Television and Why It Is the Way It Is - Essay Example

Television and Why It Is the Way It Is Television is a complex technology, although it doesn’t necessary seem so on the face of it.However, it certainly is capable of changing people’s psyches and personalities, and it has been noted for its importance and its ability to meet societal needs. These are just some of the ways that television is examined in the essays of Adorno, Williams and Spigel, each of which will be examined in this particular essay. Each of the commentators look at television, and the reason why television is the way that it is, in a different way. Williams looks at television in a broad sense, looking at the social history of television as a technology and the social history of the uses of television technology, as well as looking at cause and effect of technology and society. Spigel looks at television by examining how it affected domestic life in the 1950s, while also reflecting this domestic life. Adorno looked at television by how it affected the psyche and the personality. Williams (3) begins his essay by looking at looking at the general statement that television has altered our world. He argues that technology, in general, has profound social change, and television is a kind of technology that promotes this type of change. The technologies which had come along by Williams’ time, including the steam engine, the car, the atom bomb, and the television, are responsible for making modern man and making television. Or, alternatively, instead of looking at technology as changing and making the modern man, the technology is actually the consequence of a certain societal change. In this case, the new technology is a symptom of social change, not the cause of it. He also states that television, like most technology, sprung up as the result of a specific need that was expressed by society (Williams, 12). That was that technology was necessary because there was a need to spread the word of mouth communication, which is the dominant mode of getting a message out to the masses. There was an extension of the social, economic and political system, and television was a response to the crisis within this system. There came a time where there was a great complex group of technologies which were needed for society, including photography for community, family and personal life; the motion picture for entertainment; and the telephone for business communication (Williams, 12). The television, then, was the result of these needs coalescing, as the television essentially brings all of these technologies together. Therefore, the television, according to Williams (13), is a way for there to be social integration and control. While Williams viewed television in terms of how it was used, and why it was invented, Spigel (337) took a different tact. For her, television was not simply a matter of technology that is responding to different social needs, but television has also played a complex role in the individual households and individual lives that view it. Specifically, television was a representation of the gendered patterns of work and leisure in the average American home (Spigel, 337). Spigel examined advertisements that ran in women’s magazines to determine how television was integrated into the family life, particularly in the life of the woman. These advertisements provided a clue to how television was made sense of by the people and how television related to their lives. For a time, television was a way to restore the faith in the family. During the 1950s, Spigel (340) explains, there was much fracture in families, as the war had just ended, which left many broken homes. On television, however, there were portraits of happy and domestic people living lives that were not so fractured, so this was a way of restoring faith in the family. Moreover, women were affirmed through television, as television showed them that they were important. They often felt devalued, because their work was not seen as important in the overall scheme of things, but television helped them see that they were, in fact, important. Spigel (342) also looked at the problems that television brought to the 1950s woman –specifically that the television had the possibility of disrupting the household by focusing the woman’s attention on it, as opposed to her housework. The fear was that the woman might decide that she wanted to watch television instead of cooking and cleaning. This was the reason why, initially, daytime television was not available. The solution was to put on soap operas which had minimal action and visual interest, on the assumption that the housewife could listen to the television while she went about her daily chores. The television networks helpfully gave tips for housewives on how to watch the television while still getting their chores done (Spigel, 343). At the same time, television provided yet more proof that there was a domestic imbalance in the home – that the man was more powerful than the woman. Advertisements from the 1950s showed this power imbalance in a subtle way – the father was shown watching television in a relaxing position, while the woman was shown watching television while doing chores, such as ironing. Therefore, Spigel looked at television as affecting the domesticity of the household, while also reflecting the power imbalance in the household, while presenting women an encouraging message about family life. Williams examined television by looking at why it was invented, and social purpose it served by its invention. Adorno (213) looked at television in another light still. For Adorno, there are powerful psychodynamics behind television viewing. Television has an impact upon the audience’s psyche and personality, and this is the aspect that concerned him the most. He feels that the programs need to be improved, as they apparently had negative psychodynamic effects on people, and he also feels that the public is not necessarily aware of the negative psychodynamic effects that emanate from television programs (Adorno, 213). He looks at television as part of a larger schema of popular entertainment that has been around, entertaining the masses, for a number of years. That is, the works that are on television are those which are driven by the market, and written for the market, the same as the novels of Defoe and Richardson in 18th Century England. Moreover, he sees that the television programs have become standardized, and, therefore, exerts a kind of psychological control. There are automatized reactions to television, because so much is the same, and this, in turn, means that individual resistance is weakened (Adorno, 216). Adorno also states that television is standardized so that the audience may always know how the story will end, and this gives the audience a sense of comfort that is sought because humans have an infantile need for protection (Adorno, 217). He is critical of the ideas of conformity and conventionalism, because they become prescriptions for society on what one should or should not do. Television becomes a subtle way of encouraging the masses to aspire to the status quo, and be like everybody else, while also instructing the masses how these everybody elses should behave. This undermines conventional values and strips them of their substance, argues Adorno (220). Television does this by complex psychological processes which are insidious and appeal to our basic psychological instincts, because television is multilayered, with messages that are overt and covert, with hidden meanings which appeal to our basic subconscious brain. The hidden meaning is what enforces the conventions that television is trying to promote (Adorno, 221). Conclusion The television commentators look at television in different ways, ascertaining how society is affected by it. Williams argues that television provides an answer to some complex societal needs, as it integrated different mediums which are important to society and how society functions. Spigel sees that television is a way to keep the power relations distant between husband and wife, by subtly reinforcing the power imbalance, while still giving families comfort and hope that the world is not fractured. Adorno sees television’s insidious power in shaping society by reinforcing conventions through hidden messages that appeal to our deepest psychological needs. While each of these commentators provide a different perspective, each is meaningful, for each of the commentators are able to let us see how television has shaped us. References Adorno, Theodore. “How To Look at Television,” The Quarterly of Film, Radio and Television, 8.3: 213-235. Spigel, Lynn. “The Domestic Economy of Television Viewing in Postwar America,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 6.4: 337-354. Williams, Raymond. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Routledge, Read More