- Researching the visual: TV
- Analysing television
- A multifaceted medium needs
- A multifaceted approach
- The Circuit of Culture Model
- Commercial industry :
- An enormously profitable industry, grossing over $100 billion annually through advertising, cable fees, DVD sales, and other sources of revenue.
- Democratic institution :
- Part of democracy, informing American citizens and serving their public interests through news and electoral coverage, and governed by public policy decisions and regulations
- Textual form and technology
- Site of cultural representations- Presents an often-distorted representation of reality
- This is a simplified idea of representation
- Aspect of everyday life
- Jackson’s wardrobe malfunctions.
- The FCC regulate TV within America. They fined CBS for broadcasting this wardrobe malfunctions.
- The super bowl, was broadcast live so CBS so they couldn’t stop it.
- Now live broad cast are now broadcast on a 10 second delay in order to prevent any incidents.
- Site of cultural representation, a mirror of our world. Offering an often-distorted vision of national identity, as well as shaping our perceptions of various groups of people.
- We use TV to build relationship. Talking around the water cooler.
- This model helps you to think beyond the common-sense answers.
- TV is now regarded to be a more culturally sophisticated medium.
- A not of History
- The classic Network Era 1940’S-1980’s
- The norms of TV where established and still in place today. Audience watched shows together. Only three networks.
- The multi-channel era 1980”S- 1990’s
- Cable networks started, cable TV is the most profitable TV industry.
- The VSR gave people more power. They didn’t have to be home to see a programme.
- They shift from appealing to mass audiences to appealing to specific audience.
- The Convergence Era 2000- Today
- Digital technologies, amazon prime, Netflix
- Public TV is stronger in the UK than in the US.
- Representation and reality
- Present or depict,- this emphasises the process of construction
- Stand-in or mirror of reality –Stereotypes
- Positive/ negative images
- –insufficiently complex
- If we were to look at TV as something that has meaning to us.
- Reality and representation are mutually constitutive. Do things have one fixed meaning? No. The shear fact that TV and film is edited through a stream of people and their ideas, we cant actually capture a real representation.
- “Reality is slippery. Not fixed or known at all”
- Reality doe not exist until it is represent in form.
- TV is a medium.
- TV is often selective representation.
- We need to Understand how meaning is produced through representation
- All the conventions and demands TV adheres to remove it even further from reality: Camera placement, editing, genre. FCC regulations, advertising
- TV is a medium: it can always only re-present reality, but never capture.
- Analysing Representation: Diversity
- Does having a diverse cast doesn’t mean that they have their representation of diversity has meaning.
- Meaningful Diversity: Yes or NO? Mary Beltran
- 1) Are the characters of colour fully realized individuals?
- 2) Do the writers and producers appear to knowledgeable about and interested in the worlds and perspectives of the non-white characters
- 3) Does the diversity of the cast appear natural?
- 4) Finally, do the series or film produces exploit the natural diversity of a story’s setting or subject matter?
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