Chapter one
Changing paradigms in audience studies
Changing paradigms in audience studies
David Moriey
i
py|J jZjluulqH Cct^\
LITctLs, uses, and decodiugs
The history of audience, sludi eg during the post- war period can be seen as a scries of oscillations between perspectives which have stressed Uie power uf the tcm\ar message) over 113 audiences and perspectives which have stressed the harriers "protecting" the audience Tram the potential effects of lite message'The first position is most obviously represented by the whole tradition of effects studies, mobilizing a hypodermic model of media influence, in which the media are 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 see 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 farm of false consciousness.
One finds curious contradictions here/On the one hand, television is accused of reducing ils audience to the stalus oi "zombies" consume a constant diet «r predigesieri junk food.
"sausage factory" and who suffer the'anaesihciic effects of this addictive and narcotic substance,* However, at the same time as television has been held responsible for causing this kind ofsomnambulant state cTniirid (as a result of the viewers" consumption of this "chewing gum for the eyes1*) '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 thai die 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 Jiombies" are always other people. Few people think of their own use of television in diis way. Tt is a theory about what television does la other, more vulnerable pcoptc.
The ??ecnnd key perspective has been the wort that has developed principally from the Wi and gratifications schoof. Within that perspective, the viewer is credited with an active role, and it is then a question, as Hallnran puts it.-ijf looking at what people do wilh the media rather than what media do 10 them.1 This argument was obviously qf great significance in moving the debate forward
: one hand, television is accused *) ss" or "glassy-eyed dupes" who i :nKi, Churned out by the media ] lie effects of this addictive and
It
-to begin to look at the active engagement of the audience with the medium and with die 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 otic can no longer talk abauL the "effects" of a message on a homogeneous mass audience who are expected to be affected in the same way. However, ittc limitation is that the "uses and gratifications" perepecti y emnjaj nsJlldivjdujalM^ Jji so far as differences of response or intcrmj^ajirjn are ultimately attributed to individual differences of r^rranaliivor psychology. Clearly, asca and gratifications dots rep resent a^igntficani~ad vancc oiTef fects theory, in so far as it opens up the question of differential interpretation. However, it remains severely limited by its A insufficiently sociological or cultural perspective, in so far os everything is reduced to the level of variations of individual psychology. Tt was against this background that Stoan Hall's encoding/decoding model of communication was developed at the Centre for Con temporary Cultural Studies, as an attempt to take forward insights which had emerged within each of these other perspectives.J It took, from (he effects theorists, the notion that mass communication is a structured activity, in which the Institutions which produce the messages do have Tpqwe?i5"stt agendas* and to define issues. This is to move away from the idea of the power of 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 lend u> 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 hoard, from the work developed within the interpretative and normative paradigms, the concern with the ways in which responses and interpretations structured and patterned at a level beyond that of individual psychologies. The model was also, critically, in fomtcd by scmiological perspectives focusing on the question of how communication "works." The key focus wqs on therealizalitin that we arc, of course, dcali ng with signs and symbols which on ly have meaning within the terms of reference supplied by codes (of one sort or another) which Ihe audience shares, to some greater or lesser e stent, with the producers of messages-In short. Pie encoding/decoding model was designed to provide a synthesis of insights that had come out of a series or different perspectives - communication theory, semiology, sociology, and psychology - and to provide an overall model or the communication circuit as U operated in its 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 thai we should look not for the meaning of a teal, but for tiic cotuiilions of a practice - i.e. In examine the foundations of communication, but crucially, to examine those foundations as social and cultural phenomena. This was tlvt point of interest
David Mar lay
Changing paradigms in audience studied
in socio-tinguistics and in die connections wjth debutes in the sociology of education (most notably around the work of Basil Bernstein) which was evident in the early development or the encoding/decoding model.4 Ii was also connected to 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,* However, it remains a limited model, in so far as ft simply provides for the three logical possibilities of the receiver either sharing, partly sharing, or not sharing the code in which the message is sent and therefore, lo that extern, being likely to make a dominant, negotiated, or oppositional decoding of the encoded message. Further, following the encounter with the work of Hymcs, Buurdicu, and Bernstein the encoding/ decod ing model also repress n ted an attempt to develop an anal ysis of the role of social structure in distributing different forms of cultural competence throughout the different sections of the media audience,*
Tn the more recent period, a whole number of shortcomings with the encoding/ decoding mode) or communication have been identified.1 These criticisms concern, for instance, the extent to which the model lends to conceive of l^nguag^jnerel^ns a conveyor bell for preconstiluted meanings or messages; the way m whlcffil lends 10 confuse textual meaning wish Ihc conscious intentions of broadcasters; and the tendency to blur together under the heading of "decoding" what arc probably best thought of as separate processes along die axes of camprehcnsiorxTincomprehension. as opposed to agreement/disagreement with the proposiiional content of messages. Furthermore, the concept of the preferred reading, which is of course central in the encoding/decoding model, has been subjected lo a number of criticisms. At one level one can ask how specific ihe concept of preferred reading is to the field of news and current affairs television (within which the encoding/decoding model was first applied). How one might effectively transfer that model to the analysis of fictional television remains a problem. There are also further problems about the cxaci status of the "preferred reading." is it something which is in the text (a property of the text) or is It something which can be generated from the lext by certain methods of semi-ological analysis, or is it a statement, or prediction by the analyst, as to how most members of the audience will empirically read a given program or message?
There are Ihen a number of problems with the model and in particular with Ihe concept of preferred reading as specified in ihat'modcl. However, 1 would still want lo defend the model's usefulness, in so far as it avoids sliding straight from the notion of a text as having a determinate meaning (which would necessarily impose iLicir in the same way on all members of the audience) 10 an equally absurd, and opposite position, in which it is assumed that the text is completely "open" lo the reader and is merely ihc site upon which ihc reader constructs meaning. This latter "reader as writer" position seems to unite theories as apparently distanced as those of "uses and gratifications" and many forms of "postmodern" theory, fn cither case, any notion of particular forms of textual
organ!nation as constraints on Ihe production of meaning disappear entirely and the text is seen as infinitely (and equally) open in all interpretations. The pointer the preferred reading model was to insist that readers arc, of course, engaged in productive work, but under determinate conditions, Those determinate conditions are of course supplied both by the text, 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 cm a psychoanalytic perspective, which is concerned with the positioning or the subject by the texL
Despite ihe theoretical sophistication of much of this work, in offering a more developed model of tcxl/subjecl relations it has. until now, contributed |title to the empirical study of the audience. This is Tor the simple reason that those working tn this tradition have, on the whole, been content 10 "deduce" audience responses from the structure of the text. To this extent, and despite the theoretical advances achieved hy this work in odicr respects. 1 would argue that the psycho-analytically based work has ultimately mobilized what can he seen as another version of the hypodermic theory or effects - in so far as it is, at least in its Initial and fundamental formulations, a universalis* theory which attempts to account Tor the way in which ihc subject is necessarily positioned by the text. The difficulty, in terms of audience studies, is that this body or work, premised as it. is on universalis! criteria, finds it difficult to provide the theoretical space within which one can allow for. and then investigate, differential readings, interpretation.', or responses on die part of the audience. This is so quite simply because the theory, in effect, tries (a explain any specific instance of the text/reader relationship in terms of a universalis! theory of the formation of subjec is in general.
From within litis perspective emphasis Tails on the universal, primary, psychoanalytic processes through which the subject is constituted. The icxl is dicn understood as reproducing or replaying this primary positioning, which is ihen ihc foundation of any particular reading. My argument would be that, in Taci, we need 10 question the assumption that all specific discursive effects can be reduced 10. and explained hy, die functioning of a single, universal set of psychic mechanisms - which is railier like a theory of Platonic forms, which find their expression in any particular instance. The key issue is that this form or psychoanalytic theory poses the problem or the politics of die signifier (the struggle over ideology in language) exclusively at the level of the subject, rather than at the intersection between constituted subjects and specific discursive positions - i.e. at ihe site of inicrpellaiion, where the discursive subject Is recognized to be operating in Intcrdiscursive space.
tn making this argument, I follow Stuart Hall's critique of the Lacanian perspective. Hall argues that "without further work, further specification, ihe
David Motley
Changing paradigms in audience studies
mechanisms of the Oedipus complex in the discourse of Freud and Lacan ore universalist. trans-historical anil therefore 'essential ist.*"1 To that extent, Hall argues, these concepts, in their universalis! forms, cannot usefully be applied, without further specification find elaboration, to the analysis of historically specific social formation;;.
This is to attempt to hold on to the distinction between the constitution of the subject as a general (or mythical) moment and the moment when the subject in general is interpellated by the discursive formation of specific societies. Thai is to insist on the distinction between the formation of subjects for language, and the recruitment of specific subjects to ihe subject positions or discursive formations through the process of interpellation. It is also to move away from the assumption diatevery specific reading is already determined by the primary structure of subject positions and to insist that these interpellations are not given and absolute, but father, arc conditional and provisional, in so far as the struggle in ideology lakes place precisely through the aniculption/disarticuialion of interpellations. This is to lay stress on the possibility of contradictory interpellations and lo emphasize the unstable, provisional, and dynamic properties or subject positioning. It is also to recognize that subjects have histories and that past interpellations affect present ones, rather than to "deduce" subjects from die subject position? offered by the text and to argue that readers arc not merely bearers or puppets of their unconscious positions. It is to insist, with Volosinov, on the "mulllacceni-ualiijf of the sign" which makes it possible for discourse to become an arena of struggle.9
However, it must also be recognized that, within this psychoanalytic perspective itself, the gap between real, empirical readers and the "inscribed" ones constructed and marked in and by the lexl has 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 (he text and the social subject who is invited to take up this position). This is further tu recognize that address is not synonymous with textual address, and that particular positions arc a product of textual address in conjunction with the immediate discourses and apparatuses that sum nun I and support it, and that the social subject always exceeds the subject implied by the lexL Wc can point here to the work of Paul Willcmcn and Steve Neale who developed dii$ break with the ahistcrical and unspecified use of the category of the subject10 It follows from this break that the meaning produced by the encounter of text and subject cannot be read straight off from textual charge (eristics or discursive strategies. We have to lake into account what Nealc so aptly described as "the use lo which a particular text is put. its function within a particular conjuncture, in particular institutional spaces, in relation to particular audiences.*"1 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 text by the reader. One crucial facior delimiting this will, of course, be the repertoire of discourses at ihc disposal of
different audiences, and the individual's position in the social formation wilt tend to determine which sets of discourses a given subject is likely to have access to, and thus to bring to their encounter with the icxl.
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 or intelligibility, it may operate to prefer certain readings above others; what il cannot do is to guarantee them - that must always be an empirical question. This is, in part, because the subject that the text encounters is, as Pecheux has argued, never a "raw" or "unaccuUnrated" subject. Readers are always already formed, shaped as subjects, by the ideological discourses which have operated on them prior in their encounter with (he text in * question."
If wc are in theorize die 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 dint wc can move beyond a theory of the subject which has reference only to universal, primary psychoanalytic processes, and only thus that wc can allow s space in which one can recognize that (he struggle over ideology also takes place at the 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 ihe problems of "universalism". Walkcrdine sets out to offer an understanding of a particular working-class family's viewing habits and pleasures (and. in particular, ihe pleasure which ihc husband derives from watching ihe Rocky films) within ihe terms of what she describes as an "ethnography of the unconscious," Her concern is wiih "the production of subjectivity in the actual regulative practices of daily life" and with the "effeetivity of filmic representations within the lived relations of domestic practices." In particular, Walkcrdinc aims to avoid the common problem associated with psychoanalytic accounts which lend lo "impose universalislic meanings on particularistic viewing situations."11 Walkcrdinc offers an illuminating analysis of a class-specific mode of masculinity. Thus, in seeking to understand this working-class man's obsession with the Rocky films, rather than simply understanding the fighting in the films as' 'macho violence" (and thus die appropriate object of pathologization in a liberal ann-scxist discourse), Walkcrdine examines it in relation lo thisman's own undersianding of himself as a "fighter." struggling to defend his (and his family's) rights in an oppressive * system. Thus, for this working-class man, for whom advancement through mental labor is not an option, there remains only the body - and the struggle for advancement is then expressed cither through manual labor, or ultimately, through fighting. From this perspective then
David MorJey
Changing paradigms in audience studies
fighting is a key term in a discourse of powcriessness. or a constant struggle not to sink, to get rights, nol to be pushed out. In that lived historicity fighting is quilt specific in ils meaning, and therefore not coterminous with what fighting would mean in a professional middle class household. This is an argument against a universalisrri of meaning, reading and interpretation.*4
From my own point of view, Wqlkcrditie's analysis is of interest not simply on account of Ihc important "tweak" which it makes by developing a mode of analysis derived from psychoanalyiic theory which is. for once, historically and contextuaily spec i lie, but also because it opens up the whole question of how we understand (he specific conditions of formation of "pleasures" Tor particular groijps at any one historical moment.
Moreover, the idea of the dclcjmining cffeclivily of the single text which has been die cornerstone or much film theory is not simply deficient when we consider the role of promotional material within the cinema. It is certainly deficient when we consider the consumption of television, given the higher level of inlcrpcnctration of different materials across the flow or television scheduling. In this context, Nick Browne has usefully suggested a notion of Hie televisual text which is quite different from the traditional notion of the discrete and separate lexl. He proposes the concept of the "supenexl" which consist or "the particular program and all the introductory and interstitial materials - chiefly announce-menis and ads - considered in its specific position in die schedule." He thus argues that the
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 lo the structure and economics of the work week of the general population.11
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 nol occupy a fixed position but is always mobilized, placed, and articulated wiHi other texts in different ways.
However, it can be objected that this new emphasis u|xin inicmexiualiiy runs several risks, notably that contextual issues will overwhelm and ovcrdeierminc lex ts and the ir specificity. The question is whether, in fol lowing ih is rau ic, we run the danger of arriving at a poinl 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 sliJI usefully speak of the separate text, as opposed lo what has variously been described as the
"paratext" or the "supertcxt"? ! 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.'7 tn thai study. Bcnnctl quotes Pierre Machercy as * asking what studying a specific text should entail. Machercy argues that studying a text involves studying tint just the text, but also everything which has been writlcn ahuul it. everything which has collected on it or become attached in it. like shells on a rock by the seashore, funning a whole encrustation. At that point ihc very idea of a separable text becomes problematic Machercy moves us inward a perspective on the text which, rather than looking ai ii as a given and separable cniiiy. is concerned with the history of its use and iis inscription into a variety or different material, social, and institutional contexts."
John Fiske has called for a rc-thcorization of the televisual text, which would allow us to investigate its openness by mobilizing Barthes' distinction between "work" and "icxi." Barthcs argued that ihc work is the physical construct of signiHers, thai becomes a "lexf only when read.'* The icxi, in this formulation, is never a fixed or stable tiling bui is continually being recreated out of the work. Fiske has extended this argumcnl toward Hie idea Of a "readers' liberation movement," involving a theory of audience reading which
asserts the rentier's right lo make, oul of the program, ihc icxt that connecls the discourses of the program wiih the discourses through which he/she lives his/her social experience, and itius for program, society and reading subject lo come together in an active, creative living of culture in the moment of reading.*
While I sympathize with this concern with "readers' rights," I would argue thai the concept or rights in this context is problematic, in so far as it is perhaps less s question of the readers' rights lo make oui 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. the presence or absence of the power or cultural resources necessary to make certain types of meaning (which is, ultimately, an empirical question).
Jane Feucr has usefully identified a number of the problems which lurk aruund here. As she notes, from Hie standpoint of the reception theories on which Bennett draws, ihe question of what constilutes the text is extremely complex. As she notes, from Uii$ perspective il becomes increasingly hard lo separate Hie text from its conicmponuy encrustations - fan magazines, the- ads, the product lie-ins, ihe books, the publicity articles and so on, and indeed, the very sense of attempting lhts separation is called into question. Ffcuer'!! argumcnl is lhai this approach endlessly defers the attribution of meaning. Whereas Bennett argues thai "the lexl is never available for analysis except in ihe context of its activations." as Feucr puts it,
ihc reception theorist is asking us to read those activations, lo read Hie text of the reading formation. Thus, audience response criticism becomes another
David Morloy
Changing paradigms In audience studies
form of interpretation, ihe text for which is now relocated, ir wc take the concept of Lhc "openness" .., of a tcxl lo its logical extreme, wc hiivc merely displaced the whole problem of interpretation, for the audience responses also Constitute a representation, iri this ca.se a linguistic discourse. In displacing the text onto the audience, the reception theorist constantly risks falling back into an empiricism of the subject, by granting a privileged status to the interpretations of the audience over those of the critic.11
In Feiicr's formulation, the problem is that when one attempts to combine this (Kvspcciive with empirical audience work,
the authors begin by reacting against theories which assume that the text has a total dcterminity over the audience. They then attempt to read their own audience data. In each case, ihc critic reads another icxt, that is to say. the text of the audience discourse. For the empirical researcher, granting a privileged status lo the audience response does not creatca problem. But it does for those reception theorists who acknowledge the textual status of the audience response. They then have to read the 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 lite spectator's unconscious responses to texts than do Ihc more speculative attempts by Him theorists to imagine the possible implications of spectator positioning by the text."21
Certainly, much of the audience work discussed here (including my own) is inevitably subject to the problems of reflexivity that Fcuer raises. Jn my own research" I have offered the reader a "reading" of the texts supplied by my respondents - those texts themselves being the respondents' accounts of their own viewing behavior. However, in relation 10 the problems of the status of any knowledge that might be produced as a result of this process of "readings of readings" I would still argue that the interview (mu to mention other techniques such as participant observation) remains a fundamentally more appropriate way to attempt to understand what audiences do when they watch television than for the analyst to simply stay home and imagine the passible implications or how other people might watch television, in the manner which Feucr suggests.
In the case of my own research, I would accept that in the absence of any significant element or participant observation of actual behavior beyond Ihc interview situation, 1 am lefi only with the stories that respondents chose to tell me. These stories are, however, themselves both limited by, and indexical of, ihc cultural and linguistic frames of reference which respondents have available lo them, through which to articulate their responses, though, as Feucr rightly notes, these arc limited [n the level of conscious responses.
However, a number of other points also need to be made. The first concerns the supposedly lesser validity of respondents' accounts of behavior, as opposed to observations of actual behavior. The problem here is that observing behavior always leaves open the question of interpretation. I may be observed to be sitting, storing qi the TV screen, but this behavior would be equally compatible with total fascination or total boredom on my part - 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 mc. 1 may well, of course, lie to you or otherwise misrepresent my thoughts or feelings, for any number of purposes, hut uc Il-lini, through my verba! responses, you will begin to get some access to the kind of language, 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 dien is to be defended, in my view, not simply for the access it gives die researcher to die respondents* conscious opinions and statements but also for the access that it gives lo the linguistic terms and categories (the "logical scaffolding" in Wittgenstein's terms14) through which respondents construct their worlds and their own understanding of their activities.
The dangers uf the "speculative" approach advocated by Feucr in which the theorist simply attempts to imagine the possible implications of spectator positioning by the text ore well illustrated in Ellen Seiter et ai's critique orTania Modlcski's work (sec Chapter twelve of this volume). Seiter el al. argue dial ModleskPs analysis of how women soap opera viewers are positioned by ihc text - in the manner of the "ideal mother" who understands all the various motives and desires or the characters in a soap opera" - is in fact premised on an unexamined assumption ofa particular white, middle-class social position. Thus, the subject positioning which Modleski "imagines" thai all women will occupy in relation tu snap opera texts turns out, empirically, to be refused by many of the working-class women interviewed by Seiter el al. In short, we sec here how the "speculative" approach can, ai limes, lead to inappropriate "universali/asians" of analysis which turn out to be premised on particular assumptions regarding the social positioning of the viewer. This is precisely the point of empirical work -as len Ang puts it, to "keep our interpretations sensitive to concrete specificities, to the unexpected, lo history" - to the possibility of, in Paul Willis' words, "being surprised, of reaching knowledge not prefigured in one's starting paradigm."'*
Contexts, media, and modes of viewing
The question here is how wc might develop a mode of analysis which combines a focus on the understanding of viewing practices with on understanding of the readings or specific program material in specific contexts. There arc ihrcc muni issues thai I wish to address. One concents ihc adequacy of the traditional model within film theory, which relates the spectator to the cinema tcxl, or film. The
David Morle ;■
Changing paradigms In audience studies
second concerns ihc problem of the nun-iransferability or the modes or viewing associated with the cinema to the dominant mode of viewing associated with television. The third is concerned with the need to specify variations within the different modes of viewing of television.
First. 1 want to consider the thcorization of the film audience, within the context or the cinema. Predominantly, within film theory, the subject which is addressed is the subject tif the text, i,c. the film. At its simplest, I want to argue that there is more to the matter ilian 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. dims traditionally had to be seen in certain places, and die understanding of such places has to be central 10 any analysis or what "going to the pictures" has meant. I want lo suggest that die whole notion or "the picture palace" is as significant as the question of "film." This is lo introduce die 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 than seeing films. There is going out at night, the sense of relaxation combined with the sense of Tun and excitement. The very name "picture palace" by which cinemas were known Tor a long time captures on important pan 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 or romance and glamor, warmth and color. This is 10 point to die phenomenology of the whole "moment" of going Lo the pictures - "tin- queue, the entrance stalls, the foyer, cash desk, stairs, corridor, entering the cinema, the gangway, the seats, the music, the lights fading, darkness, the screen which begins to glow as the silk curtains' are opening."17 Any analysis of the film subject which docs not take on board these questions - uf the context in which die film is consumed - is, lo my mind, inadequate. Unfortunately most recent work in film theory has, in fact, operated without reference to these issues, and has largely followed die protocols of (he literary tradition, in prioritizing the status of die text itscll, abstracted from the context or 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 Larry Orossbcrg 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 are absorbed into the world of the film."31 Now, not only must this cease to apply in relation to film when we consider its consumption cither on broadcast television or on video in the home, since these provide a quite different context ofrcception, and therefore a quite different set ofsubject positions for the viewer. The problem is all the more marked if we try to transpose theories developed in relation to the activity or the cinema audience to the activity of (he television audience.
John Ellis has usefully pointed to the distinctions between cinema and television, in terms of their different regimes or representation, or vision, and or reception Ellis attempts (0 sketch out cinema and television as particular social forms of organization or meaning, for pardculor farms 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 ihc TV switched on. but is giving it very liuie attention - a casual viewer rclaxi 11 g 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 selT-promotinn thai each broadcast TV channel docs for itself, the amount or direct address dial occurs, and the centrality given to sound in television broadcasting. As Ellis puis it "sound draws the at tendon of the look when it has wandered away."'*
Ipn 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 ore rhetoric of television. However, in relation to the third issue noted in the introduction to this section, the need to specify variations in the different modes of viewing television, Jen Ang points out that 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 or 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.*8
len Ang goes on to argue dial the point is that » '
different types of involvement, based upon different ideological positions can be*constructed by televisual discourse. It does not make scn.se, therefore, to see televisual discourse as a basically unified text without... internal contradictions ... (rather)... we should analyse the different positions of lered to viewers in relation to different parts of ihc televisual discourse.51
In summary, the key issues identified here are the status of the text; the relation of text and context; the usefulness uf an expanded notion of the "supcrtcxt"; the problem of "medium specific" modes of viewing; and the further problem of variations of modes of viewing within any one medium. It is this set of concerns, J want to argue, which provide the framework within which one must, in fact, consider the particular readings which specific audiences make of individual programs.
Davwl Mofley
Changing paradigms In audience studies
Genres, pleasures and th* politics or consumption
One or the most important developments in recent work in this field has been ihc shirt from the concern with interpretations of specific films or television programs to the study or patterns of engagement with different types or genres of material, Whnl is at issue here is how wt can begin in understand the particular pleasures which particular types {or genres) of material seem to offer to particular audiences in specific social situations. In this respect, Janice Railway offers what 1 would regard as an exemplary proposal for the appropriate mode of analysis. As she puts it
a good cultural analysis or the romance ought iu specify not only how the wo-men understand the novels themselves but also how they comprehend the very act of picking up a book in the first place. The analytic focus must shift from the text itseir, taken in isolation, (o the complex social event or readingss
1 will return later to this theme, in discussing the need to combine analysis of viewing contexts unrl mode; of viewing with the analysis of specific readings, but first t want to focus on the issue of how popular laste and popular pleasures can be understood. From my own perspective, the most interesting question is that of
h v r-.i > titular types of material ore paiticularly altraclive to specific segments or the audience. The key reference, most obviously, is to the work of Pierre Bourdicu on patterns of taste, and die distribution nf these patterns within different segments orn society." The issue is how best lo understand the "fir between particular cultural forms and particular patterns of losie.
In an earlier period. Bardies suggested that what was needed was an aesthetic based on (lie pleasures or the consumer. My own argument is that the critical issue is, in fact, the analysis of the particular pleasures or specific audience groups rather than any abstract concern with the na l tire or "Pleasure" as such. To pursue die latter route would be to 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 tltc general theory, as mere "replays" of a universal ized psychic mechanism.
Here, in fact, it seems quite possible that we have much to team from the commercial world. In die context of the proliferation of channels and the much heralded advent or "narrow casting." the commercial world has been fast to identify the issue of audience segmentation as one of the keys to the successful pursuit of prnfii. It is of some considerable interest tli.it. within the realm of British television it was* as Ian Conncll has argued, undoubtedly the commercial channel, FTV, which "led the way in making connection with and expressing popular structures of feeling,"M As Conncll argues, by Us very logic a commercial station Is bound to attempt to meet the tastes and needs of its audience more directly than any station (of j left- or right-wing political persuasion) which lakes a more paternalist oltitudc inward iu audience.
There are, evidently, a number of political difficulties running through these debates, as has been well evidenced in Britain certainly by the debates between Ian Conncll and Nicholas Gamham concerning the question of commercial television, popular taste, and public broadcasting," These same political difficulties have also been brought into focus in another context, in die debates between writers Such as Jane Ro«l and KaUty Mycrs,M who have attempted m analyse the specific forms of pleasure which are orfcrcd lo consumers (and particularly to women) - as against those such as Judith Williamson11 who urc,uc that the project or attempting lo understand popular pleasures continually runs the risk or ending up as an uncritical perspective which simply endorses popular tastes because they arc popular.
In a similar vein lo Williamson, Tania Mtxllcski has also recently argued that face a danger of "collusion" between "mass culture critics" and "consumer
society." Modleski'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 Tar thai il would seeni that mass culture is no longer a problem for some "marxist" critics.... If die problem with some of the work of (he Frankfurl School was that its members were too far outside the culture they examined, critics today seem to have the opposite problem: immersed in their culture, hair in love with their subject, they sometimes seem unable (o achieve the proper critical distance from tL As a result, they may unwittingly wind up writing apologies for moss culture and embracing ils ideology,1*
Modleskl daim s that die stress on the "active" role of the audience/consumer has been carried too Tar. However, she is also concerned that the very activity of studying audiences may somehow turn out to he a form of "collaborating with the (mass culture) industry." More fundamentally, she quotes, with approval. Terry Faglc ion's com men is to the clTcci that a socialist criticism "is not primarily concerned with the consumers' revolution. Its task is lo take over the means of production.***9
It seems that, from Modlcski's point or view, empirical methods far llic study or audiences ore assumed to be "lainicd" simply because many of them have been and arc used within the realms of commercial market research- Moreover, in her uscofEaglelon's quote, she finally has recourse loa traditional mode of classical Marxist analysis, the weakness of which is precisely ils "hlinctspot" in relation to issues of consumption - and, indeed, its tendency to priorifivte the study of "productiorr to the exclusion of ihc study of all oiher levels of the social formation. The problem is that production is only brought to fruition in the spheres of circulation and exchange - to thai extent, die study nf consumption is, 1 would argue, essential to a full understanding of production.
I want to argue thai the critical (r>r "political") judgment which we might wish to make on me popularity of Dallas or any oUier commercial product is a quite
David t' • i
i
Changing paradigms in audience sludtes
different matter from the need to understand iu populnrity, The functioning of taste, and indeed of ideology, has to be understood as a process in which die commercial world succeeds in producing objects, programs (and consumer goods), which do connect with the lived desires of popular audiences. To Tail to understand exactly how this works is, in my own view, not only academically retrograde but also politically suicidal As Terry Love 11 hat argued, goods which arc produced Tor profit can only, in fact, acquire an exchange value if they also have a use value U) those who consume ihcm. As Lovcll puis it:
the commodities in question - films, books, tele vision programs, etc. - have different use values for the individuals who purchase them than they have for the capitalists who produce and sell them, and in turn, for capitalism as a whole. We may assume thai people do noi 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 ut in the absence of analysis and investigation There is no guarantee that the use value or the cultural object for its purchaser will even be compatible with its utility to capitalism as bourgeois ideology, and therefore no guarantee thai it will in fact secure "the ideological effect.'™
Popular forms: soap opera and American culture
t want now to move on. within this general framework, to look in a little more detail at two particular areas of work on the question of the "fil" between particular types (or genres) of programming and particular types of audiences. These two areas are, first, the study 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 Modlcski. Dorothy Hobson, ten Ang. Charlotte BrunsrJon, Janice Railway, Ellen Setter et at., and Ann Gray is now ex tensive and I shall not comment here in detail on it,1' However, 1 would argue 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 thai 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 locales the issue centrally around die "fit" 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, die specific types of pleasures which this particular type of programming offers to a distinct category of viewers.
len Aug draws on Pierre Buurdicu's notion that popular pleasures are characterized by an immediate emotional or sensual involvement in the object of pleasure (i.e. the possibility or identification) so that popular pleasure is first and foremost a pleasure of recognition *! As Ang says, the question is what do Dallas lovers recognize in Dallas, and how and why docs that pleasure work? Clearly, one part of that identification, for a feminine audience, must be lite way in which soap operas do give expression to the contradictions of patriarchy. Thus, even if the women within these narratives cannot resolve their problems, given the structure in which they operate, minimally these arc programs in which liiosc problems arc recognized and validated. However, these forms of identification themselves are clearly variable. Some soap operas dearly work on a level of empirical realism, in so far as the characters wilhin ihcm arc presented as living in situations comparable tu those or significant numbers of ihcir audiences {Brookside 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 at 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 fee ling.'"^ As she suggest, it would seem lu he Jus "tragic structure or feeling" in soap opera which, for many women, is what is recognized and is thai with which ihey can identify.
However, Dallas can also provide us with a useful bridge lo ihc second theme noted above. This is lo focus on Dallas not so much as a soap opera but as "yet more evidence of the threat posed by American style commercial culture against 'authentic' national cultures and idemilies' ... i.e. Dallas as ihc symbol of American cultural imperialism."" Here die issue becomes nol so much one of gender but one of how Dallas "works'* for non -American audiences, i.e. how and why it can be pleasurable for a whole range of audiences outside oT America and indeed, outside or the First World. In this context the most important work is tlt»l which has been conducted by Elihu Katz and Tamar Licbcs on international readings of Dallas.** Their project was designed to investigate how it is dial US commercial culture can be so popular throughout ihe world - how it is that such a variety ol international audiences can attend lo it and indeed seem enthusiastic about iL In short, the issue is, what is it about Dallas that is compatible with the lives of its variously cultured viewers? Mow is this compatibility expressed'.' Or. negatively, when and where docs die program not work? One of the key issues which Katz and Liebcs have been concerned to investigate is the way in which certain levels of ihc program might be expected lo be universally understood (for instance the universality of family conflict) whereas decoding* of other levels of Ihc program might be expected to vary by social category of viewer, cither in terms of nationality, ethnicity, class, or sex. Ihc broad framework widiin 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 ihc interactions or the characters, in the moral issues as embodied in these characters.
Oavřd Mor 'f y
or in the narrative rorm. As Tamar Licbcs herself has written, this research project has not been aimed ut "attempting to demonstrate effect, but rather . ut 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 programs can crass cultural and linguistic frontiers."**
Their research has thrown up a number of examples of how community members from a variety of ethnic origins negotiate the meanings of the program by confronting the text with their own traditions and ihcir own experience. Moreover, uiis research has illustrated the important function which programs of this type can serve fur viewers in providing them with an "occasion" or forum in which to debate issues of concern to ihcm. As Katz and Licbes have shown, this is not a process which simply goes on in a reflective manner, after the event of program transmission - rather die viewing process itself is likely lo include ongoing comment, and indeed debate along these lines. Of further, substantial, interest is (be material which the research has produced, nol simply in terms of differential interpretations or evaluations or dus or that program item, but in relation lo lite different "angles or vision** (for instance, the distinction between poetic and referential readings) which different groups bring to the program.41
In the British context, where ihc very phrase "wall to wall Dallas" has come lo represent the notion of television at its very (and quintcsscntially American) worst, this kind of precise investigation of ihc specific meaning ol die program in different contexts is to be particularly welcomed. What I want to briefly explore now is a further set of issues, wilhin this debate, about Lhc way in which "glossy" American scries are held to have "invaded" European culture.
I want to Iry to relate the argument about cultural imperialism buck to the issues raised earlier concerning popular taste, but now from a different perspective. The idea thai English or European "high culture" is in danger of being swamped by a rclcnUess deluge of "Americana" is not new. In the British context Dick ffebdige traces these fears back lo at least the 1930s, when writers as different as the coascrvative 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, Ihese were the images of lhc "soft," enervating, "easy life" which threatened to smother British cultural identity. By lhc 1950s, lhc battle lines in this debate were drawn - real working-class culture, quality, and taste on one side; die ersatz blandishment of sofl disposable commodities, streamlined cars, rock and roll, crime and promiscuity on the other. As Hcbdigc says, when anything American was sighted, it tended lo be interpreted - at least by those working in ihc context of education or professional cultural criticism - as the "beginning of the end." Hcbdigc describes how the images of crime, disaf fecicd youth, urban crisis, and spiritual drift became "anchored togcdicr around popular American commodities, fixing a chain of associations which has become thoroughly scdimenicd in British common-sense."4* Thus, in particular, American
Changing paradigms In audience studlas
food become a standard metaphor for declining standards. The very notion or die Americanization of television came lo stand for a scries of associations; commercialization, banality, and die destruction or traditional values.
The debate which Hebdige opens up here goes back centrally to Richard Hoggart's work on The Uses of Literacy,1* Huggarc's book is a detailed appreciation of traditional working-class community life, coupled wiui a critique of the "homogenizing" impact of American culture on ihese communities. According lo Hoggart, auUientic working-class lire was being destroyed by the "hollow brightness," the "shiny barbarism," and "spiritual decay" of imported American culture. This lamentation on lhc deleterious effects of Americanization was, and continues to he, advanced from the left just as much as from the right of lhc political spectrum. However, Hcbdigc**central point is that these American products - streamlined, plastic, and glamorous - were precisely Uiose which appealed tu substantial sections of a British working-class audience (and, in television terms, were relaied to the same dynamics of popular taste which lay behind die mass desertion of the working-class audience toward commercial television when it began to be broadcast in die UK in lhc 1950s). While, from the paternalistic point of view or ihc upholders of "traditional British values," these American imported products constituted "a chromium hoard bearing down on us," for a popular audience. Hehdigc argues, they constituted a space in which oppositional meanings (in relation to dominant traditions of British cult tire) could be negotiated and expressed.
1 would note a number of connections in this respect. First, the point which Hebdige develops about the appeal of American culture to disadvantaged groups wilhin another society is paralleled by len Ang's findings concerning die nature or the pleasures offered by American-style commercial programming to working-class audiences in Holland." Second, die work which Tim Blanchard has done in Britain, analysing the differential preferences of various calegorics of teenagers for different types or television programs, adds some further support lo Uic argument.'11 He identified n patlem among the young people he interviewed in which black English teenagers had a particularly high regard for American programming; this is by no means simply to do with the fact thai lhc re arc more black characters in American shows, but is closely related to I lebdigc's argument about ihe subversive appeals of certain types or "vulgar" commercial products for subordinated groups.
In concluding this section, I would also like tn add one more iwist to the siory. The images which Orwell and Hoggart use to characterize lhc damaging effects of American popular culture have a recurring ihemc: die "feminization" of Hie authentic muscle and masculinity c>r Ihc British industrial working class, which they saw as under attack from an excess ol Americana - characterized essentially by passivity, leisure, and domesticity, warm water baths, sun bathing, and the "easy lire." When the discussion or American programming is combined with the discussion of programming in the form of soap opera, principally understood as d feminine form in uscir, we arc clearly, from Hoggart's or Orwell's position,
David Morfav
Changing paradigms in audience studies
dealing with the lowest of the low, or as Charlotte Bransdon has characterized it "the trashiest [rash."" Audience research which can help us begin to unpick die threads which lie tangled behind this particular conundrum would seem to be or particular value.
Television and everyday life: tlie context of viewing
One of the most important advances in recent audience work has been the growing recognition of ihe importance of the context of viewing. In lite 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 contemporary modes of domestic organization. I will rulum to this point, but for the moment. Jet us begin by noting, with Icn Aug that
an audience does not merely consist or Ihe aggregate or 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 diis connection, Thomas Lindlor 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 it gels done.
As they argue, "in order for many of the central theoretical and policy questions tobesatisraciorily framed, let alone answered, a number of prerequisite questions concerning what the act of television viewing entails ... need to be posed and investigated."55 This is not. by any means, to return to any abstracted notion of the specificity of ihc medium of television, or even ihe specificity of television viewing as such, as if that itself were an invariable and homogeneous category. However, it is, first of allt necessary to distinguish television viewing as a practice from, for instance, cinema viewing, or indeed, from ihe 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 mck conccri...). Each medium is then a mobile term laking shape as it situates itself... within ihe rest of our lives ... the text is located, not only iniencxtually, but in a range of apparatuses as well... thus, one rarely just listens to the radio, watches TV, or even, goes to the movies - one is studying, dating, driving somewhere else, etc,*4
In Grossbcrg's version of the argument,
the indifference of the media displaces Ihc problematic of cultural theory from thai of coding .., lo lhal of the apparatus itself .., television makes diis 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 mundanitics of everyday life, and simultaneously, its constant interruption by, and continuity wiih our other daily routines.57
AsGmsshcrg points out,
/ one rarely intently gazes at television, allowing oneself in be absorbed into the work, but raiher distractedly glances at it or absorbs it into our momentary mood or position .,, television is indifferent to us (it doesn't demand our presence, yei it is always wailing for us).
Thus, as he argues, wc need lo face up to the consequences of the facl lhal
viewers rarely pay attention in the way thai sponsors {or ad vcrliscrs) want, and there is little relation between the television's being on, and cither the presence of bodies in front of il, ar even a limited concentration or interpretative activity being invested in iLH
Hermann Bausinger approaches the problem of the domestic context or viewing from s similar angle,-1' and quotes the following remark made by an interviewee: "Early in the evening wc walch very lilllcTV. Only when my husband is in a real rage. He comes home, hardly says anything and switches on the TV .""'Bausinger notes thai many media analysis would interpret this man's acLion as signifying a desircjo.iva.teh TV. However, as Bausinger goes oh, in this case "pushing the bulion doesn't signify '1 would like to watch this,' hut rather M would tike (0 see and bear nothing.'"*1 Conversely, be notes, later, ihc opposite case where "ihe lather goes to his room, while ihe mother sits down next to her eldest son and watches the sports review with him. It docs not interest her. but it is an attempt at making contact."51
By way or a protocol, Bausinger also helpfully provides us with a number ut points lo bear in mind in relation lo domestic media consumption:
1 To make a meaningful study uf the use of the media, il is necessary 1,1 ^ke different media into consideration, (he 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 die time of the day, or moods, die media message competes with other messages.
3 The media are an integral pan or the way ihe everyday Is conducted (for example, die newspaper as a necessary constituent part of "breakfasl") and (media) decisions are constantly crossed through and influenced by non-media conditions and decisions.
4 It is not a question of an isolated, individual process, but ol a collective
David Morley
I-
process. Even when reading a newspaper one is not truly alone, it lakes place in ihe context of ihe 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 die "unobtrusive ways in which broadcasting sustains the lives, and routines, from one day to the nexl. year in, year out, of whole populations."" This is, in effect, to pay attention to the role of the media in the very structuring of time. Another oblique connection is worth noting here. The perspective which Scannell advances is closely related to Bourdicu's insistence on the matcrialily of ihe subject, as a biological organism existing chronologically. This is to emphasize the study of the organization of time as a necessary focus for any sociology of culture. At another level, Scanncll's focus is on Ihe role of national broadcasting media as central agents of national culture, in the organizing of the "involvement" of the population in die calendar of national life. Similarly, he analyses the way in which broadcast media constitute a cultural resource "sluired by millions" and the way in which, for instance, long-running poputar serials provide a "past in common" to whole populations. Here we move beyond both the study of the isolated text, and at the same time 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 positiuns, we must attend to the issue of television scheduling and the manner in which, for instance, as Richard Patcrson has argued." the broadcasting institutions construct their schedules in ways which are designed to complement the basic modes of domestic organization, but also, inevitably, then come lo play an active and consuiulivc role in the organization of domestic lime.
This, then, is to advance a perspective which attempts to combine questions of intcrpretatron with questions of the "uses" of television (and other media), on approach more commonly associated with a broadly based sociology of leisure. This perspective relocates television viewing within the overall context ot domestic leisure. Given thai television is a domestic medium it follows that the appropriate mode of analysis must lake the unit of consumption of television as the family or household rather than die individual viewer. This is to situate individual viewing within the household relations in which it operates, and to 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 to consider the differential modes of viewing engaged in by different types of viewers, in relation to different types of programs, shown in different slots in the overall schedule, in relation to different spaces within the organization of domestic life.
Clearly, if we are considering television viewing in the context of die family, things arc prcuy complicated. First of all one is not able to treat 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 the less powerful members of any household) die programs they watch arc not necessarily programs which they will have chosen to watch. In the context of the domestic household, viewing choices must ortcn be negotiated. Moreover, Ihis perspective introduces, as one of its
(premises, what Scan Cubitt has called "the politics of the living room." where, as he puts it, "if the camera pulls you in to involvement with the screen, the family is likely to pull you out."6* This is also lo try to gel beyond the way in which television is often understood - simply as disruptive of family life. It 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 gel away from the idea that people either live in social relations or watch television. Rather one musi analyse how viewing is done within die social relations of the household.
However, a number of points follow from this. As soon as otic thinks about television in the context of social relations then one is inevitably thinking about television in (he context of power relations. If one is considering the domestic context, then it will inevitably be gender relations, in particular, that will come into focus, within the household. This is to introduce a whole set of possible connections and disjunctions between gender relations and the organization of private and public life - nol least, the differential positioning of women and men within die domestic space of the household. In short, if. Tor men. their concept of lime and space is organized around a notion of "worktimc" and ihc "public" -from which the domestic is a respite, for most women (even those who do work outside the household) the fundamental principles of organization operate in a different way. Far them, the domestic is nol understood as a sphere of leisure, but rather as a sphere in which u further set of (domestic) obligations lake precedence, which complicate and interrupt any desires they may have to watch television. Dorothy Hobson's work on the complicated modalities of women's viewing has explored some of diesc issues.'7 though again it is worth noting the way in which it is women's viewing which becomes the "marked" category, and the "problem" for analysis - as opposed to the "unmarked" (i.e. masculine) mode or viewing, which constitutes the taken for granted norm of the activity.
In this connection, il is also important to take note of James Lull's work on TV viewing in the domestic context. One of the issues which Lull investigates is the question of "who is responsible Tor the selection or television programs at home, how program selection processes occur, and how the roles uf family position and family communication patterns influence these activities."*" Lull's point is that program selection decisions are often complicated interpersonal communications activities involving inter-family status relations, temporal crime xi, the number of scls available, and role-based communications conventions. Here wc approach the central question of power. And within any patriarchal society the power at issue will necessarily be that of the father. 'I ins perspective involves us in considering the ways in which familial relations, tike any other social relations, arc also and inevitably power relations. Lull's central finding in his survey of
David Motley
Changing paradigms in audience studies
control of the television set was that fathers were named (not surprisingly) most often as the person who controlled the selection or 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, to consider the ways in which viewing is performed within the social relations of the family is also, inevitably, (□ 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 or gender and age,
In making these points about the structure of the domestic viewing context, there is a certain sense of simply restating things which we "already know," from our own experience or domestic life. This very insistence on the importance of these banal considerations is made difficult by their "taken-raf-granredness" -as the invisible routines and structures inside or which our lives arc organized. In Britain, the results of a study conducted during 1985 by Peter Collctt. in which a video camera was placed inside the television sets of a number of different households, thus providing film of families watching television, had notable erfecis in gelling ihese considerations on to the agenda of public discussion." No one who saw the tapes could really have claimed to have been surprised by what they saw - pictures or people sitting in a room with their back to ihc television, pictures of empty sofas in rront or the screen, pictures of people dressing their children, eating meals, and arguing with each other while seemingly oblivious Co the set, etc. However, it seemed that it was only at the point at which this kind of videotape "evidence" or these everyday situations was made available, in the context of respectable scientific research within a framework or behavioral psychology, that it was possible, certainly for ihe broadcasters, to begin lo take these questions at all scriousty.
In making these points about the complex nature of the domestic setting in which television is viewed by its audience. T am not arguing for any kind of "new optimism" which would allow us to rest content in the secure understanding that because so many other things arc going on at the same time, nobody pays any attention lo television and therefore we shouldn't worry about it. Rather. 1 am trying to move the baseline, against which wc precisely should then be concerned to examine the modes and varieties oT attention which arc paid to different types or programs, at different points in the day by different types or viewers. It is precisely in the context of all these domestic complications that ihe activity of television viewing must be seriously examined.
Old perspectives for new
Centrally, I have been trying to 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 the flow of television, the positioning of the subject, the 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 the part of specific members of lbe audience. Here I would specifically like lo Support the arguments made by Elíhu Kali, and Tamar Liebes when they note that they aie
in disagreement with others who believe that the unit ol television viewing is better conceptualized as background, or as "a strip" that cuts through an evening's viewing, or as a pervasive barrage or messages about society dial is embedded in all of prime time. Our argument is simply ,,. thai certain programs - some more than nlhers - arc identified by viewers as discrete stories and, as such, viewing entails attention, imeiprciation. evaluation and perhaps social and psychological consequences/"
It is this kind of close attention to, for instance, the varieties or subject positioning which, I would argue, we need to pursue. Without this kind of demited empirical attention to what actually happens in particular situations, we run ihe 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 ihc object... [andI the cultural text is reduced to an abstract grammar, with meaning residing wholly in its confines. The negotiation of meaning and the historicity or consciousness is denied,""
As Dahlgrcn continues.
In the heady wake of the structural reading of Freud it seems ihsti the only alternative to the infamous transcendental subject has been a view which understands the subject not only as deccntred by. but also created by. ihc grammatical structures of the unconscious. The unconscious becomes an abstract drive shaft of history, while the individual subject is emptied of any conscious intcntionaltly.'*1
Similarly, 1 would want to argue that ihe varieties of postmodern relativism in which ihc text is seen as infinitely "iicrable" or writable, according to the whim or the subject, arc equally unhelpful, if for the opposite reason. The demonstration that theoretically "anything goes," in terms of ihc potential polysemy of any text, is very different Trom the demonstration that empirically "just anything" happens when it comes lo ihe actual reading of television teats. Such an approach not only abandons any notion (however attenuated) of the effectivity uf die lext, Ti also flies in the face of the empirical evidence we have of the way in which attention, modes of viewing, response, and interpretation arc patterned in observable empirical clusters as between different sectors of ihe audience.
Pelcr Dahlgrcn has advanced what, in my view, is a very useful definition of a perspective which he describes as 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 "cpisicmic bias" of different media (in so far as each medium fosters a somewhat different dispositional relatic-aship between itself
Davrd Mofley
Changing paradigms in audience studies
and its audiences) and intJecdt a concern wiih Uic differential "cnisiemie biases" of particular lypes of television maicrial. In a similar vein, Robert Dcming has advanced an analysis of ihc ways in which specific channels offer rjariieultir pnsilionalities lo their viewers," and Ellsworth remarks on the way in which MTV (the American all-music cable channel)
offers siudcnl-age viewers a place lo stand in relation to oilier individual groups in the culture .., n social identity ... that positions iho inscribed viewer as a middle-class consumer of rock music wiih enough money to purchase record albums, concert dfccis, fan magazines and rock influenced fashion, while excluding and evaluating those who arc female, ethnic, working-class'1
Thus, as Dcming argues,
ihc position T assume, when called by Dynasty is different from bul related to the position 1 assume when called by Dallas... I am called lo assume a position vis-a-vis those two texts, but nmatl thai 1 am is so culted, only mat which is appropriate ... T bring with mc, as a Real Social Subject, all my genre-, program-, and culture-specific competence bul, again, only [what] is appropriate lo ihc subject-text position.15
[t is Liiis level o] different in Lion or subject positions in relation to different types of maicrial which, it scorns to me, is important for us to explore.
In short, this is to examine the maicrial varieties of the positioning of the subject, not in some transhislorical or universalistic mode, bul from a pcrspeciive which would also properly involve very material questions aboul the physical organization and inhabitation of ihc domestic space within which television is ordinarily viewed.71
The object of study, Trom this perspective, then focuses on systems of cultural behavior and is necessarily concerned with the orgiini ration of diversity.7* Here one can most usefully look for guidance 10 ihni body of work in socEo-linguistics which has been concerned with the study of communicative acts, in particular socio-culiural contexts. My own argument is thai ihc study of viewing will musl effectively be pursued along these same lines.
To make these points is to argue..ultimately, far the reium Df ihc somewhal discredited discipline or sociology to a central place in the understanding of communication. In this connection, I shall close by quoting horn Richard Nice who, some years ago. in a commentary on iliu significance of Pierre Hourdieu's work, argued that
those who seek to expel sociology... in favor of a strictly internal analysis of what happens on the screcn.or how the viewing subject is articulated, can only do so on the basis of an Implicit soc ialogy wh tch. in so far as h ignores Ihc social realities of ihe differential distribution of cultural competences and values* is an erroneous sociology, ihc more insidious for being unrecognized,1*
Notes
1 Jane Root, Open the Bas (London: Comedta, 1986).
2 James Hflilurw (ed.) The Effects of Television (London: Paniher Boots. 19711),
3 Stuart Hall. 'Encoding/Decoding." in Siuarc Itilt. Dorothy Hchson, Andrew Lowe. Hid Paul Willis (cds) Culture. Media, language {LzmAtm1, Hutchinson. 1980), pp. 128-38.
4 B*fil Bernstein, C'ioh. CWw oná Control, 3 voli {London: Rouifedgc & Kegan PiuL. 1973).
5 Frank Parkin. Class Inequality ami Political Order (London: Paladin Books. 1973),
6 See, for example, Dell Myme;. *'On Comniimicalivc Cnnipelente," in J.B. Pride wkU. Holmes (tds)SocioHn%ttisties (Hwrnondiwoith; Penguin, 1972), pp. 269*93; Pierre Hour dim, Lh'iiru:tion (London: Kentledge A Kegan Piul. 19S4); Biitnsliin, Cia.tr.
7 Sew. fcr example. Jusiin Wren -Lewis, "The Encoding-Decoding Model: Criticisms tru) RcdcvclnpiTuniis for Research on Decoding." Media, Cuiiurc, and Society 5 (1983): 179-97,
ft   Stuart Hall. "Some Problems with the ldeutopy/Subjeci Couplet.'" Ideulogy and Ci*.tew«wwM 3(1978): IIA.
9 Siuin Hull, "Recent Developments in Theories of Language and Ideology," in Hill ef of.. Culture, Media. Language, pp. 157-61.
10 Paul Wiltemcri. "Nuiesan Subjectivity"Screen 19,no. I (1978):41 69: Steve Neafe, "Propaganda," Screen 18. no. 3 (1977): 9-40.
11 Neafc. "Prap*bwliV p. 39.
12 Michel Pccneux, Language, Semantics and Ideology (London: Mncmiltiui. 1982).
13 Valerie Walkcrdinc. "Projecting Fantisiei: Families Waiching Filmu" (unpublished piper. University of London, 1986).
14 Ibid.
15 Nidc Browne. "The FoHúco) Economy of the TV (Super) Tent" (paper prcscniod at die International Television Studies Conference (IT5C), London, 1986).
16 Duty Gtosiber(, "The In-Diffcrcnce of Television," Screen 28, no. 2 (l9S7y 33.
17 Tony Bemieu, 'Test and Social Process: The Case of Junes BcndTScreen Education 41 (1982): 3-14. See also Tony Benncii and Jantt Woollacoll, Bund and Beyond.' The PotUkal Career of a Popular Hero (London: M jm n u Iku i, 1987).
IB   Pierre Machercy, A Theory of Literary Production f London: Rouiledge St Kefifln Paul, 1978). See also "An Interview wiih Pierre Macherey," fled Letters 5 (1977): 3-9.
19 Roland ^vňi\ei.lmage-t4*sic-Text (London: Pontajia, 1977).
20 John Fiike, "TV and Popular Culture" (paper presented il Iowa Symposium on Television Criticism. 1983).
21 June Fnier. "Dynasty" (paper prwenled Ji ITSC. London, 1986).
22 ibid
23 See David Moriey, The "Nationwide' Audienre: Structure and Decoding (London: British Film Insiituic, 1980). and David Morley, Family Television. Cultural Power and Qômestk Leisure (London: Comedia, 1986).
24 Ludwig Wiugcnsiein. TrantmuxLogico-Phitnsophicus (London: Roulkdfic & Kcgon Paul, 1961. p. 40).
25 TanLa Modleiki, "The Search lurTiinhirmw in Today's Soup Operas." in Iter Loving nilA a Vengeance: Mass-produced Fantasies for Women (Hamdcn. Conn.: Aichon, 1982), pp. 85-109,
2fi   ten Ang, "Warned: Audiences: On ihe Pelilie* af Empirical Audience Studies." Chapter five of ihis volume: Paul Willis is quoled in Ang's essay.