WEEK ONE: INTRODUCTION TO TELEVISION STUDIES
- Television is a medium that’s in constant transformation, a lot of conversations in our
world revolve around it.
- The alleged “death of tv” is false, because people are still selling and buying tv sets.
- The new oversaturation of media makes the tv watching experience radically
different from what it was 20 years ago: the MASH finale was watched by 128
million, whereas The Big Bang Theory only 18,5 million people tuned in. This is a sign
of the medium’s maturation and vitality
- Television wasn’t legitimized as something worthy of studying until the 90s, when it
developed its own canon and intellectual touchstones. The reason it took so long was
because it was dismissed as a mass media form, and it was related to domesticity.
- Also in order to study television we would need to stop and rewatch, which was not
possible until reruns and vcr.
- Television studies are sustained by the analysis of programmes, audiences, context
and industries.
TELEVISION STUDIES
- Programmes:
→Critical analysis: The general disdain towards television, delayed the critic's arrival
to the 1970s, and instead the only analysis done was textual. Once it arrived it was
difficult to develop it because of the ephemeral nature of television in its beginning.
→Formal analysis: Centered on the aesthetic and narrative. This used to be
exclusive to literature and film. In television the audience creates the text, that
creates the meaning.
→Semiotic/semiological analysis: Semiotics study how meaning is created. Changes
in language create changes in reality. News programmes try to create a sense of
trustworthiness by seeming transparent, neutral, object, etc. Suits and sobriety give
us a sense of authority
- These signifiers can be used and twisted to create new meaning. These
examples use the associations we have in order and change their meaning.
The environments are similar but they are used to bring comedy not
trustworthiness. Ex: SNL’s weekend update, Drew’s news
→Aesthetics and ideology: Dominant ideology (culture and power) Not just high
culture, but in every cultural product. Why should we only analyze Shakespeare
when culture is so much broader than that? The “value” is (inter)subjective:
consensus and the canon.
-Ex: The handmaid’s tale appeals to our collective idea of what nuns look like
in western culture which translates this idea of submissive and docile god
given women.
