Chapter one
Changing paradigms in audiencs studies
Changing paradigms in audience studies
David Moriey 1 %i Sti'&U-aJ. NfJ Mm ^^1-
Effects, uses, and decodings
The history of audience studies during the post-war period can be seen as a scries of oscillations between perspectives wliich have stressed die power of the iex|J(or message) over its audiences and perspectives which have stressed the barriers "protecting" the audience from the potential effects of the message.'The first position is most obviously represented by the whole tradition of effects studies, mobilizing a hypodermic model of media influence, in wliich the media arc seen as having the power to "inject" their audiences with particular messages which will cause them to behave in a particular way. This has involved, from the right, perspectives which would sec the media causing the breakdown of "traditional values" and, from the left, perspectives which sec the media causing their audience to remain quiescent in political terms, or causing them to inhabit some form of false consciousness.
One finds curious contradictions here/On the one hand, television is accused of reducing its audience to the status of "zombies" or "glassy-eyed dupes" who consume a constant diet of prcdigestcd junk food, churned out by the media "sausage factory" and who suffer the'anaesthetic effects of Utis addictive and narcotic substance*However, at the same time as television has been held responsible for causing this kind of somnambulani state of mind (as a result of the viewers' consumption of this "chewing gum for the eyes") "television has also been accused of making us do all manner of things, most notably in the debates around television and violence - where it has been argued that the viewing of violent television content will cause viewers to go out and commit violent acts.1 One point of interest here is that these "television zombies" are always other people. Few people think of their own use of television in dlis way. It is a dieory about what television does to other, more vulnerable people.
The second key perspective has been the work that has developed principally from thcWs and gratifications school. Within that perspective, the viewer is credited with an active role, and it is then a question, as Halloran puts it, of looking at what people do with the media rather than what media do to them.1 This argument was obviously of great significance in moving the debate forward
-to begin to look at the active engagement of the audience with the medium and with the particular television programs that they might be watching. One key advance which was developed by the uses and gratifications perspective was that of the variability of response and interpretation. From this perspective one can no longer talk about the "effects" of a message on a homogeneous mass audience who are expected to be affected in the same way. However, the limitation is that the "uses and gratifications" r>crsr«cu'vc_rcrniunsJl^^ 50 far as
differences of response or interpretation are ultimately attributed to individual diffcTcnccs of personality or psychology. Clearly, uses and gratifications docs represent a significant advance on effects theory, in so far as it opens up the question of differential interpretation. However, it remains severely limited by its insufficiently sociological or cultural perspective, in so far as everything is reduced to the level of variations of individual psychology. It was against this background that Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model of communication was developed at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, as an attempt to take forward insights which had emerged within each of these other perspectives.' It took, from the effects theorists, the notion that mass communication is a structured activity, in which the institutions which produce the messages do have 'a power tfTsct agendas, and to define issues. This is to move away from the idea of the power or the medium to make a person behave in a certain way (as a direct effect which is caused by stimulus provided by the medium) but it is to hold on to a notion of the role of the media in setting agendas and providing cultural categories and frameworks within which members of the culture will tend to operate. The model also attempted to incorporate, from the uses and gratifications perspective, the model of the active viewer making meaning from the signs and symbols which the media provide. However, it was also designed to lake on board, from the work developed within the interpretative and normative paradigms, the concern with the ways in which responses and interpretations are structured and patterned at a level beyond that of individual psychologies. The model was also, critically, informed by scmiological perspectives focusing on the question of how communication "works." The key focus was on the realization that we are. of course, dealing with signs and symbols which only have meaning within the terms of reference supplied by codes (of one sort oranothcr) which the audience shares, to some greater or lesser extent, with the producers of messages.
In short the encoding/decoding model was designed to provide a synthesis of insights that had come out of a series of different perspectives - communication theory, semiology, sociology, and psychology - and to provide an overall model of the communication circuit as it operated in iis social context. It was concerned with matters of ideological and cultural power and it was concerned with shifting the ground of debate so that emphasis moved to the consideration of how it was possible for meaning to be produced. It attempted to develop the argument that we should look not for the meaning of a text, but for the conditions of a practice - i.e. to examine the foundations of communication, but crucially, to examine those foundations as social and cultural phenomena. This was die point of interest
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Changing paradigms in audionce sludi«s
in socio! nguistii ■. and in ihc connections wiih debates in the sociology of education (most notably around the work of Basil Bernstein) which was evident in Hie early development of the encoding/decoding model.4 Ii was also connected lo the field of political sociology and notably with the work of Frank Parkin, in so far as his theory of meaning systems which might exist within a given society (dominant, negotiated and oppositional) provided the basis of the three decoding "potentials" identified in the encoding/decoding model.1 However, it remains a limited model, in so far as il simply provides for the three logical possibilities of the receiver cither sharing, partly sharing, or not sharing the code in which the message is sent and therefore, lo that extent, being likely to make a dominant, negotiated, or oppositional decoding of the encoded message. Further, following the encounter with the work of Hymcs. Bourdicu, and Bernstein the encoding/ decoding model also represented an attempt to develop an analysis of the role of social structure in distributing different forms of cultural competence throughout the different sections or the media audience.6
In the more recent period, a whole number of shortcomings with the encoding/ decoding model of communication have been identified.' These criticisms concern, for instance, the extent to which the model lends to conceive of language merely as a conveyor belt for preconstiiuicd meanings or messages; the way in which it lends lo confuse textual meaning with the conscious intentions of broadcasters; and ihc tendency lo blur together under the heading of "decoding" what arc probably best thought of as separate processes along the axes of comprehension/incomprehension, as opposed to agrccmcnt/disagrccmcni with the proposilional content of messages. Furthermore, the concept of the preferred reading, which is of course central to the encoding/decoding model, has been subjected to a number of criticisms. At one level one can ask how specific the concept of preferred reading is to the field of news and current affairs television (within which the eiKoding/dccoding model was first applied). How one might effectively transfer thai model to die aim lysis of fictional television remains a problem. There arc also further problems about the exact status of the "preferred reading." Is it something which is in the text (i properly of the text) or is it something which can be generated from the text by certain methods of semt-ological analysis, or is it a statement, or prediction by the analyst, as lo how most members of ihc audience will empirically read a given program or message?
There arc then a number of problems with the model and in particular with the concept of preferred reading as specified in ihat'modcl. However. I would still want to defend the model's usefulness, in so far as ii avoids sliding siraighi from the notion of a text as having a determinate meaning (which would necessarily impose iisclf in the same way on all members of the audience) lo an equally absurd, and opposite position, in which it is assumed that the tcxi is completely "open" to the reader and is merely the site upon which the reader constructs meaning. This laiicr "reader as writer" position seems to unile theories as apparently distanced as those of "uses and gratifications" and many forms of "postmodern" theory. In cither case, any notion of particular forms of textual
organization as constraints on the production of meaning disappear entirely and the lext is seen as infinitely (and equally) open to all interpretations. The point of ■tic preferred reading model was to i nsisi thai readers arc, of course, engaged in productive work, but under determinate conditions, Those determinate conditions arc of course supplied boih by the (ext. the producing institution and by the social history of the audience.
Psychoanalytic theories of the subject
The other key perspective on the audience which has been developed in recent years is the body of work, principally within film theory, based on a psychoanalytic perspective, which is concerned with the positioning of the subject by the lext.
Despite ihc theoretical sophistication of much of this work, in offering a more developed model of icxi/subjcct relations il has, until now, contributed liltle lo the empirical study of the audience. I 1ms is for the simple reason that those working in this tradition have, on the whole, been content to "deduce" audience responses from the structure of the tcxl. To this extent, and despite the theoretical advances achieved by this work in odicr respects. 1 would argue that the psycho-analytically based work has ultimately mobilized whal can be seen as another version of the hypodermic theory of cTfccls - in so far as it is, at least in its initial and fundamental formulations, a univcrsalist theory which attempts 10 account for ihc way in which ihc subject is necessarily positioned by the lext. The difficulty, m terms of audience studies, is thai ihis body of work, premised as it is on univcrsalisl criteria, finds it difficult to provide the theoretical space within which one can allow for, and then investigate, differential readings, interpret)lions, or responses on the nan of the audience. This is so quite simply because the theory, in effect, tries to explain any specific instance of the tcxi/rcadcr relationship in terms of a universalis! ihcory of ihc formation of subjects in general.
From within this perspective emphasis falls on the universal, primary, psychoanalytic processes through which Ihc subject is constituted. The lext is then understood as reproducing or replaying Otis primary positioning, which is then the foundation of any particular reading. My argument would be thai, in fact, we need lo question the assumption that all specific discursive effects can be reduced lo, and explained by. ihc functioning of a single, universal set of psychic mechanisms - which is rather like a theory of Plalonic forms, which find their expression in any particular instance. The key issue is lhat this form of psychoanalytic ihcory poses ihc problem of the politics of the significr (the struggle over ideology in language) exclusively at the level of the subject, rather than at (he intersection between constituted subjects and specific discursive positions - i.e. at ihc site of interpellation, where the discursive subject is recognized to be operating in intcrdisc ursivc space.
In making this argument. I follow Stuart Hall's critique of Hie Lacanian perspective. Hall argues thai "without further work, further specification, the
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Changing paradigms in audience studios
mechanisms of the Oedipus complex in ihe discourse of Freud and Lacan axe universalis!, trans historical and therefore 'e&temialisL'"1 To lhai extent. Hall argues, these concepts, in ihcir universalis! forms, cannot usefully be applied, without further specification and elaboration, to the analysis of historically specific social formations.
This is lo attempt to hold on to the distinction between the constitution of the subjeel as a general {or mythical) moment and the momcn! when the subject in general is interpellated by the discursive forma lion of specific societies. Thai is lo insist on ihc distinction between the formation of subjects for language, and the recruitment of specific subjects to the subject positions of discursive formations through the process of interpellation. It is also to move away from the assumption thai every specific reading is already determined by the primary structure of subject positions and lo insist that these interpellations are not given and absolute, but rather, arc condiuonal and provisional, in so far as the struggle in ideology lakes place precisely through the aru'culaiion/disarticulaiion of interpellations. This is to lay stress on the possibility of contradictory intcrpc Hut ions and to emphasize the unstable, provisional, and dynamic properties of subject positioning. It is also lo recognize that subjects have histories and that past interpellations affect present ones, rather than to "deduce" subjects from the subject positions offered by the text and lo argue trmt readers arc not merely bearers or puppets of their unconscious positions. It is to insist, with Volosinov, on the "multiaccem-uality of the sign" which makes it possible for discourse to become an orcna of struggle.'
However, it must also be recognized that, wiihin this psychoanalytic perspective itself, the gap between real, empirical readers and the "inscribed" ones constructed and marked in and by the text lias increasingly been recognized. To that extent real readers can then be seen to be subjects in history, living in social formations, rather than mere subjects of a single text (cf. the distinction between the inscribed reader of the text and ihc social subject who is invited lo lake up this position). This is further to recognize that address is not synonymous with textual address, and that particular positions are a product of textual address in conjunction with the immediate discourses and apparatuses that surround and support it, and that the social subject always exceeds the subject implied by the text. We can point here to the work of Paul Willemcn and Steve Ncalc who developed this break with the ahistoricQl and unspecified use of the category of Ihc subject.10 It follows from this break thai ihe meaning produced by ihe encounter of text and subject cannot be read stroight off from textual characteristics or discursive strategies. We have to lake into account what Ncalc so aptly described as "the use to which a particular text is put, its function within a particular conjuncture, in particular institutional spaces, in relation to particular audiences."" This is. further, to recognize that the meaning of the text will also be constructed differently depending on the discourses, knowledges, prejudices, or resistances brought to bear on the tcxi by the reader. One crucial factor delimiting this will, of course, be the repertoire of discourses at the disposal of
different audiences, and the individual's position in the social formation wilt tend to determine which sels of discourses a given subjeel is likely lo have access !0. and thus to bring to their encounter with the text.
These then arc. in my view, the main difficulties with much recent psychoanalytic work, in so far as it is a theoretical perspective which presumes a unilateral fixing of a position for the reader, imprisoning him or her in its structure, so as to produce a singular and guaranteed effect. The text, of course, may offer the subject specific positions of intelligibility, it may operate to prefer certain readings above others; what it cannot do is to guarantee them - lhal must always be an empirical question. Ihis is. in part, because the subject lhal the text encounters is. as Pecheux has argued, never a "raw" or "unacculturaied" subject. Readers are always already formed, shaped as subjects, by the ideological discourses which have operated on them prior lo their encounter with the text in» question."
If we arc to theorize the subject of television, it has to be theorized in its cultural and historical specificity, an area where psychoanalytic theory is obviously weak. It is only thus that we can move beyond a theory of the subject which has reference only to universal, primary psychoanalytic processes, and only thus that wc can allow a space in which one can recognize that the struggle over ideology also takes place at ihc moment of the encounter of text and subject and is not "always already" predetermined at the psychoanalytic level.
Valeric Walkcrdinc has recently produced an analysis which addresses the question of how a psychoanalytic mode of analysis might be developed while avoiding the problems of "universal ism". Walkcrdinc sets out to offer an understanding of a particular working-class family's viewing habits and pleasures (and. in particular, the pleasure which Ihc husband derives from watching the Rocky films) within the terms of what she describes as an "ethnography of the unconscious." Her concern is with "the production of subjectivity in ihe actual regulative practices of daily life" and with the "effeciivity of filmic representations wiihin ihe lived relations of domestic practices." In particular, Walkcrdinc aims lo avoid ihc common problem associated with psycht»analytic accounts which lend lo "impose univcrsalisiic meanings on particularistic viewing situations."" Walkcrdinc offers an illuminating analysis of u class-specific mode of masculinity. Thus, in seeking Ui understand this working-class man's obsession with the Rocky films, rather than simply understanding the fighting in Ihc films as "macho violence" (and thus die appropriate object of pathologization in a liberal anii-scxisl discourse), Walkcrdinc examines it in relation lo this man's own understanding of himself as a "fighler," struggling 10 defend his (and his family's) rights in an oppressive ♦ system. Thus, for this working-class man. for whom advancement through menial labor is not an option, there remains only Ihc body - and the struggle for advancement is then expressed either through manual labor, or ultimately, through fighting. From this perspective then
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Changing paradigms in audience studies
fighting is a key term in a discourse of power!essness, of a constant struggle not to sink, to get rights, not to be pushed out. In that lived historicity fighting is quite specific in its meaning, and therefore not coterminous with what fighting would mean in a professional middle class household. This is an argument against a universalism of meaning, reading and interpretation."
Prom my own point of view, Walkcrdinc's analysis is of interest not simply on account of the important "break" which it makes by developing a mode of analysis derived from psychoanalytic theory which is. for once, historically and contcxtually specific, but also because it opens up the whole question of how we understand the specific conditions of formation of "pleasures" Tor particular groups at any one historical moment.
Moreover, the idea of the determining cffcctiviiy of the single text which has been the cornerstone of much film theory is not simply deficient when we consider the role of promotional material within the cinema. Il is certainly deficient when we consider the consumption of television, given the higher level of intcrpene [ration ofdifferent materials across the flow of television scheduling. In this context. Nick Browne has usefully suggested a notion of the televisual text which is quite different from the traditional notion of the discrete and separate text. He proposes the concept of the "supertcxt" which consists of "the particular program and all the introductory and interstitial materials - chiefly announcements and ads - considered in its specific position in the schedule." He thus argues that die
relevant context for the analysis of form and meaning of the television text consists of its relation to the schedule, that is. to the world of television and secondly, of the relation of the schedule to the structure and economics of the work week of the general population.15
As Larry Grossbcrg has put it. "not only is every media event mediated by other texts, but it's almost impossible to know what constitutes the bounded text which might be interpreted or which is actually consumed."'* This is because the text docs not occupy a fixed position but is always mobilized, placed, and articulated with other texts in different ways.
However, it can be objected that this new emphasis ujxin intcnextuality runs several risks, notably that contextual issues will overwhelm and ovcrdclermine texts and thcirspccificity. The question is whether, in following this route, we run the danger of arriving at a point in which the text is simply dissolved into its readings,
Texts and readings
The primary issue which contemporary work has opened up in this connection concerns the definition of the text itself. To what extent can we still usefully speak of the separate text, as opposed to what has variously been described as the
"paralcxfor the "supertcxt"? I want to begin hereby referring to Tony Bennett's work on the problems for textual analysis highlighted in his case study of the "James Bond" phenomenon." In that study. Bennett quotes Pierre Machercy as asking what studying a specific text should entail. Machercy argues thai studying a text involves studying not just the text, but also everything which has been written about it. everything which has collected on it or become attached to it. like shells on a rock by the seashore, forming a whole encrustation. At that point the very idea of a separable text becomes problematic. Machercy moves us toward a perspective on the text which, rather than looking at it as a given and separable entity, is concerned with the history of its use and its inscription into a variety ofdifferent material, social, and institutional contexts."
John Fiske has called for a re-thcoriration of the televisual text, which would allow us to investigate its openness by mobilizing Barthcs' distinction between "work" and "text" Barthcs aigucd that the work is the physical construct of y signifiers. that becomes a "text" only when read." The text, in this formulation, is never a fixed or stable thing but is continual ty being recreated out of the work. Fiske has extended this argument toward tlic idea of a "readers' liberation movement." involving a theory of audience reading which
asserts the reader's right to make, out of the program, the text that connects the discourses of the program with the discourses through which he/she lives his/her social experience, and thus for prog ram, society and reading subject to come together in an active, creative living of culture in the moment of reading.10
While I sympathize with this concern with "readers' rights." I would argue that the concept of rights in this context is problematic, in so far as it is perhaps less a question of the readers' rights to make out of a program whatever meaning they wish (which presumably involves a moral or philosophical discourse concerning "rights" in general) than a question of power - i.e. ihc presence or absence of the power or cultural resources necessary to make certain types of meaning (which is. ultimately, an empirical question).
JaneFeucr has usefully identified a number of the problems which lurk around here. As she notes, from the standpoint of the reception theories on which Bennett draws, the question of what constitutes the text is extremely complex. As she notes, from this perspective it becomes increasingly hard to separate the text from its contemporary encrustations - fan magazines, the ads, Ihc product tie-ins. the books, the publicity articles and so on. and indeed, Ihc very sense of attempting Ibis separation is called into question. Fcucr's argument is that this approach endlessly defers the attribution of meaning. Whereas Hcnncll argues that "the text is never available for analysis except in the context of its activations." as Feucr puts II.
the reception theorist is asking us to read those activations, to read the text of the reading formation. Thus, audience response criticism becomes another
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Changing paradigms in audience studies
form ol interpretation, the icxi for which is now relocated. If we lake the concept of ihc "openness"... of a icxi 10 its logical extreme, we hiivr merely displaced the whole problem of interpretation, for the audience response* also consiiluie a representation, in this case a linguistic discourse. In displacing the text onto the audience, the reception theorist constantly risks falling hack into an empiricism of the subject, by granting a privileged status to the interpretations of the audience over those of (he critic.11
In Fcuer'* formulation, the problem is that when one attempts to combine lhi5 perspective with empirical audience work.
the authors begin by reacting against theories which assume that (he icxi has a total dcterminily over the audience. They then attempt to read their own audience data. In each case, the critic reads another text, thai is to say. the text of the audience discourse. For the empirical researcher, granting a privileged status lo the audience response does not create a problem. Bui it does for those reception theorists who acknowledge the textual status of the audience response. They then have to read ihe unconscious of the audience without benefit of the therapeutic situation, or they can relinquish the psychoanalytic conception of the subject - in which case there is a tendency to privilege the conscious or easily articulated response.
Feucr concludes that studies of this type arc not necessarily "gaining any greater access to the spectator's unconscious responses to texts lhan do the more speculative Attempts by film theorists to imagine the possible implications of spectator positioning by the text."*1
Certainly, much of the audience work discussed here (including my own) is Inevitably subject to the problems of reflcxiviiy that Fcuer raises. In my own research" I have offered the reader a "reading" of the lexis supplied by my respondents - those texts themselves being the respondents' accounts of iheir own viewing behavior. However, in relation to Ihc problems of the status of any knowledge thai might be produced as a result of this process of "readings of readings" I would still argue that the interview (not lo mention other techniques such as participant observation) remains a fundamentally more appropriate way lo attempt lo understand what audiences do when they watch television lhan fo" ihc analyst to simply stay horhe ami imagine the possible implications of how other people might watch television, m the manner which Fcuer suggests.
In ihc case of my own research. I would accept ihm in ihe absence of any significant clement of participant observation of actual behavior beyond the interview situation. 1 am left only wilh the stories that respondents chose 10 tell me. These stories are. however, themselves born limited by. and index it al of, Ihc cultural and linguistic frames of reference which respondents have available to them, through which to articulate their responses, ihough. as Feucr rightly notes, these arc limited to the level of conscious responses.
However, a number of other points also need 10 be made. The first concerns the supposedly lesser validity of respondent' accounts of bcliavior. as opposed 10 observations of actual behavior. The problem here is that observing behavior always leaves open ihe question of interpretation. I may be observed to be siuing, staring at the TV screen, bul this behavior would be equally compatible with total fascination or total boredom on my pan - and the distinction will not necessarily be readily accessible from observed behavioral clues. Moreover, should you wish to understand what I am doing, it would probably be as well to ask me. 1 may well, of course, lie to you or otherwise misrepresent my thoughts or feelings, for any number of purposes, hut al least, through my verbal responses, you will begin to gel some access lo the kind of langunge. the criteria of distinction and the types of categorizations, through which I construct my (conscious) world. Without these clues my TV viewing (or other behavior) will necessarily remain opaque.
The interview method then is to be defended, in my view, not simply for ihe access il gives ihe researcher to Ihe respondents' conscious opinions and statements but also for the access lhai il gives lo ihc linguistic terms and categories (the "logical scaffolding" in Wittgenstein's terms1*) through which respondents construct iheir worlds and their own understanding of their activities.
The dangers of ihc "speculative" approach advocated by Feucr in which the theorist simply attempts lo imagine ihe possible implications of spectator positioning by the lexl arc well illustrated in F.llcn Scitcr et al. 's critique of Tania Mudleski's work (sec Chapter twelve of this volume). Scitcr ci al. argue dial Modleski's analysis of how women soap opera viewers are positioned by ihc Icxi - in die manner of ihc "ideal mother" who understands all Ihe various motives and desires of ihe characters in a soap i^iera" - is in fact premised on an unexamined assumption of a particular while, middle-class social position. Thus, the subject positioning which Modleski "imagines" lh.ii all women will occupy in iclaiion to snap opera texts turns out, cmpi rically, to be refused by many of the working-class women interviewed by Seiicr el al In shoit. wc sec here how the "speculative" approach can. ai limes. lead lo inappropriate "univcrsali/aiions" of analysis which lum out lo be premised on particular assumptions regarding (he social positioning of the viewer. This is precisely (he point of empirical work -as Ien Ang puis it, to "keep our interpretations sensitive to concrete specificities, lo the unexpected. Ui history" - lo ihe possibility of, in Paul Willis' words, "being surprised, of reaching knowledge not prefigured in one's starling paradigm."3*
Contexts, media, and modes of viewing
The question here is how we might develop a mode of analysis which combines a focus on ihe understanding of viewing practices wilh an understanding of Ihe readings of specific program material in specific contexts. There arc three main issues thai I wish to address. One concerns ihe adequacy of the traditional model wilhin film theory, which relates Ihc spectator lo ihc cinema icxi, or film. The
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Changing paradigms In audience studios
second concerns the problem of (he non-transferability of the modes of viewing associated with the cinema to the dominant mode of viewing associated with television. The third is concerned with ihe need to specify variations within ihe different modes of viewing of television.
First. I want to consider the thcori/ation of the Him audience, within the contest of the cinema. Predominantly, within film theory, the subject which is addressed is the subject of the text. i.e. Ilic film. At its simplest. I want to argue that there is more to the matter than the question of the film text, and that it is necessary to consider the context of viewing as much as the object of viewing. Simply put, films traditionally had to be seen in certain places, and the understanding of such places has to be central to any analysis of what "going to the pictures" has meant. I want to suggest that the whole notion of "the picture palace" is as significant as the question of "film." This is to introduce the question of the phenomenology of "going to the pictures," which involves the "social architecture" - in terms of decor and ambience - of the context in which films have predominantly been seen.
Quite simply, this is to argue that there is more to cinema-going limn seeing film*. There is going out at night, the sense of relaxation combined with the sense of fun and excitement. The very name "picture palace" by which cinemas were known for a long time captures an important part of that experience. Rather than selling individual films, cinema is best understood as having sold a habit, or a certain type of socialized experience. This experience involves a whole flavor of romance and glamor, warmth and color. This is to point to the phenomenology of the whole "moment" of going to the pictures - "the queue, the entrance stalls, the foyer, cash desk, stairs, corridor, entering the cinema, the gangway, the seals, the music, the lights fading, darkness, the screen which begins to glow as the silk curtains nrc opening."" Any nnalysts of the film subject which docs not take on board these questions - of the context in which the film is consumed - is, to my mind, inadequate. Unfortunately most recent work in film theory has, in fact, operated without reference to these issues, and has largely followed Ihe protocols of the literary tradition, in prionii/mg the status of the text itself, abstracted from the context of consumption.
Second, I want to raise a query about the possibility of transferring any insights gained from the understanding of the film audience to the different context of the understanding of a television audience. As Lait y Grossbcrg has put it. "film theory rests on the assumed privileging ... of a particular form of engaged subjectivity... (in which] the viewer (is) engaged in a concentrativc act in which they arc absorbed into the world of the film."1* Now. not only must this cease to apply in relation to film when wc consider its consumption either on broadcast television or on video m the home, since these provide a quite different context of reception, and therefore a quite different set of subject positions for the viewer. The problem is all the more marked if wc try to transpose theories developed in relation to the activity of the cinema audience to the activity of the television audience.
John Ellis has usefully pointed to the distinctions between cinema and television, in terms of their different regimes of representation, of vision, and of reception. Ellis attempts to sketch out cinema and television as particular social forms of organization of meaning, for particular forms of spectator attention. He argues that broadcast TV has developed distinctive aesthetic forms to suit the circumstances within which it is used. The viewer is cast as someone who has the TV switched on. but is giving it very little attention - a casual viewer relaxing at home in the midst of a family group. Attention has to be solicited and grasped segment by segment. Hence. Ellis argues, the amount of self-promotion that each broadcast TV channel docs for itself, the amount of direct address that occurs, and the centrality given to sound in television broadcasting. As Ellis puis it "sound draws the attention of the look when it has wandered away.""
len Ang has noted that what is particularly interesting here is the way in which Ellis treats the aesthetic modes developed by television, not as neutral or arbitrary forms, but as rhetorical strategies to attract viewers. In short, he offers the beginnings ofn rhetoric of television. However, in relation to the third issue tinted in the introduction to thix section, the need to specify variations in the different modes of viewing television, len Ang points out ih.it while Ellis' work is of considerable interest in this respect, he
continually speaks about broadcast TV in general and tends to give a generalised account of televisual discourse which is consciously abstracted from the specificities of different programme categories, modes of representation and types of (direct) address. (... (thus Ellis'] preoccupation seems to be with what unifies televisual discourse into one "specific signifying practice"). As a result, it becomes difficult to theorise the possibility that television constructs more than one position for the viewer.16
len Ang goes on to argue that the point is that
different types of involvement, based upon different ideological positions can be constructed by televisual discourse. It does not make sense, therefore, to see televisual discourse as a basically unified text without... internal contradictions ... Iratherl... wc should analyse the different positions offered to viewers in relation to different parts of the televisual discourse."
In summary, the key issues identified here are the status of the text: the relation of text and context; the usefulness of an expanded notion of the "supcrtext": the problem of "medium specific" modes of viewing; and the further problem ol variations of modes of viewing within any one medium. It is this set of concerns, l^want to argue, which provide the framework within which one must, in fact, consider the particular readings which specific audiences moke of individual programs.
16
Da'/>d Mor lay
Changing paradigms in audience studies
Genres, pleasures and ihe politics or consumption
One of live most important developments in recent work in this Held has been the shift from the concern with interpretations of specific films or television programs lo the .study of patterns of engagement with different types or genres of material. What is at issue here is how wc can begin to understand the particular pleasures which particular types (or genres) of material seem lo offer to particular audiences in specific social situations. In this respect. Janice Radwuy offers what I would regard II an exemplary proposal for dw appropriate mode of analysis. As she puts it
a good cultural analysis of the romance ought to specify not only how the women understand the novels themselves hut also how they comprehend the very act of picking up a book in the first place. The analytic focus must shift from the text itself, taken in isolation, to the complex social event of reading.'1
I wdl return later to this theme, in discussing the need to combine analysis of viewing contexts and modes of viewing with the analysis of specific readings, but first I want to focus on the issue uf how popular taste and popular pleasures can be understood. I:rom my own perspective, the most interesting question is that of why particular types of material are particularly attractive to specific segments of the audience. The key reference, most obviously, is to the work of Pierre Bourdicu on patterns of taste, and the distribution of these patterns within different segments of a society." The issue is how best to understand the "fit" between particular cultural forms and particular patterns of taste.
In an earlier period. Bardies suggested that what was needed was an aesthetic based on the pleasures of the consumer. My own argument is that the critical issue is, in fact, the analysis of the particular pleasures of specific audience groups rather than any abstract concern with the nature of "Pleasure" as such. To pursue the latter mute would be lo risk replicating all the difficulties encountered by the attempt to develop a theory of "the subject in general" in so far as all specific instances of pleasure in all their various forms would be unhelpfully subsumed within the general theory, as mere "replays" of a universalized psychic mechanism.
Here, in fact, it seems quite possible that wc have much to leam from the commercial world. In the context of the proliferation of channels and the much heralded advent of "narrow casting," the commercial world has been fast to identify the issue of audience segmentation as one of the keys lo the successful pursuit of profit. It is of some considerable interest that, within the realm of British television it was. as Ian Connell has argued, undoubtedly the commercial chnnncl. 1TV. which "led the way in making connection with nnd expressing popular structures of feeling."*4 As Connell argues, by its very logic a commercial station is bound to attempt to meet the tastes and needs of its audience more directly than any station (of a left- or right-wing political persuasion) which takes a more paternalist altitude toward its uudiencc.
There arc. evidently, a number of political difficulties running through these debates, as has been well evidenced in Britain certainly by the debates between Ian Connell and Nicholas Gamham concerning the question of commercial television, popular lastc, and public broadcasting,11 These same political difficulties have also been brought into focus in another context, in die debates between writers such as Jane Root and Katliy Myers* who have attempted ui analyse the specific forms of pleasure which are offered to consumers (and particularly to women) - as against those such as Judith Williamson1* who argue that the project of attempting to understand popular pleasures continually runs the risk of ending up as an uncritical perspective which simply endorses popular tastes because they arc popular.
In a similar vein lo Williamson. Tarda Modlcski has also recently argued that we face a danger of "collusion" between "mass culture critics" and "consumer society." Modlcski's argument is that
the insight that audiences arc not completely manipulated, but may appropriate mass cultural artefacts for their own purposes, has been carried so far that it would seem that mass culture is no longer a problem for some "marxist" critics.... If die problem with some of the work of Ihc Frankfurt School was that its members were too far outside die culture they examined, critics today seem to have the opposite problem: immersed in thcir culiute, half in love with their subject, they sometimes seem unable to achieve the proper critical distance from it. As a result, they may unwittingly wind up writing apologies for mass culture and embracing its ideology.*
Modleski claims that die slrcss on the "acUvc" role of the audience/consumer has been carried too far. However, she is also concerned that the very activity of studying audiences may somehow turn out to be a form of "collaborating with ihc (mass culture) industry." More fundamentally, she quotes, with approval. Terry Haglcton's comments to the effect that a socialist criticism "is nol primarily concerned with ihc consumers' revoludon. Its task is lo take over die means of prod uc lion
It seems that, from Modlcski's point of view, empirical methods for the study of audiences arc assumed lo be "tainted" simply because many of them have been and arc used within the realms of commercial market research. Moreover, in her use of Eaglelon's quote, she finally has recourse lo a traditional mode of classical Marxist analysis, the wenkness of which is precisely its "blindspot" in relation to issues of consumption - and, indeed, its tendency to prioriii/e the study of "production" to ihc exclusion of ihc study of all other levels of the social formation. The problem is that production is only brought to fruition in the spheres of circulation and exchange - to that extent, the study of consumption is. I would argue, essential to a full understanding of production.
I want to argue thai ihc critical (or "political") judgment which wc might wish to make on die popularity of Dallas or any other commercial product is a quite
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different matter from the need to understand its popularity. The functioning of taste, and indeed of ideology, has to he understood as a process in which the commercial world succeeds in producing objects, programs (and consumer goods), which do connect with the lived desires of popular audiences. To fail to understand exactly how [his works, is, in my own view, no* only academically retrograde hut also politically suicidal. As Tcny I ovcll has argued, goods which are produced for profit can only, in fact, acquire an exchange value if they also have a use value to those who consume them. As Lovcll puis it
the commodities in question - films, books, television programs, etc. - have different use values for the individuals who purchase ihem than they have for the capitalists who produce and sell ihem, and in turn, for capitalism as a whole. We may assume that people do not purchase these cultural artefacts in order to expose themselves to bourgeois ideology ... but to satisfy a variety of different wants, which can only be guessed al in the absence of analysis awl investigation. There is no guarantee that the use value of the cultural object for its purchaser will even be compatible with its utility to capitalism as bourgeois ideology, and therefore no guarantee that it will in fact secure "the ideological effect."*
Popular forms: soap opera and American culture
I wunt now to move on. within this general framework, in look in a little more detail at two particular areas of work on the question of the Tit" between particular types (or genres) of programming and particular types of audiences. These two areas arc. first, the \tudy of soap opera in relation to a feminine audience and, second, the study of "American culture." American fictional programming (and Dallas as a particular instance), in relation to non-American audiences.
In relation to the study of soap opera, the body of work developed by writers such as Tania Modleski. Dorothy Hobson, len Ang. Charlotte Rrunsdon, Janice Railway. Ellen Setter ct al.. and Ann Gray is now extensive and 1 shall not comment here in detail on it.'1 However, I would urgue that what is most interesting about it is precisely the concern to understand how and why it is that this specific variety of programming is found to be particularly pleasurable by women. Whether one locates that pleasure in the homology between the narrative style of the programming and the constantly interrupted and cyclical nature of many women's domestic work-time, or whether one locates the issue centrally around the "In" between particular feminine forms of social and cultural competence and the particular focus of these texts on the complexities of human relations, the mode of inquiry is. to my mind, exemplary in so far as it takes seriously, and is concerned to investigate in detail, the specific types of pleasures which this particular type of programming offers to a distinct category of viewers.
len Aug draws on Pierre Bourdieu's notion that popular pleasures arc characterised by an immediate emotional or sensual involvement in the object of pleasure (i.e. the possibility of identification) so that popular pleasure is first and foremmt a pleasure of recognition As Ang says, the question is what do Dallas lovers recognize in Dallas, and how and why does that pleasure work'' Clearly, one purl of that identification, for a feminine audience. must be the way in which soap o|)cias do give expression to the COMfldfclions of patriarchy. Thus, even if the women within these narratives cannot resolve their problems, given the structure in which they operate, minimally these are programs in which those problems arc recognized and validated. However, these forms of identification themselves arc clearly variable. Some soap operas clearly work on a level of empirical realism, in so far as the characters within ihem arc presented as living in situation*: comparable to those ol significant numbers of their audiences (Brockside in the UK). In other cases, like Dallas, as Ang argues, the realism need not be of an empirical kind. The stories can be recognized as realistic at an emotional level, rather than al a literal or denotative level. As Ang puts it "what is recognized as real is not knowledge of the world, but is subjective experience of the world: a 'structure of feeling.As she suggests, it would seem to he this "tragc structure of feeling" in soap opera which, for many women, is what is recognized and is thai with which they can identify.
However. Dallas can also provide us with a useful bridge to the second theme noted oIkwc. This is (o focus on Dallas not so much us a soap opera but as ">et more evidence of the threat posed by American style commercial culture against 'authentic' national cultures and identities ... Le. Dallas as the symbol of American cultural imperialism."** Here the issue becomes not so much one of gender but one of how Dallas "works" for nun-American audiences, i.e. how and why it can be pleasurable for a whole range of audiences outside of America and indeed, outside of the First World. In this context the most important work is dint which has been conducted by Elihu Katz and Tamar Licbcs on international readings of Dallas." Their project was designed to investigate how it is thai US commercial culture can be so popular throughout the world - how it is that such a variety of international audiences can attend to it and indeed seem enthusiastic about it. In short, the issue is, what is it about Dallas that is compatible with the lives of its variously cultured viewers? I low is this compatibility expressed? Or. negatively, when and where docs U« program not work? One of the key issues which Katz and Licbcs have been concerned to investigate is the way in which certain levels of the program might be expected to be universally understood (for instance the universality of family conflict) whereas decodings of oihcr levels of the program might be expected to vary by social category of viewer, either in terms of nationality, ethnicity, class, or sex. The broad framework within which this project was initially conceived has allowed questions to be asked such as whether the "meaning" of the program is to be found in the genre, in the interactions of the characters, in the moral issues as embodied in these characters.
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or in the narrative form. As Tamar l.ichcs herself has writien. this research project has not been aimed at "attempting to demonstrate effect, but rather... to investigate those processes that are prerequisite to any possible effect, namely, understanding, interpretation and evaluation ... i.e. to address the question of how American films and television progiams can crass cultural and linguistic frontiers.""
Their research has thrown up a number of examples of how community mc.iibcrs from a variety of ethnic origins negotiate the meanings of the program by confronting the text with their own traditions and their own experience. Moreover, this research has illustrated the important function which programs of this type can serve for viewers in providing them with an "occasion" or forum in which 10 debate issues of concern to them. As Katz and Liebes have shown, this is not a process which simply goes on in a reflective manner, after the event of program transmission - rather the viewing process itself is likely to include ongoing comment, and indeed debate along these lines. Of further, substantial, interest is the material which the research has produced, not simply in terms of differential interpretations or evaluations of diis or that program item, but in relation to tl>e different "angles of vision" (for instance, the distinction between poetic and referential readings) which different groups bring to the program.'1
In (he British context, where the very phrase "wall to wall Dallas" has come to represent the notion of television at its very (and quintessential I y American) worst, this kind of precise investigation of the specific meaning of the program in different contexts is to be particularly welcomed. What 1 want to briefly explore now is a further set of issues, within this debate, about the way in which "glossy" American scries arc held to have "invaded" European culture.
I want to try to relate the argument about cultural imperialism bock to the issues raised earlier concerning popular taste, but now from a different perspective. The idea lh.it English or European "high culture" is in danger of being swamped by a relentless deluge of "Americana" is not new. In the British context Dick llcbdigc traces these fears back to at least the 1930s, when writers as different as the conservative Evelyn Waugh and the socialist George Orwell were united by a fascinated loathing for modem architecture, holiday camps, advertising, fast food, plastics, and. of course, chewing gum." To both Waugh and Orwell, these were the images of the "soft." enervating, "easy life" which threatened to smother British cultural identity. By the 1950s, the battle lines in this debate were drawn - real working-class culture, quality, and taste on one side; the ersatz blandishment of soft disposable commodities, streamlined cars, rock and roll, crime and promiscuity on the other. As Hcbdigc says, when anything American was sighted, it tended to be interpreted - at least by those working in the context of education or professional cultural criticism - as the "beginning of the end." Hcbdigc describes how the images of crime, disaffected youth, urban crisis, and spiritual drift became "anchored together around popular American commodities, fixing a chain of associations which has become thoroughly scdimcntcd in British common sense.-" Thus, m particular. American
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food became a standard metaphor for declining standards. The very notion of the Americanization of television came to stand for a scries of associations: commercialization, banality, and the destruction of traditional values.
The debate which Hcbdigc opens up here goes back ccntrplly to Richard Hoggart's work on The Uses of Literacy..*> Hoggiut's book is a detailed appreciation of traditional working-class community life, coupled with a critique of the "homogenizing" impact of American culture on these communities. According to Hoggart. authentic working-t Ij-^s life was being destroyed b> the "hollow brightness.*' the "shiny barbarism," and "spiritual decay" of imported American culture. This lamentation on the dele tcrious effects of Americanization was. and continues to be. advanced from the left just as much as from the right of the political spectrum However. Hcbdigc's central point is that these American products - streamlined, plasuc. and glamorous - were precisely tfiosc which appealed to substantial sections of a British working class audience (and. in television terms, were related to die same dynamics of popular taste which lay behind die mass desertion of the working-class audience toward commercial television when it began to Ik broadcast in the UK in the 1950s). While, from the paternalistic point of view of the upholders of "traditional British values." these American imported products constituted "a chromium hoaid bearing down on us." for a popular audience. Hcbdigc argues, ibey constituted a space in which oppositional meanings (in relation to dominant tradiuonsof British culture) could be negotiated and expressed.
1 would note a number of connections in this respect. First, the point which Hcbdigc develops about the appeal of American culluie to disadvantaged groups within another society is paralleled by len Ang's findings concerning the nature of the pleasures offered by American-style commercial programming 10 working-class audiences in Holland.1* Second, die work which Tun Blanrhaid has done in Britain, analysing the differential preferences of various cntcgoi ics of teenagers for different types of television programs, adds some further supixiri to the argument." He identified a pattern among the young people he interviewed in which black English teenagers had a particularly high regard lor American programming; this is by no means simpls to do with the fact that there arc MM black characters in American shows, but is closely related to Hebdigc's argument about the subversive appeals of certain types of "vulgar" commci cial products for
subordinated groups.
In concluding this section, 1 would also like to add one more twist to the story. The images which Orwell and Hoggart use to characterize the damaging e I feds of American popular culture have a recurring theme: die "feminization" of the authentic muscle and masculinity of the British industrial working class, which they saw as under attack from an excess of Americana characterized essentially by passivity, leisure, and domesticity, warm water baths, sun bathing, and the "easy life." When the discussion of American programming is combined with the discussion of programming in the form of soapopcia. principally understood as a feminine form in itself, we arc clearly, from Hoggart's or Orwell's position.
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dealing with the lowest of the low. or as Charlotte Brunsdon has characterized it "the trashiest trash."" Audience research which can help us begin to unpick the threads which lie tangled behind this particular conundrum would seem to be of particular value.
Television and everyday life: the context of viewing
One of the most important advances in recent audience work has been the growing recognition of the importance of the context of viewing. In the case of television this is a recognition of the domestic context. Of necessity, once one recognizes the domestic, one moves rapidly toward questions of gender, given the significance of gender in conicmporary modes of domestic organization. I will return to this point, bul for the moment, let us begin by noting, with Icn Ang that
an audience does not merely consist of the aggregate of viewers of a specific program, it should also be conceived of as engaging in the practice of watching television as such ... so decodings must be seen as embedded in a general practice of television viewing."
In mis connection. Thomas l.indlof and Paul Traudt have argued that
much TV audience research has concentrated on questions of why to the exclusion of what and how. Scholars have attempted to describe the causes and consequences of television viewing without an adequate understanding of what it is and how ii gets done.
As they argue, "in order for many of the central theoretical and policy questions lo be satisfactorily framed, let alone answered, a number of prerequisite questions concerning what the act of iclevision viewing entails... need to be posed and investigated."" This is not. by any means, to return to any abstracted notion of the specificity of the medium of television, or even the specificity of television viewing as such, as if that itself were an invariable and homogeneous category. However, it is, first of all, necessary to distinguish television viewing as a practice from, for instance, cinema viewing, or indeed, from the viewing of video.
As Larry Gross berg argues.
the very force and impact of any medium changes significantly as it is moved from one context to another (a bar. a theatre, the living room, the bedroom, die beach, a rock concert...). Each medium is then a mobile term taking shape as it situates itself... wilhin |hc rest of our lives ... the text is located, not only iniertcxtually. but in a range of apparatuses as well... thus, one rarely just listens to the radio, watches TV, or even, goes lo the movies - one is studying, dating, driving somewhere else. cic.**
In Grossbcrg's version of the argument,
Ihc indifference of the media displaces the problematic of cultural theory from that of coding ... to that of the apparatus itself ... television makes this displacement particularly obvious and disconcerting - in so far as television viewing constitutes a large temporal pan of our lives ... we must note its integration into the mundaniiics of everyday life, and simultaneously, its constant interruption by, and continuity with our other daily routines."
As Grossbcrg points out,
one rarely intently ga/es at television, allowing oneself lo 1« ubsorbed into the work, bul rather distractedly glances at it or absorbs il mio our momentary mood or position ... television is indifferent lo us (it doesn't demand our presence, yet il is always wailing for us).
Thus, as he argues, we need lo face up to the consequences of the fact that
viewers rarely pay attention in the way thai sponsors (or advertisers) want, and there is Utile relation between the television's being on. and cither the presence of bodies in from of it. or even a limited concentration or interpretative activity being invested in it"
Hermann Bausinger approaches (he problem of the domestic context of viewing from a similar angle." and quotes die following remark made by an interviewee: "Early in the evening we watch very little TV. Only when my husband is in a real rage. He comes home, hardly says anything and switches on the TV."** Bausinger notes dial many media analysis would interpret this man's action as signifying a d«irj;.io.watch TV. However, as Bausinger goes on. in this case "pushing the button doesn't signify ' 1 would like lo watch this.* bul rather 'I would like lo sec and hear nothing.'"*1 Conversely, he notes, later, the opposite case where "the Tather goes to his room, while the mother sits down next to her eldest son and watches the sports review with him. It docs not interest her. but il is an attempt al making contact."*1
By way of a protocol. Bausinger also helpfully provides us with a number of points to bear in mind in relation to domestic media consumption:
1 To make a meaningful sludy of the use of the media, il is necessary lo lake difrcreni media into consideration, die media ensemble which everyone deals with today - the recipient integrates the content of different media.
2 As a rule the media are not used completely, nor with full concentration -ihc degree of attention depends on the time of ihc day. or moods, ihc media message com|>ctes with other messages.
3 The media arc an integral part of the way the everyday is conducted (for example, the newspaper as a necessary constituent part oPhfcakfasT) and (media) decisions arc constantly crossed through and influenced by non-media conditions and decisions.
4 It is not a question of an isolated, individual process, bul of a collective
David Morley
process. Even when reading a newspaper one is noi iruly atone, il takes place in the conicxi of the family, friends. 5 Media communication cannot be separated from direct personal communication. Media contacts are materials for conversation."
In a similar way. Paddy Scanncll has usefully analysed what he calls Uk "unobtrusive ways in which broadcasting sustains the lives, and routines, from one day to the next, year in, year out. of whole populations."*- This is, in effect, to pay aitcnuon to the role of the media in the very structuring of time. Another oblique connection is worth noting here. The perspective which Scaunell advances is closely related to Boiirdicu insistence on the materiality of the subject, as a biological organism existing chronologically. This is to emphasize the study of the organization of lime as a necessary focus for any sociology of culture. At another level. Scanncll't focus is on the mtc of national broadcasting media at central agents of national culture, in the organizing of the "involvement" of the population in the calendar of national life. Similarly, he analyses the way in which broadcast media constitute a cultural resource "shared by millions" and the way in which, for instance, long-running popular serials provide a "past in common" lo whole populations. Here we move beyond both the study of the isolated leu, and at the same lime beyond any abstract notion of the study of television as an undifferentiated "flow." Rather than having recourse to cither of these opposite, but equally inadequate position*, we must attend 10 the issue of television scheduling and Ihc manner in which, for instance, as Richard Patcrsnn has argued** ihc broadcasting institutions construct their schedules in ways which are designed to complement the ba\ie modes of domestic organization, but also, inevitably, then come lo play an active and consuiutivc role in the organization of domestic lime.
This, then, is to advance a perspective which attempts lo combine questions of inicrprciauon with questions of ihc "uses" of television (and other media), an approach more commonly associated with a broadly based sociology of leisure. This perspective relocates television viewing wuhin the overall context of domestic leisure. Given thai television is a domestic medium it follows that die appropriate mode* of analysis must take the unit of consumption of television as the family or household ralhcr ihan ihc individual viewer. This is to siluau-iiidivniu.il viewing within the household relations in which it operates, and lo insist that individual viewing activity only makes sense inside of this frame. Here we begin to open up a whole set of questions about the differences hidden behind the indiscriminate label of "watching television." It is to begin 10 consider the differential modes of viewing engaged in by different lypcs of viewers, in relation lo different types of programs, shown in different slots In die ovcnil I schedule, in relation 10 different spaces within the organization of domestic life.
Clearly, if we are considering television viewing in the context of the family, things arc prcuy complicated. First of all one is not able 10 Lrcat the individual viewer as if he or she were a free or rational consumer in a cultural supermarket.
Changing paradigms in audience studies
For many people (and especially for ihc less powerful members of any household) ihc program* ihcy watch arc not necessarily programs which they will have chosen lo watch. In the context of the domestic household, viewing choices must ortcn be negotiated. Moreover, this perspective introduces, as one of its premises, what Scan C'uhiit has called "ihc politics of the living room," where, as be puts il. "if the camera pulls you in to involvement with ihc screen, the family is likely to pull you out"** This is also to try to get beyond the way in which television is often understood - simply as disruptive of family life. Il is to look at the way in which television is also used by people to construct "occasions" around viewing, in which various types of interaction can be pursued. This is also to get away from the ideu that people either live in social relations or watch television. Rather one must analyse how viewing is done within die social relauons of the household.
However, a number of points follow from this. As soon as one thinks about television in the context of social relauons then one is inevitably thinking about television in the context of power relations. If one is considering the domestic context, Uicn it will inevitably be gender relations, in particular, that will come inio focus, within the household. This is lo introduce a whole scl of possible connections and disjunctions between gender relations and the organization of private and public life - not least, the differential positioning of women and men within the domestic space of the household. In short if. for men, their concept of time and space is organized around a notion of "worktimc" and the "public" -from which the domestic is a respite, lor most women (even those who do work outside the household) the fundamental principles of organization operate in a different way. For them, die domestic is not understood as a sphere of leisure, bul rather as a sphere in which a further scl of (domestic i obligations lake precedence, which complicate and interrupt any desires ihcy may have 10 watch television. Dorothy Hobson's work on the complicated modalities of women's viewing has explored some of these issues.*7 though again il is worth noting the way in which it is women's viewing which becomes the "marked" category, and the "problem" for analysis - as opposed lo the "unmarked'' (if. masculine) mode of viewing, which constitutes the token fin granted norm of Ihc activity.
In this connection, il Is also important lo lake note of James Lull's work on TV viewing in the domestic context. One of ihe issues which Lull investigates is the question of "who is responsible for the selection of television programs at home, how program selection processes occur, and how the roles of family position and family communication patterns influence these activities."- Lull's point is that program selection decisions are often comp licatcd interpersonal communications activities involving inter-family status relations, temporal context, die number of sets available, and role-based communicotions conventions. Here we approach the central question of power. And wiihin any patriarchal society the power at issue will necessarily be that of the father. This perspective involves us in considering the ways in which familial relations, like any other social relations, arc also and inevitably power relations. Lull's central finding in his turvcy of
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control of (he television set was that fathers were named (not surprisingly) most often as the person who controlled the selection of television programs.
In essence, as Lull puts it, "the locus of control in the program selection process can be explained primarily by family position."** Thus, lo consider the ways in which viewing is performed within the social relations of the family is also, inevitably, to consider the ways in which viewing is performed within the context of power relations and the differential power afforded to members of the family primarily in terms of gender and age.
In making these points about the structure of ihe domestic viewing context, there is a certain sense of simply restating things which we "already know," from our own experience of domestic life. This very insistence on the importance of these banal considerations is made difficult by their "taken-for-grnntcdncss" - as the invisible routines and structures inside of which our lives arc organized. In Britain, the results of a study conducted during 1985 by Peter Collet!, in which a video camera was placed inside Ihc television seis of a number of different households, thus providing film of families watching television, had notable effects in getting these considerations on to the agenda of public discussion.70 No one who saw the tapes could really have claimed 10 have been surprised by wltat they saw - pictures of people silting in a room with their back to the television, piciurcs of empty sofas in front of the screen, pictures of people dressing their children, eating meals, and arguing with each other while seemingly oblivious to the set, etc. However, it seemed that it was only at Ihc point at which this kind of videotape "evidence" of these everyday situations was made available, in the context of respectable scientific research wiihin a framework of behavioral psychology, that it was possible, certainly for the broadcasters, lo begin to take these questions ai all seriously.
In making these points about Ihc complex nature of ihc domestic selling in which television is viewed by its audience, I am noi arguing for any kind of "new optimism" which would allow us 10 rest content in the secure understanding thai because so many other things arc going on at the same lime, nobody pays any attention lo television and therefore we shouldn't worry about il. Rather, I am trying to move the baseline, against which wc precisely should then be concerned to examine the modes and varieties of .mention which are paid to different types of programs, at different points in the day by different types of viewers. It is precisely in the context of all these domestic complications lhal the activity of television viewing must be seriously examined.
Old perspectives for new
Centrally. I have been trying lo argue that the most useful work which has been conducted within audience studies in the last few years is that which has taken on board the questions raised about Ihe flow of television, the positioning of the subject, Ihc contextual determinations operating on different types of viewing of different media, alongside a close attention to die varieties of patterns of taste.
response, and interpretation on ihc pari of specific members of ihc audience. Here 1 would specifically like lo support the arguments made by Elihu Katz and Tamar Licbcs when they note that they arc
in disagreement with others who believe lhal ihc unit of television viewing is better conceptualized as background, or as "a strip" lhal cuts through an evening's viewing, or as a pervasive barrage of messages about society that is embedded in all of prime time. Our argument is simply ... that certain programs — some more lhan others — arc identified by viewers as discrete stories and, as such, viewing entails aucnikm, interpretation, evaluation and perhaps social and psychological consequences."
It is this kind of close attention to. for instance, the varieties of subjeel positioning which, I would argue, we need to pursue. Without this kind of detailed empirical attention to what actually happens in particular situations, we run the danger of lapsing into the kind of structuralist perspective which in Peter Dahlgrcn's words,
incorporates a view of meaning and consciousness ... and the unconscious ... where the subject is essentially dominated by die object ... |and| the cultural text is reduced to an abstract grammar, with meaning residing wholly in its confines. The negotiation of meaning and the historicity of consciousness is denied."11
As Dahlgrcn continues,
In the heady wake of the structural reading of Freud it seems lhal die only alternative to ihc infamous transcendental subject has been a view which understands the subject nol only as deccntred by. but also created by. the grammatical structures of the unconscious. The unconscious becomes an abstract drive shaft of history, while the individual subject is emptied of any conscious intentional!ly.71
Similarly, I would want to argue that ihe varieties of postmodern relativism in which the text is seen as infinitely "itcrablc" or writable, according lo ihe whim of the subject, arc equally unhelpful, if for ihe opposite reason. The demonstration thai theoretically "anything goes," in terms of the potential polysemy of any text, is very different from the demonstration that empirically "just anything" happens when it conies 10 the actual reading of television texts. Such an approach not only abandons any notion (however attenuated) of the cffccUvity of the text. It also flies in the face of the empirical evidence wc have of ihc way in which attention, modes of viewing, response, and intcrp re union ore patterned in observable empirical clusters as between different sectors of ihe audience.
Pcicr Dahlgrcn has advanced what, in my view, is a very useful definition of 3 perspective which he describes us a concern with the "social ecology" of viewing. He attempts to combine this perspective with a concern for what he also describes as the different "cpistcmic bias" of different media (in so far as each medium fosters a somewhat different dispositional relationship between itself
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and ils audiences) and indeed, a concern with the differential "episicmic biases" of particular types of television material. In a similar vein. Robert Dcniing has advanced an analysis of the ways in which specific channels offer particular posiiioiialities to their viewers,'4 and Ellsworth remarks on the way in which MTV (the American all-music cable channel)
offers student-age viewers a place to stand in relation to oilier individual groups in the culture ... a social identity ... that positions the inscribed viewer as a middle class consumer of rock music with enough money lo purchase record albums, concert likcts. fan magazines and rock influenced fashion, while excluding and evaluating those who arc female, ethnic, working-class."
Thus, as Denting argues,
ihc position "1" assume, when called by Dynasty is different from but related to the position I assume when called by Dallas ... I am called lo assume a position vis-a-vis those two lexis, but not all that I am is so called, only that which is appropriate ... I bring with me. as a Real Social Subject, all my genre-, program-, and culture-specific competence but. again, only (what| u appropriate lo ihc subject-text position."
It is this level of differentiation of subject positions in relation to different types of material which, it seems lo me, is important for us to explore.
In short, this is to examine the material varieties of the positioning of the subject, not in some transitistorica! or universalisuc mode, but from o perspective which would also properly involve very material questions about ihc physical organization and inhabitation of the domestic space within which television is ordinarily viewed.7'
The object of study, from this perspective, then focuses on systems of cultural behavior anil is necessarily concerned with the organization of diversity.1" Here one can most usefully look for guidance to that body of work in socio-linguistics which has been concerned with the study of communicative acts, in particular socio-cullurul contexts. My own argument is dial die study of viewing will most effectively be pursued along these same lines.
To make these points is to argue, ultimately, for the return of the somewhat discredited discipline of sociology to a central place in the understanding of communication. In this connection, I shall close by quoting from Richard Nice who. some years ago. in a commentary on ihc significance of Picrrc Bourdieu's work, argued that
those who seek to expel sociology... in favor of a strictly internal analysis of what happens on the screen, or how the viewing subject is orticulatcd, can only do so on the basis of an implicit sociology which, in so far as it ignores the social realities of the differential distribution of cultural competences and values, is an erroneous sociology, the more insidious for being unrecognized."
Notes
1 Jnne Root. Open the Box (London: Comedia. 1986),
2 Junes Hallurui (cd.) The Effects of Television (Ixmdnn: Panther Books. 197«).
3 Stuart Hall. "Encoding/Decoding." in Smart Hill. Dorothy Hohson, Andrew Lowe, and Paul Willi* (eds) Culture. Media, language (London: Hutchinson. 1980). pp.128 38.
4 Basil Bernstein. Class. Codes and Control. 3 vols (Umdon: Routledgc A Kegan PauL 1973),
5 Frank Parkin. Class Inequality ami Political Order (London: Paladin Books. 1973).
6 See. for example. Dell Hymes, "On Communicative Competence." tn J.II Pride and J. Holmes (ccU)5oe^i/i£Uisfier(Harma*id(woith. Penguin. 1972). pp. 269-93; Picne Bourdieu. Distinction (London: Roulledge A Kegan Paul. 1984); Bcmsirin. Class.
7 Sec fcr example. Justin Wren-Lewis. "The Encoding-Decoding Model: Criticisms and Redevelopment* for Research on Decoding." Media. Culture, and Society 5 (1983): 179-97.
8 Stuart Hall. "Some Problems with the Ideology/Subject Couplet." Ideology and Consciousness 3(1978): 118
9 Stuart Hall. "Recent Developments in Theories of Language and Ideology." in Hall et al„ Culture. Media. Lansuane. pp. 15762.
10 Paul Wiliemcn. "Notes on Subjectivity," Screen I9.no. I (1978): 41 69; Steve Ncalc. "Propaganda." Screen 18. no. 3 (1977): 9-40.
11 Neale. "Propaganda." p. 39.
12 Michel I'echeiix, Language. Semantic % and Ideology (London: Macmillan. 1982).
13 Valerie Walkerdine. "Projecting Fantasies: Families Watching Films" (unpublished paper. University of London. 1986).
14 ibid.
15 Nick Browne. "The Political Economy of inc. TV (Super) Test" (paper presented at the InlcoiBlional Television Studies Conference (fTSC), London, 1986).
16 Lorry Grossbcrg, "The ln-Diffcrcnce of Television," Screen 28. no. 2 (1987): 33.
17 Tony Bennett. 'Text and Social Pmccss: The Case of James Bond," Screen Education 41 (1982): 3-14. Sec also Tony Bennett and Janet Wonllacoil. Bond and Beyond: The Political Career of a Popular Hero (London: Macmillan. 1987).
| %    Pierre Machcrey. A Theory of Literary Production (London: Routlcdge A Kegan Paul. 1978). See also "An Interview with Pierre Machcrey." Red Letters 5 (1977): 3-9.
19 Roland Barthes. Image-Musk-Text (London: Fontana, 1977).
20 John Fiske. 'TV and Popular Culture" (paper presented at Iowa Symposium on Television Criticism. 1985).
21 Jane Feuer. "Dynasty" (paper presented at fTSC. London. 1986).
22 ibid.
23 See David Morley. The 'Nationwide' nudierve: Structure and Decoding (London: British Film Institute. 1980). and David Motley. Family Televiuon Cultural Power and Domestic Leisure (London: Comedia, 1986).
24 Ludwig Wiltgcnstcin. Traumas h>gicoPhitr>sophie.u% (London: Routlcdge 8i Kegan Paul, 1961. p. 40).
25 Tarda Modleski. "The Search fur Tomorrow in Today's Soap Operas." in her Loving with a Vengeance: Mass Produced Fantasies for Women (Hamdcn. Conn.: Archon. 1982). pp. 85 109.
26 len Aug. "Wanted: Audiences: On the Politics of Empirical Audience Studies." Chapter live of this volume; Paul Willis is quoted in Ang's essay.