TV Globalization: MacGyver in the field

While rereading Wilk's essay for today's class, I was reminded of what has become one of my favorite "scene setting" moments in an ethnography. The passage below comes from the preface of Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld's 1999 ethnography The Native Leisure Class: Consumption and Cultural Creativity in the Andes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press):

“Mingachiway,” I called out.

It was early November 1994, and I was heralding my arrival at a weaver’s house in the upper part of Ariasucu. The household had participated in my time-allocation study since the project’s inception the previous February. Used to my unplanned visits, the weaver no longer rose from his loom to greet me and instead beckoned me into the interior where he worked. I stepped over the threshold and waited briefly, giving my eyes a chance to adjust to the dimness of this cluttered, windowless space. Holding his shuttle and resting his feet on the pedals of the loom, the weaver also paused. He then broke the silence with a question that the had evidently been waiting a long time to ask of me: “Whay Macgyverca na armasta mihishtin. Nachu?”

He wanted to know whether MacGyver, the lead character in the eponymous television drama from the United States, ever needs to use weapons to get out of the predicament she got into each afternoon. I told him I did not think so. I could not be sure, though, as the only time I had really watched the show was with him and other weavers whom I had visited while the show was on. In some houses, this U.S. production had become quite popular. In others, artisans tuned into Japanese cartoons. Still other weavers had no real interest in what was on, they just liked the dialogue and images as distractions from a long day at the loom. While the weavers may not have had the same tastes in programs, they did share the same routines. In 1994, the most commonly used object in an Ariasucu home was a loom, the second most common thing was a television.

The ubiquity of television sets that Colloredo-Mansfeld suggests here was one of the unifying threads of the Wilk and Schwoch readings today. First, there is the sense of media "lag" that Wilk describes--that is, gradually compressed as satellites simultaneously shows around a region (broadly defined). One might imagine that the media lag of 1994 has been compressed in 2007, that the discussion is more about American Idol or shows from Univision than it would be about early 2000s shows. Second, embedded in this statement is ubiquity: its the loom and the television that are the household objects of importance that mutually reinforce each other. The loom makes possible the purchase of the television; the television makes long hours at the loom possible (in the eyes of the people he worked with). Finally, the television structures the time of day: MacGyver and/or cartoons are broadcast at certain times, leading to certain activities (not) being performed at certain times.

This last point reminds me of descriptions of the television broadcast of the Ramayana and Mahabharata in India. The Lonely Planet guide, among others, has suggested that the streets were empty, markets closed during the broadcast, leading to a high number of shop burglaries. Here, the structuration of time isn't necessarily a good thing.

NASCAR Publics

I recently came across an amusing discussion in a liberal blog that resonated with Warner's conception of 'subpublics.' If you remember, Warner has this to say about subpublics:

There are as many shades of difference among publics as there are in modes of address, style, and spaces of circulation. Many might be thought of as subpublics, or specialized publics, focused on particular interests, professions, or locales. The public of Field and Stream, to take an example well within the familiar range of print genres, does not take itself to be the national people, nor humanity in general; the magazine addresses only those with an interest in hunting and fishing, who in varying degrees participate in a (male) subculture of hunters and fishermen. Yet nothing in the mode of address or in the projected horizon of this subculture requires its participants to cease for a moment to think of themselves as members of the general public as well; indeed, they might well consider themselves its most representative members. [2002:84]

Warner goes on to suggest at the end of the essay that we tend to attribute agency to these publics, fetishizing them (my interjection) in ways not so different from the Marxian commodity fetish. That is, we know we're fetishizing--attributing agency to objects as we elide relationships between humans--but we're helpless to avoid it.

If it wasn't obvious, we're currently in the middle of an election cycle, and all sorts of voting blocs are now given agency and various sorts of characteristics are covertly associated with them. In 1984 election, for example, we had "Reagan Democrats," a term that's still used to describe certain publics. In the 1996 elections, it was "Soccer Moms" who turned the tide toward Bill. So one might reasonably ask, which public is it today? How about "NASCAR voters?"

But as the blog excerpt below will illustrate, this subpublic is fraught for Democrats. After a (real) description of a memo that recommended Democratic staffers get Hepatitis, Tetanus, and Diphtheria immunizations before visiting this imagined public in the faraway "deep South," the blogger goes on to point out the covert assumptions in play here:

Once again, the erroneous stereotype of NASCAR fans is being perpetuated as a rowdy mob of unwashed, unshaven, uncouth, uneducated, inbred, toothless, drunken, shirtless, Confederate flag tattooed, Chevy pickup drivin’, gun-totin’, tabakky-spittin’, beer-belly scratchin’ redneck hillbillies all yelling ‘show us yer tits’ at every woman who walks through the stands. Oh, and they all vote Republican, of course.
http://nthemouse.blogspot.com/2007/10/nascar-seen-from-left.html

I was particularly amused by this because I currently own a NASCAR branded laptop, which sports the NASCAR trademark on the exterior, as well as when it boots up (as it did in class yesterday). Now, we discussed the conception of the boundaries of publics in class yesterday, as well as the conception that the formation of a public merely requires one to pay attention, however briefly. So apparently, by owning this laptop, I'm now part of the NASCAR subpublic, insofar as I use my computer everyday, notwithstanding the fact that I purchased the laptop on the basis of its excellent reviews and specs on Newegg.com, not on the basis of it being the cheapest laptop for sale at Walmart (another public that one might imagine to articulate with the NASCAR voter--certainly corporate executives thought so!).

But this raises a troubling question. According to Warner, my belonging to a public is irrespective of my own self-identification. Does this mean that every time I happen to pick Pepsi in a restaurant because they've signed an exclusive contract with PepsiCo that I'm now part of a Pepsi public? Where does this end?

Media Imperialism Begins at Home?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15067649 While at home this weekend, I happened to catch a story on NPR on the CW show "Aliens in America." Among other things, I was struck by the ways in which the representational fears of Muslim students in the classroom at Georgetown watching (analyzing) the show were reported. That is, in larger media context that focuses upon Muslim terrorism (e.g. 24), anxieties of representation were allayed by the portrayals of the Pakistani student in the sitcom. As I listened to the story, I thought about the discussion of "Media Imperialism" in Thursday's class and the power of multinational media corporations to represent the Other, even if the Other is Us. For example, the radio report uses a quote from one of the foreign students at Georgetown who points out that they learned about "American Culture" (whatever that may be) from television. I wonder, in what ways can we speak of Media Imperialism at home? Certainly the concerns about misrepresentation don't just apply to foreigners in the U.S., but to representations in and of the U.S. As I read a student blog this morning, this very issue came up: representation of the ranchers in This American Life as primitives of sorts, who view the genetic science as a kind of magic. I certainly hadn't thought of that, but its a compelling idea. As I've suggested before, I think that most people are very cognizant that media representations are largely out of their control: there is a tendency to reify "the media." And, who can blame them? I certainly wonder how the tourists in Cannibal Tours responded to their representation in film.

But I must add that the producers of the show discussed on NPR are more interested in keeping the show alive on the network, the rest (i.e. ideological arguments about representation and talk in classrooms) "is just gravy." Indeed the radio reportage points out the low ratings of the first show and ends with"So any broader cultural impact of Aliens in America will depend first upon whether viewers and advertisers actually tune in." Another complication of the Culture Industry argument, perhaps.

Teddie and Me

I've always had a troubled relationship with Mr. Adorno, beginning with my first exposure to his essay "On Jazz." I felt very defensive on the first reading: how could he be writing about a music that I have spent so much of my time practicing and performing in such dismissive terms? And his analysis was simply wrong, based upon a 1930s conception of race and popular music. I was willing to grant that he had a point with regard to his descriptions of the big band era, especially the bands that I found insipid like Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Bing Crosby, etc. Indeed, he does refer to these groups specifically in the essay, but not to some of the individuals and groups that have been retroactively trumpeted as "pioneers," such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, etc. who did not produce formulaic 3'30" tracks. But that is not the point, Teddie told me later, the problem is rhythm that forces yourself to tap your foot to the time, the "tyranny of the beat" that eventually leads to fascist conceptions of the world and homogenizes you. Not so, I said, innovative jazz musicians have always played around with the groove. That's part of the excitement of performing and listening. Not to be mollified, he informed me that this is a false sense of individuality: you think you're resisting, but the fact of the matter is, no matter how much you have convinced yourself otherwise, you still tap to the same beat as everyone else in the room. This is the danger.

This back and forth between Teddie and I has continued for many years, and I've given him more credit than I ever imagined that I would. In re-reading the "Culture Industry" essay this time around, along with some biographical information, I have a lot more sympathy for his position. And I'm no longer absolutely convinced that he's just an art snob: deep down I think that he tries in this essay to find some sort of relief from the monotony of mass culture and that on a certain level, he does understand the plight of the worker (despite his relatively privileged background). Art should be available to the masses, we all should have the leisure to experience it. But I'm still not convinced by his argument that pleasure is necessarily bad despite--or perhaps because of--his neo-Kantian approach to aesthetics. In fact, I think that he's simply denying the pleasure he feels in the experience of art, trying to rationalize as a qualitatively higher experience. But I'm not so sure that's the case.

I'm curious to continue to explore the idea that the Culture Industry cannot be completely transcended, not unlike culture more generally. Althusser's conception of the inescapability of "ideology" comes to mind when thinking of this, and further back, Whorf's "Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language." And further back, Descartes' Discourse on Method, and on. There are all sorts of problems with the culture concept and its articulation with a liberal conception of freedom. But this too large of an issue to explore at the moment.