MSNBC

Last one: watch a show that's comparable to the "straight" scoop from CNN and Fox. How does it compare? Biased? Or no?

Fox (For Nov 14 but you can do it ANY time before that)

Watch a whole hour of the news. Is it straight news? Or did you sense a bias? Explain.

CNN (For Nov 14 but you can do it ANY time before that)

Watch a whole hour of the news. Is it straight news? Or did you sense a bias? Explain.

Colbert (Nov 7)

Colbert, I would argue, is quite different from anybody else we have talked about. Yesterday's New York Times said, "Stephen Colbert's on-air persona is a conservative buffoon." How exactly does The Colbert Report work? What is it? What news conventions does it rely on to be a parody?
(Or whatever else you want to say about Colbert.)

no spin? no way

spin spin spin.

That's all O'Reilly does. My favorite part of today's show was when he said "The LOON who wrote that is apparently on the editorial board" of some journal. He said, you can email them at this address. Please keep it respectful. !?! Does he think calling people "loons" is respectful?

Very funny. I love when he puts his "talking points" up so that I know how to think. As though they are fact. I particularly liked:

Church Attacks
:"the mainstream media doesn't condemn these actions. Some loons even encourage them."

Awesome. Look how his own sense of superiority leaches into every sentence. "The mainstream media" (unlike and inferior to me.) doesn't have the courage to condemn an arsonist. (Like you have to condemn arsonists. hello? the news is they got arrested for being arsonists. You don't need courage to condemn people who commit this sort of crime.) And then, of course, there are the "loons."

He then went on to rag on the city's mayor who didn't even bother to respond to O'Reilly because the perpetrator had been caught and he was caught up in an activity to feed the poor and homeless. He said
"Newsom is irresponsible. Nothing new." In his talking points. I find the "Talking Points" HILARIOUS, as, apparently, does Colbert.

Then out loud he said, directly addressing Newsom, "you are a coward and irresponsible." Just saying. This is not news. This is the endless opining and editorializing of an arrogant man who thinks he's both smarter and more interesting than he is. (Although obviously since he's been reasonably successful, I am wrong here and some people do fiind him interesting . . . )

Chris Matthews (Nov 7)

Wiki calls Hardball (or did when I posted this) "a talking-head style cable news show where the moderator advances opinions on a wide range of topics, focusing primarily on political issues."

Check out the website below for the transcript of Matthews on The Daily Show. How could I have missed it?


http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2007/10/03/publiceye/entry3326751.shtml

Nancy Grace (due Nov 5)

Okay. What kind of news is this? Who is the audience? What gives Nancy Grace authority (if anything does)?

Hannity and Colmes (for Nov 5)

http://web.mit.edu/cms/reconstructions/interpretations/tvnews.html


Here's a link to the article on your syllabus. Hannity? Colmes? Can anyone tell me why people listen to these two bozos? Does anybody listen to these guys? Hannity is a totally biased, pompous, narrow-thinking ideologue. Colmes might be dead and nobody's noticed yet.

Stewart: The Daily Show

Okay. You've already heard this news blurb, no doubt. Most college students (your peers) get their news from The Daily Show but (oops) don't double check it with a newspaper or "hard news" television show. The article at this link refers to a study that appears to back the claim that The Daily Show is making you all (your peers!) worse citizens. What do you think?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/22/AR2006062201474.html

O'Reilly and his Factor

Apparently O'Reilly and Olbermann are perceived as opposites. So you might check out Olbermann's Countdown. And the Colbert Report, of course, is a spoof of The O'Reilly Factor so you might watch Colbert with that in mind.

Is he a "hard-hitting, uncompromising No Spin" reporter? or a "biased Republican, all-spin zone" reporter? One of these quotes is from O'Reilly's own web site, the other is from "oreillysucks.com."

Is he entertainment or news?

the morning news

How would you characterize the morning news show you watched? (Be sure to identify it.) Who do you think is its audience? How can you tell? What do you think of the host(s)? Is this hard news? Or soft? Be specific.

discuss amongst yourselves . . . 10/16 pre-class

1. Scores of third-person perception studies have demonstrated the fact that individuals believe other people are more affected by media messages than they themselves are (Perloff, 1993).

This stat. cracks me up. This is so human: we always think everything is a bad influence on everybody except us--because we're too smart, too savvy, to be influenced.

what do you think?

2. Here's an excerpt from an interview with Christopher J. Wright. Read it. We've discussed some of these issues in terms of Kid Nation. What is his point? Do you agree?

What do you think we need to understand about reality television in American culture? You call Survivor the “false real.”Well, a number of scholars (and newspaper writers, too) have documented how “reality TV” is an ironic term. Sure, what we see on Survivor and The Real World, etc., isn’t fiction – it did happen. But it’s a bad idea to assume that things occurred during filming exactly as we see it on screen, and viewers, myself included, could get lulled into a false sense of a relative lack of mediation – like we’re watching a live event, nearly free of editing. Now, Survivor, The Amazing Race, and maybe one or two other reality shows are expertly edited – as good, I’d say, as some adventure/drama/suspense films. Both shows at their best can be riveting. So we forget about editing, time compression, the fact that when we see a contestant alone, talking to the camera, they’re usually responding to interview questions from a producer. But the biggest issue may be the potential impact on socialization, and that’s something I try to hit on repeatedly in my book. If Survivor and reality TV are seen as “real,” then the ideologies, stereotypes, and the like presented in them are all the more believable. In our society, we already stereotype people left and right – we all do it. This doesn’t help.

Pre-class, week of Oct. 8 / Reality tv

Oct 6. Post class

defining trash and pornography

Defining trash television has been hard. And maybe, like pornography, it's impossible to define precisely because it involves judgment. Defining pornography in order to legislate has been notoriously difficult. The Supreme Court Justice, Potter Steward, said in the obscenity case of Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964) that "hard-core pornography " was hard to define, but that "I know it when I see it." Since we all seem to agree that Springer is trash and most of concur that Oprah is not, this seems apt to our discussion.
Nonetheless. Let's TRY to define trash tv. Or at least some of the principles.

We seem to (mostly) agree that trash tv:

does not educate
seems to be interested in shocking subject matter only for the sake of shock value
that its purpose is solely entertainment

Is there more that we agree on?

Does trash television have content that is outrageous as well as badly-behaved and inarticulate guests? (And would this be something like literature's form v. content?)

(Raising the question that if Springer has a particularly articulate and well-behaved woman who slept with her father's best friend, does the episode qualify as "trashy?")

Also, some of us may believe that many shows meet all of these "qualifications." So what defines tv as "not trash"? And what is the difference between trash tv and mere bad tv?

post-class/Kid Nation optional 9/26

Any thoughts about kid nation? The ethics? The "plot"? How "real" it is? The entertainment value?

pre-class Sept 26: Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy

Make sure to watch The Simpsons because that's what the essay is on. South Park and The Family Guy were other cartoons we discussed. Make sure to watch at least one of these two. I will watch Family Guy and try to see why some of you like it. Sigh.

But The Simpsons is now canonical.


Write on this blog about the reading and your watching. Have fun.

post-class 9/19 Will and Grace

Jones

Connolly argues that Will and Grace are always discussed as an almost perfect heterosexual couple and that this makes "homosexuality on television" more acceptable to right-wing critics and mainstream viewers. I actually thought that Connolly’s argument was pretty flawed—she had a conclusion in mind and then tried to tweak the facts to make them fit. What did you think? What were her most valid points? Any points that you thought she used sloppily?

Will and Grace

Talk shows leave openings . . .

"Talk shows leave openings . . . more than elsewhere in mass culture, for honest expressions" (Gamson, 94).

The "reality" of talk shows

Gamson argues that shows are both coached and "real," both familiar and unusual. He states that producers seek out the weird, the bizarre, set up the conflict, and then attempt both to control the unpredictability of the guests responses AND hope to catch a "real" moment. Did any of the descriptions of back-stage orchestrating suprise you? Do you think that Gamson's statement that "much of the appeal of the genre is its claim that audiences are witnessing something nonfictional" is true? And if so, do you think that most viewers recognize the various unrealities as well--the coaching, the baiting, the surpising?

And if this line between nonfiction and fiction is blurred in talk shows in this way, is it blurred everywhere? Any time there's a genre, is there a human tendency to conform to the genre? Is there any pure nonfiction--in news, in interviews, on The Actor's Studio?

suggestions: what to watch

Ok. You still need to watch some talk shows. I would suggest the ones that you are currently writing about.

What about a cartoon for next week? You have to watch an episode of The Simpsons. Other suggestions? South Park certainly changed the adult cartoon forever and I know your generation likes The Family Guy (which I find mostly unclever but am willing to try again).

Also: tell me what reality show you suggest we watch. I'm for Kid Nation but there's a new Survivor and who knows what else starting up soon. We'll vote soon so get your suggestions in.

9/16

icons

I was annoyed by "The Mythic Characters of Popular Culture." While I thought the discussions of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis were sometimes enlightening, the editors were just plain wrong about Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong. And frankly, though I don't like the guy myself, I think it's unfair to lump Trump with Jessica Simpson. And could they not have mentioned a single admirable female icon? Must we have Paris Hilton always popping up? What about Mia Hamm? (Okay. She's not Elvis, but she had her day as icon . . . )
What did you all think?

Trash fever

Okay. I read Gamson's chapter on how the talk show changed and I think he's MORE than fair about the upside of the trash talk tv genre. Indeed, he gives quotes any number of people who argue that it gives all of American a voice, no matter what their race, class, genre, or education level. However, I watched an episode of Maury yesterday and I'm not sure that any of the people I saw were worth giving a voice to. And I'm not sure that you're giving people a voice when you just bleep out every other word.
My sense was that it was all very cheap, over-sensationalized bad behavior and that furthermore the whole show reinforced race and class steretypes. I didn't see one redemptive moment.

celebrities who aren't . . .

Here you can comment on smellebrities if you wish--the Linda Tripps and the William Hungs of the world.

(I might argue that Linda Tripp was very briefly in the news and that William Hung deserved to be a celebrity--he was entertaining and in some odd way very appealing . . . ) But what are your thoughts on talent-less celebrities?

post-class blog 9/5

So what are some ways we define girl/boy male/female man/woman in this culture. Things that have nothing to do with biology (like playing with Barbies, as Matt said. Or opening doors for women as Mike said).

Think particularly about lines that you can't cross without getting made fun of . . .

I'll have paper guidelines for you all on Friday so that my workshop people don't have to wander in the dark . . .

Oprah

So, I presume you've watched Oprah. Did you see anything that explains or justifies her position as "probably the most celebrated and powerful black woman in U. S. history"?

On the other hand, did you see anything that would make you classify her show as "trash"?

TV: bad for us?

Grindstaff quotes Richard Zoglin’s warning that “a new batch of shows is playing ever faster and looser with the line that separates fact and fiction” and discusses the ethical problems raised by this blurring of the “line.” Postmodernists would argue that this line was constructed, even fictional, to begin with. Thus, perhaps our awareness of the blurring of the line between reality and fiction is a good thing. We no longer accept our news as “fact” but rather as a story that appears to have some grounding in fact delivered by a station or channel that has some sort of philosophy and then written and delivered by an individual with his or her own agenda.

So: what do you think? Is reality television desensitizing us to reality (as Gringwold suggests)? Or is it making us (and reflecting the fact that we already are) sophisticated, savvy, and even cynical viewers?

And is this a good thing? Or a bad thing? What is your opinion? Be specific.

get an account at blogger.com

Hey all--

If you want to post (and you do, I know), apparently you need to create an account at blogger.com. It won't cost anything . . . If you are desperate, and things are not working, you can try my My Space account where I also have a blog.
Bear with me. I'm new to this. The google account is free though and they'll walk you through a set up. Ok? If you really really can't get this up by tomorrow midnight, no worries. Just bring your paragraphs to class. We'll get there. And I'd rather have this be a public blog--a blog out in the world--than a private Rollins one. Who knows? Maybe Springer himself will check in . . .

See you Wednesday

trash tv: perverting our young? really?

Check out the essay at this address:

http://proxy.arts.uci.edu/~nideffer/Tvc/section3/11.Tvc.v9.sect3.Grindstaff.html

Here's an essay on trash tv. It raises some interesting points about "high" art and "low" art. New media always seems to be considered trash. Parents used to be appalled at the sight of their children reading novels, now they pay them off (in Pan Pizzas, for example) to read them. I get interested in ANYTHING that gets people worked up enough to declare it "trash" and "porn" and "dangerous" and "the democratization of perversion." (Oh how I wish I had coined that phrase.)

Anyway. Here's my question. Does television really have the power to change the way we all view the world? Does it really normalize "filthy" behavior? Or does it just act as spectacle that we can all watch, moralize about, and feel superior to?

Are we really so stupid, so shallow, so naive as to be taken in and unable to "separate fact from reality"?

Has tv really gotten worse or trashier? Or has it gotten better and cleverer?

(And yeah, that was more than one question.)

what do you think?