Transcript “Making room” for TV

“Making Room”
COM 250
February 23, 2016
QUIZ!!
1. Bourdieu notes that: "the evening news on French TV
brings together more people than all the French _______
together, morning and evening editions included"
a) theorists
b) boxcars
c) fries
d) newspapers
2. What is the phrase Tryon uses to describe the definitive
feature of contemporary TV viewing?
a) soul-sucking agony
b) platform mobility
c) post-reality
d) ChatSnap
3. Spigel discusses how in the early 1950s, magazine ads
showed the television set replacing either the piano or the
____________ in the “modern living room”.
a) husband
b) printing press
c) fireplace
d) gun rack
4. Amidst a growing concern over juvenile delinquency in
the 1950’s, “audience research showed that parents
believed television would keep their children _________.”
a) stupid
b) off the streets
c) drug-free
d) away from Marshal McLuhan
BONUS
What do both Tryon and Spigel analyze in understanding
the role of TV in domestic life (in the present day and
1950’s, respectively?)
a) music videos
b) advertisements
c) clouds
d) their feelings
MIDTERM:
1. printed notes, papers, etc are allowed
2. no laptops / tablets / smartphones
3. remember to bring your journal
4. you will hand in ALL your materials – journal, notes, printouts – at the end
Group 1: library 1st
Jackson & Wu; Pshock; Kolski & Leonard;
Hudsen & Goudy; Bunten & Ross; Hilburn
& Eddy; Grant & Trestman; Ortiz
Group 2: classroom 1st
Griffin & Ruggery; Dalton; Bradford &
Hauser-Hines; Jensen & Hall; Mintel &
Perini; LaFell & Eavenson; Hudnall & Jahr
WHAT IS TV?
“It can refer to a television set, a television program, or the medium of television transmission.”
Pierre Bourdieu, On Television
- written in 1996 (what else was happening technologically?)
- TV journalism is not beholden to truth, accuracy, depth, but to the
market
- fear of the lowest common denominator – the manipulation of ‘the
masses’ by media elites
- “rating system” is undemocratic; lowest common denominator
"anchors, our talk show hosts, and our sports announcers have turned into two-bit spiritual guides,
representatives of middle-class morality. They are always telling us what we “should think” about
what they call “social problems,” such as violence in the inner city or in the schools. The same is true
for art and literature, where the best-known of the so-called literary programs serve the
establishment and ever-more obsequiously promote social conformity and market values. “
“catering to the most primitive drives and emotions” (Bourdieu, 370)
Portrayal of ordinary people as
relatively powerless
“dupes”
“false consciousness”
“Consciousness industry”
“On the Audience Commodity and Its Work”
Dallas Smythe, 1981
$$
$$
$$
$$
In the relationship between television
producers, audiences, and advertisers…
…WE are the commodity.
“Making Room for TV”
Following Spigel and Tryon’s focus on the
domesticity of communications
technologies
• What role did television play in the broader
social / economic / environmental /
technological transformations of post-WW2
North America?
• In what ways are we still living with (and
through) these transformations?
Radio & phonograph
First mass-produced ‘mass media’
built for home consumption
TV = center of family life
“Nuclear family” = primary social unit
Gender roles
Housewife as “job”;
New domestic technologies
Returning from war;
Re-entering ‘normal’ society
“Bread winner”
Growth of suburbs; lowdensity living; “family unit”
Processed food
(TV dinner)
Highways & ‘car culture’
Economic & environmental
transformations
“The media discourses did not so much reflect social
reality; instead, they preceded it. The home magazines
helped to construct television as a household object, one
that belonged in the family space” (Spigel, p. 239)
New TV genres (sitcom) reflected
& legitimated these new social &
economic conditions
•
•
•
•
White
Suburban
Experiences of boys
Portrayals of ‘normal’ domestic
life (meals, spatial arrangements)
Tryon: “‘Make any room your TV room’: digital delivery and media mobility”
“rather than the collective filmgoing experiences associated with film theatres, or
even the domestic image of a family gathered around a shared television set,
platform mobility engages with a seemingly empowered individual viewer who has
access to a wide range of on-demand content at the click of a remote or mouse”