A Cultural Look at TV

from communication center the university of texas at austin this is university for raw data before him as a public interdisciplinary meeting place for the wide ranging world of ideas opinion and analysis in this week's programme a former television critic speaks on the role of television in our culture and the french ambassador to the united nations speaks all that body's role in the international community first dr horst newcomb associate professor of american studies at the university of maryland and a former television critic for the baltimore sun talks about the role of tv in our culture and speaks on televisions future i have to begin today but talking about some of the problematic aspect of television not necessarily because i want to but because we seem to have been asking the same questions for about thirty years now we have been trying to define problems from the same perspective for about thirty years and

until recently i think we offered we standardize the answers to those things that are answers were as redundant and i think in many ways as simplistic as our questions i tend to forget about these things because i'm trying to find new ways to talk about television and i overlook certain aspects but i'm always reminded of them in different modes of interaction with my friends and people i meet older questions come up how do you regulate the viewing of your children and i tell people that i don't regulate viewing of my children that i watch television with them talk with them about it and have been right about it and that i make one restriction and that is that they do not watch hogan's heroes result of that decision i think is thoroughly irrational my response is purely emotional and i would suspect that that's what a lot of television regulation

one so being on the part of parents the crucial moment for deciding what to do about television came last night when someone suggested a question a very pointed question what would we do if we had the opportunity to abolish it one person standing with me said i would vote to abolish it i thought for a moment and i said to myself are said to the group i think that most americans would vote with you and they would vote for the wrong reasons i think if we took a vote on whether or not to abolish television today those who wish to abolish television would win and they would win out of an enormous guilt complex we all watch television we spend hours with it and our responses of the same only watch pbs i really don't watch that much but did you see the last episode of all in the family but how does that compare with the earlier episode and what about

comparing that with mary tyler moore and suddenly we find this tremendous oral culture about television everybody can talk about it a common culture very shared kind of saying among all these people who don't watch television very much you see my word is generally positive toward television from one perspective i suppose that's the result of a kind of rhetorical stance given the massive negativism that one faces when talking about television in order to get any clearer view of the object of study that one has to in some way overcome some of that negative is i say that in order to go on to say that i do not discount possible negative effects of television as a parent i do worry about the hours spent by my children as a citizen i worry about the control of the airwaves by certain interest groups as an american i worry about the depiction of my culture in this manner and yet i think that we have to be able at least to articulate a perspective on television that puts it

into our range of artistic experience an invention and response that is not remove it so far from other more conventional art forms more conventional only because we're more familiar with them because we are educated and believing that those of the art form's we should pay attention to there's another reason i suspect that my own positive attitude seems a bit strong enough because i like tv i make it a point to admit that audiences when i talk publicly because i think it's and it's rather important that once again we counter some of the guilt syndrome but really the central humanistic question of television is not how to get rid of it but how to understand it better perhaps in order to live more richly with it because i do not think that americans will abolish television even if given the opportunity they will not allow the opportunity to rise there are too many complex factors there the major problem in television studies is that all about easy assumptions are stories in our jokes all of the cocktail

party fascination with what you do with your children and how my children deal with a far more substantive they have policy implications and when things began to pop up in front of congressional hearings and we had the same kind of valence unveiled assumptions the same kind of naive response to the media and we are in a more difficult and more trying situation i would argue of course that all of the arts and our responses to them alternately become tied up in policy decisions is that there are very few arts which are removed from the horrors of economic necessity but with television those things become even more focused because the questions of regulation and control are always at the forefront i think that we are making many of our decisions on the basis of these rather generalized easy cultural assumptions about the negative effects of television i think that these policy decisions are often short sighted we think

immediately what would we do if we could abolish it rather than thinking about how to use that for instance one of my side projects which i think will eventually come in which is very important it is the possibility of taking up far more traditional american cultural response to a problematic issue why have we not talk television and the public schools k through twelve why do we not begin with kindergarten through in able young children to see some of the things that are being done there with the visual image why do we not talk more seriously about manipulation of images in commercials i've done that with my own children's classes and i know that we can teach children very quickly to make all sorts of critical distinction i'm not talking about poll curriculum i'm talking about a unit here in a unit there six weeks two weeks three weeks which will eventually lead to children making their own television shows to be able to gain their control over the technical aspects of the media which would give them a far greater sense of freedom and dealing with it

i would like now to go to some specific examples of how people have responded to television and show how these might work in practice some of the difficulties i think i want to begin with a very linked the blurb for a new book about television i'm going to be reading some of these responses to the beach or to get their party the book is called rated x the moral case against tv it's written by mary louis coakley the book is i think perhaps just out on reading from a publisher's blurb that came out last summer today's tv fair is bad and getting worse that bluntly is what mary louis coakley is telling concerned parents in this tough minded critique of television entertainment shielded by public apathy showbiz mom tools are saturating american homes with ross sex blood and gore slanted news and subtle attacks on religion and morality family and country together are all the fox news's coakley forced herself to sit through literally hundreds of problems movies sitcoms

quiz shows soap operas newscast the works even the commercials she poured over the trade journals of the entertainment industry she interviewed producers directors and scriptwriters the result a devastating documented expo say a current tv programming and the people who produce it a number of recent books of zeroed in on that were political bias this is the first to demonstrate that the broadcasters are also spearheading a social and moral revolution against the wishes of the majority of americans ten years ago ten years ago when americans have tolerated abortion homosexuality wife swapping and prostitution on tv knows as mrs coakley charging that the electronic media have come dangerously close to drowning out our sense of decency but she adds we don't have to surrender to this assault on our values we can fight back for citizens who want to help clean up the tube mary coakley has a host of practical suggestions decent americans

are eager for tv programming that the whole family can enjoy this book shows them how to make sure the media get the message how easy it is for the lab how naive she seemed somehow remote her concerns are from those of us who would come together to talk about television in a far larger cultural context we take additional delight and learning from her publisher that she writes extensively for magazines like kathleen digest modern maturity and suburban life and that her books include ms lister music maker a bestselling biography of lawrence welk i suspect however the two biggest reason for our conversation to ms is coakley i think that's what it is when we laugh about it is that we dislike the terms of your car indictment we are uncomfortable with her particular subject matter categories after all most of us aren't trade rather than outraged at the notion of roll sax we'd hesitate to condemn tv presentations of homosexuality or

prostitution or abortion because that sort of condemnation hangs us in the liberal snare the avoidance of that snare depends on our assumption that all such items are personally define and that the censorship of private morality is worse than any influence such presentations might have on decent americans but we're not so quick with that this missiles and serious when it comes to other patterns transmitted by television patterns that we define as ideological rather than moral consider then a set of responses to television that focuses on these other more complex issues as the chief result of television programming this first comment quickly disposes of the sort of concern expressed by mrs coakley and moves on to more sophisticated level i'm quoting now whether the suspect and controversy on media or newspapers novels in theaters in the nineteenth century or movies radio comic books and television is in the twentieth concerned tends to focus on the possibilities of disruption that threatened the established norms of beliefs behavior and

morality in our view however that concern has become anachronistic what's the industrial order has legitimized its rule the primary function of its cultural arm becomes the reiteration of that legitimacy and the maintenance of established power and authority the rules of the games and the morality of its goals can best be demonstrated by dramatic stories of their symbolic violations the intended lessons are generally effective and the social order is only rarely and peripherally threaten the system is the message and as our politicians like to say the system works our question is in fact whether it may not work too well in cultivating uniform assumptions exploitable fears acquiescence to power and resistance to meaningful change a similar view can be found in the following comment that is not so much an analysis of specific content as it is a judgment regarding the structure of the media quoting again tv was

projected as an improved window a medium for understanding the world and dialogue and with others it has not used its way present because its present structure pollsters them it that tv is sentiment may private business suits well the purposes of those who control the structure and is accepted without resistance by accusers because that liberates them from responsibilities that allows them to leave a wider consumption of messages and of the goods those messages propagate the result of such a user tv is a tendency toward a totalitarian society in which a man becomes a lonely through manipulated by those who hold powers of decision this approach common and that ignores content leads to some of the same general conclusions as the previous commentary another similar example begins with similar common assumptions and attributes very specific consequences for the type of distortions insides it is framed by concern for history of television and of the

culture in which television appearance quoting again five hours a day sixty hours a week for millions television was merging with the environment psychic lee it was the environment where did all this mean it was admired trusted beyond other sources except it as the world without a sense of what might be missing because the world was defined by the tube itself among all problems this television itself was a problem the television had most persistently of ad it was a problem that in the post nixon world confronted it with special insistence intertwined as it was with many other problems much of the world based on inflation crisis television in a quarter century of blowing air into the credit bubble had been one of the handmaidens of inflation the world they spend energy crisis television the unparalleled merchandiser had been a leading contributor to the crisis the world faced a crisis of turmoil and violence television salesman of telephones had

persistently promoted the mythology of it he wrote elaine world where problems have law and order solutions the mythology had accompanied the worldwide trust of american business and military power sometimes with catastrophic results such plots of you clearly depend on the assumption that tv is a medium open to and perhaps encouraging all exploited of control and that those now in control or doing the wrong things enormous powers attributed to the system and television is seen as having autonomy in its own sufficient to swallow those who would use it for the right purposes one person's with different points of you have achieved some degree of control then most notably in europe in the late sixties and early seventies they too have been unsuccessful in their reforms quoting again the politics of liberation are not banned but they appear framed adjusted and deluded beyond recognition the authors of the statements of course are not marry lewis coakley and the first comment george gertner larry groce lay the groundwork for their massive study the television violence and in doing so suggests that replication of

individual acts a violent are or less a crucial problem then the creation of a climate of fear in america despite the fact that those studies are used most widely what policymakers professors gertner gross rarely take the trouble to demonstrate that they are not talking about replicated acts of arts and the second quotation bill blizzard arrives and somewhat platonic faction definition television and argues that because this definition has not been applied tv has become the tool of those who would use it for the exploitation of the audience and a third commentary barno concludes his history of television by predicting two at the umbrella like force that pervades our top exporters are political statements and online you have it and a final quotations on smugglers and says berger laments the absorption of radical television makers by the dominant system but goes on quickly to suggest there will be worse problems than television to cope with in the coming of the end of the twentieth century

that we accept the views of these authors and reject those are mrs coakley is not i suggest depended on the greater complexity or sophistication their arguments it is far more dependent on our identification with their ideology as inappropriate was an adequate political and intellectual position from which to score commercial television as repressive and efficient ms coakley is viewed as narrow minded naive and parochial but the charges finally must be the radiology rather than her view of how television works she liked the other critics sees it as a pervasive and powerful force in our culture shaping and molding people in a manner that she does not approve and cannot accept she focuses on content just as many of the other critics to leveling her main criticisms that people producers writers sponsors who do not share the values of decent americans if she does not read that content in the same manner as our other critics it is clear that she operates from the same assumptions about how the content rises and is

transmitted she would change the content of television by having the audience respond more fully and more critically to what if these and by having it apply pressure to the networks and sponsors while some of the more academic critics might consider this final strategy is the most telling point in this disco queens ny today and many of them would suggest a television cannot be changed without massive changes in the political economic system that is america their own positions are really very similar the change in political and economic system would merely result in another body of content this one presumably more in keeping with what the critics would like to see the only true alternative that is to destroy the entire television system so that people are somehow prevented from experiencing it how do we respond to all this i would suggest that the difficulty is that all of these points of view are based on a particular theory of communication often referred to as the hypodermic neil theory of communication in which certain

ideas are injected into a kind of national consciousness my own work in tv the most popular art was an attempt to approach television from an aesthetic point of view largely by using formula theory developed by john wealthy in dealing with popular fiction to see what kind of aesthetic structures might emerge from television to try to define what the patterns were the kind of work that led me to say for example that soap operas that taken on their own terms our major contribution to american artist experience for i stand by that i think so far bears are highly innovative works beyond that i think we have a number of other possibilities richard adler again following raymond williams discusses the concept of flow the way in which the pattern that we must walk is a much larger block that the problem for the television critic it's what to isolate from the low that is television and how to define that david thorburn have suggested a number of very strong

possibility for examining television on the study pointed to reconsider this passage for example in which he talks about the multiplicity principle a principal applauding or organization whereby a particular drama will draw not once or twice but many times upon the immense store of stories and situations created by the genres briefly crowd of history by minimizing the need for long establishing our expires a tory sequences the multiplicity principal allows the story to leave aside the question of how these emotional entanglements or ride that and to concentrate its energies on their credible and powerful presence in act one of the common criticisms leveled against television is that there's very little dramatic development for one is suggesting that there may indeed be an aesthetic report which explains that which allows us to see television is a new thing not to be judged by dramatic criticism or by cinematic criticism i think there's a great hope in that ultimately that leads capitalist agreed with the suggestion that grasses of all

motivations might be the necessary enabling restriction on a great art form i would like for us simply to entertain the possibility that capitalist greedy in america can lead to the creation of a new and powerful art form that we call television despite all this i think that we learned a great deal from the static examinations of television i think we have to build on it and go much farther out his television work as part of a much larger cultural pattern i would assert that tv is now the central symbol system in america and that it might be necessary for us to begin to consider it in relation to folklore the ritual and the mayor that we have to begin to see it as perhaps the folklore of a post technological society these are new areas for me i'm just beginning to examine the possibilities here the problems raised are clearly the problems of interpretation that com or any art form somehow we have to understand what these things mean sociologist at very carefully

now the world of television entertainment and it pointed out quite clearly what the distortions in that world are we know that there are far more white male upper middle class professionals than is the case with that society at large the question arises now is whether that distortion that symbolic distortion means what those critics who map the distortion save me and i'm not at all sure that they're on the right track me the problems of interpretation here are problems quite related literary theory they're also related anthropology and sociology once again i would turn to month monmouth instance burger one of the most critical of our european critics who argues out all of sociological and to some extent there are other skewed marks his position but listen to this comment electronic media do not hold their irresistible power to any sleight of hand but the elemental power of the social needs which come through it even in the present the prey form of the media his admonition

is that the socialist movement ought not to the mouthpiece made with bacon seriously investigate them and make them politically productive that point if you could without or with the ideological perspective be an admonition to the student of television and american culture how do we define the deep social needs which expressing elemental powers where they come from in our consciousness how they come out in the culture i rely heavily on anthropologist marshals allen's who define the role of people such as television producers in the culture the symbolic structure of the culture he says as the true are mature of the cultural order and the anthropologist in arranging them in a weight faithful to experience does more no more than discover that order in doing so and this is the second implication he acts in something of the same way as a market researcher an advertising agent or a fashion designer unflattering is that comparison might be for the top third of the sample do not create a no vote and the nervous system of the american economy there is the

synaptic function it is their role to be sensitive to the late correspondences in the cultural order this conjunction and a product symbol name spelled mercantile's success i would argue that the television producer belongs in there with a fashion designer the market researcher in the advertising agent as a huckster of the symbol my task here is to attempt to some degree they humanized the questions that are being asked about bell mission in part that means working closely with social scientists it also means to learn from the social scientists to take what i can from the perspective that they brought to bear on television i think that there is a crucial interdisciplinary focus and television studies i do not think that it is possible to study it from any single perspective and come up with very good answers i think that it's shortsighted to think of the popular arts as something remote from everything else i am far more uneasy with a continuum which sees a popular arts as perhaps one poll were perhaps part of a larger

system after all those of us who watch television the nazis to read other things we do not cease to experience another waits i would go beyond that fondly and say that the role on the humanist with regard to all of the art is very important with regard to the social sciences it has only been since i have been dealing with television as a cultural force that i have been able to read much literary theory again that's true not simply because i find new answers to all questions there but because literary theory itself has been infused with a concern for the role of the arts in the culture and that is my primary concern i think that if we examine television this way we may indeed come to some of the same condemning points of view we may come out saying that television is a bad thing i think we may need to have some historical perspective on the far more than we do now but we might also

began to say that television is one of our rich experience is one way for people to experience fictional worlds one way for them to get in to other places where they need to be in order to rejuvenate themselves to renew themselves in other ways dr haass newcomb associate professor of american studies at the university of maryland and a former television critic for the baltimore sun speaking on public viewing habits and the role of television in american culture