TELEVISION AS TEXT

ni Nicholas Abercrombie
Inihanda ni Dr. Rowie Madula

The TEXT Refers to books, or other literary output that is written and read. QUESTION: Is television a text?

The Written Word Works through and so promotes consistency, narrative development from cause to effect, universality and abstraction, clarity and a single tone of voice.

-Fiske and Hartley

The Television Is ephemeral, episodic, specific, concrete and dramatic in mode. Its meanings are arrived at by contrasts and by the juxtaposition of seemingly contradictory signs and its logic is oral and visual. -Fiske and Hartley

THUS

Television programmes are a little like books, precisely because they are made to be read, taken in, and interpreted by an audience.

TV and FILM SIMILARITIES are both media that combine sound and image are both used primarily to inform and entertain are both using the conventions of narrative fiction

TV and FILM DIFFERENCES (Ellis 1982) FILM TV designed REMARKS Film is primarily to
Primarily designed to be a public event and its characteristic mode is the single performance complete in itself. Has as its major means of presentation a progression of segments often arranged as a series or a serial, watched relatively casually in private or domestic circumstances. These are conditions of productions and receptions. TV is an essentially domestic medium and TV programmes by and large assume a family audience. The televisual style is everyday and conversational.

TV and FILM DIFFERENCES (Ellis 1982) FILM TV designed REMARKS Film is primarily to
The technology of cinema permits a much higher quality of both image and sound than is possible in TV. It has a photographic quality. It demands, and receives, and sustains attention. The typical way of watching the TV is the glance, not the gaze. The best ang film sa kalidad, chipang naman ang TV. Pero may attempt ang TV na magproduce ng mga shows na parang pelikula ang pagkakagawa.

TV and FILM DIFFERENCES (Ellis 1982) FILM TV designed REMARKS Film is primarily to
Cinema narrative typically starts with a disordered state of some kind and then moves through a series of ups and downs to a resolution of that disorder and restoration of equilibrium. No resolution, no closure. Presents itself as a set of repeated segments which do not form a unity. Ang pelikula ay tulad ng isang maikling kuwento, samantalang ang TV ay tulad ng isang komiks. Have different forms of narration.

TV and FILM DIFFERENCES (Ellis 1982) FILM TV designed REMARKS Film is primarily to
Assumes a spectator who awaits narrative resolution in a state of pleasurable anxiety. Functions much Have different views more on behalf of the of their spectators. viewer. Functions as an eye with which the viewer can see the world.

TV and FILM more DIFFERENCES

There is the role of individuals as artist in film and tv production. Stars are an exclusively cinematic feature, or at least are not to be found in tv. (Ellis)

TV offers an essentially fragmented view by comparison to film. (Flitterman-Lewis)

There is a certain level of directness and immediacy about tv, often referred to as its directness of address.

TELEVISION FLOW Viewers are surrounded/ drowned by a continuous flow of images, sounds and feelings (ads, announcements, trailers). (Williams)
There is an attempt to keep the viewers watching one channel. There is a certain unity given to the flow of programmes by the values of the culture and by the
structure of feelings.

TELEVISION FLOW
ABS-CBN 2 TV Patrol Princess and I Dahil sa Pag-ibig Pinoy Big Brother Teen Edition 4 Dream High Bandila GMA 7 24 Oras Luna Blanca Makapiling Kang Muli One True Love Lie To Me Saksi

TV: Flow or Sequence

Flow: there is a smooth and uninterrupted process continuing throughout a period of viewing.

Sequence of segments: there is a discontinuous and fragmented experience.

The segmentation of MTV

 Watching TV is so much part of everyday life that we take it entirely for granted. It forms part of the daily household routine and helps to mark out the passage of time. Very much concerned, though not exclusively, with the family, home, and domestic life. Almost all sitcom and soap opera, for example, is organized around the domestic setting.

THE DOMESTIC STYLE OF TV

The way in which segmentation is produced by the inability of the audience to give full attention in a domestic setting.

The conversational and immediate style of presentation.

The way that programming is often taken up with family concerns.

 Fairclough argues that one of the effects of this conversationalized style of television is that the barriers between the public and the private spheres are being broken down.

NARRATIVE

are sequence of events, settings and characters arranged in a logical order through time, the sequence being driven by the cause and effect
Its importance is to impose a non-random order on the story to make it sensible.

NARRATIVE
Simple narrative structure or form begins with a state of equilibrium or harmony, chart the disruption of that equilibrium by an act of nature or of a villain, and record, in an act of narrative closure, the restoration of harmony, often by the activities of a hero. (Todorov)

A formal analysis of narratives is by giving an account of the structure of myths in simple societies which are just a set of binary oppositions, sets of opposed qualities, like good and bad. (Levi-Strauss)

BARTHES on NARRATIVES
1. Symbolic code: represents the basic binary oppositions that are characteristic of a culture. 2. Semic code: refers to the way that common cultural stereotypes are made into characters in the narratives so that the viewers know what a character represents. 3. Referential code: the means by which the text refers to wider cultural concerns in society. 4. Proairetic code: relates the actions within the text to those that the reader or viewer knows from other texts. 5. Hermeneutic code: controls the way in which the enigmas that initiate the narrative are resolved the narrative is closed.

BARTHES 3 ELEMENTS
1. Begins with an enigma, a mystery, a set of questions which capture the audiences attention. 2. 2nd stage consists of a period of suspense during which the enigma remains unresolved but the narrative carries on, almost elaborating the lack of resolution. 3. Last stage is brought to a conclusion by a solution to the mystery, an answer to the enigma.

REALISM

1. Offers a window on the world; tv seems to be like direct sight. 2. Employs a narrative which has rationally ordered connections between events and characters. 3. Conceals the production process.

REALISM as a CONVENTION
TV is not really transparent, what is offers is essentially a construction of the world, a version of reality TV presents one reality and audiences are persuaded to accept it as the only reality TV has a hierarchy of discourses or points of view in which one discourse controls the other

TELEVISION as IDEOLOGY
WHAT IS IDEOLOGY?
A synthesis or sets of concepts, ideas, images, theories, stories, beliefs, attitudes, languages, structures of feelings, and rituals that can take rational form. It is often conveyed through images. It has particular effects of supporting the distributions of power, authority, wealth and income and of ensuring conformity.

TELEVISION
Today, TV is the dominant producer of cultural symbolisms; its imagery is prescriptive as well as descriptive, and not only pictures what is happening in the society, but also shows how one adjusts to the social order. Further, it demonstrates the pain and punishment suffered by not adjusting. The endless repetition of the same images produces a TV world where the conventional is the norm and conformity the rule.

POSTMODERNISM
1. As a society, we are progressively living, not in reality, but in images and representations of that reality.
An image-saturated society (Fiske). TV is creating a simulational culture/ a hyperreality (Baudrillard).

2. Contemporary societies are about creating an image, refining a look, presenting a style.
Concerned with surface appareance. Obsession to form rather than content. Promotes consumerism.

POSTMODERNISM
3. Postmodern culture breaks traditional boundaries It does not respect the division between high and
popular culture or the distinctions between historical periods.

4. Postmodernist culture is self-referential

TV is a medium that feeds off itself .

5. Postmodern culture does not follow the conventions of realism and narrative. 6. Postmodern culture is fragmented.