Transcript Max Horkheimer & Theodor W. Adorno: The Cultural Industries

3520 TV Theory
Lecture 1: The field of TV
theory
Starting to theorise
television: great beliefs
in impact
Pinnacle of the mass society
Initial great beliefs in impact
Time-space compression
Penetrating everyday life
“A vast wasteland”, “the plug-in drug”, “the
great leveller”
Impact, re-arranged
A need to explain the unique properties of
the medium
A need to explain why it looks the way it
does: production
A need to explain the effect: reception
A need to explain the wider impact on
society, culture, mentality
The scope of the field of
TV theory
Textual vs. contextual: what is being
investigated here?
Essential vs. processual: does the medium
determine?
Abstract vs. concrete: what is the test of
scientific examination?
Theory before
institutionalisation of TV
theory
Medium theory: TV as shaper/misshaper of our
knowledge of the world (McLuhan, Ong,
Boorstin)
Critical theory: broadcasting as archexample of the modern cultural industries
(Adorno/Horkheimer)
Theories of effect: the formation of modern
mass audiences (Lazarsfeld, Merton)
Institutionalisation of TV
theory, 1970s
1960s/70s: rise of film and mass
communication studies/educations
Birmingham cultural studies: Williams, Hall
US academic study of TV as an institution:
Newcomb, Gitlin
Today: semi-institutionalised
Some common themes, some internal
referencing, but a sprawling field
Theories of representation
Main proponents: British cultural studies,
critical theory
Basic issue: what gets represented on TV,
and to whose advantage?
Example: Williams on TV as the medium of
advanced captialism
Procedure: Structuralist/semiotic textual
analysis, homologies with society’s basic
structures
Theories of representation
II
Marxist conflict view of society,
hermeneutics of suspicion
Problematic issue I: Level of
theoretical explanation
Problematic issue II: Texts as
expressions of society vs. texts as
means of processing society (Ellis)
Medium theory
Proponents: American medium theorists
(Meyrowitz, Altheide); postmodern
theorists (Baudrillard, Kittler)
Basic issue: what are the essential,
innate properties of the medium?
Example: TV as a middle region medium
(Meyrowitz)
Procedure: medium analysis/illustration
to uncover how causes effects in society
Medium theory II
TVTeleision
as shaper
of sense experience: McLuhan
as cause,
TV as shaper of civilization: Ong, Meyrowitz
Problematic issue I: Level of theoretical
explanation
Problematic issue II: Technological
determinism
Theories of institution
Teleision as cause,
Main proponents: production studies,
“political economy”
Basic issue: How is TV shaped by its
institutional contexts?
Example: Increasing US competition
produces the “televisual” style (Caldwell)
Theories of institution II
TV as
embedded
Teleision
as cause,in production, organisation,
and policy contexts
Tendences toward national specificity vs.
transnationalisation
Problematic issue I: determination vs.
autonomy
Problematic issue II: Institutional factors
vs. wider societal factors (Scannell)