L8: Television

ENGL A236F English Language Media and

Popular Culture
Mr Zach Goh
 Briefing on Term Paper Guidelines

Objectives
for today
Television Lecture
Term paper
Guidelines

Spring 2021

Due Date:
10 May 2021
(Monday), 11:59pm
 Term paper question

At the heart of this course on popular culture is

the recognition that there are many ways to make High
meaning and express creativity. The
classifications of “high,” “middle,” and “low”
become meaningless when we acknowledge that
cultural richness is possible in every level of the Middle
cultural hierarchy. In this paper, please review
the above viewpoints with one case study.

Popular/Low
 Term paper guiding questions

 1. What is “popular culture?”

 2. What do the classifications of “high,” “middle,” and “low” cultures mean?

 3. Which cultural critic has most notably argued that cultural richness is
possible in every level of the hierarchy? Do you agree with this critic’s view?
Why or why not?

 4. What is your case study to support your argument for or against the
cultural hierarchy? Why have you chosen this case study?
 Evaluation criteria and submission instructions
 The paper will be evaluated based on its persuasiveness, clarity, application of course
concepts, creativity, and grammar.

 Typed, using a 12-point standard Times New Roman

 1-inch margins
 Use double spacing
 Use MLA format throughout
 Cite your sources
 Have a Works Cited page with at least 5 credible resources (No Wikipedia)
 Submit to Turnitin via OLE (No plagiarism)
 How to avoid plagiarism?
(source: https://guides.library.ucla.edu/citing/plagiarism/avoid

 Don't procrastinate with your research and assignments: Plan your research well in
advance

 Commit to doing your own work.

  Be 100% scrupulous in your note taking: Clearly label in your notes your own ideas
(write "ME" in parentheses) and ideas and words from others (write "SMITH, 2005" or
something to indicate author, source, source date).

 Cite your sources scrupulously.

Regardless of whether you found the information in a book, article, or website, and
whether it's text, a graphic, an illustration, chart or table, you need to cite it. When you
use words or phrases from other sources, these need to be in quotes.
Television

 Is TV an idiot box?
 Why do we keep watching TV?
 A History of Television
 TV and Reality
 The Comedic and the Real
 The Simpsons
 TV and Postmodernism
 Effects: Mythologization and Fabrication
 Case Studies: Wandavision and Black Mirror
 Is TV an “idiot box?”
 Du Vernay (2013): Culture critics have argued about the
stupidity and dangers of television almost since the
advent of the medium. We’ve been warned against
spending too much time in front of the “boob tube” or
the “idiot box” so many times that we don’t even
register the warnings anymore. […] We know the evils
of TV: it makes us want to buy things we don’t need.
The beautiful stars and advertisements for beauty
products make us feel ugly and fat (and, of course,
watching TV makes us fat because it is a passive
activity that frequently involves snacking, drinking soda
or beer, and not much moving). It ”rots your brain” in
some other vague ways that my parents were never
quite able to articulate.
 So why do people keep on watching? The answer, by now, should be perfectly obvious: we
love TV because TV brings us a world in which TV does not exist. In fact, deep in their
hearts, this is what the spuds crave most: a rich, new, participatory life.
The History of Television
https://youtu.be/djYAurv76-o
 TV and reality
 Tele - far, vision - to see
 “To see far”

 As American literacy lobbyist Frederic Glezer

phrased it in a Newsweek article in 1986, television is
a “four-to five-hour experience with nothingness.”
Before the advent of video games and the internet,
television was the main scapegoat in the “culture
wars” that surface occasionally in the United States.
Ultimately, however, there is no evidence for any of
the alarming claims against TV, or any basis to the
fears that many have with regard to its effects. (277)
 THE COMEDIC AND THE REAL

 Comedy, as discussed previously, is a pillar of popular culture.

 As Arthur Asa Berger (1992) aptly puts it, the reason for this is that “People crave humor and laughter, which
explains why there are so many situation comedies on television and why film comedies have such widespread
appeal.”
 Narrating the “real” has also been part of representational activities since antiquity, as people try to understand
their own lives through a portrayal of the lives of others.
 This is the likely reason why reality shows and reality channels have become part and parcel of contemporary
television textuality.
The Simpsons
 A sitcom that perhaps best exemplifies the pastiche-collage nature of representation in pop
culture is The Simpsons, the animated sitcom on Fox Broadcasting created by cartoonist
Matt Groening (b. 1954), and one of the longest-running programs on American television,
starting in 1989.
 The sitcom is a satire of bourgeois American life and especially of the middle-class family.
It also satirizes many aspects of contemporary society and its pretentions. Like anything
else that becomes popular, it has spawned offshoots such as comic books, movies, and
video games.
 The program has been analyzed at several levels. A primary aspect of the show for pop
culture studies is that it exemplifies the admixture and crisscrossing of cultural and
aesthetic levels that characterize many pop culture texts. Any episode might contain
allusions to writers and philosophers of high culture as well as references to popular trends.
The Simpsons: Starting the Reference Revolution | NowThis Nerd

 https://youtu.be/9gsx_r4FTfw
 TV and Postmodernism
 Modernism: serious experimentation, serious art (reveal
brutal honesty about reality)

 Postmodernism: more experimental and self-aware about

the limitations of its form

 Challenge cultural hierarchies through deconstruction of

what “art” is

 Playful, ironic approach towards categories, thereby

subverting categories

 Expose assumptions, deconstruction assumptions

 “The Treachery of Images” by René Magritte

 "Ceci n'est pas une pipe", French for "This is

not a pipe”

 The ‘text’ intentionally contradicts the image.

 John (2016): The disorientation affect within

Magritte’s painting is not the contradiction
between the image (the pipe) and the text
(‘this is not a pipe’), but our natural human
instinct to ‘read’ associations between text and
image (Foucault, 1983, p. 21)
 EFFECTS (302)
 Marshall McLuhan was among the first to say that television had an impact far greater than the content it
communicated.
 As Orson Welles so aptly put it: “I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can’t stop eating peanuts.”
So, while the television universe is diversifying and becoming more and more viewer based, television itself as
a medium has had significant effects on society as a whole.

 As discussed briefly in chapter 2, George Gerbner claimed that television was “popular” because it recycled the
narrative codes inherent in folklore, replacing them as a means of modern-day story-telling.
 He developed “cultivation theory,” which maintains that television viewing, over time, subtly cultivates people’s
perceptions of reality. Those who spend more time watching television tend to have beliefs and values about
reality that are consistent with those in the programs they watch.
 Often they believe that the world is a much more dangerous and frightening place than it actually is, thus
developing a greater sense of anxiety and mistrust of others—a phenomenon called the “mean world
syndrome.” In addition to this cultivation effect, one can add two others, called conveniently here
mythologization and fabrication.
Mythologization

 The mythologization effect actually applies to all media platforms, from cinema and radio
to the internet, but it has been especially applicable to TV.
 Television transforms its personages into mythic characters by simply showcasing them on
the screen, where they are seen as suspended in real time and space, in a mythic world of
their own.
 This is why meeting television personalities causes great enthusiasm and excitement in
many people. They are otherworldly figures who have “stepped out” of the screen to take
on human proportions.
 The same effect is produced by other media, as we have seen. But since television reaches
more people, and involves visuality, the effect is more potent.
Fabrication

 A political or military conflict that gets airtime becomes a historical event; one that does
not is ignored. Television imbues a cause with significance.
 Television coverage of important events, from the John F. Kennedy assassination and
Watergate hearings to the election of Barack Obama, the first African American president,
imbues them with even greater historical significance.
Queen Elizabeth and queen Elizabeth watching
television together
The Crown Season 3 Episode 7: Moondust

 https://youtu.be/9P0iPqLF1EM
Case Study: WandaVision
(2021)
 Premise of the series is that Wanda Maximoff
and Vision are in a TV series.

 Have been lauded by critics as a metaphor for

grieving and dealing with trauma.

 We will look at more details during the tutorials.

Wandavision Trailers

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj9J2ecsSpo

 https://youtu.be/UBhlqe2OTt4
Black Mirror

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDiYGjp5iF
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Next Week:

 Tuesday Tutorial: Radio

 Wednesday Lecture: Film
 Thursday Tutorial: Television