Core Response on Jane Feuer (Tianhui)

Two things interest me in Jane Feuer’s article. First, the article is largely based on the presumption that something’s ontology could be taken as its ideology (as Feuer writes in her title, “ontology as ideology”). In her case analysis of Good Morning, America, Feuer states that “the mode of address is to a great extent its ideological problematic”, rather than an ideology that it “carries” (19), as the “liveness” of television gives a sense of instantaneous, unmediated message that hides the actual fragmentation of space. This mode of analysis could trace back to Roland Barthes’s critique of photography in his “Rhetoric of the Image”. However, while Barthes largely talks about photographic image’s capability to represent something artificial as natural in the article, he does not assign a specific ideology to photography as Feuer does when she states that television propagates “an ideology of ‘liveness’ overcoming fragmentation”. To Barthes, the medium is not the message, but rather an operating system that is especially susceptible, but not destined, to ideological manipulation. This distinguishes Barthes from McLuhan’s technological determinism and gives space for Feuer’s self-question (towards the conclusion of her article) and Raymond Williams’s appeal for spectators’ judgements and expressions.

The second thing that interests me is Feuer’s notion of television’s ideology as one of “liveness” that overcomes the “extreme fragmentation of space” in modern society. Today, with the transformation of television form, such as that of “video on demand”, it seems that, instead of creating an endless “flow” of programs on TV that hides the segregation of modern society, we are celebrating the growing independence of individual agency—everyone has the authority to choose what and when to watch. In Feuer’s time, people are still dealing with the emergence of modern communication form—what Williams calls “mobile privatization” (19)—that negotiates between mobility and home-centered way of living. Television’s “liveness” or unsegmented appearance echoes people’s nostalgia for a sense of unity and became important to theorists at that time. Today, we celebrate our individual power, but everyone is playing the game under the same unanimous rule. This epitomizes the paradox of modern society where individual components are driven towards autonomy while the whole world becomes a totality. When segmentation is already deeply rooted in both the structure and appearance of contemporary society, it is easier to see that what the ideology of television overcomes is, perhaps, less the appearance of disintegration on the surface of society than the underlying totality that is ubiquitous in the capitalist world.

(415 words :) )