On Rewatching

One of the more fulfilling experiences I've had with a TV series in the past few years came from a rewatch of Arrested Development's unfairly maligned fourth season. As someone who loved the first two seasons of the show but felt a certain weariness for most of the third, I had initially approached the fourth with some trepidation. From my dim recollection, I remember liking it the first time, with the notable caveat that I found the show drastically increasing in quality as it went along. This time around, I loved it from the beginning, and indeed much of the greatness of the fourth season comes from its inherent rewatchability. The structure only becomes funnier when the viewer is already aware of it, the constant recursiveness of each main character experiencing their mishaps mirroring the essential sense of farcical doom that the series could capture at its best. I haven't seen the chronological, conventional recut, but I'd doubt that any configuration could be as funny as the gradual revelation of every single main character in Lucille's apartment through the course of the series.

The Tonight Show War

I spent a few hours a week back or so experiencing the 2010 Tonight Show conflict between Conan O'Brien and Jay Leno, and it was in many ways revealing about the ways in which TV history can be told, especially considering I had little to no awareness of what was happening at the time. The first method was via an edited compilation of TV shows that explicitly dealt with the conflict, combining various sources, while the second was the extensive Wikipedia article, itself sourced mostly from Bill Carter's The War for Late Night. As might be expected, the latter was more in depth, carrying all the behind-the-scenes meetings that the former necessarily couldn't capture. And yet, there was still a good deal of merit to the former: not only were there moments that the latter didn't include for one reason or another, but there was also an engaging aspect to simply watching it unfold visually. Moreover, despite the video's jumbled chronology, there was a sense of watching the events as they happened — aside from a few clips used throughout, all were broadcast live, and thus gave the opportunity to experience these events as they were at the time. If television is inherently transient, we have the ability nowadays through YouTube, Internet Archive, and other formats to experience that transience in a retrospective fashion.

Virtual TV Studies Event

Hey Everyone,

I hope you are all hanging in there!  I am in the TV Studies scholarly Interest Group at SCMS, and they are currently holding virtual events since SCMS was cancelled.  On Thursday, May 7th at 2pm CST/12pm PST, Eric Hoyt will be talking to Elana Levine about her new book Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera and US Television History.  I can forward the email with the details to anyone interested. Relatedly, Duke University Press, who published Levine's book, is having a 50% off sale until May 1st!!!!

I know the next couple of weeks are busy for people, but I figured I'd share!

Zoom Meeting ID: 985-7149-2863
Password: television

The curiously material remediation of TV by the Internet

Has anyone else noticed that YouTube videos re-presenting or re-purposing TV content is interestingly material? Take Binging with Babish, for example, a cooking channel dedicated to making iconic dishes from film and TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzd0mLf366I. It is as if the Internet fulfills the desire for yummy 2D food to materialize into reality, even though it is itself a digital simulation. It also adds to the iconicity of the dish, sometimes in ways that the show itself had not anticipated. While the Krabby Patty is likely an intentional symbol for Spongebob, it's harder to argue that Carmella's ziti from the Sopranos had the same function in mind. And yet, when these shows go through the meat-grinder that is the Internet, they come out the other end with material symbols extrapolated. There are other channels that make miniatures of iconic TV sets, for example. I don't really have a conclusion or answer to this, just thought it was interesting and ironic that the Internet is material-driven in its remediation of TV.

My Definition of Television

I've been giving some thought to Tara's question at the end of class. After a semester of surveying the history of television criticism, how do I define television? The scope of "Television" makes this question nearly impossible to answer. We've seen how technological definitions of television are susceptible to deterministic assumptions. We've discussed how "flow," once so apt to describe the televisual experience of broadcast and cable, falls short of explaining modern phenomena like platforms and binge watching. We've tried to categorize Television based on form, content, and audience, all of which fail maintain their distinctions in the face of full-season releases and hybridity. It seems that "Television" has come to describe such a broad spectrum of contemporary media experiences that it loses most of its utility as an analytical term. I do, however, have a definition to push forward:

"Television" describes any electronic apparatus capable of receiving signals and decoding them in such a way as to present the intended audio-visual programming on a screen, or the programmed content itself.

Post-TV Presentation

Readings this week deal with results of increasing convergence between internet and TV, and there seems to be this assumption both in some of those and the industry marketing practices they narrate that convergence leads to more interactivity. This interactivity, in turn, opens up space for audience agency and tastes to assert itself. Even though there is a lot of truth to that, this focus on internet and new forms of interactivity actually prompted me to think about the opportunities for interactivity classical TV provided the audiences with. New TV has more technological means for sure, but it seems to me that its content is highly monitored compared to the older TV’s moments of interactivity. Here I will provide a brief glance into two crucial moments of classical TV interactivity from Turkey within the last decade, and explore how we can understand TV interactivity less in terms of technological improvement and internet and more in relation to the power dynamics within the public sphere they take place in.
Esra Erol’da (which can be translated as With Esra Erol, the name of the host) is a marriage show that had aired under a few different TV channels in the same format for a decade until it was cancelled a few years ago. It is a live broadcast show that airs five days a week, recorded in front of a studio audience. Every episode features a group of ten to fifteen contestants, and these contestants change gradually as they get married and leave the show instead of being structured around the seasons. One significant difference of the show is that the participants literally can be anyone, they are not young and pretty as one normally expects them to be in a show like this. The contestants are both male and female, come in all kinds of looks and body sizes, and even more interestingly, from all ages. Contestants in their 60s are quite prevalent and accepted as a normal part of the show.
Another key aspect of this show that makes it truly interactive is the fact that the progression of the story is entirely dependent on the phone calls they receive on live TV. The show starts with the contestants, audience and the host in the studio, waiting for the phone calls from potential suitors (can be either men or women) who call to express their interest in marrying a certain contestant. Both the contestant and the host ask a bunch of questions to the suitor, and if the contestant is interested in the end, the suitor is invited to come to the studio to meet the contestant next day, which also happens as a part of the show. Basically, everything that happens in the show is brought by people, and the host is simply there to moderate the conversations.
One can’t deny the fact that this show, and the other shows in similar formats, not only do provide a widely acknowledged public space for meaningful participation, but also rely on that participation to exist in the first place. In that sense, the viewers’ agency is essential. However, this public space is embedded in a political context which is significantly defined by public opinion, but heavily sanctions it at the same time. Polls are the most crucial piece of information when the government is making decisions in Turkey right now, and it is a well-known fact that Erdoğan conducts his business based on polls. With the constitutional change, the necessity to get the 50 percent plus one of the electoral body narrows down politics (at least for Erdoğan) into a struggle over the margins, which creates a situation where the participation in the public space is encouraged, but at one’s own risk.
There are times people take the risk for the sake of meaningful participation and exerting agency. One example that immediately sparked a nationwide conversation took place in this marriage show. A Turkish woman from Amsterdam (the show was aired live in several European countries that have significant population of Turkish immigrants) called the show, stated that she is a lesbian, and expressed her interest in marrying a female contestant. Considering this was a conservative show that claims to encourage marriages within the traditional values of Turkish society, the host was caught in shock, and chose to scold and insult the woman on the phone, and disconnected the call. The shaming continued afterwards, this time with the participation of the studio audience and contestants as well. This woman most probably already knew what she was doing, decided to take advantage of the interactivity of this show to make a point (which she managed to do, this incident was discussed widely in the media afterwards) but also risked being publicly humiliated in front of millions of viewers in various countries, and potentially gaining enemies.
Sometimes the risk of participation is higher than the viewer would assume. In 2015, five years after the incident described above and in a much more politically tense Turkey, another viewer called another show on live TV. A teacher from an Eastern city, where the civil war between the Turkish government and the Kurdish minorities has been going on for decades, wanted to use this very popular show as a platform where she could tell something to Turkish society: “Are you aware of what is going on in the East? The media tells it very differently. Please don’t remain silent. Be more sensitive about it. Don’t let people die, don’t let children die”. This was the entirety of what she said, and the host responded in solidarity, saying that they would do their best to make it known. However, immediately afterwards, a formal investigation was started for both of them, even though she did not openly state any solidarity with any ethnicity or sides in the conflict. The host was cleared when he apologized for his words, claiming that he thought “she was referring to our martyrs” whereas the teacher is sentenced to prison after two years of investigation, due to making terrorist propaganda.
So why does the government allow this level of interactivity (they have no problems with heavily censoring everything else on TV) and why do people continue to call? What happened to Esra Erol’s show can provide some clues. It wasn’t cancelled because the network decided to do so. As a part of the state of emergency the country had been living in for two years after the coup d’état attempt in 2016, executive orders have been issued one after another, and the marriage shows were cancelled with an executive order of their own.
However, to a lot of people’s surprise, this particular show was announced to come back this fall, hosted by the same person, but “with a new format”, which the network did not elaborate on until the day it was aired. It turned out to be equally interactive and based on audience participation, but with a difference: now the “contestants” with the saddest life stories are chosen to attend and tell their stories in front of the audience, promising to make everyone cry. The show develops by building upon the potential other characters in the stories that can be found and traced, or organizing some sort of response to a tense situation they are asking help for. Basically, the government decided that marriage isn’t a suitable conversation to be held on public anymore, because it creates “negative influences” What is interesting is that the public affect once created by this show was immediately replaced by another, “more appropriate” one. The strategy of producing preapproved emotion through interactivity as the widespread participation of the public on TV remained as a consistent formula, encouraged by the government, as a supervised public space.

the lures of volition: fifth core post

I apologize for the delay in posting; Blackboard was being resistant.

Here we are! At the climax: post-tv. I'm glad that one of today's presentations will be about Tik Tok, because I can't help but think about Tik Tok and its creators in relation to the texts we read today. The 'top creators' of TT collect several million followers within a couple months. Many seem to be about sixteen, eighteen at the oldest. There is an unfortunate and much commented on prevalence of white faces among the most popular names--but as our presenter points out, there are important exceptions.

How does the explosion of TT revise the articles we read for today? Or does it represent an unrelated stream of post-television video content? Raphael's presentation takes an excellent first stab at this question, by drawing on the Parks & Christian pieces. One of the major points of comparison does seem to be the extant feature of the "archive" versus an experience of "liveness". When thinking about the turn to Netflix, Hulu etc as TV providers, the observation of a move to archive seems very accurate. Tik Tok does seem to recuperate "live" experience, however, with an algorithm that can freshly update you on trends and conversations that you're interested in. I don't regularly feel as if I'm reviewing work from a long time ago, it's rather that I'm rocketed into the middle of a party that doesn't really stop.

Which brings me to Professor Mcpherson's article, which I think points the way for TT's development much more accurately. It's about the "lure" of the illusion of "volition", in which a relatively pre-determined path would confer an experience of soft interactivity. Could anything describe TT's interface better? The ultra sensitive AI watches me watch the videos, and in doing suggests new content for me: I am interacting with a live-ish event mainly through the passive activity of scrolling. No 'likes' or 'cursor' necessary, and the breadth of content covers the tracks of this algorithmic guidance.

[16] Ray Kyooyung Ra - Has Anyone Seen 'Murder House Flip'?

Speaking of 'post-TV' this week, has anyone seen 'Murder House Flip'? I am this close to getting into Quibi and was recommended this show, apparently a mind-blowing intersection of true crime, home renovation, and all the crazies imaginable... which is exactly what I need right now. I also heard one episode involves psychics that feng-shui the angry spirits out of the house, and despite losing all respect for this show after hearing this, I am still curious and intrigued.

Has anyone tried Quibi? What is it like?

In your small group, answer the following two questions. At least one group member should be prepared to discuss your answer to number 1 when we reconvene. We'll discuss number 2 in a more freeform way.

1. Pick a key concept or argument from one of the essays by Parks, Lotz or Christian. Summarize the concept/argument and find an example that illustrates the argument/concept in some way. Your example can confirm and reinforce the argument, or, alternately, it might function as a counterargument.

2. We've now spent 14 weeks collectively thinking through the history of U.S. television studies and about TV itself. Has your thinking about television and TV studies shifted at all and, if so, how? How would you define television as the semester draws to a close? 

Core response #5 (the Post-TV week)

Amanda Lotz’s article provides highly detailed analyses of emerging technologies that enable viewers to have much more control over their personal television experience in terms of time and space and therefore redefine the medium from its network-era norm. Furthermore, she considers cultural implications of portability and mobility enhanced by this convergence of television and internet, and focuses on how mobile technology reconfigures concepts of home and work in both emancipatory and constraining ways. She contends that, after technology permeated work into all aspects of life, mobile television could be envisioned as a counter-way to tether entertainment to the integrated pattern of work and home.

Likewise, Tara speaks of the intensifying “dissolution between the spatio-temporal borders of work and leisure” towards the end of her article. She astutely points out a new phenomenon in the post-network economy, that is, television fans being more and more exploited for their free labor on the internet, which further structures viewers into the flow of corporate capitals. She contextualizes this experience in relation to the neo-Fordism. One thing I particularly like about this article is a constant vigilance that runs through phenomenological analysis of the experiential modalities of web-surfing, and this is what I find Lotz’s piece lacks when unpacking the ideas of mobility and immediacy without a cautionary note.

It is crucial not to overlook the ways that ideology masquerade as ontology in promoting and even hyping terms such as control and choice as well as discourses around them. Unlike Lotz’s embrace of the possibilities opened up by the post-network technologies, Tara, while deconstructing a distinct kind of liveness specific to the Web, keeps describing it as an illusion both in the fact and the feel of it. This rings true, especially in recent years when television becomes more and more associated with concepts including interactivity and agency, and one of the best examples might be Black Mirror: Bandersnatch that deliberately seeks to enhance participation of viewers and promotes the interactive experience. It is much easier to recognize the limits of agency under the disguise of a series of choices in this case as compared to those experiences of free will in video games, but it is difficult to see how far the medium would go to explore its possibility to establish itself as a pull medium. Anyway, it would be important to always keep in mind the shaping of discourses over what television looks like in the post-network era.

Chameleon TV

From Fleabag (Amazon) to Mrs America (Hulu) to Insecure (HBO) to Shrill (Hulu) to My Brilliant Friend (HBO), it's been a treat to watch high quality programing, across genres, centered on complex and compelling female characters with cares and realities that reflect various angles on women's experiences. I find the limited series format really is a great bridge between film and TV­­ (from someone who doesn’t watch much TV at all). I also think we needed to reach the era of narrowcasting for these stories to come out in our patriarchal society.

My take-away from this class might be that when it comes to the ontology of TV, "Because conditions such as choosing among predetermined options came first, they appear natural, and many theories of television unreflectively assumed them to be inherently characteristic of the medium" (Lotz 77). With the advent of interactivity and the slow death of broadcast TV, TV reinvents itself, channeling the new opportunities and managing to stay more than revelant. TV is on the web, TV is on streaming platforms, TV is at the gas station, TV is online, TV is a bundle you pay for to animate the large monitor(s) in your home with liveness. The stakes of the circulation of ideas are too high and the concept of “TV” is embedded in people’s personal information flow, so TV morphs through time and along with our technologies. I am convinced it will never become an obsolete medium, but will rather chameleon itself into the media needs of the era, both top down and bottom up.

Thank you for a thought-provoking semester of TV Theory!

On turning our technological lives back into freedom

Professor McPherson notes that "emergent modes of experience are neither innocent nor neutral" (207). This reminded me of the promises held by so many technological advances and that inevitably have been absorbed into human-consumer lifestyles and turned into constraints and subjugation. The freedom of having a car turned into people having to commute for hours everyday to make it to their jobs. The internet allowing one to be connected at all times blurred the lines between work and leisure time, entrusting workers to be prompt and effective around the clock. Amanda Lots writes about the evolution of TV and its paraphernalia: "convenience, mobility, and theatricality redefined the medium" (50). As "Viewers gained greater control over their entertainment experience" they also become "attached to an increasing range of devices that demanded their attention and financial support" (51). Emergent modes of experience, Prof McPherson says, "model particular modes of subjectivity which can work all too neatly in the service of the shifting patterns of global capitalism" (207). Bottom line, "We might see out web-enhanced experiences of volitional mobility, scan-and-search, and transformation as training us for a new neo-Fordist existence" (McPherson 207). At the end of the day, the new devices and experiences that shape our lives are embedded in our capitalist economic model. Behind the convenience and ideals that may motivate us to create and adopt them lurk the new lifestyles that they shape for us, for good and bad, and always for capital's efficacious outcomes. There are empowering aspects to these changes, and our challenge is to not lose sight of them: as the freedom ideation of innovation becomes disorted by capital, we must remember the core ideal and not lose track of the freedom/empowerment at its root. Or as Professor McPherson writes, in conclusion of her analysis of the web's volition offerings, "While the 'click and buy' logic of DEN certainly overrides the ontology of volition mobility with an illusory ideology of volition, that these modalities are also part of the forms of the Web suggests a redemptive possibility, if only in the ways they activate our very desire for movement and change, a desire that might be mobilized elsewhere" (207).

Core Response #5

Leaving aside the elements that have clearly shifted or dated, like the infancy and uncharted territory of the Internet and its approval vs. the television, Lisa Parks's essay, "Flexible Microcasting: Gender, Generation, and Television-Internet Convergence," possesses some crucial blindspots that somewhat undermine the main arguments in question. For the most part, Parks's general assertion that television and the Internet are intertwined by dint of both their shared lineage and the continuing efforts of networks and other market forces to use their intrinsic qualities to support one another was and is accurate, even more so considering the prevalence of show-related posts and memes on social media. Her earlier arguments, too, hold water, especially in the case of her use of Lynn Spigel's inversion of Raymond Williams's mobile privatization into privatized mobility, highlighting the inherently different connection that the Internet fosters, and in her citation of the VCR and over-the-air distribution directly leading to certain aspects of the Internet.

Where her ideas fail, however, is in her attempts to apply them specifically to inherent questions surrounding race and gender. Perhaps the most obvious flaw is in her binary categorization of the industry's perception of the Internet as a masculine endeavor, opposed to the sedentary and feminine televisual pursuit. While my view of the active nature of the Internet might be clouded by fifteen years of nerd stereotypes, and it is true that television was largely the domain of housewives and the working class, that ignores the sizable middle-class male audience, along with the bounty of programming intended for men. To instill these binaries feels reductive, and already calls Parks's assertions into question.

Even more damaging, however, is the specific way in which Parks contextualizes her two core examples: Oxygen Media and DEN, especially in opposition to the supposedly ultramasculine game shows like Millionaire. What is particularly striking in the Oxygen Media example is how Parks offers the slightest mention of the main sticking point in her argument: that the venture created by wealthy people is designed for the purposes of profit and enlarging a media empire, rather than as a purely altruistic endeavor. This is not meant to entirely dismiss the benefits of such a structure, but Parks seems intent on dismissing all demerits, including the question of exactly how inclusive something created with the specific parameters Oxygen had in mind can be. On the other hand is the DEN, which Parks perhaps categorizes too strongly as dismissing the entirety of television. More lacking is comment on the specific, hyperintrusive version of advertising involved in the network, which both represents the not-always beneficial innovations allowed by a technological shift and the underlying key idea, largely not covered by Parks: that most of American television is controlled by the market. While Parks does discuss this more industry-based or economic side, it feels critically lacking when it comes to the actual examples that could have illustrated her points.

Core Post #5

This week’s reading helped me to contemplate how the television and internet convergence in the era of post-broadcasting relates to the politics of gender, race, and class. Lisa Park’s analysis on “flexible microcasting” explicates the ways in which the method of target marketing provides contents that fits each individual audience’s tastes and preferences, and how this phenomena generated new cultural space for voices from marginalized communities. Park’s emphasis on the potential for a new form of television that serves to democratize the medium parallels with Aymar Jean Christian’s focus on the way that television in the postbroadcasting era opens up new opportunities for marginalized independent creators to produce and circulate their creation to their audience. These arguments are very convincing, but at the same time, there is always this question bugging me when I think about the internet-based cultural formation and especially the issue of consumption and spectatorship. 

As neoliberalism has completely changed the formation of power and knowledge on almost every level, the boundary between subjective engagement and subjugated experience has become more and more blurred. For instance, when we use internet, we all experience what the programmed algorithm constantly suggests to us, what we should watch next, and by following the suggestion, our tastes or preferences are somehow structured by the algorithms and there emerges this bizarre situation where we can no longer tell whether it is a subjective engagement or a form of subjugation. Although I am still in the process of thinking about this complicated relationship revolving around the subject and subjugation, I think the issues in relation to the politics of gender, race, and class is that it doesn’t necessarily succeed even with progressive content due to the structuring of the medium for its commercial ends. 

What I would like to deepen more is how we can understand the neoliberalism as new forms of technology that are pervasive in our society. I personally think it is important to critically assess what kind of technologies, specifically their ownership, enable and form internet platforms when we try to clarify new possibilities of gender, racial, class politics that performed on/through the platform. 

TikTok as TV? “A lot of people will be scared…” (Presentation)

As a big fan of internet content, I was very excited for this week’s topic of Post-TV. The readings did a great job at explaining the multiple sides of “open TV”, as Christian calls it, referring to “independent web TV production and distribution” (4). He briefly discusses how scholars have underestimated the value of open TV and although there has been a rise in scholarship unpacking new media and this independent format or style of television - if we can even call it television -, I think the more it evolves the harder it is to define. The internet keeps changing faster and faster and I don’t see how it would be possible for media theory to keep up with all shapes and forms media is taking with the impact of the digital. However, this week’s readings did a great job at setting up a base for theorizing post-TV. I specifically liked how Christian discusses the inner-workings of open TV in terms of how producers make it, what they’re making and to what ends; and how Parks attempts to define a “Television 2.0” by looking at the emergence of new forms of TV related to digital access and the shifting meanings of converging technologies, overlapping with politics of gender, race and class. No matter how blurry lines get, I strongly agree with Parks’ final remarks in her chapter, about not killing television. That if we are concerned about the future of the medium and the next wave of content, we should engage with it rather than kill it. So that’s the approach I would like to take with this “presentation” in presenting a case for a potential Television 3.0 with Parks as a starting point. 

Parks’ chapter was written in 2004, so yes, a lot has changed in postbroadcasting, as she calls it. I was fascinated by her description of flexible microcasting and the way our post-TV platforms would (and still do, very strongly) read into the content that we choose to watch to give us a computer-curated menu of shows. While it sounds amazing, by now we can see the limitations in this algorithm. With so much new content being made, that can quickly limit what’s pushed to your menu of options but many of us have also learned how clicking on wildcards can completely mess up the platform’s recommendations. I’ve gotten mad at YouTube countless times for filling up my homepage with recommendations I don’t want to see, only because I felt adventurous and decided to watch one or two (… or thousands) of videos that I wouldn’t normally watch. I also thought it was interesting how Parks discussed more people having access to TV than the internet. The way media conglomerates are quickly making as much of their “traditional content” available online (e.g. talk shows) shows that the tables are turning. But it’s conflicting how as much as they are trying to embrace media convergence, they’re also attempting to hold on to a clean-cut division between television and the internet, where what’s popular online is only popular online, and what’s on traditional media is still superior. A few weeks ago, YouTuber Nikkietutorials spoke about her experience as a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show after getting a lot of traction online for coming out as a trans woman. She said:

“'Call me naive, but I kind of expected to be welcomed with confetti cannons: 'Welcome to The Ellen DeGeneres Show!' But instead I was greeted by an angry intern who was a bit overworked. I was expecting a Disney show, but got Teletubbies after dark. Every guest at Ellen's had a private toilet, but I didn't. I was not allowed to use the nearest toilet, because it was reserved for the Jonas Brothers. Why do they get a private toilet, I thought. But in the end my item had eight million views afterwards and theirs two million, ha!'” (&C).

I thought this was relevant for our current state of Post-TV because we see traditional media running after “open TV” producers as an attempt to stay relevant while also neglecting its value to maintain a level of superiority, or freshly acquired sense of “high art” now that there’s a new form of “low art” in town. I’m not going to list everything that has changed since “Television 2.0,” but this made me wonder what could serve as an example of current post-TV and an evolution of what Parks was talking about, something fresh.

If “Television 2.0” removed “the spontaneity of the practice of channel surfing” (Parks, 136), we may look at TikTok as Television 3.0, still existing as “more of an archive than a schedule” (Parks, 150) and challenging traditional television with inclusive and innovative representations, but bringing back the flow and discovery viewing mode of channel surfing as the norm, instead of curating exactly what you want to watch. I’ve been spending a lot of time on TikTok lately and it has become my favorite form of escapism. What’s most interesting about it is the main page, called “For You.” It’s a never-ending feed of videos that represent what’s popular and currently “going viral” on the app at the moment. There’s a very fast turnaround, but the way you’re supposed to keep scrolling in search for more content encourages you to stay on the app for longer. You never know what’s next, maybe there’s something even funnier. Addicting as it sounds, it reminds me of channel surfing. In class we often discuss how we don’t practice channel surfing anymore and that we go straight to the TV shows we already know of. TikTok’s For You page encourages users to discover new content, producers and “channels” until it’s 3 a.m. and you realize you’ve been on it for too long, only because a video by the official TikTok account with a smiley teenage boy shows up and he says: “I understand it’s easy to keep watching videos, and trust me, I’ve been there before. But those videos will still be there tomorrow. Go get some extra sleep, turn your phone off, do yourself that favor, and have a great night.” The new generation of “open TV” spectators are channel surfing for so long that the platform has to tell them to go to sleep.

This never-ending flow also translates into the nature of the content in the platform. A popular user, @adamrayokay, became extremely popular for his exaggerated latinx character Rosa. Adam has uploaded countless videos of Rosa talking to the camera and users all over social media insert themselves in the stories by making “duets” with the videos. Then, there is not only the channel surfing in the For You page, but also under one video, as it generates a wave of new co-created content. This goes in line with Christian’s theory of how “the Internet brought innovation to television by opening mass distribution to those excluded from legacy development processes, fostering new ways of creating and marketing series” (4). The “duet” feature allows for viewers to find new creators, but it also encourages viewers to insert themselves in the narrative and expand the representation seen on screen. Adam, who was bored with his day-to-day job in Texas (as he describes on his first YouTube video), now has the opportunity to produce and market his own stories (we could consider Rosa to be a series) and has even collaborated with big YouTubers like Zane Hijazi from the Vlog Squad and James Charles, all from a couple of months of major internet success.

Here’s one of Rosa’s most popular videos:

@adamrayokay

POV: Rosa finds out her 8th period partner is gay😭😂 ##fyp ##viral ##foryou

♬ original sound - adamrayokay

And here are two of the many re-creations of her video:

@honeyanttt

Me everyday in Middle School. ##react to @adamrayokay . ##funnyvideos ##gay ##duett

♬ original sound - adamrayokay

@kevsters__

Rosa has a new gay best friend @adamrayokay @marlenedizzle @carlospereda_ ##rosa ##foryoupage ##fyp ##xyzbca ##viral ##foryou ##comedy

♬ original sound - adamrayokay

Legacy TV?

I loved reading Open TV. This is my second time reading the intro (I read parts of the book in 2018 when the book was first published, but I did not read it all the way through) and I find Christian’s writing to be excellent. His ideas are clear. I especially like his terms: Legacy TV, Open TV, and Indie TV. TV cannot be defined as the way it has been for the past 70 years. Thanks to the internet (specifically web series) it has become much more expansive. I think that Christian was the first to really nail this research. I love how he discusses Legacy television’s relationship with indie TV. This is especially interesting to me as I am currently researching shows that started as web series and later became sensations on Legacy TV: High Maintenance, Insecure, and Pen15 (hulu show). I certainly do see these texts catering to a diverse population, whereas many of the premium HBO shows were targeted towards middle aged white men. I appreciate what TV is becoming, even if. indie platforms are attempting to subvert Legacy TV. Interesting, it seems as though Legacy TV is advertising indie TV as something that will “ruin TV”–which is what Hulu boasts on their billboards. This begs the question: is legacy TV gloating about ruining their own industry/standards? (I ask this question because web series are becoming flagship shows on legacy channels, i.e. High Maintenance on HBO) If legacy TV is appropriating indie TV for their own gain, is anything changing? Who is ruining what?

I must give J.D. Connor credit for showing me this image as he posted it on his Twitter with the caption “odd flex.” I loled.

John Krasinski's "Some Good News"

Christian mentions that "Hollywood directors, producers, and actors in search of creative freedom or extra work have developed web shows and networks since the late 1990s" (12). This made me think of John Krasinski's Some Good News, a new Youtube show he has started to release weekly shortly after the shelter-in-place orders were given. The first episode dropped on March 29. The show opens with a parodic take on the news segments visual trope of the globe -- only this is the kind of globe that people have at home, for decorative or educational purposes. "My daughters made it," Krasinski goes on to say of the markers-drawn SGN sign that hangs behind him, not far from a "I <3 Dad" sign.
I understand this show as a light-hearted alternative to the news we are receiving through the conventional "legacy TV." The show stays very, very far away from politics, and practical pandemic-related matters, but it screams "enough of the stressful noise. let's shelter in place. and let's focus on the good."
After a mention of the unprecedented times we are in, stating the need for positive news, doing a shoutout to the heroism of the global healthcare community, Karasinski gets on a video call with Steve Carell. They joke around about looking dapper to appear on camera and Krasinski confesses to wearing "jamas" rather than the bottoms that match his top -- relating to the average American's work-from-home circumstances.  The two then reminisce about The Office, surely giving their fans a little treat. In other good news, a cancer survivor child comes home, couples don't let corona stop their engagement plans. In another episode, Brad Pitt appears as the weather man. These high profile actors generally appear in very mediated content as performers, but here Krasinski produces and curates content of his choice: kid-friendly news aiming to help keep the "troops'" morale up.
SGN cane read as a pandemic version of what Christian would deem A-list talent frustrated by major brands tapping into the networked television market.

Core Post - Just Different Enough

Throughout the class, there’s been a tendency to bring TV to the “now” moment. In most cases, that moment is one of “streaming” and how this moment of TV as such necessarily demands a kind of approach that draws on various methodologies and conceptual approaches, not just any one approach. We’ve all illuminated some of the ways in which today’s TV simply feels different, or different enough, such that definitions around TV and approaches to studying TV become more sophisticated. McPherson’s chapter revolves around exploring precisely that feeling or feeling of just-different-enough.

Focusing on the “specificity of the experience of using the Web, of the Web as mediator between human and machine, of the Web as a technology of experience”, the chapter describes how discourses around the Web, the structures of Web, and the interactions with the Web generate a kind of liveness (200). Such liveness is constituted by, what McPherson calls, volitional mobility, the scan-and-search, and transformation. (201) I find this approach extremely generative towards thinking of TV “now” or post-TV, which for me, inevitably lead to streaming. If American TV in the 70s meant certain kinds of content, facilitated by a specific kind of infrastructure, then those kinds of content and infrastructures become more complicated throughout the 80s and 90s with deregulation—a kind of convergence before the more familiar discourses around “Convergence.” Throughout these changes, how might content or corporate infrastructures imagine the audiences of TV as such? How does that imagined audience generate different modes of interaction and experience?

We’re all privy towards the ways in which personalization seems to be the way in which streaming imagines “us” / ”you” compared to how linear TV imagined a broader demographic or “public.” Volitional mobility/scan-and-search/transformation, then, certainly seems to describe that kind of relationship imagined by streaming platforms through the experiences of using these platforms. Whether it’s because these platforms constructed their interface in order to generate that “sense of causality,” “mobility,” or a “liveness on demand”, or if it’s the “Web” that already sets the conditions for such sensations, there’s something different-enough about streaming that entice us to think of how these sensations have shifted definitions around and approaches to TV, yet still remain fixed around TV as such. But most importantly, as McPherson notes, “this much touted liveness is actually the illusion of liveness” that is very much part of both the discourses of personalization around streaming as well as the corporate strategy of these platforms. (202) Thus, while “liveness” seems to be constant throughout the history of TV, the chapter sharply distinguishes the specificity around the experiences of using the Web that is meaningfully different, or just-different-enough, in all the ways (e.g. corporate producer, the empowered consumer/fan) that we’ve talked about TV’s contemporary moment.

Core Post 5

For our final grouping of readings, we’re dealing with the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries’ fundamental changes to television ecology, in the complex and interdependent registers of medium specificity, technological advancement, and aesthetic transformation. One can use the heuristic of x, y, and z-axes to understand the nature of these developments. The most significant difficulty mounted by a knowledge of this history is the potential threat that it poses to the notion of ‘television’, as an idea, a medium, or an institution. Is television dead? If so, when should we have called the time of death? And does its death alter how we should view its life and even its birth?

The first axis of transformation—what for my purposes I’m thinking of as the horizontal axis—is that of technological change. The origins of ‘television’ as we are intimately familiar with it lie of course in the form or the electric hearth, the cornerstone of the post-war living room collecting broadcast signals through an antenna connected to a massive picture-box. Arguably the most significant quantitative evolutions came via analogue and then digital cable, which drastically increased the number of channels available to homes and thus served as an infrastructural substrate for a socioeconomic boom in television production. Satellite television then capped the technological development available within the confines of traditional TV viewing.

The second axis—what I think of as the vertical counterpart—involves the increasingly prevalent intersections of medium-based affordances operating under the category of the ‘televisual’. Home video devices, from Betamax to Blu-Ray players, gave viewers a newfound freedom in terms of timeshifting and a pluralization of available programming. Most obviously and importantly, the nature of streaming services has appeared to subsume television viewing within the larger field of web-based connectivity affecting most aspects of our lives, within and without the realms of entertainment or informational consumption.

Finally, we have the aesthetic realm, that of content and its forms, which seems to know few to no bounds. The more regularly discussed shift from sitcoms to prestige dramas the basic unit of popular television is perhaps less interesting than the recent centrality of shorter and shorter short-form content. The launch of Quibi tells us a great deal about what Hollywood expects from contemporary viewing desires. Curiously, the pandemic has also jumpstarted another streaming affordance which might quickly become a part of our new normal—the party view, a way for friends and family to watch together at a distance.

Introspection amidst violence (Westworld season 3 spoilers)

*** THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR SEASON 3, IF YOU ARE NOT CAUGHT UP AND WANT TO AVOID SPOILERS, CONSIDER YOURSELVES WARNED ***

Sorry, I had to, it’s too topical. 

Okay, so previously on “Jess gets pretentious about Westworld,” I contemplated the show’s treatment of the dichotomy of chaos versus control. The most recent episode, S3E6, feels like a filler, meant to push the plot along and establish the conditions for characters’ future actions. Interestingly, as the episode that follows a data leak causing people to panic, one would have expected more chaos than the episode actually provides. With just one brief mention of social upheaval, the episode leaves the topic of human in-fighting to focus, instead, on the introspection of two key characters: William and Maeve. In both cases, the characters talk to some version of themselves; William is in a “group therapy” session with his former selves, while Maeve talks through various strategic points with a Dolores simulation in an attempt to get ahead of her enemy. 

It’s interesting that the show puts introspection immediately after the instigation of violence, and I read this as a comment on human instinct, how we might look into the depth of our own being once chaos falls, either as a defense/denial mechanism to escape the outside world or as a response to the often thought-provoking nature of violence and extreme change. In both cases, however, William and Maeve are violence even within their own simulations, ruling out the likelihood that introspection occurs out of escapism. So then, the provocation of self-reflection. Although it’s difficult to comment on this without seeing more episodes and knowing the actual result of this self-reflection, the fact that reflection exists and produces epiphanies suggests that amongst external chaos, information-processing and planning can still occur on the individual level. In processing the chaos of our internal selves, we can still come up with some kind of order. Perhaps that is the only thing we can hold onto in moments of crisis: our own introspection, the ability to find order within oneself. 

Additionally, I had also read this episode as somewhat of an allegory on writing and creativity. I’m not sure about how others write, but for me, it plays out mostly as a conversation with myself. And I tend to dismiss the legitimacy of these conversations, since I feel like they are useless without the input of alternative perspectives. They are, to put it weirdly, not real… Arguably, chaos deals mainly in alternative perspectives and conflict, while control works on authority talking to and reaffirming itself. Are some of the anxieties surrounding control therefore linked to the fear that it isn’t real? That when we live under complete order, there is a sense of artifice? Does that mean reality and truth are inherently chaotic, and that the markers of reality is that there are breaks in expectation? The more I ask these questions, the more I feel like the Matrix has already answered most of them. My final question then is maybe why do we feel this way? What is it in our mainstream ideology that teaches us chaos is real? 🤔