I really enjoyed reading Barnouw's Tube of Plenty. For me, this book synthesized the themes that we've been discussing individually throughout the semester: how communications is tied to oral traditions, written traditions, familial traditions, justice, technological advances, politics, nationalism, war, and collective memory. It also reinforced something I noticed a few weeks ago: that historically, the development of the way we communicate is the domain of white men. Neither of these statements is meant as a criticism, only as an observation.
I walk away from this week's readings feeling like television is just another vehicle by which the public can be manipulated by "the man." Television executives, advertisers, politicians, and government representatives are all in bed together. It's utterly exasperating! TV execs want to generate revenue from advertisers who only want to be associated with the most desirable programming which only gets funded if it meets certain criteria and can pass the litmus test of politics (should we reveal this information to the public?).
Barnouw writes about the television coverage in the wake of Kennedy's assassination. While I wasn't alive to witness that myself, I imagine that it felt a lot like 9/11. Is TV, then, responsible for the fetishization of national and international tragedy? A lot of evidence indicates that it is: during my lifetime alone, we have had exhaustive, overwhelming coverage of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the earthquake in Haiti, the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia, and the Oklahoma City bombings, to name a few. Does television numb us to tragedy, or does it create an insatiable desire for visual representations of those tragedies?
Another question: Is the Internet the new television? I think the Internet actually has the potential to undermine television. If television is a tool by which the masses can be manipulated, then the Internet (while it can also serve that function), provides an opportunity to circumvent that system. Television projects the voices of few to the masses. The Internet projects the voices of the masses to the masses and sometimes projects the voices of the masses back to the few - without politics, governments, or business executives "cluttering the airwaves" so to speak.
Can the Internet catch up to TV? I think it has a fighting chance. In its heyday, the television replaced newspapers as Americans' primary news source. A recent study (March 2010) from the Pew Internet & American Life Project reveals that the Internet is now the third most popular source for news (behind local and cable television). If this week's WikiLeaks scandal is any indication of the public's ability to a) get news on the web and b) get news that other sources won't report, then I think the Internet has a fighting chance, indeed. I couldn't find a study about this, but I wonder how many people watch cable TV versus the number of people who seek entertainment from YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, CastTV, or other online entertainment sites.
And the battle to control our minds rages on. . .
EDIT: Barnouw writes that "The advent of television was widely compared, in its impact, with that of the Gutenberg printing press centuries earlier. Television was beginning to be seen as the more revolutionary innovation." (page 467) We can obviously substitute the Internet here and have a contemporary version of the sentences: The advent of the Internet was widely compared, in its impact, with that of the television. The Internet was beginning to be seen as the more revolutionary innovation.
I've been thinking a lot about whether or not the Internet can really unseat television in a meaningful way. And I think it can. But it will be tricky to measure. On the one hand, the Internet can become just another screen we look at. Whether we watch NBC on a TV or online is irrelevant if the content is the same. But once we utilize the web to go beyond the content that corporations feed to us, then the Internet will have truly become a "revolutionary innovation." If it's just another screen by which we absorb the same material that's on the television, then it falls short of its potential to unseat the manipulative machinery behind the television.
Edit #2: It is absolutely incredible how much attention this book has gotten. Whether I was reading on the train, during lunch, or around relatives, everyone felt comfortable commenting on it - after seeing only the title! One of my colleagues described the phenomenon: That's because everyone's an expert. We all have TV experiences. We've all invested in it.
Reading the first half of your post I kept thinking back to Gitlin's argument that "hegemony is a collaboration" (241). He concedes that it is an unequal collaboration, one in which the producers have a lot more power than the consumers, but it is a collaboration nonetheless: it works because we, the consumers consent to it. I like his distinction at the bottom of p. 241 between absolute power, which "coerces" or manipulates, and hegemonic power, which "persuades, coaxes, rewards, chastises."
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