Television to most people is, like the title of this blog, an invisible necessity. We watch television to fill an hour of our day, to keep up with our favorite program and characters, to relax and drift to sleep, and to socialize with friends and family. Butler, in his article titled, “Television’s Ebb and Flow in the Post network Era,” states that, “television remains the principle medium through which most people obtain visual entertainment and information.” In this sense, television has become a major impact on society today and is shaping our culture drastically. We use media and television almost every day and it’s a critics job is to make sense of the ways this form of media relates to our culture as who we are as a society as well as individuals by the shows we watch and how and why information is obtained and reflected in society.
#1. What are your goals for doing TV criticism?
A critic’s goal should not be to please everyone; its impossible. A critics goal, stated by Gronbeck should be, “to stimulate a dialogue about important matters,” and also, “to be relevant to the lives of the readers, listeners, and viewers.” A critic should want to relate to his/her audience in a sense that the reader understands not only what is being portrayed as good or bad, but also how the text is related to our culture today and the consequences emerging out of the text itself as it reflects events and phenomenon’s occurring within society. Culture shapes who we are as a society as well as on an individual level. It’s the critic’s job to connect the dots for the general viewer.
Similar to Gronbeck’s views of the goals of criticism, O’Donnell adds that, “as a critic, you become a ‘transformer’ capable of generating new understanding and new awareness in the minds of other television viewers.” Television today has many motives, goals, and standards of its own and a television critic’s goal should include channeling these goals for the viewer and creating meanings or value blind to the viewers prior to reading the critique. Polysemy, explained by Butler as simply having multiple meanings is a concept that allows a critic to create new meanings seen through a foreign lens and give viewers another perspective of the meanings transpiring from the program. The common opinion that all television is bad can also be argued by a critic if he/she is able to inform viewers of new understandings and how to relate them to their own lives using polysemy and creating a number of meaningful interpretations and readings of a text.
#2. What is your view of, or relationship to, television as an object of study?
Recently, since I no longer spend a majority of my time addicted to television, I have started to see television from a different aspect than before. I find myself thinking about not only what is happening on the screen in front of me, but about the production, directing, and acting perspective that took place prior to the airing of the television show. Things like product placement, and different advertisement opportunities in the media shape how I currently view a television show dramatically. I have learned that a show is never just simply part of a series or a flip of a switch but something much more than that. O’Donnell, in his article titled, “the work of a critic,” talks about how being critical of the production side of a program can, “enable us to see and hear more details, to anticipate certain moments, to ponder certain questions, and to recognize special qualities.”
I took a film class during high school and became very interested in the production side of television and its extreme reflection on culture and society. O’Donnell talks about the reflection television programming has on society as she gives a great example of how the Columbine shooting spurred a number of other television shows to portray the reality of school shootings happening around the U.S. These programs, “had stories about school shootings, reflecting the real-life horror of school violence and students being gunned down by their classmates,” including shows such as Third Watch, and Law and Order. A serious cultural epidemic of school shootings was occurring at this time and television was able to portray that as well as call attention to this problem by bringing these issues straight into the household of the American population.
This idea of a mass media reflecting social problems and creeping into the homes of millions of Americans has the power to direct the population to what issues we view as important and what is not. The aspects which make television differ from past forms of mass media include, “electronic, visual, and mass/domestic character” (Corner 4). These properties, defined by Corner in the article, “Introduction: Research and Criticism,” addresses the issues of politics within television and criticism. De-democratization of our society is occurring as television highlights for us what we should regard as important and useful information.
#3. How do you intend to relate to your readers/other viewers?
Relating to the audience can be one of the most difficult aspects of creating what “good criticism” is viewed as. If the critic receives no praise or following for her critiques, the work thus becomes useless. Gronbeck makes an exceptional point describing that, “texts are in one sense the ways that different peoples ‘read a work’- especially how they examine parts of the works because of their particular interests. Texts are constructed out of verbal, visual, written, oral, pictorial, and other sorts of codes.” This quote makes the argument that not everyone will agree or disagree with the texts any given critic writes; however acknowledging certain cultural codes and behavioral norms can be the first step to relating to an audience and capturing their trust.
The fact that different discourses, defined by Butler as, “a language or system of representation that has developed socially in order to make and circulate a coherent set of meanings about an important topic area,” forces viewers to draw on their own backgrounds and things such as, “schooling, religion, upbringing, class, and gender,” to make choices and meanings dealing with the things they watch on television. This creates a struggle to relate to a variety and mass amount of people for the critic. I plan to use my background as a Catholic female with a middle class background and strong family morals to relate to a group of viewers similar to myself. The meanings and understandings produced by my criticism will be most useful to people viewing the shows with a similar lens.
The invisible necessity of television as an important construct of not only our society but a culture as a whole is what makes me as a critic important. The reflections between TV and culture highlight the important things in our lives that shape the way we live day to day. The discovery of these connections is fascinating as a critic and it is my job to connect a number of meanings and fill in the dots between how we view television as a model of society so that new understandings can be discovered by not only myself but by the general public to spur new and forthcoming meanings and interpretations.
Brunsdon, C. (1993). Identity in feminist television criticism. Media, Culture and Society, 15: 309-320.
Butler, J. (2002). Television: Critical Methods and Applications (2nd ed). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Corner, J. (1999). Critical Ideas in Television Studies. New York: Oxford University Press.
O’Donnell, V. (2007). Television Criticism. New York: Sage.
Sillars, M. O. and Gronbeck, B. E. (2001). Communication Criticism: Rhetoric, Social Codes, Cultural Studies. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
