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As a result of numerous technological advances, nearly all aspects of the mass media seem to have been forever modified in light of the growing trend toward the interactive. Accordingly, a natural tendency would be to attempt an interpretation of this very vexed term as it relates to various media spheres. But as Foucault notes, any attempt at interpretation will not yield up some secret meaning hidden beneath the concept in question. (109-110.) And a more productive initial inquiry might be to sketch some of the effects interactivity has had on the discursive practices of a particular field--its rules, its institutions--in this case, the field of Television Studies.
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Many important scholars like David Morley and Lynn Spigel have discussed a TV spectatorship in which the household or the family is central to their model (in contrast to film theorists who typically begin with the individual). In effect, Morley, and many others, contextualize TV viewing inside a “politics of the living room.” (19) This approach--with its ongoing gender struggles, generational conflicts, and class antagonisms determining reading positions and protocols--already prepared TV theorists for considering interactive technologies like pay-per-view, Web-TV, and TiVo, which all tout more consumer CHOICE!, more FREEDOM!, as simply another aspect of the continuing power-knowledge mechanisms that link producers with their targets and vice-versa. Just as power functioned in the home to determine the types of televisual pleasure available as a result of, or as a reaction against, socialized constraints, so do interactive pleasures further delineate class boundaries by highlighting the (purchasing) power of those within a certain economic class in the case of a costly item such as TiVo.
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From this perspective, we might want to ask: if a technology is only affordable to a certain class, as with TiVo, does that devalue its cultural impact? Or we might want to go further and consider Web-TV, where the set can link up with the Internet, and expand and contract the TV text in ways previously unimaginable (not to mention halt the flow of images and send messages via a medium that was previously only a receiver). Certainly the vast majority of consumers in America, at least, are quite happy keeping their computer and TV separate and will not sign up for such a service. Yet in both cases, the mere existence of the phenomena is enough to make television scholars rethink fundamental theoretical principles of “liveness,” immediacy and “present-ness” as wholly sufficient for understanding TV’s guiding aesthetic principles.
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In the original incarnation of her theory of “liveness,” Jane Feuer asserted TV trumpets an “ideology of the live”--its unique ability to capture and transmit the live event--in order to calculatedly overcome fragmentary programming policies and place the spectator in a very passive viewing position. While many recent (and not so recent) developments in Cultural Studies may be at odds with portions of this position, certainly the interactive capabilities inherent in the pay-per-view option which arrives built into all cable systems, where a viewer can now dial up a variety of movies he or she wishes to see at any hour of the day, greatly increases the consumer’s “agency.” We are now, in a limited sense, editing our own personal TV text rather than relying on Hollywood’s editors to call all the shots for us. Of course, in another sense, we have always been an active participant in the creation of what Raymond Williams famously designated as television’s “flow” in our ability to simply change the channel. Yet with a device like TiVo that acts as a continuous VCR, giving us the opportunity to “pause” the flow and resume it at will (as the commercials stress), or even rearrange the televised schedule, the implication is that each of us can become a programming executive in our own home (or there is the potential that one of our family members can, remembering the earlier studies of Morley and Spigel).
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We now reach the point in the reality-TV age where television trumpets the increasingly culturally anachronistic ideology of the live ever more loudly even while providing consumers with the technology to tune them out or, better yet, put them on pause with the push of a button. To make the situation seemingly even more complex and contradictory, certain shows such as the Big Brother series (in all its many incarnations) and MTV’s “TRL” are about, not simply immediacy and “present-ness,” but also the concept of viewer participation that interactive technologies facilitate. This enables us to understand that interactivity is more about offering viewers the fantasy of sitting next to the programming executive rather than transferring any real control related to what goes into production, or what is allowed onto our TV screens, etc. In America, we may be able to transform specific aspects of certain shows, shift what time those shows come on, or even juggle the schedule of a slate of shows, but the decision-making process regarding the production of the shows themselves is still in the hands of a select group of largely white, male executives who remain disappointingly hesitant to let their programs reflect the diversity of attitudes, faces, ideologies, and artistry of the society which they are often thought to reflect.
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This perpetual tension between the knowledge-power function seemingly afforded to the consumer by television products incorporating interactive technologies, and the manner in which these products often end up an outlet for consumers’ fantasies regarding this binarism was conjured up recently on a popular Film and TV Studies listserve in an intriguing discussion about the DVD release of the independent film Memento. The DVD release in general, with its many interactive features, has become a moment of intense interest for the film buff and the scholar alike. Inserted into the home-theater system--VCR, TV, DVD player--it can often be a useful tool for research, textual analysis, etc.
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But in the case of Memento, the chance to see the stubbornly non-chronological film re-ordered chronologically, or to be able to manipulate entire sequences on the DVD and re-order the film oneself was of particular interest to the listserve members. What exactly was to be gained through this interactive ability was not clear. Regardless, in the American release, the DVD lacked any of these assorted options. Nonetheless, a discussion of the film’s narrative on the listserve revealed that the DVD, thanks to its ability to analyze individual frames, provided additional clarity as to the protagonist’s true identity “hidden” within his own doppelganger whom he constructs for himself via flashback. A rumor that the Canadian release of the DVD provided the much desired chronological-playback option was also confirmed, further evidence that in these days of increasing interactivity, the much more significant power continues to reside with the producers of the products, who are free to discriminate on the basis of nationality, class, etc. Another posting mentioned that loading the film into a computer and recutting it by...hand(?) could produce a VHS copy. Still another voice offered that a chronologically ordered version would completely “work against the themes” of the film, making it ultimately pointless “even as a curiosity.” The lesson, or a lesson, to be gleaned from this plenitude of voices is that despite (or as a result of) the largely fantastical embodiment that shapes many interactive products offered to the consumer, we mostly see on our televisions what we are interested in seeing. And we interpret what we are interested in interpreting. Foucault be damned.
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8 | | Works Cited
Feuer, Jane. “The Concept of Live Television: Ontology as Ideology,” Regarding Television: Critical Approaches--An Anthology. E. Ann Kaplan, ed. Los Angeles: American Film Institute, 1983.
Foucault, Michel. Archeology of Knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972.
Morley, David. Family Television: Cultural Power and Domestic Leisure. London: Comedia Publishing Group, 1986.
Spigel, Lynn. Make Room For TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992.
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9 | | Citation reference for this article
MLA style:
Greg Oguss. "Television: Theory, Practice and the Interactive" M/C Reviews 25 Oct. 01. [your date of access] <http://www.media-culture.org.au/reviews/features/interactive/goguss.html>.
Chicago style:
Greg Oguss, "Television: Theory, Practice and the Interactive," M/C Reviews 25 Oct. 01, <http://www.media-culture.org.au/reviews/features/interactive/goguss.html> ([your date of access]).
APA style:
Greg Oguss. (2000) Television: Theory, Practice and the Interactive. M/C Reviews 25 Oct. 01. <http://www.media-culture.org.au/reviews/features/interactive/goguss.html> ([your date of access]). | |
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