True Blood title sequence: sexual consumption and intolerance of the Other

The beginning title sequence of True Blood effectively sets the location and space in which the narrative will unfold while alluding to racial tensions and overt themes of sex and consumption. In a recent interview, design house Digital Kitchen’s Shawn Fedorchuk, one of the main creatives behind the storyboarding of the True Blood title sequence, alleged he wanted the credits to take on “a point of view of a supernatural, predatory creature observing human beings from the shadows, almost stalking them” [1]. The sequence begins underwater with the camera tilting up from a menacing, amphibious creature lurking in the depths, immediately cutting to the eye of a crocodile that stares unblinking at the camera. The following shots pan across deserted swamplands, simultaneously locating the action in the Southern state of Louisiana (well-known for its alluvial topography) while also insinuating that the actions to unfold will deal with “creatures” literally hidden beneath the surface of society, important both symbolically and literally as vampires sleep underground.

As the camera takes the viewer away from the swamplands and along the streets of a town lined with picaresque houses and Mom and Pop liquor stores, we get our first clear glimpse of some of the people who inhabit this Louisiana town: black women in their Sunday best, singing and clapping their hands in a church choir. As the camera continues to move along the sleepy storefront of a liquor store, there is a cut to archival black and white footage of civil unrest between black and white folks with an intervention by police officers. The archival footage has most likely been taken from a Civil Rights protest in the 1960s, hinting to the viewer that similar struggles for civil rights will unfold during the course of the program’s narrative, in this case contextualized with the Vampire Rights Movement. The choice to show these black faces after images of the creatures that inhabit the literal underbelly of the swamplands might be an attempt to prepare the audience for the depiction of a Southern state that still positions minorities against the hegemonic norm of whiteness, a town in which white (in this case white human) authority is bureaucratically superior and minorities still maintain their traditional Southern role of persecution.

The next several bodies that we see are white and evoke some reference – both indirect and directly – to either sexuality or violence: the black lingerie-clad body of a blond woman on a bed; the youthful, blank face of a tiny, hood-adorned Ku Klux Klan member; two young boys smearing a pulverized strawberry across their mouths and chins. After the shot of the half-naked white body, the audience is privy to the slow-motion shot of a snake preparing to strike an unseen victim that might just be the unassuming white woman. If we are to link the black, minority bodies to their introduction by gruesome yet inactive swamp creatures, then the same connection can be made for the relationship between the predatory snake and the violent and sexualized white bodies: in this narrative, white men are the main purveyors of violence who are able to comfortably and openly speak about killing the minority vampire figures.

As the title sequence moves on, we see several female bodies juxtaposed with dead or dying animals: an image of a white, half-naked woman lying down just before a shot of a flattened, bloody possum; in another sequence, a woman sits on the edge of a pool table, wrapping her legs around a man’s waist, an image in contrast with a frog being consumed by a Venus Flytrap. By equating these sexual bodies with dead animals and creatures capable of consumption, the title sequence attempts to align sexuality with nonhuman creatures in a way that foreshadows the miscegenation between humans and the undead that is to occur in the program's narrative. The Venus Flytrap functions as a visual play on the vagina dentata, a male fear of the female sex organ as a possible castrator due to the female’s “lack” of a phallus [2] that can be said to serve as a comment on Jason Stackhouse's fear of having sex with both vampires and women who have copulated with vampires. The dead, bloody possum juxtaposed with the white, half-naked female body serves as a reference to “meat” available for consumption by whatever creature intends to feed on it. As the song “Bad Things” by Jace Everett plays to its end, the sequence culminates with convulsing black bodies in a Baptist church and two white men baptizing a white woman in a lake. The intense religious imagery, including a brief shot of a cross bursting into flames and two white women praying and crying, notifies the viewer of the religiously-informed position of most of the people in this small Southern town. If the brief shot in this title sequence of a church sign reading "God Hates Fangs" didn't do enough to convince the audience that this town is filled with intolerance of the Other - even an Other who looks so much like them as humans - the events that unfold on the show will convincingly depict this atmosphere of religiously- and socially-formed intolerance in due time.

[1] Shawn Fedorchuk. Qtd in “Doing Baptisms, Bars and Bloodlust.” Red Orbit, 10 September 2008. http://www.redorbit.com/news/entertainment/1550089/doing_baptisms_bars_and_bloodlust/index.html

[2] Discussed in Barbara Creed. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis. New York: Routldge, 1993. 105 - 121.

The Degendering of Black Male Performers

Take a look at this video which showcases dance moves of the 1930s like the Charleston, the Lindy Hop and the Shim Sham as exemplified by black performers Al Minns and Leon James in both solo and partner dance.



Interestingly enough, these men who start as individual male performers begin to perform as partners, a traditionally male-female relationship in the world of dance. Would this have been acceptable with a white male-male partnership on 1960s national television? As this video is showcasing the "jazz" (read: black) dance moves that came out of "jazz" (again, read: black) clubs of the era, having two white performers enact these moves would have been inappropriate to some degree. But the interesting choice to have two black men perform a partner dance that includes close body contact and lifts (that should be massively accredited for their impressive athleticism) proves the point of many scholars that mediated representations of black men and women are usually "divested of their sexuality"(i) on television or are portraying "neutered or counterfeit sexuality"(ii) in films. Also, their attire is reminiscent of a bellhop's or a waiter's uniform, warranting another reading of the chosen costume for these black entertainers as congruous with other contemporary representations of black men as individuals in the service industry.

Despite these observations, the video is pretty fantastically entertaining in its own right, is it not?

(i) Donald Bogle, Primetime Blues: African Americans on Network Television. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), 37.

(ii) Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), 72.

The Cinematic and Televisual Vampire as the Imaginary Racial and Sexual "Other"

The title of this blog post is a topic I am brainstorming on as a potential avenue of exploration for the final paper in my Race, Ethnicity, and Class in the Media course that I am taking this semester with Racquel Gates. This concept is inspired by some of my burgeoning and preliminary thoughts on the blurry and fluctuating metaphor of the vampire as the racially- or sexually-marginalized "Other" on the HBO Original Series True Blood.

My hope is to investigate the use of the vampire as a representative figure for at once gay communities and minority populations both, utilizing discursive analysis of phrases employed on this program such as "coming out of the coffin" - which is easily identified as a signifier for queer culture and the process of "coming out of the closet" - or the term "Vampire Rights Movement," a battle for equality and rights being waged by the vampires of True Blood that was fought by African Americans in this country in the 1960s with the Civil Rights Movement, a struggle for equal representation and opportunities that still continues within the LGBTQ community to this day. In most cases, the vampire takes the place of the discriminated or marginalized Other, especially in the small fictional town of Bon Temps, Louisiana featured in True Blood; while we are not sure that there was extreme racism against the racial Other - and in Bon Temps, LA, this racial Other is by all accounts a member of the black community - before the vampires came out of the coffin a few years prior to the time period of the first season of the series (roughly present day), it can be certain that all hatred, stereotyping, fear and bigotry that was focused on and around the racial Other in Bon Temps is now directed at the vampires as the new Other. The vampire seems to be a convenient stand-in for a minority, since vampires are purely mythical beings, able to become a location for metaphor, for symbolism, for contextualized signification.

There is a fascinating character on True Blood on whom I would like to focus seeing as he shares almost the same role of the Other as the vampires but without the same of stigmatization: Lafayette Reynolds, a homosexual black short-order cook, public works employee, prostitute and drug dealer. Wearing multiple hats with his myriad professions he is one of the keenest and most strong-willed characters on the show, having connections with the mainstream public in his restaurant job, with the hidden sexual life of some of the high-ranking men in his town through his prostitution and webcam service on his website, as well as with the vampire community as a dealer of "V," or vampire blood, a substance that seems to have similar attributes to ecstasy - or, as an active party or rave subculture would refer to it, "E." He is also the physical personification of what the vampires signify as the Other as a black man and a homosexual man, for at times the vampire can represent both the racial and the sexual Other, never quite committing to one or the other.

So far, I believe I will most likely be referencing the writing of bell hooks, Homi K. Bhabha, and Stuart Hall. As I delve deeper into the semester, I am sure I will find more and more that I can work into this paper. Any suggestions? Please leave them in the comments!

I am also interested in investigating the rumblings I've heard surrounding queer identifications with and sociological analyses of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and other more classic representations of vampires in the cinema and on television. I am not yet sure where the Twilight franchise will fit in to all of this, and I feel I would be remiss in skipping over this phenomenon entirely, but I really, really don't want to read those books.

Gilles Deleuze

So for this lovely, sunny Winter Break that I've been spending in Southern California, I've been spending a good deal of it reading. Granted, I've also been watching a hell of a lot of television on DVD, namely the first season of House and the first season of True Blood. There's been some "Jersey Shore" sprinkled in there (don't judge, you know you watch it, too) and a few films, both in the theaters (Fantastic Mr. Fox and Avatar) and on DVD (Angels with Dirty Faces, Finding Woodstock, Triplets of Belleville, probably a few more that I'm forgetting), but the time not spent watching has been spent reading. I'm still working on Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, and two days ago I finished Wesley the Owl by Stacey O'Brien, a sort of Marley and Me-esque memoir but with a Caltech biologist who lives with and raises a rescued barn owl.

But the main goal of this break was to get started on some texts by Gilles Deleuze, especially since I'm enrolled in a class in the Spring called "Art After Deleuze," and I figured I should probably begin to understand some of his concepts and his style before I try to understand that which came and was created after him.

Thanks to a generous gift card to Amazon from my very literary aunt, I have purchased three texts by Deleuze: What is Philosophy?, which is co-authored by Guattari; Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, a text which I've been reading in front of a computer in order to search for all of the paintings to which Deleuze is referring; and Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, quite possibly the most dense text of the three. I'm only through the various introductions and the first 5 pages, but I've already found a passage that grabbed me, which I would like to share here:

...what was cinema's position at the outset? On the one hand, the view point [prise de vue] was fixed, the shot was therefore spatial and strictly immobile; on the other hand, the apparatus for shooting [appareil de prise de vue] was combined with the apparatus for projection, endowed with a uniform abstract time. The evolution of the cinema, the conquest of its own essence or novelty, was to take place through montage, the mobile camera and the emancipation of the view point, which became seperate from projection.

I know some of you might be thinking that this is quite an obvious statement of the moment(s) when cinema began to evolve, and the means through which it did, and therefore must be wondering why I like this quote so much. It's quite simple, really: I'm a sucker for concise definitions.

Hopefully this text gets a bit easier as it goes on, because right now I'm struggling a little. This could be because I'm trying to read the introductory concepts at 7 in the morning, which is what I'm hoping the case may be. I should probably continue reading when I've had a bit more caffeine...

This was bound to happen...

According to accounts from an NYC industry summit that took place Wednesday, October 21st, Hulu plans to begin to charge users for their services starting in 2010. Umm...

That's less than two months away. You're trying to tell me that a service that started off as free hasn't found a way to utilize their growing (nay, rapidly surmounting) amount of time and space devoted to advertising to their advantage is now planning on charging, likely in a subscription-based model?

Most newspapers haven't even dared to make this leap, and while to most people access to news information is more valuable than access to entertainment*, I'm surprised, yet not too surprised, that Hulu has come to this decision. I wouldn't mind paying a small fee to watch a few TV shows -- I do have a Netflix subscription. But since I can probably find these shows elsewhere online and I need that extra money to pay for, you know, my Internet connection in the first place, odds are you will find me opting out of Hulu as a viewing platform if I am made to pay for it.

Now that I think about it, I'm actually surprised that Netflix hasn't started charging users more for the "View Instantly" feature since it allows a user access to movies and TV shows (admittedly, a lot fewer than their entire stock of available titles) at virtually any time. I wonder if there will be different tiers of subscription for Hulu, and if so I hope that some content will still be free for those of us who chose not to pay. They can't completely eliminate a huge pool of users like that just because they don't want/can't afford to pay for their services, can they? Maybe it's a risk they are willing to take.

*I realize in making this statement I'm being very optimistic about the type of information the average individual consumes. This statement is easily altered due to the age and education of the user.

Former NY Times Journalist talks about drinking and journalism

Thanks to MediaBistro, a media-centric news content provider and creator (that, I might add, always advertises amazing panels, classes, and jobs in one's area), I recently discovered Big Think, a "global online forum connecting people and ideas" through videos from experts in particular fields. Big Think hosts pages from each of their "experts", one such individual being Gay Talese, a former New York Times journalist and non-fiction writer who is credited with bringing "storytelling into the practice of journalism". It makes sense that a site like Big Think would consider him an "expert", even though he has not been as active as of late with his writing practices: his way of writing and relating to the world seems to be very similar with the way that modern-day bloggers share their views with their readers.

Little segue: I've been watching Mad Men quite a bit lately, and although I am not quite caught up enough to start watching the 3rd season live, I have watched enough of the show to assert that the show is a fascinating case study of several things: gender roles, the American Dream, power, and, among others, our nation's relationship with substances. Everyone on that show seems to be constantly ingesting something, usually cigarette smoke or alcohol in its myriad forms -- hell, Don needed about five beers just to finish building his kids' playhouse. But in this interview with Gay Talese, the former journalist puts all their afternoon office drinking and after-work inebriation to shame. "Hell," he states, "journalism was beyond that [what you see in Mad Men]...It's a wonder the paper could even get out."

See the video below for a fun recollection of the mighty journalists from days of yore passing out face first on their typewriters.

Closure of 29 radio stations in Venezuela means freedom of expression just moves to new media platforms

This past Friday in Venezuela, protesters marched against President Hugo Chavez's decision to continue to shut down radio and television stations, supposedly for breaches of contract and "violations relating to their broadcasting licenses". Whatever the claimed reasons for denying citizens access to an option of media sources may be, it seems as though this effort to silence the public and their opinions, whether they be pro- or anti-Chavez, won't really hinder their freedom of expression as much as they think. Case in point: one news station covering the story ran text messages sent in from viewers in a ticker along the bottom of the screen, messages that expressed their views and opinions on the radio and television station closures. It seems that the station wants to go out with a bang, refusing to back down even after threats of closure. And that takes guts -- albeit rather sneaky guts -- from a station being controlled by a government wishing to silence any anti-Chavez opinions.

Said television broadcasting station Globovision, which is a known critic of Chavez, is being investigated for "breaking a law on 'social responsibility'", allegedly because of their biases and opinions that go against Chavez and his policies. But instead of sitting still and allowing to be silenced, Venezuelan citizens moved their discussion of Chavez's choices on to another platform (the ticker aired on the older medium of television) by means of the new medium of mobile phone technology. I have yet to see this be a trend on Twitter and I haven't found a Cause for the incident on Facebook, but it wouldn't surprise me if these topics show up sooner or later (it's quite possible that maybe I'm having difficulty finding these groups because I haven't been searching Spanish).

In some ways, I'm incredibly grateful for the freedom of the press and access to information that we have here in America. I may find it difficult to completely support and agree with any of the major news providers or pundits in the media, but at least those who the majority of citizens do not agree with or who fall on the fringes of public opinion are not at risk of being silenced for their views and opinions. I'm not saying that Venezuela needs to adopt a freedom of speech model akin to ours in the US, because I do not think that our system is by any means flawless (one could argue that there is just too much media noise out there, or an unpalatable amount of "truthiness", i.e.); I'm simply stating that I think the opportunities for free speech awarded by unchecked new media outlets like text messaging, Twitter and Facebook make the possibility of silencing a public difficult. Without complete removal of these media from public access, which I don't think neither pro- nor anti-Chavez citizens would be particularly happy about (but which has happened recently in China), citizens and pundits will still be allowed to express their opinions without fear of repercussions. So while Chavez may be attempting to silence the public opinion via the radio and television platforms, I'm pretty sure he may not actually be targeting the right media.

Happy Birthday, Dear Bloggie...

...Happy Birthday to You!


Today marks exactly one year since I posted my first blog entry as You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet!, and look at the forms it's taken as it's grown up to a walking, talking, free wheelin' space for my thoughts, rants, observations, and musings. What began as a place to document reviews of music shows (my first entry is a reflection on Coachella 2008) and films slowly morphed into a space where nothing I post is not somehow media-related, stretching the boundaries of what I originally intended into a far less restrictive arena of new media, advertising, television, audience studies, etc (the most recent entry is on the evolving nature of YouTube's social networking capabilities). Sure, there are other themes that I've incorporated throughout this weblog's first year, including but not limited to politics, gender issues, a series entitled "Things Grad Students Love" (that I hope to continue as an on-going contribution...ideas for Part 6, anyone?), and reviews of art exhibits, but I try, sometimes in vain, to always dovetail the issues I discuss with media studies and analysis.

While I certainly maintain this space for my personal benefit as a portfolio, as a way for family and friends who don't live in my city to keep up with my life and interests, and as my own contribution to the on-going meta-dialogue on the media, I have also gotten recognition for my work here from professors, administrators within my Masters program, fellow Media Studies students, and non-Media Studies friends, as well as some comments from a few strangers. While this certainly boosts my ego and restores faith in my abilities, this is not why I am writing. I want my writing and ideas to be public to inspire conversation within the Media Studies community and the Internet community at large and hopefully cause someone, even one individual, to think a bit differently about the way they interact with the visual environment surrounding them.

Some may think that my quiet voice in a sea of millions of others may not make an impact, and I don't expect it to. But it does instill a sense of purpose in the work that I am doing, and has even allowed me to chart my growth and decline of interest on certain issues and topics, guiding me in (god, hopefully) the right direction for future areas of study. I started this blog wanting to be a film critic. But because I have been given a space to air out my ideas that is communal and includes much-welcomed comments, questions, and discourse, I have decided that writing solely about film would be selling myself short, as the Internet is quickly replacing film as the most influential visual media in the world. I will never give up my passion for film and what it means to me as an art form, as a social commentary, and as a form of entertainment, escapism and fantasy, and I will continue to write about film when the mood strikes. However, I will also never again pigeonhole myself into such a narrow category.

So, for all of you who have been with me from the beginning and for those of you who have just started participating in the discourse I offer here, thank you. Your readership, comments, participation, kind praise and constructive criticism are more important to me that you may ever know.

Hulu's Media Coverage

I'm finally done with this (very procrastinated) midterm. It's due in less than four hours.

We were asked to select one theme or issue and carefully explain the status of this issue as of January, and how it has evolved since. We were also asked to ponder why is this issue important, and what does it suggest about the future of digital media?

Here is my 600-some-odd word answer:


Much before the inception of this course in January, Hulu has been growing and building its cache memory and expanding the amount of content it makes available to the connected Internet public for free. Hulu is doing this in cooperation with NBC, Comedy Central, PBS, USA, Sundance, Oxygen, and several other network and cable companies to provide content with advertising for free to anyone with broadband Internet access. In fact, Hulu began its venture in mid-2007 to act as a syndication site and alternative to the television broadcast model of linear programming; noting this, the site has effectively been in “business” for two years now. The term “business” is in quotations because Hulu is not literally selling anything to the user; Hulu is merely presenting content free of charge with the occasional commercial interruption. This business model, although not allowing any user-related creativity or “remixing” capabilities, is functioning on the level of the hybrid that Lawrence Lessig discusses in his book Remix in that it is providing a free service to the user by effectively monetizing through the sales of advertising spots.

During the Superbowl on February 1st, 2009, among the slue of advertisements for soft drinks and cars, Hulu enlisted the talents of actor Alec Baldwin to act as spokesperson for the site, airing Hulu’s first ever television spot. Several blogs (throughout the semester, I’ve been following IWantMedia and MediaBistro) and the Monday New York Times Business section either announced that this ad would be airing or included review of the tone of and/or the significance of the advertisement in an editorial article. Essentially taking the stance that Hulu’s eventual take over is inevitable, Baldwin (and, in effect, Hulu speaking through Baldwin) asks the question: “What are you going to do? Turn off your TV and your computer?”

Since this “evil plot to destroy the world” advertised during one of the largest media events (short of the Oscars) of the year in February and thus graced the pages of the NYT and blogging sites, it seems as though Hulu will be a mainstay not only on our computer screens but also in the news media: at least weekly, if not daily, bloggers on both IWantMedia and MediaBistro have some tidbit of news to share about Hulu, the television industry, and the recent battle with Boxee technology, a tower and essential hard drive that can reroute content wirelessly to any screen in one’s household. Since sharing television screen time with cable- and network-provided television content is not Hulu’s aim (Hulu works in direct agreement and correlation with networks and cable providers) Hulu adamantly opposes this idea, as stated in a February 23rd article in the New York Times Business section. Only two weeks later, it was announced that with Boxee’s clever ab/use of RSS technology, it looks as though there is no way to avoid the shifting of content from screen to screen.

It should be noted that other Hulu rivals such as Sling and TV.com are no where near as prevalent in the reviewed news and information corpus as is the Hulu content giant.

As recently as March 30th, Disney announced that it wanted to take part in Hulu’s cache of programming. Considering the way that ABC and Disney are laid out as a business, this move to include sacred House of Mouse content on a free site is huge, and reflects the potential future of Hulu as the ultimate online content provider. This certainly proves the sentiment that distribution and not content is the true king. With Hulu acquiring more and more content by the week, it’s no surprise that theirs is the model with the most success. And the fact that they are providing this free content legally should serve as a model for other wannabe hybrids to come.

A look at the future of television

This is the answer to one of the questions on my take-home midterm for my Media Industry Perspectives course. I've been working on finishing Lessig's book Remix for this course, and therefore feel the need to include this disclaimer: Please be aware that this is not due until Monday the 6th of April at 6 PM Eastern, and I trust that anyone who reads this will not borrow my thoughts or ideas before a week after that time. I don't feel this will be a problem actually. Anyway, after that: cite away, friends!

Quick note: I've been meaning to include an update and play-by-play of sorts on Saturday's fantastic and eventful Critical Themes in Media Studies Conference at The New School, but certain academic and personal obligations and desires have kept me from responding. Let me just say I took tons of notes, moderated two panels, and broke up a fight between a presenter and an aging liberal audience-terrorist. In short, I'm looking forward to sharing my experience.

On to the midterm...

In response to the (here paraphrased) question:
What aspects of today's network and cable television industry will remain in place, and what aspects will change, be reinvented, or even abolished?

(Please excuse the tiny photo. We've all seen this before, I'm sure: Screen shot of Hulu's "choose your ads" screen before watching a program.)

In the era of Hulu and TV.com, in a time when programming content is offered virtually free to the viewer/user via online digital video streaming (this is ignoring the cost of monthly broadband/dial-up services), the antiquated broadcast model that has survived since the inception of the medium of television cannot continue on its current stagnant model of linear programming and stale advertising tendencies if it expects to successfully monetize and remain successful in the digital age. The first challenge to the broadcast model was certainly the in-home digital video recorder (known henceforth as the DVR; a specific example: TiVo). A similar model has now been brought to sites on the Internet where the viewer can choose from a number of videos stored in a database; however, with the Internet model these videos do not actually “belong” to the viewer. With the DVR, television shows are something that can be stored and essentially owned for brief amounts of time, whereas videos online are in a massive cache memory that can be accessed by any viewer with Internet capability, allowing the viewer to skip around within the content or pause if a break is needed to complete another task, (the Internet has been called the multi-tasking medium, after all) liberties that are also allowed with DVR technology. This changes and challenges not only the original linear model of broadcast television but also the concept of ownership and accessibility of content and programming.

However, content streaming sites such as Hulu still adhere to the network industry’s advertising model: sites such as these incorporate advertising before and/or during their programs in order to monetize programming on their site, advertising much like one can find in the original television broadcast model. With more and more individuals relying on their DVRs and streaming websites and less and less relying on the medium of television to access their television content via cable providers, the model of advertising has evolved (or, as I argue, devolved) and changed, for it must change. Most importantly, the thirty-second spot is in the process of becoming obsolete. This is not to say that broadcast standards of advertising have disintegrated or will disappear completely; this is merely to insinuate that the model must change to adapt to changing preferences influenced by available technologies to properly monetize online business models.

One way that advertising had in fact devolved within streaming videos on sites such as Hulu is exemplified in the return to the single sponsor model akin to the first days of radio and early television. Before a program commences on Hulu, there is an announcement stating “The following program is brought to you with limited commercial interruption by (name of sponsor)”, reminding the viewer that there will indeed be commercial breaks in the format of the 30-second spot all from the same company, industry, public service or utility. At the onset of some videos, viewers can actually choose to watch a 90-second spot right away, allowing the viewer to then watch their programming uninterrupted. This option of how to interact with advertising runs parallel to the viewer’s choices of when and where to watch their programming, and is therefore a possible improvement to the prior-mandated advertising model. With this model and the possible shift toward increased in-program product placement, the 30-second spot may be a thing of the past – but let’s not jump to conclusions.

Whether or not viewers will continue to respond to this type of advertising strategy is uncertain, but for right now virtually no other models exist. It has been speculated that content will include an increase in product placement and become interactive, allowing viewers to click on a soft drink or a baseball hat within the diegesis of the programming and effectively order this product in a similar style to ordering a product on Amazon. But, much like the cell-phone-as-credit-card technology that is still in development in the US, the interactive programming model will most likely prove to be a thing of the (albeit near) future.

Hitch Your Antenna to the Stars

Susan Murray's Hitch Your Antenna to the Stars provides an interesting blend of straightforward history and insightful analysis of the later popular radio model and the early television model for not just programming but also advertisement. Mainly seen through the lens of the comedians who made up the majority of this early television programming, the text is a fascinating integration of presentation of gender and ethnic-based characterizations and commentary on these representations and how they evolved between the pre- and postwar eras in entertainment fields. Focusing on mainly Jewish performers in the pre-war era and integrating some of Judith Butler's comments on gender representation from her book Gender Trouble (which I have been meaning to finish one of these days), the idea of the masculine feminization is presented as being recurrent and rampant on early television vaudeo programs. While charting the evolving nature of the type of entertainment that was successful in the early years of television, the text does a great job of drawing parallels between this analysis and the analysis of the evolving nature of advertising in a visual medium, as well as the way advertisers' control over content eventually waned once broadcast companies (NBC, CBS) began to accept more than one sponsor per program while simultaneously asserting more saying power behind their performers. In its entirety, Murray's text was informative and an interesting analytic historical look at early television stardom.

I especially enjoyed the portions of the book that focused in detail on personal stories of performers, mainly Berle and Godfrey. Godfrey is incredibly unique in that Murray's analysis focused less on aspects of his straight performance and much more on qualities indicative of his style of product pitching, something that is not often seen on television today due to the decline of vaudeo and variety show performance styles, and due to the breaks in current television programming designated specifically for advertisements (commercial breaks). Another factor that I found incredibly interesting is a short block quote found on page 109, where a trade press states "Television in the short span of 18 months has practically gone through what it took radio 25 years to exhaust". I thought that this quotation certainly smacked of the increasing momentum found in the entertainment as well as the technology industries, especially in modern times. Television exhausted the radio model quicker, probably because their formats were both so similar. And now the model of the sitcom, which has experienced far more longevity, is being replaced with reality television models, which will also soon be exhausted by a more popular, of-the-moment form of entertainment. It seems to me that the evolutionary nature of effective advertising and entertaining television programming are quite parallel to each other...

Hulu Advertises on Television?

Hold on to your cable boxes, kids: TV's in for a bumpy ride.

On IWantMedia last Tuesday, I read that Hulu, a free online television show and movie provider, would be advertising during the Super Bowl on Sunday. This was to be Hulu's first advertisement to air over, well, the airwaves, marking an interesting conflict of interest: while Hulu could potentially take viewers away from their television sets and displace them in front of their lap- and desktops, the majority of the content that Hulu streams is from NBC, the station that aired the Super Bowl. So really, "displacement" is the most appropriate term for what could potentially happen if viewers turn off their sets and scoot over to their desks; NBC programs will still be watched, just through a different medium. And with the plus of less and briefer advertising, who could ask for anything more? And not having to buy DVR or TiVo equipment? Bonus for everyone!

Considering the slapstick, expected sense of humor that was rampant throughout all of the spots, Hulu's ad actually had a unique sense of humor. A bit darkly twisted, this ad pokes fun at the idea that television will soon move away from every one's sets and onto their "personal computing devices", a prophecy that is admittedly not that far-fetched. I canceled my cable service a week ago, and so far it hasn't been missed. Case in point: I found the following video online, not having watched it during its original air time. Was there something missed because I didn't experience the live event? I think not.

Of course, online programming will not completely replace television programming, at least not for quite some time. I'm not saying that this commercial has started a revolution, but I personally know several people my age who have never heard of Hulu. For that minority (and in more parts of the country it might be the majority), their curiosity might have rightly been piqued by this advertisement. It will be interesting to see if Hulu's traffic starts to get as insane as CNN's did during President Obama's inaugeration speech. Doubtful, but still...

81st Academy Award Nominations

I'm not much of a fan of award shows. But you can bet I watch the Oscar's every year. It kind of gives me an idea as to where the major players in the industry stand when it comes to what they think is "best", and it also reminds me of important American films I should really get out and see.

Having said that, here is the list of the 81st Annual Academy Award Nominees:

Best Picture:

'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'

'Frost/Nixon'

'Milk'

'The Reader'

'Slumdog Millionaire'

Best Actor:

Richard Jenkins 'The Visitor'

Brad Pitt 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'

Frank Langella 'Frost/Nixon'

Sean Penn 'Milk'

Mickey Rourke 'The Wrestler'

Best Actress:

Anne Hathaway 'Rachel Getting Married'

Melissa Leo 'Frozen River'

Meryl Street 'Doubt'

Angelina Jolie 'Changeling'

Kate Winslet 'The Reader'

Best Supporting Actor:

Josh Brolin 'Milk'

Robert Downey Jr. 'Tropic Thunder'

Philip Seymour Hoffman 'Doubt'

Heath Ledger 'The Dark Knight'

Michael Shannon 'Revolutionary Road'

Best Supporting Actress:

Amy Adams 'Doubt'

Penelope Cruz 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona'

Viola Davis 'Doubt'

Taraji P. Henson 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'

Best Director:

David Fincher 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'

Ron Howard 'Frost/Nixon'

Gus Van Sant 'Milk'

Stephen Daldry 'The Reader'

Danny Boyle 'Slumdog Millionaire'

Best Animated Feature Film:

'Bolt'

'Kung Fu Panda'

'Wall-E'

Best Adapted Screenplay:

'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'

'Doubt'

'Frost/Nixon'

'The Reader'

'Slumdog Millionaire'

Best Original Screenplay:

'Frozen River'

'Happy-Go-Lucky'

'In Bruges'

'Milk'

'Wall-E'

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I really have to see more of these films before I can make any predictions. For all my New York friends out there, I will be having an Oscar party and you better all be there.

Let's tear Freud to the ground: Laura Mulvey and Feminist Film Theory

Why does Laura Mulvey say that the film form is best suited for representing “the image of woman as passive raw material for the active gaze of man?” (forgive the length on this one).

With her text “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” (1992) Laura Mulvey was one of the first to write about classical Hollywood cinema through the literal lens of the feminist perspective, paying special attention to the deconstruction of psychoanalysis and theories behind the male-driven gaze and narrative of film, essentially developing the beginnings of the feminist point of view on cinema in the late 20th century. Mulvey challenges audience members to understand the cinema of the past in order to change the cinema of the future, and the first step in understanding the older, antiquated mode of cinema, she claims, is to intentionally destroy pleasure and beauty through rigorous analysis. Divided into two dominant sections, Mulvey’s article intends to analyze 1) the pleasure in looking vs. fascination with the human form and its relation to Lacan’s mirror stage, the ego and psychoanalysis, and 2) woman as icon, with man as bearer of look. Through these two main points, Mulvey outlines how the passive image of the woman in narrative cinema is only there for the gaze of the male audience member and the men within the filmic world.

Focusing mainly on Lacan and Freud, Mulvey opens her article with scrutiny of the male-dominated realm of psychoanalysis and its relationship to the construction of the ego. In Lacanian theory, the mirror stage of self-identification is essential to construction of the ego of the young child, allowing the male who once saw himself only in his mother to now have an identity separate from the castrated image of this dominant female figure in his life. In a way, Mulvey argues, cinema acts much like a mirror, creating a protagonist with which the male audience member can identify, as well as relating this image to a likeness of himself on screen, larger than life, feeding the ego of the man. A woman in Hollywood cinema, however, is forever “tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning”, is caught in a patriarchal order that can only be reversed by a deconstruction of psychoanalytic theory (343).

Mulvey believes that males essentially drive the plot in classical Hollywood cinema and that women do nothing to advance the plot whatsoever; this allows the male audience member to use this mirror image of a strong, plot-driving male as a reflection of himself and an echo to his own ego, boosting his own self-image to greater heights than a woman could ever achieve while watching a film in which her only relation on screen is an objectified, passive woman. Women have trouble utilizing this mirror self as seen on screen as any sort of ego-boosting or morale-lifting device because traditionally, Mulvey believes, the woman serves two functions in narrative cinema: 1) she is the “erotic object” for on-screen characters, and she is also 2) the erotic object for the spectator in the theater.

With this point that women are the passive object when projected on screen and seen through the lens of the camera and the social scope of the audience, film in general is proven to be masculine and reflects the power relationship between men and women: Mulvey states that

“woman then stands in patriarchal culture as a signifier for the male other, bound by symbolic order in which man can live out his phantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning” (343).

The fact that the woman cannot be maker of meaning but only bearer of meaning much like she is bearer of children and life also puts her in a role of narrative passivity, never allowing her to take charge within the narrative of the film or of the direction of the camera’s gaze.

An example of women not allowed to take charge and instead remain in a passive role is personified and symbolized in the 1960 film Peeping Tom by Michael Powell, a film for which Laura Mulvey herself later wrote the DVD commentary. The film is about Mark, a man who lives out his male sexual and primal “phantasies” through the lens and the equipment of the camera. Mulvey uses this narrative to further explain her theories written in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Not only does the tripod come to symbolize the phallic and the brutal weapon as it supports, protrudes from and literally holds up the camera, but the camera itself is never operated or touched by women. When Mark, (played by German actor Carl Boehm), was younger, his father passed on to him the gift of a camera, phallic in the symbolic because of the lens and phallic in reality because it is an extension of his father’s masculinity, an extension of the father’s power of the dominant gaze that is passed down to his son. It is now Mark’s camera, and it is now his way to control and to view women.

There are several point-of-view shots from the perspective of the camera as Mark gazes at the women in his life who will eventually become victims of murder after they become victims to the brutal, scrutinizing, voyeuristic gaze of the camera. The women in Peeping Tom cannot use the camera because they have no control, they have no literal phallus, and the camera is ultimately a phallic object. This exemplifies Mulvey’s claim that film is the best medium through which to depict the passive woman, the iconic, pin-up fashion of female objectivity.

Our conscious thoughts are driven by dominant order, which, at least in narrative American cinema, are male-centric. Mulvey believes that the world in which we live is one where there is extreme “sexual imbalance”, a world where the female in film “holds the look, plays to and signifies male desire” (346). If one wishes to argue with the “sexual imbalance” of this society, please take note of the number of men who make films as compared to the number of women, or the target audience for most moneymaking blockbuster films (males aged 18 to 24, usually), or the percentage of films in which men are the main protagonist versus films in which it is the woman who drives the narrative.

I believe there to be several recent female-driven plots lines, but according to Mulvey the filmic medium does not allow for a female-driven narrative, period. One could look at, for example, Thelma and Louis (dir. Ridley Scott, 1991), but this film also falls victim to the male gaze: we see Geena Davis in several sexual situations, and although it is Brad Pitt’s character who is usually exampled as being fetishized by the camera the audience still sees Geena Davis fragmented by the camera’s gaze, depicted in sexual situations, and punished for both instances on sexual expression, first by rape and next as a victim of theft. This film also suggests that the only way to get away from horrible, detrimental marital situations is to commit suicide, something that I think Mulvey would completely attack and scrutinize.

There is this concept of looking to which Mulvey continuously returns, that men are the bearer of the look directed at the fragmented, iconic, displayed female forms on screen. This look is presented for all in the theater, but the darkness that is present out in the house of theater makes the viewing experience into a selfish and personal one, and a shift of the look occurs: the female who is literally on display for all, flickering within the lights of the screen, now slips into the possession of one, and suddenly the only person watching the screen is the scopophilic male, oblivious to everyone around him, believing this narrative is being played out for his pleasure alone in complete ignorance of everyone else in the theater. The filmic world is a private glimpse into the lives of others, thus enhancing its voyeuristic appeal. This is, as Mulvey states, a classic example of scopophilia, or the pleasure of looking, developing into narcissism. Curiosity mingles with likeness and recognition, and the male audience member as well as the male protagonist are free to enjoy the performance of the woman as it plays out in front of them.

Voyeurism, Mulvey would argue, is an inherently masculine trait. Voyeurism and film are quite similar in that film constructs viewing that reflects this pathology of the instinctual pleasure of scopophilia. We are forced to look at the screen in a theater, forced to focus on it, which is precisely a way of enforcing that gaze, imposing it as the only possible way of interpretation. When we look at the other side of this, which is narcissism, film concentrates on the human form. We look at people acting on screen, we gaze at these humans and are attracted by our likeness to these characters. In these characters, we recognize ourselves. In a way, film is a way of looking at others while at the same time looking at ourselves and judging ourselves on the basis of these characters.

When one looks at the differences between the focused, attentive gaze required for viewing the cinema and the unfocused, distracted gaze required of, say, television or the Internet, the fact that film is the best suited for the active male gaze becomes apparent. One could argue that television and the Internet as media are intended for distracted audiences who are capable of multi-tasking (arguably female audiences), and the content within the media is formatted with this in mind. For example, a film is presented on a large screen in an amphitheatre as an event for which the audience pays good money, and therefore undivided, undistracted attention is required of the medium and the content. Television has reruns, events such as Internet videos and web pages can be accessed at any time, and modern digital video recorders allow the audience to rewind, fast-forward, skip, and repeat recorded television programs on a whim. Film is unique in its viewed setting, its format, and its creators; while some could argue that men dominate television programming (at least in the upper tiers of production), most programs cater to and are made for women. While some could argue that the fragmentation and accompanying fetishization that is inherent in female representation on the film screen also occurs on the smaller screen of the television, this is solely out of necessity of aspect ratio and screen size and should not be focused on much within this argument.

And now here it is, your moment of zen.

My friend Josh sent out a message on Facebook about two weeks ago stating that he had three extra tickets to The Daily Show on Wednesday, December 10th, and that whoever wanted them should write back soon to claim them. As it turns out, no one else to whom he sent the message could go, so my immediate and urgent reply of "DIBS! Dibs dibs DIIIIBS!" wasn't really necessary.

Josh and I arrived at the studio right at 3:30 PM after walking about 3 blocks up and 4 avenue blocks over from the N train at 49th, and there was already quite a line formed under the modest navy blue awning of the single story building inside of which the magic of the show unfolds four times weekly. The awning was marked with simple white text stating the name of the show, above which were hung five flags with each of the correspondents and some vertical text next to their bodies (Samantha Bee's flag: "HARD HITTING"; Aasif Mandvi's: "PRO WESTERN"; Jon Stewart's (next to a picture of Stewart looking terrified): AFRAID OF HEIGHTS). Josh's classmates who claimed the other two tickets came just in the nick of time at 4:20; anyone showing up after 4:30 would not be allowed to cut in line with their friends and families who were holding their places.

We were let inside around 5:30, which gave us about two hours of wait time that went by rather quickly - I grabbed a sandwich at a local deli and some chips since I hadn't eaten since breakfast, seeing as I'd come straight from editing a video. Luckily we had better-than-normal weather conditions (see previous post), and we stayed dry through the intermittent rain thanks to aforementioned awning. We were 196-199th in line, and figured we'd be fairly far back in the studio that couldn't possibly house more than 300 people.

After walking through the singular metal detector into the double doors of the studio, we were promptly escorted to the first row in the middle, and proceeded to gloat and dance in our seats for the next few minutes. We weren't allowed to take photos - security threatened to take away our cameras/cellphones and erase all photos taken - but I still snuck one which can be seen above, albeit sans Stewart. I think Josh's classmate Megan and I spent most of the remaining time fixing our hair and smiling like idiots, wondering if there would be a possibility of touching Jon Stewart, hugging him, making eye contact, perhaaaps bum rushing the stage and declaring our love for him and all he does and is? Please, Jon, just sit down and do one crossword with me? We could snuggle on the green room couch and sip hot tea or coffee, really, which ever you prefer, and giggle about the clever theme of this Wednesday's New York Times puzzle cause really, we could finish it in fifteen minutes if we put our heads together, they don't actually get that difficult until Friday, and then as you realize how wonderfully amazing and cute I am you think that yes, you really want to start over in your life over and that a short, green-eyed self-deprecating Jew-by-association grad student is really all you need to make your life whole again....

Eh hem. Sorry.

Anyway, Stewart came out before the show for a brief Q&A session that doubled as audience hype and a brief warm-up for himself. No one really asked him anything interesting; one guy asked if he was going to miss Bush after he was gone, and Megan pointed out after the show that Stewart has answered that question on several other occasions. Another woman asked if he was ever able to change a guest's mind on an issue, and he cited his experience with Mike Huckabee from the previous night (which I watched tonight as soon as I returned from Midtown as a rerun); he responded that he never expects to change any one's mind, and really, if he was able to accomplish that with Huckabee after only 6 minutes then Huckabee wouldn't and shouldn't be in the position of political power in which he finds himself. He seemed a little despondent, tired, and didn't really over exert himself; odds are, he was saving it all for his on-screen moments.

After about 7 minutes of Q&A he sat down to do the show, and all personal audience connection was gone. It's so strange, because sitting at home, watching him on television, he always looks right at you through the camera, almost having a conversation with the viewer as we sit on our couch and he sits in his studio. But being there in the studio, it was like watching a comedy show that wasn't actually being performed for the in-house audience. And really, the studio audience of 300 is nothing compared to the millions of viewers watching at home, so I can understand that Stewart rarely took his eyes from the camera's lens. But even during the commercial breaks (they film the show as if it was recorded and broadcast simultaneously) Stewart spent time talking to his staff or making notes on his note cards, not really looking up or making eye contact with anyone in the audience. Not that this didn't make it hilarious; I still laughed my ass off and didn't stop smiling the entire time. It's so great seeing hilarious material brilliantly executed in the company of an appreciative audience.

I'm not going to ruin the content of the show because it's not airing for most of you for another 3 hours (only 20 more minutes for everyone in the East); there's a hilarious segment with Rob Riggle that was made even more hilarious by watching Stewart's reactions to the material, and Don Rickles was the guest. Not sure how much of the Rickles stuff will get edited out, but suffice it to say there was some audience heckling and a bit of rambling.

All in all, a great experience. If you've never been to a taping of a show before, do it. This was by far my best experience. Jimmy Kimmel was fun only because of Rilo Kiley's performance, and Bill Maher was great too. But I have been on a high for three hours and have definitely fallen more in love with and have even more respect for Jon Stewart's life and work. His show is, I think, one of the most important news commentary shows on cable today.

Abandoning My Television

As a student of media, I've struggled with the idea of canceling my cable service for a while. I kind of see it as one more way to stay connected to popular and broadcast culture, but since all the shows I watch are comedic or entertainment (and not educational or news-related) in nature, it's not like television is really teaching me anything. The last time I watched the "real" news on television was election night, and that wasn't even in my home; all the local bars were broadcasting either CNN or MSNBC or Fox, and Kelly's on A and Houston was running all three on their eight different screens. And the last time I watched any sort of televised news before then was strictly for the debates. I'm just not one of those kids who enjoys sitting around watching Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly while yelling and throwing things at the screen, and besides, there's more of a selection on the internet anyway (CBC, BBC, NPR, etc).

I don't follow any sports teams (despite Matt's hearty attempt to get me into the Lakers in my undergrad), and I've recently gotten in the habit of watching "The Office", "30 Rock" and "It's Always Sunny" on Hulu. I occasionally enjoy "The Daily Show" (I'm going to see it in person on Wednesday!) but for the most part I don't have time nor do I make time for live television (we opted out of getting a DVR). I spend most of my days reading or, to use the antiquated phrase, "surfing" the net anyway, and the television in my apartment can be found in the common space in which one of my roommates can inevitably be found reading (the historical studies roommate), writing, cooking, or running lines (the actor roommate). Even on the rare events that I do watch TV, the actor roommate will usually come out of her room and say "Can you turn it just a lit-tle bit lower?" (I've learned hard wood floors definitely mess with spacial accoustics). Plus, without the cable we're paying $40 less a month on our package (about $13 per person).

So today, I've finally decided to kill my television while I'm away for winter break. The cable will remain hooked up until December 25th (since we've already paid through that date), and when I return to New York on January 6th it will be like our cable service never existed. The screen will still remain in the common space with the DVD player hooked up in case anyone wants to watch movies or Netflix-ed TV shows (my historical studies roommate is currently hooked on "Rome" after kicking her nasty "Gossip Girl" habit).

I called RCN around 1:45 this afternoon, and by 2:20 I had been transferred not just once but twice, had heard their horrible on-hold music far too many times, and decided that a half an hour of waiting was just absurd. The tension and anger was quickly mounting in my chest, and I couldn't wait to just unload on whoever finally decided to answer my call. Are you aware that I've been transferred to THREE different departments and have been waiting for OVER a half an hour?! Do you know what I could have done with that time? You realllly don't want people canceling their services, do you?!

As I scripted my verbal assault in my head, I eventually gave up. Growling and stomping into the living room, I hung up the house phone, jammed it into its cradle, and proclaimed in a sing-song voice to my "Rome"-obsessed roommate, "I'll call them again TO-MOR-ROW!"

So much for trying to save some coin...

**NOTE: It must be trash day in the East Village. While strolling up 1st Avenue this evening my friend and I spotted an abandoned TV that looked almost identical to the one pictured above. Looks like I'm not the only person abandoning my television...

The Televisual, "The Affluencer", and The Live

First of all, I find striking similarities between the article "The Affluencer" by Susan Dominus from the NY Times and the topics being discussed in my Media Studies: Ideas class. After watching "The Persuaders" from Frontline on PBS for his class last week, we engaged in an in depth discussion about advertising; I posted on the discussion board that in the advent of TiVo and DVRs, the proliferation of product integration that occurs on realities programs is especially noticeable on Bravo reality shows such as "Project Runway" who rely on their sponsors for funding yet somehow seamlessly integrate the products into the content.

There is a quote from the Times that discusses this aforementioned seamless integration: "On 'Project Runway,' Tim Gunn invokes the Bluefly Accessories Wall with a reverence and regularity that's more ritual than rote," emphasizing the point I made in my MS:I post that “I don't really cringe every time I hear Heidi or Tim say these things, because it's almost like it's a recurring character, some sort of repetition that's almost soothing to the ear.” I don’t mind hearing these things because I love the show that much. But let’s leave behind advertising for a minute and focus on televisuality. Most of what I will be referring to comes from Channel 8 (“The Real”) of Paolo Carpignano’s website.

The term “affluencer” was developed by the general manager of Bravo Media to refer to the channel’s “premium demographic”: usually educated adults under the age of 50 who make a significant amount of money (the article cites that “about a quarter of [Bravo viewers] make more than $100,000 a year”). And if one studies the characters on most of Bravo’s original programming (“Real Housewives of...”, “Project Runway”, “Flipping Out”, “Million Dollar Listing”, “Top Chef”) we see individuals who are hard-working, culturally-savvy and slightly highbrow with whom the audience of the programs directly identifies. This directly refers to Carpignano’s ideas surrounding the mimetic nature of television, namely that these programs represent the real world through the art of the television show.

Also interesting: Carpignano argues that there is “a sense of "nowness," of being there, of being a relay of events that increases ‘the sense of realisticness, the sense that the camera is merely recording what happened’”, which is essentially the whole draw of reality television. In actuality, these programs are edited within an inch of their reality. There is so much that goes unseen. And this is an attempt to “[flatter] the viewers’ sense of their own good taste” (Dominus), a value that Bravo Media prides itself on upholding: the majority of these shows are not people throwing chairs at each other, people complaining about how someone left the bathroom in disarray. Bravo competitive reality programming caters to the sense of reality that is affluence, good taste, and artful, the types of lives that its viewers (usually) live.

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Furthering the discussion of the televisual, I think that we can no longer say that we watch television unless we are watching it in real time or when it is a live broadcast. I still watch some television shows that are not readily available on the internet for free in real time on television because I don't have a DVR or TiVo. This would relate to Carpignano's concept of "The Live" on Channel 6 of his website. Carpignano claims that "live after all is the main attribute of transmission", and therefore the main attribute that makes television television. I would argue that instead, we watch "television programs" that can really be viewed on any screen, despite the size, style or type of the screen. These are not live transmissions because they are stored on sites to be played and replayed whenever we, the audience, chooses to commit the "play" button into action. The transmission of live television can only be through the dominance of TV stations and their executives and heads of programming over the transmission schedule, ie they will decide for the mass audiences what will be played and when. I think that by making "watching television" or "watching a television show" something that the viewer chooses to do on her/his own schedule takes away some power from those who transmit, and ultimately does redefine what watching television is. In "the age of the DVR", audience members are no longer completely at the whim of programmers; audience members can now take an active role in watching television.

Is there anything being done in internet audience studies?

Almost the entire time I was reading Dallas Smythe's essay "On the Audience Commodity and its Work", I couldn't help but wonder how audience studies are being addressed nowadays with the medium of the personal computer equipped with internet connectivity; this is definitely an area where I need to do more research, for I'm sure there is information on internet audience commodity. I simply haven't read any yet, and the majority of the work on this topic seems to focus solely on television and radio.

Along with the radio and the television, the internet has become the most recent medium to provide in-home entertainment to millions of audience members, allowing them to access music (once only available on the radio), videos (once only available on television), and articles (once only available in the form of newspapers and magazines). The only means of the internet is not, however, entertainment, for it also serves as an information provider. I suppose that the television and radio can function in this way as well with their presentation of news stories, documentary features, etc.

While advertising on the internet is structured in a very similar fashion to the presentation modes on the television screen, internet advertising is not a mass medium; with access to personal information, preferences, frequency of sites visited, etc., advertisers online can hone in on a user's penchants and provide personalized advertising for them based on this information. I wonder what Smythe would have to say about internet advertising...I'm sure that Table 16.1 on page 240 would look incredibly different if internet audience studies were factored in to the equation.

Am I being completely naive here in assuming that all personalized, in-home media should be the subject for audience studies scrutiny? Or are audience studies only confined to the television and radio?

Also, what is the role of television channels that offer "commercial free" programming? I'm thinking here of HBO, Showtime, etc. I suppose the audience is still subjected to advertising in the form of previews and plugs for other shows and films shown on that channel, yet the audience pays more for these channels to be free from commercial advertisements.

Palin makes me want to vomit.

Palin's speech at the RNC was such a feeble attempt at stirring anti-Obama emotions, I can't even believe it was attempted. Not only is this woman trying to play in to the image of being just a small town "hockey mom" who is strictly against elitism in Washington, the fact is that she IS a part of the political machine. I mean, she is a GOVERNER, after all. The sad thing is that this rhetoric might just work, seeing as it's along the same lines as Bush's attempt to appear to be the candidate everyone just wants to have a beer with. I feel the chunks rising...gahh...

There was a woman holding up a sign at the Convention reading "Hockey Moms Unite for Palin", and in the BBC article I read there were images of women holding up buttons stating "Hottest VP from the Coolest State" and others with "Sarah Palin" in a big pink heart. Aww, maybe once she's elected you can all sip your lo-cal caramel mocha frappuccinos and conduct a heated debate over the best place to get a manicure! And I’m not saying this simply because she’s a woman; I say this because she is a vapid, slimy, image-conscious candidate attempting to win a title that is, in the end, about intelligence, compromise, and experience. I only begrudgingly credit her with intelligence; she was able to woo an entire room of stiff old guys into laughter and several onslaughts of booing, much like one would see at a comedy show or a celebrity roast.

And basically, that’s what her speech was; an evil, smirking attack on Obama, calling him a tree-hugging hippie (essentially) for caring about saving our planet that we are slowly destroying while also calling him a quitter for not talking about victory when it comes to the war in which we’re currently engulfed. I’m paraphrasing here, but on the whole she stated ‘Obama doesn’t mention victory once unless it’s referring to his own campaign’. The lovely media then decided to make a quick cut-away to a stoic veteran sitting unwaveringly in the audience. Gahh, I’m gagging again…

It's practically insulting that the Right felt Palin was a worthy Vice Presidential candidate after reaming Hillary for being “cold” and “elitist”. Hillary has more sense of how to run a country in her little finger than Palin has in her entire body. Remember, PALIN IS A GOVERNER. Foreign policy experience be damned, she says! But I guess that’s what McCain is there for. He's been around long enough, right?

The last thing this country needs in another woman in power who is anti-choice telling other women that the state should have control over their bodies. The last thing this country needs is a candidate who not only supports off-shore drilling, but essentially organized it in her state of Alaska. I could give a rat’s ass that she’s a member of the NRA (do whatever you want with that antiquated Amendment, folks) but making part of your reform for the state HUNTING WOLVES FROM HELICOPTERS seems a bit, I dunno, INSANE.

Among others in attendance at the convention were an elderly woman (presumably Giuliani's mother) sitting and clapping inconsistently while looking about ready to keel over. There could have been a cartoon thought bubble coming out of her head reading "I am just so lost. Actually, I think I may have wet myself" while people on both sides hugged their trophy wives and waved their cowboy hats.

2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing in full swing

It's official: I've been captivated, again, by an arena of entertainment in which I usually have zero personal stake. It's times like this I wish I had a DVR.

I spent several hours last night watching the Chinese and American gymnastics teams take the floor in what proved to be some pretty shaky performances, but over all incredibly entertaining. The majority of the coverage was split between this and swimming, in which America's Michael Phelps proved his 8 gold medal goal was actually a possibility as his 4X100 relay ended in a photo finish with a gold, with one of his teammates beating the world record for time.

It was fairly hilarious the amount of hype that NBC gave to the American female gymnast team, and the scandalous back story they told about the French swimmer Laure Manaudou; it made it seem like the headlines of supermarket tabloids, filled with sensationalist scandals, nude photos, and relationship hardships. The American gymnastics team was displayed on our screen like untouchable, strong, unwavering gods; when they took the floor, the first three of them stepped out of bounds, one of them earning a tenth point deduction, another a third, another a half a point. That's HUGE. Keep it together, women, or you'll probably loose a substantial viewership.

NBC also pitted Lanaudou against Italian Federica Pellegrini, the woman who is now dating Lanaudou's ex, in their race against each other last night. Pellegrini pulled in 4th, with Lanaudou finished LAST. Tsk, tsk, NBC, all that hype for nothing. I guess they like to keep their audience riveted!

Of course, I will keep watching. I just wish it could be without all the proud-to-be-an-American, even-the-mighty-may-fall, Michael-Phelps-is-not-part-dolphin-nor-does-he-have-fins bullcrap NBC decides to fill dead air time with. Sure, the ultimate point of the Olympics is to establish national pride in our few strong, talented athletes we send over there, to have another excuse for flag-waving and patriotism. For me, the Olympics is more of an exciting, alternative way to watch sporting events: most of the events are fairly simple to understand, and you don't get lost in cryptic stats like you would in, say, a baseball game. I personally highly enjoy swimming, gymnastics, and some track and field events, which are all over quickly with straightforward rules, regulations, and clear cut winners. Again, a DVR would really come in handy; as much as I love Morgan Freeman, I really can't watch another inspirational freakin' Visa, Coca Cola or McDonald's commercial (yes, there really were athletes stating that they love eating chicken in a biscuit for breakfast. I suppose it is all-American. Sigh....). I guess there's always the mute button.

*EDITOR'S ADDITION: I am in the process of reading a book by Neal Gabler titled Life: The Movie; How Entertainment Conquered Reality. He says of the Olympics "said [research director Nicholas] Schiavone, 'What they [viewers] really want is not live but alive; not sports but stories about sports,' a finding that accounted for why so much of the [1996] Olympics' coverage revolved around profiles of athletes rather than around the atheletic events themselves."

And so it goes with the 2008 Olympics as well. The aforementioned scandal between the French and Italian female swimmers; the hype behind what turned out to be overall poor execution of the American female gymnastics team; and the issue of the potential under-qualifying-age members of the Chinese female gymnastics team. Some of them are thought to be as young as twelve, but apparently all their documents are in order. Commentators last night were saying things to the effect of "now you look at these girls and all of you must be wondering 'Is this girl 16?'" If their papers are in order and the facts check out, then why are you still bringing this up? Of course, of course...for the entertainment, scandalous, supermarket tabloid value of it all.