-paragraph rifle-shot story
he would eventually create a five- season
cumulative serial whose primary outrage-a
futile war on drugs-encompasses myriad
others
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Serial melodrama can show us, in a way
sociologists and ethnographers cannot, how
much as Detective Lester Freamon puts it, “all
the pieces matter.”