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.