Understanding the Aesthetic Strategies of TV Programs - Essay Example

 In Barthes's The Pleasure of the Text published in 1973, which was first written in French and translated to English later on, Barthes sets out some of his ideas about literary theory. In his work, he distinguished two experiences one can derive from a text: the plaisir (translated to pleasure) and the jouissance (translated as bliss), the latter French word is also commonly associated with orgasmic pleasure and is commonly associated with sex. Plaisir, is the warmth of sensation that opposes cold abstraction, the contentment, euphoria and delectation that relieve the method, commitment and science of the intellect. It is found in texts of and on pleasure and connected to a reading practice that is comfortable and continuous with the culture of the reader and the text (Carvalho, n.d.) . Plaisir is not rooted in the subconscious but in the social domain. It results, either from the confirmation of an existing dominant status, or from a somewhat unexpected empowerment in seeing one's own position as the one equipped with the power of definition. The “power of definition” refers to the pleasure of discourse, a pleasure of positioning one's self in relation to the devices of social control. It is a pleasure of the political and social dimension that “comes from culture instead of breaking with it”. It is a “productive pleasure” that actively produces meaning from a cultural context in accordance with one's social disposition, one's habitus. Social pleasure always confirms one's identity – it “enjoys the persistence of the self”. Yet this does not automatically result in an affirmation of the dominant ideology as the confirmed identity might as well be the one opposing its hegemonic power (Lauteren, 2002). On the other hand, jouissance --- the bliss or ecstatic pleasure, is a feeling of enjoyment characterized by a state of loss. It is the pleasure of the body, as suggested by the sexual connotations, a pleasure of its own dissolution, of “losing oneself”. It is not centered in the heart (as opposed to the head) but spread sensuously across the entire surface of the body. Jouissance is found in a reading practice that "cruises" the text, skipping passages anticipated as "boring," looking up distractedly to consider ideas associated with the body and dissociated from the culture of the reader or the text. Jouissance is found in distinctly "writerly" readings and texts that multiply meanings for the sheer pleasure of it (Carvalho, n.d.). Bliss is not a product of social discourse, but exists outside of it. It occurs “at the moment of the breakdown of culture”. As John Fiske (1987) observes, it is rooted not in the affirmation or subversion of ideology but in its negation. According to Fiske, therefore, bliss is an “evasive pleasure”, the pleasure of body out of control, through which an individual escapes the structures of social discipline. It is not concerned with meaning, as is social pleasure, but with presence and intensity – it is a “reading with the body” (Lauteren, 2002). Further distinction is made by Barthes between the two experience with the elaboration that he made between texte lisible and texte scriptible. Both are French words as well that translates to “readerly texts” and “writerly texts”, respectively. In simpler terms, they correspond to “readable texts” and “writeable texts”. Plaisir or pleasure is equated with the readerly text because it does not challenge the reader's position as a subject. While the writerly text on the other hand is equated with jouissance or bliss because it “explodes literary codes and allows the reader to break out of his or her subject position” (Wikipedia, 2009). In his work S/Z (1970), Barthes made a clear distinction and critique between “readerly texts” and “writerly texts. He argued that texts categorized as “writerly” are more crucial than texts identified as “readerly”. According to him, this is so because a text's unity should be seen as being continuously re-established by its composition, the codes that form and constantly slide around within the text (Wikipedia, 2009). He continued to argue that “readerly text” readers are rather passive in nature. Whereas, “writerly text” readers are proactive in the sense that they need to exert effort, even to an extent where one re-enacts the actions of the writer himself. Barthes view “writerly texts” as open texts and are characterized by the nature of being indeterminant because they can always be written fresh. Thus, although there is pleasure derived from readerly texts, it is only when one reads a text in a manner where the perspective used is that of in a writerly point of view, that the experience become ecstatic, blissful or jouissance. To sum up, plaisir and jouissance are two French words that both refer to pleasure, albeit different kinds of pleasure (Ott, 2007). In “The Pleasure of the Text,” Barthes () argues that ‘plaisir’ is the pleasure associated with passive reading, while ‘jouissance’ is a more intense, erotic pleasure associated with blissful enjoyment. But, Barthes's notion about plaisir and jouissance has a linguistic origin. That the “text” it is referring to, would be commonly taken to be referring to written texts, and that the reading of that written text would be taken as the act of going through the literary text. Can it, then be applicable to media studies as well? The answer is yes. According to Gozzi (1998), a metaphor has crept into common use in academic discourse about television. He elaborated that the metaphor asserts that a television program is a “text”. A companion metaphor describes watching and interpreting as “reading”. The emerging and the proliferation of texts other than print texts (in this case, the television) has given way to questions about how we ‘read’ these texts and how we correlate with them to construct or produce meaning. Meskill (n.d.) proposed that electronic texts are similarly ‘read’, albeit in a producerly, multimodal fashion; in a manner akin to Barthes’ writerly readings where pleasure is inherent by virtue of the viewer/reader’s intimate familiarity with convention . According to Ott (2007), the television can be treated as a semiotic system and that pleasure/meaning/identity configurations are possible when audiences engage in televisual texts. He said that reflecting on the uniquely postmodern character of television as a communication medium, it can be argued that traditional hermeneutic and interpretive approaches to television such as artistic or ideological criticism should be accompanied by alternative approaches rooted in erotics. In accordance with those lines of argument, he developed the simile “television as a lover” to theorize a transgressive pleasure of television viewing that undermines hegemonic ideology by transforming viewers from patrons into producers. An important thing to remember though is the fact that pleasure is never a part of the text. There is no guarantee that one will get to experience the same kind of initial pleasure, enjoyment or bliss when a text, in the case, a television program, is experienced for the second time or so. Lauteren (2002) claimed that pleasure is always a product of the historical subject. That being said though, it should be made clear that although pleasure in never a part of the text, the text enables the pleasure, it acts as the catalyst, its raw material. Besides the work of Barthes, the works of Mulvey (1975) and Fiske (1987) contributes importance and significant understanding between the poetics of the text (in this consideration: the television) and the kind of pleasure we derive from it. The text shapes our pleasure, either through its signs, (for example, from the image of the female body as explored by the work of Mulvey, or the melody of a piece of music as exemplified by the work of Barthes) or through the modes of production, mediation and consumption of these signs (for example, the selective reading of a text, proposed by the work of Barthes, or the specific viewing of a movie in a cinema or a program in a television as discussed by Mulvey and Fiske). So how do these notions aid us in understanding the aesthetic strategies employed or at work with television programmes? It is common sense to say that it is human nature to long for pleasure, that all human beings could not resist, for the most part, anything that would give them pleasure. And as one of media's primarily objective is to profit, appealing to the pleasure works its way to the viewers. Reeves and Nass (1996) reported that the socio-emotive responses of people to screens support the notion that these encounters are inherently pleasurable, just as writerly readings are to those reading print. Hoenisch (2006), raised a question that concerns most if not all of us: “Why can't we stop watching TV even when we know it's awful?”. With that question posed, he offered an answer originating from Barthes's Pleasure of the Text as saying: "If I judge a text according to pleasure, I cannot go on to say: this one is good, that bad. No awards, no `critique," for this always implies a tactical aim, a social usage, and frequently an extenuating image-reservoir" (1975). And, more poignantly: "It is intermittence, as psychoanalysis has so rightly stated, which is erotic: the intermittence [for example] of skin flashing between two articles of clothing (trousers and sweater), between two edges (the open-necked shirt, the glove and the sleeve); it is this flash itself which seduces, or rather: the stage of an appearance-as-disappearance." Simply put, we watch because of pleasure. Pleasure may be provoked by the text (a television program to say), but it can only be experienced by the reader in the reading. It can thus differ from reader to reader, and even from reading to reading (Fiske, 1987). Fiske (1987) described in detail how pleasure is evoked from television programmes. For example, he said that “the close-ups in soap opera may produce jouissance. The in tense materiality of emotion in the magnified quiver of the mouth's corner, the narrowing of the eyes, the breathy wetness of the voice may produce tears in the viewer quite independent of, or even counter to, the narrative of what is said, of what is felt, and the way they work in the subjectivity. “A good cry” which Brown (1987) identifies as one of the pleasures of soap opera in not only the plaisir of expressing emotions and an identity which social life frequently represses, but often the jouissance of reading with the body, of establishing a presence that is outside culture, outside ideology, because it is not concerned with meaning (either of self or of the world) but with presence and intensity”. Action scenes would evoke plaisir, especially for male audiences, because it depicts societal's patriarchal idea, or male egotism and power. With a certain twist though, it can become jouissance on the other hand. For example, Fiske (1987) discussed that in wrestling, the referee is seen as someone having an important role and has a pivotal part in the game. But in some cases, the impotence of the referee is a major part of the pleasure. The constant role breaking of the wrestlers and their coaches indicates their refusal to accept the social roles imposed upon them. This can be read specifically, as the conflict between wild, “natural” masculinity and social control, or it can signify more generally the arbitrariness of rules and roles, and the “naturalness” of breaking or exceeding them. Poststructural ways of understanding appear to converge around a combined notion of gestalt, connectivity, and complexities via our idiosyncratically positioned relationships with representations. Form-meaning connections along the way are thereby transient and situation specific. In no other context is this more apparent than in electronic texts where viewing... television can often have a destabilizing effect, where a lack of direct, sensible connection of form and meaning can surprise, cause disequilibria, but ultimately please (Meskill, n.d.). Identification, the pleasurable production of meaning is one key factor to media's appeal to the viewers. That's why it is very important for those concerned about the formatting of the programmes to create a way for the audience to make connections to their “self” and to the material. A Meskill said, television has always been the medium par excellence to exploit viewers in this respect, first and foremost through compelling commercials. Earlier television commercial genres overtly manipulated our desire to see ourselves by making extensive use of picture-perfect, larger-than-life actors to tell us what we wanted, needed, and just had to have. Contemporary commercials employ this and additional, more subtle techniques that manipulate our desire to see ourselves on and through the screen, idealized or not. The television offers us a wide-array of models, idealisms, and behaviours in a manner by which we can witness the showcase of the different beings where we envision ourselves to be. This medium provides us an instant paradigm where we would want aspire ourselves to adapt, or maybe not. The nature of media being dynamic creates to us a rich environment that serves as our mirror and model. That media can appeal to our pleasure can sometimes, if not most of the times, can influence us as much. Having said that, although it can't be avoided that we appreciate the aesthetics of the television programmes we subscribe ourselves with, it is still wise that we contemplate and give way to introspection beyond what is aesthetically appealing to our senses. Bibliography Barthes, Roland. 1970. S/Z. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Translated by Richard Miller as S/Z. London: Cape. Barthes, Roland. (1975) The Pleasure of the Text. New York: Hill and Wang. Carvalho, John. "Barthes, Roland (1915–1980)". [Online] Available at: [Accessed 8 May 2009]. Fiske, John. 1987. Television Culture. London and New York. Gozzi, Raymond. 1998. Is Television a Text? ETC: A Review of General Semantics, Vol. 55. Hoenisch, Steve. Why Can't We Stop Watching TV? [Online] (Updated on 15 Feb 2006) Available at: http://www.criticism.com/md/theory1.html [Accessed 8 May 2009]. Lauteren, Georg. 2002. The Pleasure of the Playable Text:Towards an Aesthetic Theory of Computer Games. Proceedings of Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference,ed. Frans Mäyrä. Tampere: Tampere University Press. Meskill, Carla. Producerly Texts: Implications for Language in Education. [Online] Available at: http://www.albany.edu/etap/faculty/CarlaMeskill/publication/Prod pleasures.doc [Accessed on 8 May 2009]. Mulvey, Laura. 1975. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. In Screen 16.3 : pp. 6-18. Reeves, B. and Nass, C. (1996) The Media Equation. New York: Cambridge University Press and CSLI Publications. Ott, Bryan. 2007. Television as Lover, Part I: Writing Dirty Theory. Critical Methodologies, Vol 7. No. 1, pp. 26-47. Wikipedia. 2009. The Pleasure of the Text. [Online] (Updated 22 April 2009) Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pleasure_of_the_Text [Accessed 8 May 2009]. Read More