Television
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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| Since it first became commercially available from the late 1940s, the television set has become a common household communications device in homes and institutions, particularly in the [[first world]], as a source of entertainment and news. Since the 1970s, [[video]] recordings on VCR tapes and later, digital playback systems such as [[DVD]]s, have enabled the television to be used to view recorded movies and other programs. | Since it first became commercially available from the late 1940s, the television set has become a common household communications device in homes and institutions, particularly in the [[first world]], as a source of entertainment and news. Since the 1970s, [[video]] recordings on VCR tapes and later, digital playback systems such as [[DVD]]s, have enabled the television to be used to view recorded movies and other programs. | ||
| - | In the 1950s television replaces radio as the dominant mass medium in industrialized countries, it nearly immediately becomes the scapegoat of the [[dumbing down]] of our culture. By the late 1980s, 98% of all homes in the U.S. had at least one TV set. On average, Americans watch four hours of television per day. An estimated two-thirds of Americans got most of their news about the world from TV. | + | In the 1950s television replaces radio as the dominant mass medium in industrialized countries, it nearly immediately becomes the scapegoat of the [[dumbing down]] - like so many [[new media]] before it - of our culture. By the late 1980s, 98% of all homes in the U.S. had at least one TV set. On average, Americans watch four hours of television per day. An estimated two-thirds of Americans got most of their news about the world from TV. |
Revision as of 20:28, 14 November 2007
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- “Television, the drug of a nation, feeding ignorance and breeding radiation.” --The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, 1992
- “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” --Gil Scott-Heron, 1970
Television is a widely used telecommunication system for broadcasting and receiving moving pictures and sound over a distance. The term "television" may also be used to refer specifically to a television set, programming or television transmission.
Since it first became commercially available from the late 1940s, the television set has become a common household communications device in homes and institutions, particularly in the first world, as a source of entertainment and news. Since the 1970s, video recordings on VCR tapes and later, digital playback systems such as DVDs, have enabled the television to be used to view recorded movies and other programs.
In the 1950s television replaces radio as the dominant mass medium in industrialized countries, it nearly immediately becomes the scapegoat of the dumbing down - like so many new media before it - of our culture. By the late 1980s, 98% of all homes in the U.S. had at least one TV set. On average, Americans watch four hours of television per day. An estimated two-thirds of Americans got most of their news about the world from TV.
Notes
Related
- broadcasting - music video - film - cult television - electronic media - living room - reality television - TV horror hosts - VCR - video game - visual culture - Youtube.com
Television series
- Civilisation (1969) - Sir Kenneth Clark
Films about television
- Videodrome (1983) - David Cronenberg
Pessimistic views of television
- Neil Postman
Optimistic views of television
- Camille Paglia
Television Culture (1990) - John Fiske
Videodrome
Quote: "The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears in the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television." --Videodrome (1983)
Cultural pessimism and television
Three films that thematically deal with the dumbing down of man by television.
- Network (Dunaway comes while thinking of her TV ratings)
- Being there (videot, videocy)
- Fahrenheit 451 (books are forbidden, television omnipresent)
Inspired by Bread and Circuses (1983) - Patrick Brantlinger
In his book Bread and Circuses, Patrick Brantlinger analyzes the idea of "bread and circuses" as a narcotic for the masses throughout history. Though he never mentions Richard Dawkin's theory of memetics, the book is the history of a meme, a collection of related ideas replicating through history. Brantlinger defines as "negative classicism" the idea that Rome was decadent and that our society is sliding downhill to a Roman-style decadence. "The shade of Rome," says Brantlinger, "looms up to suggest the fate of societies that fail to elevate their masses to something better than welfare checks and mass entertainments." --http://www.spectacle.org/496/dream.html [Jun 2006]
See also: television - cultural pessimism - Patrick Brantlinger Television culture
Semiotic democracy
Semiotic democracy is a phrase first coined by John Fiske, a media studies professor, in his seminal media studies book Television Culture. Fiske defined the term as the "delegation of the production of meanings and pleasures [(and I suppose horrors too)] to [television's] viewers." Fiske discussed how rather than being passive couch potatoes that absorbed information in an unmediated way, viewers actually gave their own meanings to the shows they watched that often differed substantially from the meaning intended by the show's producer.
Subsequently, this term was appropriated by the technical and legal community in the context of any re-working of cultural imagery by someone who is not the original author. Examples include Harry Potter slash fiction that reworks J. K. Rowling's characters into homosexual romances.
Legal scholars are concerned that just as technology eases the process of cheaply making and distributing derivative works imbued with new cultural meanings available to wide public, copyright and right-to-publicity law is clamping down on and limiting these works, thus reducing their promulgation, and limiting semiotic democracy. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotic_democracy [Jun 2006]
See also: visual culture - media theory - television - culture - semiotics
Television in Film
Being There (1979) Broadcast News (1987) Ed TV (1999), A Face In the Crowd (1957), Fahrenheit 451 (1966), Medium Cool (1969), Network (1976), Pleasantville (1998), Quiz Show (1994), To Die For (1995), The Truman Show (1998)
- Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985) - Neil Postman
Films about television
1. Deathwatch / La Mort en direct (1980) - Bertrand Tavernier 2. The Cable Guy (1996) - Ben Stiller 3. Network (1976) - Sidney Lumet 4. Secret Cinema (1968) - Paul Bartel
See also
