Lecture 4:Liveness, Spectatorship and

Commerce in The First Golden Age of Television

In This Lecture

•PART ONE: Liveness

•PART TWO: Spectatorship

•PART THREE: Commerce

•The Link: unique qualities of the medium.

PART ONE: Liveness

•Critical Hierarchies

•Live Writers

•Live Directors

•Postmodern Comedy

Critical Hierarchies

• William Boddy “Live Television: Program Formats & Critical Hierarchies”

• “Aesthetic distinctions offered by television critics in the early 1950s were often argued on essentialist grounds.”

• TERM: “Essentialist.”

• Immediacy: viewer in two places at once.

• Jack Gould: “The emphasis is more on stereotypes.”

• Combines radio, theater and film

Live Demands•Simple sets

•fluid transitions

•careful scripting

•thorough rehearsals

•improvisation

•small cast

Writers

• Theater vs. Screen....Live TV vs. Taped/Filmed

• Lucille Ball: “We never discuss anything with them.”

•“Hollywood television took a leaf out of the notebook of the motion pictures and shoved its authors into a professional Siberia.” - Rod Serling. (Patterns, Requiem for a Heavy Weight)

•“The writer has a whole new, untouched area of drama in which to poke about. He can write about the simplest things, the smallest incidents, as long as they have dramatic significance.” - Paddy Chayefsky (Marty)

Marty

•(pause lecture. Under Learning Tasks view Marty. This live TV teleplay was written by Paddy Chayefsky. Consider how it uses the medium of live television to highlight the dramatic significance of small moments.)

Further Viewing: Network

•Writer: Paddy Chayefsky

•Director: Sidney Lumet

•Why this withering critique of the medium that launched their careers?

The Death of Liveness

•Was this a fall from grace?

Directors

• Sidney Lumet• LIVE TV: Playhouse 90, Kraft Television Theatre, Studio One

• FILM: 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, The Verdict

•Richard Lester (American born, British-based)

• LIVE TV: The Idiot Weekly (TV version of the Goon Show), A Show Called Fred, Son of Fred

• FILMS: Hard Days Night, Help!

•Robert Altman• LIVE TV: Kraft Television Theater

• FILM: MASH, Nashville

•John Frankenheimer • LIVE TV: Playhouse 90 (Days of Wine and Roses)

• FILM: The Manchrian Candidate, Birdman of Alcatraz, Seconds

Live Comedy

• Sid Caesar (b. 1922)

• Raised in Yonkers, New York, son of Jewish immigrants.

• Played sax in Catskills age 14.

• During WWII in Coast Guard, musical revues, comedy.

• First series, The Broadway Admiral Revue, signed by Pat Weaver.

Your Show of Shows

(1950-1954)

•90 Minute weekly sketch comedy show, NBC Saturday night.

•Q. Sound familiar?

Improvisation

•No cue cards

•No jokes

•Stretching and collapsing time

•“Double-talk”

•(pause lecture. Under Learning Tasks view Your Show of Shows. Consider how the cast gets laughs within the constraints of live television.)

The Writing Room

• Head Writer: Mel Tolkin (father of Michael)

• Writers: Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Danny Simon, and Carl Reiner.

• Caesars later writers: Larry Gelbarth (M*A*S*H) and Woody Allen.

Funny Fallout

•The Dick Van Dyke Show (Reiner Produced)

•My Favorite Year (Brooks Produced)

•Laughter on the 23rd Floor (Neil Simon wrote)

Postmodern Aesthetics

•Media about media (Flying Film Spoof)

•Defamiliarize (double-talk)

•Repurpose (quarrel to Beethoven)

•Deconstruct (the Haircuts)

Postmodern Theory

• Started as architectural style, then art, then anti-philosophy

• Rejects notion of “objective truth”

• Rejects concept of “Great Men”

• Rejects “master narratives.”

• Rejects rigid binaries (male/female)

• Perspective determined by language

• power relations

TV as Postmodern Medium

• Brings media into the home.

• Juxtaposes narratives, genres, worldviews.

• Immediacy of liveness: two minds.

• Time to fill.

• Low budget

• “Commercial” entertainment.

PART TWO: Spectatorship

Media Theory

•The ancient Greeks debated about the influence of media.

•Plato feared the medium of the written word.

•Thought it would atrophy memory.

•It also “froze” meaning, ending dialectic.

Media Effects• Plato also feared the advent

of Theatre. He felt that the “mimetic” (or mimicking) impulse would cause some audience members to copy what they saw on stage.

• Aristotle (Plato’s student) felt the theater could provide a healthy “cathartic” experience, allowing audiences to experience passionate and even violent impulses vicariously at a distance.

Media Effects Today•The debate continues and

is often politically charged.

•Conservatives often claim the media triggers violent, transgressive behavior.

•Liberals often claim the media “manufactures consent,” generating conformity and mindless consumerism.

William Bennett

Noam Chomsky

Effects and Contexts•Because human beings are

complex, we are never entirely unpredictable.

•In different contexts, different people behave in different ways.

•Thus no overarching theory of media effects can predict our behavior in all situations relating to all kinds of texts.

Example: Scarface

•Is Tony Montana a Role Model or a cautionary tale?

•Depends on who we are, where we live and how we see the world around us?

•How we are affected by the text is deeply influenced by social context.

• A middle class teen viewing the film Scarface may consider the gangster Tony Montana a tragic figure he would never wish to emulate (catharsis).

• Yet a culturally disenfranchised teen from a less privileged background might consider Montana--a rebellious hero, living the high life and going out in a blaze of glory--an attractive figure to model his behavior after (mimesis).

Different Media Influence us in Different Ways

• The advent of Gutenberg’s printing press ushered in mass literacy, the end of the Middle Ages, the Protestant Reformation and the Renaissance.

• A “text-based” worldview became dominant. Linear thinking was privileged, the pursuit of long intricate strands of thought.

The Industrial Revolution & the Birth of the Mass-

Media•In the 19th Century, the world’s

wealthiest nations were transformed from agrarian to industrial economies.

•Twin revolution: advent of mass-media.

•The camera, telegraph, phonograph, telephone, film camera and film projector - all invented in the 19th century.

•The advent of the mass-media, and in particular, the cinema, radically altered the way we see ourselves and the world around us.

From Linearity to Juxtaposition

•The text-based era inspired people to think in terms of fixed hierarchies, the linear pursuit of a single aim, idea or goal. (modernism)

•Mass-media culture inspires us to think in terms of juxtaposition and irony. (postmodernism)

The Revolution Has Been Televised

• Since the 19th Century, traditional cultural hierarchies have been radically destabilized.

• New technologies and modes of representation (film, TV, the internet) have encouraged us to juxtapose multiple worldviews and to question the presumed dominance of any single perspective.

The Revolution has been Commodified

•However, the mass-media not only challenges traditions. It also reinforces and reinscribes them.

•The modern media is a double edged sword, both subverting and maintaining cultural norms.

Media Theory

• WWI first modern industrial conflict, also first mass-mediated conflict.

• Media studies initially focused on media effects, specifically the new “science” of propaganda.

• The notion of direct “effects” has since been called into question, but theorists still debate how the media influences us and how we influence it.

Reactive audience (behaviorism)

Active Audience(“media savvy”)

PART THREE: Commerce

•Modern or Postmodern?

•Cultural Paradoxes

•Marketing Mickey

•Multi-platforming

•Synergy

Term: Modernism

•Confusing terms, as now related to both innovation and “traditional” perspective.

•Represents a time frame (modernity) and a state of mind (self-determination).

The Modern Era• Period from the Renaissance on (including the Enlightenment)

• OR...from early 20th century until 1960s (related to Modern art).

Characteristics of Modernism

• Belief in objective truth.

• Self-determination, boot-strap success

• Individual geniuses

• march toward perfection

• justified hierarchies: elitist, essentialist

• white, western male dominant

•(pause lecture. Under Learning Tasks view The Disneyland Story. Is this a modern or postmodern text? Note: in media studies, we refer to all forms of media as “texts.”)

The Disneyland Story

Disney as Modernist Text• Mickey as Horatio Alger

• Walt as patriarch

• Davy Crocket as heroic white western individual

• Disneyland as magical invented world

Disney as Postmodern Text• First “infommercial”

• Repurposing content of films

• Marketing tie-ins (Coonskin caps)

• Juxtaposing genres (Adventure Land, etc.)

Modernism vs.Postmodernism

• Jackson Pollack (modernist)

• Andy Warhol (postmodernist)

Cultural Paradoxes

•Tension between modernist “exceptionalism” and postmodern “commercialism” in the Disney brand create paradoxes.

Term: Paradox

•Para: beside or against

•doxa: belief

•Disney is the ultimate wholesome brand (modernism), but sex sells so its stars must be somewhat sexualized (postmodernism)

•Disney celebrates the heroic individual (modernism), but by carefully controlling and branding young generic talent, it can reap maximum profits (postmodernism)

Marketing Mickey

• Reading: C. Anderson, “Disney”

• Disney diversifies in 1940s, bad result

• Disney diversifies in 1950s, good result.

• Why the difference?

• When is diversifying a bad idea in terms of both cultural moment and brand?

Term: Multi-Platforming•Single franchise/multiple variations: Davy

Crocket record, cap, show, comic, and even a flashlight!

Term: Synergy•Various franchises within a corporation or

even different corporations, working cooperatively in mutually beneficial way (Disney theme park and films, ABC TV)

Next Time:THE CREEPING RED MENACE AND THE

ELECTRONIC HEARTH