MiT3: television in transition

Plenary Conversation 4:

Summary Perspectives

Nick Couldry, London School of Economics
Christine Geraghty, University of Glasgow
Mary Beth Haralovich, University of Arizona
Anna McCarthy, New York University

An audiorecording of Summary Perspectives is now available.

NICK COULDRY said he believes the conference discourse could be understood to show that postmodern theorization of media has been superceded by more interesting and dynamic interpretive perspectives.

Couldry first addressed the notion of mediation. He recalled Toby Miller's view of U.S. television as "a bank, a couch, and a landfill." This analogy is appropriate, because television as we normally think of it - in the closed form of a text, production process, or audience - is something that inevitably spills out beyond those boundaries. Media is a broad social process of both making and destroying meaning.

While there was plenty of discussion at the conference of genre and textual complexity, Couldry wanted to focus on the social aspects of the medium. It has been revealed that text is not a bounded object of interpretation. The text can be a space of governance; in her paper, Laurie Ouellette describes the way Judge Judy attempts to replace the civil legal process. The text is also a quasi-scientific experiment, as described by Anna McCarthy in her paper on social science and the roots of reality TV. Finally, it has also become a military enclosure, like Ghen Maynard's no-fly zone over the Survivor location, which tries to keep out an over-interpretive audience. Besides the expansion of the text, the audience is also spinning out beyond normal boundaries by their intervention into the text.

Media is also a social process in the way people have power over textual interpretation. James Carey called reality a "scarce resource." There are corporate and government interests in regulating the text and its interpretation.

Couldry next spoke about "interpretative violence." One type of interpretative violence is symbolic: the idea that in certain social arrangements, it is possible for one interpretation to be imposed so effectively that it could be seen as reality. One example of this is the coverage of the war in Iraq.

Another type of interpretative violence is the kind that was done at this conference. A sociological framework was imposed on the subjects covered here. But how can a general sociologic frame of reference capture Henry Jenkins's point about the new literary possibilities of reality TV, such as its new use of the soliloquy? A sociological approach can lose touch with literary complexities.

Ultimately, both sociological and literary perspectives are needed. These two modes must be in more effective dialogue, which includes international perspectives. An ongoing dialogue between the sociological and the literary provides the tools to grapple with symbolic violence. As the panel on news during wartime showed - one person's media text is literally another man's nation.

CHRISTINE GERAGHTY made three points about her experience as an international delegate at the conference.

First, Geraghty agrees with James Carey that there is no such thing as "global television." Similarly, there is no such thing as global television studies. The model of U.S. television is not universal. Practices that may be normal here in the U.S. are abnormal to outsiders, such as the extreme commercialization that Toby Miller referred to as "the bank." There seem to be so many advertisements on U.S. television that it is impossible to see any programming.

The next point was about the organization of the plenary conversations. The panels tended to feature people from the industry side of television. Delegates need to think about the consequences of that. Masculinity was over-represented on those panels, especially the one concerning news during wartime. Delegates found themselves to be extremely polite to regulators and journalists, which can hinder a genuine dialogue. The responsibility to generate a dialogue is placed on conference delegates rather than the contributors, and a greater effort must be made. However, one should realize that the discussion of creativity can be difficult with creators and producers who do not want to define creativity.

Last, Geraghty spoke about diversity. The different opinions of talk radio in the first plenary was a good example of a discussion on diversity. Delegates must also ask themselves how far the international aspects of the conference speak to the strands that are American-dominated. It is important to be more open to cultural diversity at the conference itself.

The recent belief has been that the U.S. model of television is what the rest of the world will adopt. However, with U.S. military power so firmly asserted, the response may be a cultural resistance to American things, and the U.S. model may not become the standard.

MARY BETH HARALOVICH spoke about the local and global aspects of television. She recalled that during the first plenary discussion, she found herself yearning for the days when the principle of government protection of the people from corporations existed. She wondered where localism is found today, when conglomerates are swallowing up smaller stations. Localism seems to be replaced by the dynamic relationship between the user of the media and the media itself. This is reflected in fan communities. People choose their own forms of mediation.

The screen culture today demands agency from us. The characters of reality TV are ordinary surrogates for us. We understand the contrivance of such programming, but are able to relate to the real. Meanings are fluid, and voices are activated. The activist behavior of television viewers can translate to political activism. The utopian notion that we could translate our actions from the screens to society was certainly present in many of the conference papers.

In thinking about whether U.S. television is global television, it is important to realize how people from the outside must be multilingual in order to understand American television, whereas the U.S. can remain monolingual. This is a complicated notion of the duality of media experience.

ANNA MCCARTHY spoke about the relationship between television studies and journalism, as professions and areas of academic study.

Journalism and TV studies as university departments produce both practitioners and critics. Yet the intellectual work on television in U.S. universities tends to replicate the programming divisions in networks: entertainment and news. If these two divisions in the industry are becoming increasingly porous, perhaps the academic divisions should do the same.

There are many barriers that prevent more humanist approaches to television. The coverage of the war in Iraq also shows how universities cannot afford to eschew the analysis of news. A model already exists with communications studies, which is a hybridized departmental identity where this mixture already exists. Since TV studies are expanding into literature, film, education, and art departments, McCarthy would like to hear how the division between news and entertainment is being played out.

One example that demonstrates the importance of this point is the way FOX news and MSNBC covered the rumors of the discovery of chemical weapons in Iraq. When the rumors broke out, regular programming was interrupted with breaking news on the air. However, when the information was proven to be false, the retractions were briefly posted on the networks' websites. This is a disturbing instance of convergence in journalism; it is allowing newsmakers to sidestep editorial standards and guidelines.

If cultural studies are to remain a progressive intellectual movement, news coverage must be taught, especially given the current conditions of media ownership and distribution.

Discussion

QUESTION: As a conference delegate from Lebanon, I was hoping for more discussion on the issue of news as entertainment. Where I am from, the news was based on a "need to know" approach. We are happy to have gotten rid of that philosophy, and at my university we preach that news should have entertainment value. I would like to hear a theoretical framework for that idea. Given that news is entertainment, how does one operate within that framework, while still informing the public and deepening their understanding of issues? Perhaps in the future, we can have a panel on that methodological concern.

MCCARTHY: There has been a longstanding attempt to grapple with the entertainment/information dialectic. Maybe we shouldn't discount the notion of entertainment, and try to exploit it. This is what many alternative media producers are working on, but those alternative sources are being affected by issues of distribution and ownership.

QUESTION: I was struck by the hermeticism of the television industry: how people inside the industry speak of the world in terms of the value of the medium without any dialogue with the outside world. Can you comment on what that does to the portrayal of the world on television?

COULDRY: The hermeticism of television was reflected in the discourse on reality TV. Since discourse is something we cannot do in a hermetic way, we have to cut into those interpretations and challenge media discourse about itself, which can be difficult.

COMMENT: Part of the difficulty in breaking the hermetic frames comes from institutional limits, such as ones that divide mass communications and television studies.

COMMENT: In my studies of Star Trek, I have found that the writers are not hermetically sealed, and that people who write fiction can incorporate the concerns we have in the real world. With regards to the entertainment/information divide, I noticed that the child audience hasn't been discussed enough at this conference. The best children's programming makes no distinction between information and entertainment.

COMMENT: For me, the real problem stems from treating news of the war as entertainment, because it trivializes war. The problem deepens when reality itself mimics entertainment. For example, it seems like the Bush administration choreographed the war before it started by creating a characterization of "good guys" and "bad guys."

As for the hermetic nature of television, I actually think that the industry talks too much to other people, such as with focus groups. The problem is not a lack of understanding, but a lack of desire or ability to apply their critical awareness, which stems from commercial imperatives.

WILLIAM URICCHIO: Institutional divides can be profound, but we shouldn't worry about the walls that divide us. Rather, I suggest that a tactical move to bridge the gaps between the sociologic and the literary is to collaborate on transdisciplinary projects.

COMMENT: I agree that news as entertainment is not necessarily a bad thing. An example of news being presented in an entertaining way is The Daily Show. I think the real issue is when news becomes purely marketing, and gives information to sell a product, or becomes the product itself.

COMMENT: We need to think of regulation as more than just policy, but as a kind of cultural regulation. For example, Nielsen research is a process of regulating the audience. Reality TV debates are about how we hybridize ourselves. Since we are at a moment where things aren't regulated for us, we must engage in it ourselves.

--compiled by Lilly Kam
--photos by Nicole Burkart and Lilly Kam

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