For the independent studies course I’m directing this semester on the topic of “Digital Media and Humanities Scholarship,” three students have set up a nice looking blog, Bonfire of the Televised Profanities (or “Profanity TV” for short), which went online today. They’ve even put together a video “trailer” for the blog, which provides some context and gives a taste of what they’ll be doing there. Check it out!
Recently I posted about a paper of mine coming out in the open-access journal Phenomenology & Practice, entitled “Faith in Technology: Televangelism and the Mediation of Immediate Experience.” Now, my article, along with the new issue of P & P, has gone online (the entire contents can be found here), and I hope that you’ll take a look.
Anyway, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I think that the “techno-phenomenological” approach I have taken towards the topic of televangelism may also be adaptable to fictional narrative television, and that it might thus provide a complement to — not a replacement for — more traditional (narratological-formal and industrial-social-contextual) approaches to television studies. This remains to be seen, of course, and I look forward to hearing your comments on the text itself and on the prospects of adapting its methodology to other sorts of projects.
Incidentally, though, since the time of suggesting that such adaptation might be possible, it has occurred to me that I once undertook a very cursory attempt at doing just that: in a very short essay, entitled “Techno-Habitats and Media Habits: Reflections on Contemporary Children’s Television” (originally published in Philament 12), I implicitly assumed a techno-phenomenological approach to young children’s TV shows like Teletubbies, Bob the Builder, or Lunar Jim. That paper, roughly contemporary with my initial work on the televangelism paper, just sketched out some ideas, presenting them in a literally essayistic manner, while the theoretical and methodological underpinnings were not explored. Now, with the publication of the televangelism paper, the methodology in particular has become available for inspection (the deeper theoretical implications, on the other hand, remain buried in the media-philosophical Part Two of my dissertation, Postnaturalism: Frankenstein, Film, and the Anthropotechnical Interface). So please take a look and let me know what you think about the prospects for a techno-phenomenological form of television studies.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXT2E9Ccc8A]
Here are a couple of videos relevant to tonight’s Film & TV Reading Group discussion of Lynn Spigel’s “Television, the Housewife, and the Museum of Modern Art.” Above: Salvador Dali’s January 27, 1957 appearance on What’s My Line? Below: a sequence from Barbra Streisand’s 1967 Color Me Barbra and an excerpt from Jackie Kennedy’s tour of the White House on Valentine’s Day, 1962.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n61ULav1uYg]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft1wgQ0VYrc]
The Film & TV Reading Group at the Leibniz Universität Hannover will be meeting this Wednesday, November 30, 2011, to discuss Lynn Spigel‘s “Television, The Housewife, and the Museum of Modern Art” (in Television after TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition, ed. Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson; Durham & London: Duke UP, 2004; pp. 349-385).
Lynn Spigel will be one of our keynote speakers at “Cultural Distinctions Remediated: Beyond the High, the Low, and the Middle,” December 15-17, 2011. Her talk is entitled “Designer TV: Television and the Taste for Modernism in Mid-Century America” (click for abstract).
The reading group will meet at 6:00 pm in room 609 (in the “Conti-Hochhaus” at Königsworther Platz 1). New members are always welcome to join us!
Lately, there has been a lot going on around here in the area of TV studies: the Film & TV Reading Group recently discussed Jason Mittell’s work, and we are preparing to discuss that of Lynn Spigel; moreover, these two scholars, Mittell and Spigel, will be giving keynotes at the “Cultural Distinctions Remediated” conference, which is being co-organized by the Initiative for Interdisciplinary Media Research. Also, Jason Mittell is giving a series of workshops in Göttingen, in association with the DFG Research Unit “Popular Seriality — Aesthetics and Practice.” And in Hannover, Florian Groß has been teaching a seminar on Mad Men, while a number of interesting student projects are currently dealing with a variety of contemporary television series. In this context, and against the background of discussions of “Quality TV,” “narrative complexity,” and, more generally, of narrative TV, I’d like to point to some alternative avenues that I’ve been exploring — avenues that, while in no way opposed to the type of work that’s been going on of late, might enrich TV studies through a very different set of emphases, objects, and approaches.
The background for this post is that I have just received final confirmation that a paper of mine, “Faith in Technology: Televangelism and the Mediation of Immediate Experience,” has been accepted and will be appearing soon in Phenomenology & Practice. The paper, which attempts a “techno-phenomenology” of faith-healing televangelism and the call to “touch the screen,” has its origins in a collaborative effort between myself and Christoph Bestian, formerly a sociology grad student here in Hannover. Together, we sought to synthesize our areas of expertise in, respectively, phenomenological approaches to media and the sociology of religion in order to forge a type of media analysis that would be more robust than either of the individual approaches in isolation — a polyvocal approach able to draw strength from interdisciplinary dialogue and differences of perspective. Of course, I take full responsibility for any shortcomings in this product of our collaboration, but I am grateful to Christoph for challenging my views and placing them alongside a very different tradition of inquiry. What I’d like to suggest is that perhaps a similarly productive encounter is possible between the phenomenological perspective that I outline in the paper on televangelism and the topics and approaches of TV studies; especially studies that emphasize the self-reflexivity of contemporary television stand to profit, I believe, from a detailed phenomenological analysis of embodied reception — not as a replacement for, but as a complement to, the more standard narratological perspectives.
In any case, this is work that remains to be done. My paper on televangelism does not engage directly with work in the field of TV studies, but it might be seen as laying a foundation for that sort of encounter. Here is the abstract for the paper:
This paper seeks to illuminate the experiential structures implied in the viewing of televangelistic programming — with particular focus on programming of the charismatic faith-healing variety that culminates in the televangelist’s appeal to viewers to “touch the screen” and consummate a communion that transcends the separation implied by the televisual medium. By way of a “techno-phenomenological” analysis of this marginal media scenario, faith-healing televangelism is shown to involve experiential paradoxes that are tied to processes of social marginalization as well. Thus, it is argued, faith-healing televangelism functions as a call to viewers to mount a head-on confrontation with the technological infrastructure of secular modernity and thereby to effect a specifically material negotiation of evangelical culture’s precarious balancing act between an entrenchment in and a self-marginalization from the secular mainstream.
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And here is the original introduction to the paper, which has now fallen to the cutting-room floor, but which gives an idea of the paper’s approach and the scope of the argument:
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Faith in Technology: Televangelism and the Mediation of Immediate Experience
Shane Denson
What is it like to watch televangelism? For many late-night channel surfers, televangelism occasionally provides a form of entertaining diversion unsurpassed on the fringe-media landscape of infomercials and call-in astrology consultations for its ability to render parody superfluous. If, however, the spectacles of mass-mediated religion offer amusement to the unbeliever, they can as readily generate an unsettling experience of disbelief: how can anyone, such a viewer may ask, take these transparent displays of charlatanry seriously? Watching televangelism as unintentional comedy is therefore a short-lived entertainment, for its pleasures are both predicated upon and potentially undermined by a distanced attitude, one that implies a critical difference from, and thus also a particular reading of, what it must be like for true believers to watch the shows. Thus, entertainment easily gives way to a form of armchair sociology or media psychology, and the humor of a televangelist asking us to put our hand on the screen to feel the power of the holy spirit becomes diluted by a concern for, or a disdain of, the “other” viewer: one naïve enough to buy into the promises of spiritual fulfillment and worldly prosperity that are peddled like so much snake oil. Like the promised rewards, the investments being solicited are both spiritual and material, and the spectacular lifestyle enjoyed by some televangelists, flying in private jets from one engagement to the next to spread the gospel to an audience that includes some of the poorest members of society, attests both to the existence of the true believer and to the dishonorable motivations of many TV preachers. Indeed, perennial sex and fraud scandals have made it common knowledge that televangelists don’t always practice what they preach, thus making it hard for our late-night ironic viewers to sympathize with their exploited counterparts.
Interpreting televangelists’ praxeological inconsistencies not just as typically human failures but as straightforward hypocrisy, the increasingly cynical viewer may detect broader contradictions in the televangelistic enterprise. The conservative theology espoused on the airwaves often seems quite at odds with the modern secular world, and yet televangelism is inextricably tied up with modernity. TV ministries often engage directly in worldly politics, lending their support to causes ranging from anti-pornography crusades to the waging of mechanized wars on foreign soil. Even more centrally, religious conservatives never tire of condemning “the media,” not just for the perceived liberal slant or indecency that characterizes mainstream media contents but also for the isolating effects of modern technological forms of mediation; paradoxically, though, televangelism is dependent for its very existence on precisely these technologies of mass communication.
However, focusing on these apparent contradictions fails to capture some of the most significant paradoxes of televangelism. Certainly, part of the reason is that the perspective outlined above — that of “the cynic” — is based on simplifying stereotypes of televangelists, their modes of address, and their audiences. Not only is there a wide range of theological content represented in today’s religious programming, but also a variety of styles and formats employed in televangelism (religious talk shows, alternative news programs, infomercial-type paid programming, issue-based fundraisers, preacher-centered motivational shows, and televised congregational church services, among others). Accordingly, it is impossible to identify a singular implied viewer or a coherent audience base of televangelism. The supposed contradictions with which televangelism is charged, it might be argued, are partially generated by lumping these differences indiscriminately together. Nevertheless, the cynic’s view does touch upon one of the central issues that any analysis of televangelism must confront—the tension between conservative evangelical theology and the mediating technology of television. But we fail to appreciate the tension’s true import so long as we reduce it to a competition between an anti-modern message and a modern channel of dissemination. At stake is not a message per se at all, I suggest, but an experience that is seen as immediate — the direct communion of the holy spirit with a believer’s body and soul. The question, then, is this: how can an inherently immediate experience be communicated through electronic media?
Posing the question in this way requires that we go beyond the dichotomies of form/content or channel/message and focus instead on the embodied experience of viewing televangelism. Recognizing the variety of televangelism’s forms and modes of address, I seek not to reify one monolithic type of televangelistic experience but to address a paradigm case in which the tension between mediation and immediatism reaches its apex: the case of the televangelist faith-healer’s appeal to viewers to touch the screen and consummate a laying on of hands at a distance. As a preliminary step towards such a phenomenological analysis, we must contextualize televangelism historically and socially and reconsider the relations between conservative evangelicalism and modern processes of secularization. As I shall demonstrate, there is an inherent connection between the two that is obfuscated by emphasizing evangelicalism’s overt rejections of secular modernity. At the level of religious practice, conservative evangelicalism and fundamentalism are less anti-modern movements than they are attempts to provide an alternative experience of modernity. As one field of such practice, televangelism is a decidedly modern phenomenon; it aims not to disseminate a pre-existing (and pre-modern) message but actively produces new constellations of discursive content and experience that are intrinsically tied to modernity and its technologies. Seen from this angle, the televangelist’s invitation to touch the TV screen is an invitation to confront modernity head on, to undergo not just a test of faith but to submit oneself to a technological ordeal in which a qualitatively new form of faith may emerge that is tuned to and inseparable from the technological conditions of modernity. Thus, rather than writing off viewers’ interaction with the screen as simple-minded naiveté that overlooks a damning contradiction, we must come to appreciate the dynamic, productive potential of the experiential paradox.
Television scholar Jason Mittell, who is currently spending a year in Göttingen as a fellow in the DFG Research Unit “Popular Seriality–Aesthetics and Practice,” will–as readers of this blog will already know–be giving one of two keynote lectures at our conference “Cultural Distinctions Remediated,” December 15-17, 2011 (our other keynote speaker is Lynn Spigel).
Now, over at his blog Just TV, Jason has a new post on Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine’s new book Legitimating Television: Media Convergence & Cultural Status. And included in this “unofficial review” (as he puts it) of Newman and Levine’s book is also what would appear to be an (unofficial?) preview of Jason’s talk in Hannover. I recommend reading the review in full, but I wanted to highlight those points that give us an idea of what kind of ground we can expect Jason to be covering in his keynote, “The Complexity of Quality.”
Jason writes, “this response [to Newman and Levine’s book] will be part of a larger argument I’ll be making in a presentation next month at the conference Cultural Distinctions Remediated at University of Hannover, so I will point toward larger arguments still to come, and welcome feedback to help me craft that talk.”
So what can we look forward to in Mittell’s keynote? Jason identifies what he takes to be a central problem in Legitimating Television: namely, a “false dichotomy” that he sees Newman and Levine putting forward in their book. According to Mittell:
“The book links the discourses of legitimation to structures of gender and class, highlighting how television has traditionally been feminized and stigmatized as lowbrow, arguing that recent legitimation practices work to masculinize and “class up” television. While I think this is correct, I do not see it as a self-evident problem to be avoided at all costs like Newman & Levine seem to, as suggested by the book’s final words: “We love television. But legitimizing that love at such a cost? Paying for the legitimation of the medium through a perpetuation of hierarchies of taste and cultural value and inequalities of class and gender? No” (171). Implied in this conclusion and their analysis throughout is a choice: we (as scholars, critics and viewers) can either embrace legitimation and its concomitant reinforcement of cultural hierarchies, or we can reject it, with the latter framed as the more politically progressive choice.”
Later, and here’s where we get an indication of – some very interesting – things to come at his talk in December, Jason writes:
“What I wanted from the book that I did not get was a third way to discuss television’s cultural legitimation, moving beyond either accepting legitimation discourses of quality television and progress, or rejecting them as illegitimate or ungrounded. (In my talk at Hannover, I hope to offer such a third approach, specifically concerning cultural evaluation.)”
I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that these are exciting prospects; I very much look forward to hearing Jason’s argument and his vision of/for this “third way.”
On November 25-26, 2011, the Bauhaus University Weimar will be hosting the conference “Lost in Media,” where the focus will be on the television series Lost as a form of reflection and projection of media change. Among the speakers, two members of the DFG Research Unit “Popular Seriality–Aesthetics and Practice” will be giving talks at the conference:
Jason Mittell, Fellow of the Research Unit, will be giving a keynote address entitled “Getting Lost in Transmedia: The Perils and Possibilities of Mapping an Island Across Media,” and Andreas Jahn-Sudmann will be speaking on “Watching Lost and Exploring Outbidding (Überbietung) as a Serial Form.”
For further information and the full conference program click here. Here is the conference description:
Kaum eine Fernsehserie lässt sich aus so vielfältigen Perspektiven betrachten wie LOST. Die Serie bringt eine weitläufige wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung hervor, die um die Komplexität ihrer narrativen und zeitlichen Struktur kreist oder sich mit der Tatsache beschäftigt, dass kaum eine Serie bisher so massiv ihre Expansion in andere Medien vorangetrieben und so konsequent Genre-Grenzen unterlaufen hat. Zudem bildet sich um LOST eine sehr aktive Fangemeinde, die nicht nur auf die quasi-religiösen, quasi-philosophischen Eschatologien der Serie reagiert, sondern Lost auf einer Vielfalt neuer digitaler Medienplattformen rezipiert und dort mit den Themenkomplexen der Serie interagiert.
Gerade wegen ihrer thematischen und ästhetischen Reichhaltigkeit wird die Tagung eine ganz spezifische Interessenlage an die Serie herantragen. Es soll darum gehen, LOST als eine Agentur der Reflexion und der Projektion des (medialen) Wandels zu untersuchen. Dabei nimmt LOST allerdings auf faszinierende Weise eine widersprüchliche und ambivalente Rolle in Bezug auf Mediatisierung und medialen Wandel ein, die ein zentrales Motiv einer wissenschaftlichen Auseinandersetzung und der besonderen Reflexionsleistung der Serie darstellen: Während auf vielfältige Weise Effekte des medialen Wandels mit der Serie verknüpft sind – z. B. transmediales Erzählen, neue televisuelle Rezeptionsformen, TV III-Age – und die Serie in der Narration und Ästhetik Effekte des vernetzten, nicht-linearen Erzählens und der Genreüberschreitung realisiert, verweist die Serie selbst jedoch nicht unmittelbar auf die Mediatisierung, die sie symbolisiert und auch verursacht.
Diese konkrete Fragestellung ist eingebettet in eine generelle Vermutung zum Verhältnis des Fernsehens und des (medialen) Wandels, wonach das Medium eine dreifache Funktion im Geschehen des Medienwandels seit 1950 und insbesondere in der aktuellen Gegenwart erfüllt. Es beobachtet – erstens – den Wandel und macht ihn so auf strukturierte Weise sichtbar. Diese Beobachtungen stellt es dann dem Sinnhaushalt, dem Selbstbeschreibungs- und Selbstverfertigungszyklus der Gesellschaft zur Verfügung. In dem Umfang, in dem es dabei – zweitens – insbesondere den Medien eine z.B. technologische, institutionelle oder epistemische Mitwirkung oder gar Urheberschaft am beobachteten Wandel beimisst, ist es selbst Agent des Wandels und beobachtet sich selbst auf diese Funktion hin. Schließlich ist es – drittens – dem beobachteten Wandel bzw. seinen Folgen wiederum seinerseits ausgesetzt und muss die Formen und Formate seiner Beobachtungen ständig den Wirkungen des beobachteten Wandels aussetzen, muss den Wandel an sich selbst mitvollziehen. Insbesondere der Fernsehserie, auf Grund ihrer Fiktionskraft und spezifischen Temporalität, kommt dabei, so die These, eine herausgehobene Position zu.
Am Beispiel von LOST soll dieser These nachgegangen werden. Angesprochen ist dabei vor allem der mediale Grenzgang der Serie selbst, deren Ausweitung in andere Medien nichts weniger aufwirft als die Frage nach dem Status ihres Herkunftsmediums Fernsehen innerhalb der rezenten multiplen Medienlandschaft, aber auch etwa ihre komplexe Temporalität, welche die Theoretisierung televisiver Zeitlichkeit und auch Historizität vor neue Herausforderungen stellt.
Kontakt: Dipl.-Kulturwiss. (Medien) Daniela Wentz, daniela.wentz [at] uni-weimar.de
Weitere Informationen zum Projekt:
The Film & TV Reading Group at the Leibniz Universität Hannover will be meeting next Wednesday, October 26, 2011, to discuss Jason Mittell’s oft-cited article “Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television” (from The Velvet Light Trap 58 (Fall 2006), also downloadable from Mittell’s website at Middlebury College here). We will meet at 6:00 pm in room 609 (in the “Conti-Hochhaus” at Königsworther Platz 1). New members are always welcome to join us!
Abstract for Jason Mittel’s keynote at “Cultural Distinctions Remediated: Beyond the High, the Low, and the Middle” (Leibniz University of Hannover, 15-17 December 2011):
The Complexity of Quality: Cultural Hierarchies & Aesthetic Evaluation in Contemporary Television
Jason Mittell (American Studies, Film & Media Culture, Middlebury)
In much popular and scholarly discourse about television, there is a slippage between the terms “quality television” and “narrative complexity.” The former is a well-worn signifier demarcating both an aesthetic judgment, and an assumed set of textual norms and mode of address—in the vein of Bourdieu, it is a classification that classifies the classifier. Narrative complexity, as I and other scholars have been exploring, is a textual mode that highlights particular storytelling structures, industrial formations, and strategies of consumption, but it need not inherently point to an evaluative hierarchy. In this talk, I will tease out the differences and overlaps between these two cultural categories, arguing that by dispensing with the rhetoric of quality television, we can use narrative complexity as one (of many) measures of aesthetic evaluation that might present a more nuanced way of discussing televisual taste and value.
Abstract for Florian Groß’s talk at “Cultural Distinctions Remediated: Beyond the High, the Low, and the Middle” (Leibniz University of Hannover, 15-17 December 2011):
‘Quality TV’ and ‘Graphic Novel’: What’s in a Name?
Florian Groß (American Studies, Hannover)
The terms Quality TV and Graphic Novel have become almost synonymous with a broad revaluation of television and comics, two media that have traditionally been related exclusively to popular, even mass, culture. And yet, both terms are less about a democratization of taste than about new forms of cultural distinction. Reminiscent of, though by no means identical with, historical processes of cultural distinction, both Quality TV and Graphic Novel refer to a certain subset of texts with higher aesthetic value and emphasize the role of creativity and education in their production as well as reception. Given the media to which these two categories of cultural distinction are applied and the timeframe in which they have developed, it is necessary to come to terms with their specific forms of distinction, which can no longer be read along the lines of high/low culture, but rather as embedded processes of an ever-expanding popular culture that ultimately have to be considered on their own.
Through an analysis of the terms Quality TV and Graphic Novel with respect to collaborative and individual authorship/production, seriality, and media convergence, this talk attempts to highlight the specific cultural work performed by the terms and thus shed light on related intra-/intermedial developments. Furthermore, it will explore their instrumentality in redefining television and comics, as well as media culture in general, in times of a rapidly changing media landscape.