Global TV Presentation

Honestly, this presentation was very challenging because of the term “global TV” itself. As Shanti Kumar presented, there is no universally agreed upon definition of global television studies.  This in part seems to stem from the monopolization Western theory holds on media theories, cultural studies, and area studies, and the incommensurability of disciplinarity and diversity. Attempts, like the East-West conference, were made to find a unified system of philosophy for East-West discourse, but unified theories overgeneralize and omit diversity in geographically based thought. With a turn toward comparison, comparison is played by Western rules, framed through Western thought, theory, and language. Kumar suggests moving less in a unifying approach of what global TV is to a dialogical approach. What does global television as a signifier represent? There is a slipperiness to the term global TV, and this slipperiness is what makes global TV as a discipline so hard to grapple with.

So how does one define and contend with global TV? Morley’s approach is an audience/reception studies approach, which this class has already found some fault with in discussions of empirical approaches. But Morley seems to be very much in conversation with Benjamin Anderson’s Imagined Communities here. For Anderson, media objects such as newspapers, novels, and I reckon TV too, facilitate the creation of imagined communities where space becomes obsolete in the creation of participant communities. Morley proposes the need to understand TV’s ideological/representational role, ritual/socially organizing function, and domestic/social consumption in relation to each other (5). This means looking to TV viewing in two parts: the ritual aspect where TV structures domestic life and acts as an entry to participation in the national community, but also the consumptive experience of whatever ideology the text is spewing.

I’d like to point our attention towards my example: the MTV reality series The Challenge. It’s an interesting choice for global TV as it is very much an American reality TV series, where American TV is oversaturated in the global market. But I think it proves an interesting example in terms of  imagined communities and its notion of space/location.

The Challenge started 36 seasons ago as Road Rules: All Stars and then was subsequently known as Real World/Road Rules Challenge. It began as a reality competition show whose contestants fed from MTV’s Real World and Road Rules. As the MTV reality universe expanded, the series which fed into The Challenge expanded also to Are You the One and Ex On the Beach. With the latter series, contestants from other reality series not produced by MTV such as Big Brother and Survivor also appeared. Recently, the series has expanded to include contestants from The Bachelor, Survivor Turkey, Love Island UK, Ex on the Beach UK and Brazil, Amazing Race, Big Brother Turkey, and more. The series, like any such survival show which functions on social games as much as physical games, promotes ideological roles of how to function in communal society, while also engaging in a ritual function. The series airs every Wednesday, which has now been dubbed “Challenge Wednesday” by its viewers who also participate on Challenge Reddit.

Morley notes the ways “in which electronic media have undermined the traditional relationship between physical setting and social situation, to the extent that we are ‘no longer “in” places in quite the same way'” (7). New communities are created around technology in otherwise disparate groups and places. Technology facilitates new communities in a creation of Imagined Communities as Anderson describes. The Challenge lives on after the weekly airing in its Reddit fanbase, social media use, and the reality universes it feeds in to and from (The Challenge in a way is its own extension of Bachelor Nation and the various other reality series it nabs contestants from). Fans come from across the world, but even more, they participate with the show itself. Contestants have been known to engage in AMAs on Reddit, the series host and major repeat contestants leave videos for viewers with reference to Reddit popular posts. The social media use of the contestants is brought into the show itself as tweets, Instagram posts, and texts are mentioned and shown in episodes. The viewers and contestants themselves bring different locations from which they view, constituting a global fanbase, and a global participant base. Morley’s attention to the ways electronic media diminishes any sense of place/locality and allow television to exist in a “generalized elsewhere” (8) are taken a step further in The Challenge, where contestants come from countries across the world, but the physical setting of the season is never offered. This current season has various signifiers to suggest it takes place in Eastern Europe, but the physical setting of the season is unimportant to the action at all. It is an any-space where the action is delivered straight to the viewer’s TV/computer. Take Season 35: War of the Worlds 2 for example:

What takes precedence is the action. In the clip, the location of the series itself is never specified. There are various, albeit short, cuts to large spiders, alligators, and a mansion where the contestants live. What’s invoked is not a physical setting, but the fierceness of nature and the luxury of the home they live in. What’s important is what’s inside: the character action. The fight itself between two contestants, Jordan and Turbo, is based on cultural misunderstanding and social manipulation (which is played as entertainment). Even more, when contestants are given the one-on-one space in confessionals, their teams (Team USA and Team UK,) are identified. Images of the American flag are rampant in the clip. The show successfully markets national pride and  cultural differences in its name, images, and contestants. While it most likely falls under the umbrella of “trash” TV, the series itself is interesting in producer (Viacom) availability as it is available internationally with a Viacom subscription which is (in America at least) often bundled into standard cable packages. It’s a show that’s largely accessible, is built off a diverse array of contestants from various cities and countries, and is able to rely on its tech-based communities to create a loyal fan-base in various locales.