Paper I wrote in the fall and reread today and liked
MC 170.5
Paper #1, Topic #1
Due 10/20/05
To study television as a medium, or a method of communication – artistic, commercial, and otherwise – it is necessary to specify what the notion of television as a medium describes. Historically, when medium specificity is mentioned in correlation to television, it is usually as a reference to the differences between film and television. Much effort, such as that of John Ellis(1), has been spent to detail the technical and contextual differences between film and television, in order to legitimize television studies as a separate genre of media critique, apart from film studies. Yet as time passes and technology grows, this line drawn in the sand is becoming less and less well-defined. Today it is commonplace to watch a “film” in a living room on a standard rear-projection, 23” television, having rented it on DVD, or even receiving its broadcast over cable; it is also not uncommon to watch “television” projected onto a screen, in a sound-foiled and darkened home-theater, without commercial interruptions or even the immediacy of a live broadcast, having saved and reorganized the selected programming using a TiVo’s hard-drive. Even film itself within the so-called film industry is losing popularity as a legitimate and economic medium, with the advent of high-definition video. Televisions, riding this wave, are rapidly becoming able to produce an image and sound not only comparable, but in some cases better than the image projected in a cinema. Thus, despite all the critical work of keeping them separated, the mediums of film and television are now inextricably formally linked to one another in terms of both equipment and method of production, distribution and consumption. This, of course, affects the definition of television as a specific technological medium.
It is also important to note that the context of television is changing along with its technology. For instance, the realm of computers and television are also converging today. It is possible now to legally download television programs off the internet the day after they have been first broadcast, transfer them to an iPod, and then play them over and over again, in any place at any time. It is also important to note that the same cable that provides television flow now provides internet service as well. It is a small step to the total convergence of the media, as computers are becoming more central in the home, and televisions are becoming indistinguishable from monitors.
Yet the question of exactly what television is, and how it should be considered critically has never been quite clearly answered. This is due to the consumer-oriented, and therefore innovation-driven nature of television, as consumerism is driven by a never-ending desire for the new. Whereas the actual technology of printing, distributing, and displaying a “true” film (something which is less individual consumer-oriented, and more mass spectacle-oriented) has not changed much since the inceptions of sound and color, the technology of the television is in a constant flux, which in fact readily mirrors the idea of televisual flow. Flow is based on the consumerism of television and therefore it gives viewers choices of innovation “horizontally” and “vertically”(2) – over time and across channels, like the readout of TV Guide (which is now, in fact, its own channel). The flux of television technology is like a larger version of this flow, because it also has a “vertical” axis – the different styles of television technology, from satellite On-Demand on a plasma screen to airwave broadcast on a portable hand-held television with a black and white 4” screen – and a “horizontal” axis – the change of these technologies over the course of time. This flux of television technology even replicates the heterogeneous yet somehow homogenous sense of flow, in that each increment horizontally or vertically can indicate a large change in content or viewing style, but somehow the whole is linked under the total genre of television, and whether watching on the train or in the kitchen, in Times Square, or in orbit, the audience for some reason does not question the validity that what they are watching is actually “television,” just as if all these technologies were contained “within the set.”
Yet the flux of these technologies presents a massive problem for the television-media critic, which is the delineation of the “text” to be analyzed. Ellis states that “a televisual text [is] a segment of the televisual flow, whether it be an individual program, a commercial, a newscast, or an entire evening’s viewing.”(3) McLuhan, on the other hand, believes that “the medium is the message,”(4) whereby he means that the true “text” to be analyzed is that of the actual relation of the human to the equipment of the medium. The difference between these positions is the difference between the flow and the flux of television technology. Yet both of these viewpoints offer an extremely blurry, and ultimately hopeless form of specificity. The idea of segmenting either the flow or the flux of television into discretely analyzable “texts” is impossible, because the trajectory of television is convergence. Television as a category subsumes so much material that the differences between it all fade away, both for viewers – and for critical analysis. Just as Ellis’ “televisual texts” intrinsically reference each other and interrelate “horizontally” and “vertically” – whether overtly and/or unconsciously – McLuhan’s technological texts – what one might call the difference between a high-definition plasma screen on the wall and a fuzzy “boob tube” on the floor – are never discrete objects, as they also intrinsically reference each other “horizontally” and “vertically,” whether overtly or unconsciously. Furthermore, basing the outline of a text on the segmentation of the aspect of production (i.e. different “shows” have different casts and writers, and are therefore different “texts”), as opposed to basing it on the aspect of reception, disregards the fact that television is actually conceived of and produced as a whole, in flow and flux.
On the other hand, it is impossible to analyze television-media without some sort of textual reference to form and content. In this regard, actually, both Ellis and McLuhan share an insightful, if hidden argument – which is that the discretion of a text depends on the relation of the audience to the media. The same holds true for a cinematic film: the text begins and ends with the arrival and departure of the audience. In that sense, these two critics are right in assuming that the text is to be found more in the effect on the audience than in the script of the television show. However, television differs from the cinematic film, because the existence of the audience does not bookend the display of the production, and thus, the production is not conceived of in that sense. Television viewing is intermittent with display of production – in other words, they do not depend so strongly on one another. The question is: If a television is on, and no-one is around to watch, does it produce a text? The answer is not straightforward. As far as a televisual text might be graspable and understood as a discrete element, it depends on the specific relation of production, distribution/display, and reception, all of which are multifarious and nebulous factors.
Jane Feuer makes an important point when she writes, “The ontology of the television image [read: televisual text] thus consists in movement, process, ‘liveness’ and presence.”(5) Of course it is impossible to grasp a flowing stream; all one can really do is get wet. In much the same way, the present state of television is already the past. The constant state of televisual consumption – and, thus, a constant desire for the new –precludes a firm coherence of a text. Whereas cinematic film is static, solid, and archived, television is mobile, fluid, and insatiable. The point is that television is not self-contained, just as mathematical axes are never-ending. The idea of a text is a fixed document that will never be rewritten. Unfortunately for critical analysis, that is the job of television: to incessantly re-write the future (both “horizontally” and “vertically”) as the present moment.
1 Ellis, 1982, p. 127
2 Butler, 1994, p.4
3 Ellis, 1994, p.7
4 McLuhan, 1964, p.23
5 Feuer, 1983, p.13
Paper #1, Topic #1
Due 10/20/05
To study television as a medium, or a method of communication – artistic, commercial, and otherwise – it is necessary to specify what the notion of television as a medium describes. Historically, when medium specificity is mentioned in correlation to television, it is usually as a reference to the differences between film and television. Much effort, such as that of John Ellis(1), has been spent to detail the technical and contextual differences between film and television, in order to legitimize television studies as a separate genre of media critique, apart from film studies. Yet as time passes and technology grows, this line drawn in the sand is becoming less and less well-defined. Today it is commonplace to watch a “film” in a living room on a standard rear-projection, 23” television, having rented it on DVD, or even receiving its broadcast over cable; it is also not uncommon to watch “television” projected onto a screen, in a sound-foiled and darkened home-theater, without commercial interruptions or even the immediacy of a live broadcast, having saved and reorganized the selected programming using a TiVo’s hard-drive. Even film itself within the so-called film industry is losing popularity as a legitimate and economic medium, with the advent of high-definition video. Televisions, riding this wave, are rapidly becoming able to produce an image and sound not only comparable, but in some cases better than the image projected in a cinema. Thus, despite all the critical work of keeping them separated, the mediums of film and television are now inextricably formally linked to one another in terms of both equipment and method of production, distribution and consumption. This, of course, affects the definition of television as a specific technological medium.
It is also important to note that the context of television is changing along with its technology. For instance, the realm of computers and television are also converging today. It is possible now to legally download television programs off the internet the day after they have been first broadcast, transfer them to an iPod, and then play them over and over again, in any place at any time. It is also important to note that the same cable that provides television flow now provides internet service as well. It is a small step to the total convergence of the media, as computers are becoming more central in the home, and televisions are becoming indistinguishable from monitors.
Yet the question of exactly what television is, and how it should be considered critically has never been quite clearly answered. This is due to the consumer-oriented, and therefore innovation-driven nature of television, as consumerism is driven by a never-ending desire for the new. Whereas the actual technology of printing, distributing, and displaying a “true” film (something which is less individual consumer-oriented, and more mass spectacle-oriented) has not changed much since the inceptions of sound and color, the technology of the television is in a constant flux, which in fact readily mirrors the idea of televisual flow. Flow is based on the consumerism of television and therefore it gives viewers choices of innovation “horizontally” and “vertically”(2) – over time and across channels, like the readout of TV Guide (which is now, in fact, its own channel). The flux of television technology is like a larger version of this flow, because it also has a “vertical” axis – the different styles of television technology, from satellite On-Demand on a plasma screen to airwave broadcast on a portable hand-held television with a black and white 4” screen – and a “horizontal” axis – the change of these technologies over the course of time. This flux of television technology even replicates the heterogeneous yet somehow homogenous sense of flow, in that each increment horizontally or vertically can indicate a large change in content or viewing style, but somehow the whole is linked under the total genre of television, and whether watching on the train or in the kitchen, in Times Square, or in orbit, the audience for some reason does not question the validity that what they are watching is actually “television,” just as if all these technologies were contained “within the set.”
Yet the flux of these technologies presents a massive problem for the television-media critic, which is the delineation of the “text” to be analyzed. Ellis states that “a televisual text [is] a segment of the televisual flow, whether it be an individual program, a commercial, a newscast, or an entire evening’s viewing.”(3) McLuhan, on the other hand, believes that “the medium is the message,”(4) whereby he means that the true “text” to be analyzed is that of the actual relation of the human to the equipment of the medium. The difference between these positions is the difference between the flow and the flux of television technology. Yet both of these viewpoints offer an extremely blurry, and ultimately hopeless form of specificity. The idea of segmenting either the flow or the flux of television into discretely analyzable “texts” is impossible, because the trajectory of television is convergence. Television as a category subsumes so much material that the differences between it all fade away, both for viewers – and for critical analysis. Just as Ellis’ “televisual texts” intrinsically reference each other and interrelate “horizontally” and “vertically” – whether overtly and/or unconsciously – McLuhan’s technological texts – what one might call the difference between a high-definition plasma screen on the wall and a fuzzy “boob tube” on the floor – are never discrete objects, as they also intrinsically reference each other “horizontally” and “vertically,” whether overtly or unconsciously. Furthermore, basing the outline of a text on the segmentation of the aspect of production (i.e. different “shows” have different casts and writers, and are therefore different “texts”), as opposed to basing it on the aspect of reception, disregards the fact that television is actually conceived of and produced as a whole, in flow and flux.
On the other hand, it is impossible to analyze television-media without some sort of textual reference to form and content. In this regard, actually, both Ellis and McLuhan share an insightful, if hidden argument – which is that the discretion of a text depends on the relation of the audience to the media. The same holds true for a cinematic film: the text begins and ends with the arrival and departure of the audience. In that sense, these two critics are right in assuming that the text is to be found more in the effect on the audience than in the script of the television show. However, television differs from the cinematic film, because the existence of the audience does not bookend the display of the production, and thus, the production is not conceived of in that sense. Television viewing is intermittent with display of production – in other words, they do not depend so strongly on one another. The question is: If a television is on, and no-one is around to watch, does it produce a text? The answer is not straightforward. As far as a televisual text might be graspable and understood as a discrete element, it depends on the specific relation of production, distribution/display, and reception, all of which are multifarious and nebulous factors.
Jane Feuer makes an important point when she writes, “The ontology of the television image [read: televisual text] thus consists in movement, process, ‘liveness’ and presence.”(5) Of course it is impossible to grasp a flowing stream; all one can really do is get wet. In much the same way, the present state of television is already the past. The constant state of televisual consumption – and, thus, a constant desire for the new –precludes a firm coherence of a text. Whereas cinematic film is static, solid, and archived, television is mobile, fluid, and insatiable. The point is that television is not self-contained, just as mathematical axes are never-ending. The idea of a text is a fixed document that will never be rewritten. Unfortunately for critical analysis, that is the job of television: to incessantly re-write the future (both “horizontally” and “vertically”) as the present moment.
1 Ellis, 1982, p. 127
2 Butler, 1994, p.4
3 Ellis, 1994, p.7
4 McLuhan, 1964, p.23
5 Feuer, 1983, p.13
posted by Sturgeon General at 3:15 PM
7 Comments:
Hey man that was a interesting paper. What was the original question? I think the next conclusion after your final sentence is that because tv is not a static text, it isn't really something we can theorize much about. On the one hand, I think it's absurd to try to talk about something like 'tv.' It's like talking about 'reading.' We all do it for different reasons, and to generalize about shows and programs is as useless as generalizing about books: they serve such multifarious purposes, and people are so myriad in their reasons for picking what they watch and read, that no real generalizations can be reached.
The other thing I was thinking today, or rather just a thing I was thinking about, is that I'm sick and tired of people talking about how terrible tv is, how people used to read, and now they just watch a screen. I got my haircut by a gay guy yesterday (his gayness is irrelevant but he was a hairdresser so I wanted to reaffirm the stereotype) and he was telling me how great it is that he can TiVo every brady bunch episode on tv for his niece without hardly an ounce of effort. I bit my tongue while wanting to tell him that there are more dignified things to be excited about, but realized that's all I really had to say: that I personally think he should be doing something better with his time. But he has no aspirations of being a writer, of knowing the meaning of being, of understanding media: he just wants to do his job, love his family, have his fun, and if that means being excited about TiVo, and spending his time watching Queer Eye (I'm just assuming) then I have no business telling him not to.
The writers and idealists in every time have derided the entertainment of common people, and in this way, tv is nothing different from cheap serial novels, magazines, pigglywinks, and whatever people in pre-modern times did when they didn't feel like wanking it. I wanted to tell the hairdresser he could be doing something better, but really that just means 'more dignified' by my valuing of things. All of this as a way of saying that while we can theorize to a degree about what it means to have our daily lives televised constantly ("to have our future incessantly rewritten as the present moment") or about the increasing slovenliness of our couch and comp-chair ridden masses, this is just a matter of the clever and the snotty looking down on who they consider to be the irresponsible victims of consumer society. We ought to be more concerned with writing good poetry and satire (and by this I mean good, immortal literature of all sorts) than with endlessly criticizing others for how they spend their time.
Yeah. I guess kind of what I was trying to get at though was that television can't be theorized in the same way as literature, for instance (or painting, film, whatever), because when we look at literature, the texts are discrete objects, firmly implanted in history, and so we can not only talk about a book, or a poem, or an essay as an understood "something" apart from all other texts (which allows us to easily talk about denotation and connotation), but we can also, inherently in that argument, talk about the text as separate from ourselves, the readers. Television theory can't work the same way, because every time we theorize a text, we have to theorize what a televisual text is first, which pretty much makes any further arguments conditional and to a point irrelevant. I got more point to make, but I just got caught writing this at work, so I gotta run for now.
Yeah sorry my comment was irrelevant. But I'm not sure I agree with you. A TV series is no different from a serial novel. Take That 70s Show for instance. That show had a good 6 or 7 seasons to it. The characters did this and that, then it ended. A Dickens novel was no different. The same way we can now look back and see Dickens within a realist, Victorian tradition, people in a hundred years will be able to look at That 70s Show and talk about what it means that that show was popular at this time, what type of people watched it, and so on. I think if you look at a show in terms of its being a series, then it is not a very different sort of text.
No, no your comment definitely wasn't irrelevant, but I just wanted to explain the point I wanted to make originally a little more clearly. Its hard because TV theory is such an obscure subject - which is what I'm trying to explain, since its probably the biggest part of culture in the world now - but its an obscure subject in terms of theory because the theory is always predicated by the answer to the basic question, what is the specific "thing" that I can analyze? When you talk about a Dickens novel, you're talking about a novel that Dickens wrote, probably by himself, perhaps edited by someone else to some extent, but its still something that has a front and back cover so we know when it starts and ends - and also, now that its written, its always there for us to pick it up and read it again - but its always the same text, every time - that's what I meant when I brought up the question of a historical versus future-present (future-perfect? future-imperfect?) text. Television doesn't work at all the way a Dickens novel does, or for that matter any piece of literature (or any "normal" piece of literature, whatever that means, but thats a whole different subject). First of all, the obvious way to differentiate telvision texts is by "show" - such as "That 70's Show" - perfect example. But "That 70's Show" was produced as a collaborative effort - not only in the sense that there were a bunch of people that put a joint effort into making the damn thing appear on your magnavox every wednesday night, but also in the sense that the show really doesn't end after a half-hour - or even begin when the title sequence comes on your set. That's because its an integral part of television as a whole, and its conceived that way as a "show." It is part of a channel, and that channel is part of a myriad of channels, all working together to provide "television." Which is actually a conscious thing on the part of the studios, writers, actors, and even distributors. For instance, does That 70's Show end during the commercial breaks? When you're watching the bud light commercials in the middle of a show, and somebody comes in the room and asks "What's on tonight?" do you say, bud light commercials, or That 70's Show? Its a good question because either and both answers are correct, because the commercials are produced as a part of that show, and the show is produced as part of those commercials. The same goes for inter-show transitions. That is the point of the term "flow" in television studies, that shows in time and tv-space (channel flipping) really blend into one another seamlessly to create a televisual experience more than "I just watched That 70's Show", like you could say "I just read Great Expectations." Its a totally different situation from my point of view, even though its meant to make viewers think its the same, its a totally different way of thinking about a message laden text. A totally different way of producing a text, and a totally different way of receiving a text. And that what I meant when I said that it even infringes on ourselves, we become a part of the text, because to a certain extent, the viewer decides on what the text is. Of course, we're told that we're watching That 70's Show, but we're really watching That 70's Show, bud light commericals, trailers for x-men, a preview of the news at 11, and the iron chef on the food network all at the same time (or at least within the same time frame of a "viewing"). Compare that to the timeframe of reading a book, or watching a movie - you're really just reading or watching one thing from beginning to end (or at least when you decide to pick up and put down that book or enter and leave the movie theater). Of course, you have the choice of what channel you're watching and what time you get up off the couch when you're watching TV, but the people who produce TV EXPECT you to change the channel, and get up from the couch in the middle of a show and everything like that. In fact, that is integral to the production model and the subsequent production of flow. All of that is sometimes taken for granted in television studies, but also sometimes glossed over and in so doing tossed aside and forgotten when theorists too often revert back to old, pre-television-world methods of analysis. The only thing that comes close to TV really, is the internet, but as I argue in the paper, the internet and television are pretty closely related and are actually converging now, which is quite clear with things like TiVo and On-Demand cable, and downloadable shows on iTunes. But its all a natural part of the trajectory of flow - I call it "flux" in my paper to be cool. Flow or flux or whatever the hell you want to call it is always looking towards the future, in time and space. Scroll down through your tv guide channel and you'll see what I mean. Its always heres whats on NOW on THIS channel, and heres whats on in a few minutes on this other channel, you know? Reruns are not past either, they are a novelty in fact - its this gimmick of bringing the supposed "historical", which was really just the future-present of the past moment into the future-present of this moment, in order to lend it a queer nostalgic quality. Yeah, that's it, reruns are nostalgia in place of history. Television is predicated on liveness and immediacy (much in the way we predicate our lives on trying to find the liveness and immediacy of everything, when its really just a reaching towards the future by way of the near-past instead of living in the present). Hopefully this all makes sense. The immediacy demanded by television (demanded by its audience - which are in fact, its product, since tv stations stay in business by "selling" viewers to commercial sponsors) spurs the production not only of constantly new shows, but also constantly new technology to record, distribute and display those shows and that is what I am trying to call the flux of television, which is inherent in what a "show" is and therefore a "show" is not bookended 30 minute thing. Ok, yeah it is sort of like a serial novel. Maybe. Maybe that's what spawned television itself... I guess television is more like a fully formed version of that, or like serial literature gave way to people being able to accept television. It's still a step - there is a difference, because of the leaps in production, distribution, and reception methods. Tv is also "free" in basic forms, and more than one person can watch at once - and don't forget the introduction of multiple channels at the same time - that is a major difference, and possibly THE definitive difference between TV and other things like literature - its that introduction of the reproduction of space along with the reproduction of time. Its a very different model of media, very different in the end when you look at it beyond what we accept it to be. Its so naturalized - because it is not just a part of our culture - it really IS our culture, and by us I mean the world. That's a whole different story in terms of local television, and the mirror world of culture and on-screen reproduction and distribution. I don't want to go there. This is too long already, and I've been at work 15 hours today, and I gotta get up at 8 tomorrow. Alright, goodnight. Hopefully, we can continue this conversation though, because I'm remembering a lot of stuff I used to think about and it's exciting because its really the here and now of what we are. Or what we is.
Well I was going to go on and argue that tv series' are not really that different from serial novels, but you came to agree with that somewhat by the end. See, when Dickens novels came out, they came out in episodes, just like episodes on tv. And when you read them, you probably even read them in magazines with ads on pages. And now you can buy a season of a tv show on dvd, and watch them without commercials, watch them without any interruptions.
But in terms of watching shows on tv, with commercials, with this and that - well firstly, nobody says 'This budlight ad is on.' Now, I personally don't understand what the point of theorizing about tv is in the first place; I don't understand 'media studies' as a thing in itself. I understand studying books, and studying tv shows, and seeing what they say about trends in interests or historical context, but you have to explain to me why we need to study the mediation itself. I don't understand why it's important that at one point we read without interruptions, but now get up or slacken our attention while our entertainment is interrupted by advertising. But as I see it, in mundane experience, nobody pays much attention to ads. Or, because advertising companies are catching the drift that the way to keep us on the couch is to continue to entertain us, these ads are now becoming part of the entertainment. No one says they're watching ads though. We put up with it. What more is there to say?
As for the temporal aspects of your argument, I don't understand again. Obviously we're now obsessed with perpetual stimulation; instead of waiting for the new episode, some of us even go get the bootlegs in advance. In every case of our lives, we're trying to find the next thing. Some of us realize this, realize the trend, and recoil from it; others enjoy it. So what's the problem, or the matter of interest? What does all of this mean in a grander scheme? Is there something nefarious happening in society? Something irrevokable?
Who's to say reruns have a purely nostalgic value? Now I love watching Ren and Stimpy on the old cartoon channel. Partly because it's entertaining, partly because it makes me remember childhood happily. But you know, as far as I can tell, it's probably mostly kids watching that cartoon channel, and often watching those episodes for the first time. Books have been reprinted for ages, generation after generation read them. Individuals even reread the same book, and perhaps they sometimes do it to remember what it felt like to read it the first time. I just think that most of what you're talking about in tv has its correlate in other types of entertainment. Maybe you can explain some of your temporal things more. I really don't think reruns are "just the future-present of the past moment into the future-present of this moment." In fact, if there's any argument against tv, it's that we don't give a fuck what's on. All time is nihilated when watching tv: you forget what you were doing, what you're going to do, and what you're doing right then. Fuck, if the show's interesting enough, brain-flattening enough, you may just shit your pants and not find out til you're dripping on the family room floor. Enough for now-
well, okay. i mean i agree with what you're saying but i still think im not explaining it from the right angle. I think that maybe the point of studying television or media in general is hinted at by what marshall mcluhan, who i mentioned in the paper, meant when he wrote vaguely and confusingly, "the media is the message." What he meant by that is that each new form of media - actually, each new form of device (that mediates things) is like an extension of the human body, and therefore the important thing to look at is not exactly what is ON television, but how we watch television. Because to him it was a fundamental change in humanity itself. You can almost think of it like becoming a cyborg? That's not to say that reading a book can't be looked at in the same way, and then it sounds ridiculous to say readers are half man half book, but in a way, it is an interesting and I think semi-valid argument. The other side of the coin is, which I think you're arguing more, that media hasn't really changed, its just taken new shapes - in the end, it's just what the messages are themselves that have changed. or maybe not even that. but I do think it is important to track changes in the human race because it's constantly happening and we're all taken under by it, most of us without giving it a second thought except wow I remember when I had dial-up or whatever. I mean you can't say that a culture like the eskimos who never had media like television didn't change when television was introduced. not that its any more important to think about that stuff than anything else, but I find it interesting and I don't think its just bullshit. But its true, they changed both because of what they were watching on tv, and because they were now watching tv instead of doing what they normally did. I mean McLuhan thought very technically in terms of television means people spend time on a couch staring at a 60hz projection of varying amounts of red green and blue. Totally ignored any form of information beyond that, totally ignored the content, because he argued that content was totally untheorizable because its so fluid. I guess, I can't remember what his reasoning was exactly and his theory is kind of crazy, but he partially has a good point.
Ok the fancy language about time may have sounded like bullshit too, but I really meant something by it, I was not just trying to spit back stuff I've learned, or sound like I'm spitting back stuff. I really think that media, especially digital media is driven by this longing for the future, which totally distracts from the present. Its always about the next bit of information, the next development. Usually, its just rehashing the same stuff, but in new ways so it looks new, because people crave new when it comes to entertainment. But people also fear change, so its like this excited state of expectation. But there are also new things happening too and maybe thats why people are yearning towards the future so badly because they want the future to be the past so they dont have to worry about changes. Maybe the problem is that I'm not quite clear about where I'm grounding the viewer. I mean when you read a book - I'm just figuring this out myself here, not theorizing, you know - you're involved in the present tense of that book - it takes you out of the present of yourself, which is mostly just a mixture of reaching towards the past and future or whatever, ill reread the heidigger stuff.
anyway im not trying to say all of this because its going to win anybody any points, because i have no idea what the goal of life is and every time i think i grasp it like an annoying mosquito i open my hand and its empty. maine similes.
Ok, im rereading your post. youre totally right about magazines and serial novels, i definitely wasnt thinking about magazines. But still, television is like a constant magazine, something thats constantly being written in the present. Its whole thing is about mimicking liveness and presence. yeah serial novels go there to a point, but not in the same way tv does. But television is NEVER live (theres ALWAYS a delay inherent in the technology) and also never present for obvious reasons - if youre looking at a screen youre not looking at what the screen is reproducing. but its always talking about how its live. who the fuck should care whether or not a broadcast is live? because theres something actually BAD about watching something on tv the day after its original live broadcast, its like you missed something - when its exactly the same thing the next day, but it loses its magic of liveness. and i know that its a cultural thing and people all want to be on the same page, but i also think there is something more there too, more about the play between the human and the technology and the wishing for this liveness that can never actually exist. The supposed liveness is always in fact the past and so the audience is always obsessed with the future because maybe then theyll catch the PRESENT moment through this mediation. But its impossible.
so about the nostalgia thing, I still think its not the same picking up an old book and watching a rerun. reruns are anomalies, because so much of tv is about the here and now. old books are just more books, its like this huge historical record. and when a new book gets written, its not new, its just immediately old and part of that record. That's why most of fiction is written in the past tense, because people understand that its already happened. Tv is written in the present tense, because people want to believe that its happening at that instant - its a step closer in achieving the impossible goal of reaching the present moment without actually doing it. But reading is like reading death, or at least thats what people see in it now that tv is so fresh and instant and, most importantly, constant. Thats where its the same as the internet and different than books and even magazines. its not about shows or sites so much as its about this constant flow of information over that cable streaming at us, always new, always updated. we always want more and we hate when things lag and we lose our connection because we feel like its not alive. even though we have all this information and we could go back and read it, its not as exciting as getting new information even if its worse than the old stuff and practically devoid of content in comparison. actually, obviously the news works similarly, it creates this mirrorworld where we feel like reporters are always out there doing their job at all hours of the day bringing us the news, even though most of the news doesnt affect the reader at all in their everyday lives. sometimes it gives a little backstory to something theyve experienced, but thats about it. people read the news more because its NEW than because its old and explanatory. That's why TV news is so huge, its the perfect medium for news, and also internet stuff like blogs and even newspaper websites. the newspaper itself is dying out because of the popularity of online and tv news actually. even newspapers are becoming a historical oddity in this draw to the future. Thats what I was talking about when i said flux, because its like this never ending stream towards the future driven by and driving changes in technology. i tend to see a gap between "new media" and "old media" and not just in terms of content and commercialism. i think theres something thats changed in them and i think it has to do with the effect they have on people's psyches and how they place themselves temporally and spatially in relation to them, and that all has to do with the cyborg thing. but you're right, things have paved the way for this new stuff, so its not a total leap.
i keep thinking about the early soviet filmmakers, like dziga vertov. he was a filmmaker and theorist (all i mean by theory is discussion - he was a writer - poet and essayist about film). anyway, he wrote about how the camera has created the new man - which of course is a big theme in communism, so the two went hand in hand. He said that the lens lets people see things they had never seen before. its true too. He actually said in his poetry that it was creating this machine man - "Kino Eye." Like a cyborg, yeah. I saw this show (on tv!) about a guy who wanted to be a real cyborg. you know what this is a perfect example of what im talkign about, because i didnt see the show itself, i actually just saw a preview for it and imagined i had seen it. but i did see the part of it before the preview for the second part, which was really cool. it was about this kid who had been paralyzed i believe from a stroke, he was 23 i think. I think this may have even been at Brown, but they didn't say, because i remember reading about something very close to this happening at Brown. Anyway, he had had a sensor installed in his brain and the hope was that eventually he would be able to speak again through a machine by learning how to control its voice using just his brain. its kind of like typing on a computer or using a remote control, you just skip the whole physical (at least physically external) aspect of it. that is a big step. he had actually learned how to make music with his thoughts. they had him hooked up to software that would produce orchestral sounds according to his brainwaves and so he was conducting with his mind. its the training for the next step, which is speech. The music he made was actually quite beautiful and ethereal.
so - to draw out something from this huge "comment" which is really just me exploring what i think about somehting i find interesting for some reason - thank you, again, for pushing me to do so and feel free to keep going and ill keep going with you and hopefully youre not getting too pissed off because you know im wrong - anyway, so draw out something from this: I think the change is in the change in the perception of time. Things are much quicker nowadays and the draw is instantaneous. That's obvious on the internet when everybody wants a faster and faster connection. and its very similar to what television tells people it offers, live broadcasts. People don't want to take the time to read a book anymore, or even watch a film, even though they might be more message-laden and meanginful. I mean of course thats not true (about people not reading or watching movies), but you know what i mean. thats why its important to "theorize" or just trying to look at tv from this perspective, because maybe in this way the medium is the message in the sense that tv is so devoid of meaning - at least heartfelt meaning - that maybe its more of an unconscious kind of meaning. and since the whole world watches tv now, its important to know what kind of messages it is telling us. i dont think its just vapid. its affecting people, not just because theyre sitting on the couch - its affecting their perception of time and space. Being a couch potato and tv zombie is a symptom of that, not the disease. I think the "disease", which is a perfect word for it, dis-ease, is really this simultaneous yearning and self-deception (and inherent regret) for the immediate transmission of the world through this media. i mean fuck i could write about this for years and never make much sense and never get it quite right. but im satisfied for tonight. i worked 13 hours again today, getting up at 9 tomorrow, then work again saturday, then staff boat trip sunday. great. night
Well I suppose it's mostly a matter of supply and demand. People want entertainment. Moreover, they want it closer and closer and as immediate and accessible as they can get it. Heidegger has this thing about how we are always trying to bring things closer, things that are severed (cut off) from us, in this process of what he calls 'de-severance.' I think about that idea a lot. We want everything as close as possible. That's what makes an all-in-one cell phone/mp3 player/hand-held video game console/scheduler/wireless internet machine so attractive. And the so-called information age: i don't think it's so much that we want to know everything or pass information around as quickly as possible as have it all available to us, all there for our perusal at any chosen moment. and also, i haven't strictly disagreed with anything you've said or thought you were wrong - i just wanted to know why it was important.
and i agree with what you said in the last paragraph (which means i agreed with the rest). but i would be careful about imagining that the majority of people ever wanted something message-laden or meaningful. i think the dangerous thing, though, is that whereas people didn't have a mind-numbing source of pointless entertainment before, and were thereby forced at times to read literature to pass the time, they can now quite easily waste themselves away without ever thinking about 'meaning.' i suppose meaning, in that sense, connotes actually doing something in the world, actually having experiences, learning through these experiences, rather than being inundated with information and knowledge which doesn't really mean anything to them. i used 'mean' in the definition of meaning purposefully there. we only find out what means anything to us when we undergo real life experiences and learn about ourselves through them. that's something that tv substitutes for us. if it screws up our sense of time, it's by making us think that we have done something when we haven't done anything at all. "what did you do today?" "i watched the world cup, then i watched a documentary on sharks, then i watched cartoons, ate lunch, watched jurassic park, and later, i'll watch the red sox game. look at all those things I did, I did a lot today huh?"
i don't know. there are definitely messages in tv. but i'm being distracted at the moment by the tv itself. law and order special victims unit. what a shit show. but i can't tell my family not to watch it. it's easier just to walk away. you can't tell people they can't waste their time. you just sound pretentious. and i'd rather people be ignorantly satisfied than angry at my condescension. one thing i think about theory is that it ought to be careful not to alienate people. theory is 90% cleverness. if you can coin good phrases and words (like deseverance) for what everyone instinctively thinks about on their own, then you can be a good theorist. but theory is certainly never out of the world of media. it's just another reading material; when a film is informed by theory, it's still a film. and if people watch it, or read it, they ought not to be alienated by it. you can't tell them they're vapid, they're diseased. so my question to you, just to push you further, is to ask: how do you tell people that what they do with their time is somehow wrong? and if it is wrong, is it in their interest that they know this? i'll talktya later.
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