Ww as) pam 3 fi a S a = a — = = Go wv x = = s - mass medTelevision: Set and Screen ‘The following remarks seck to explore a phenomenon that is so- close to us. so ubiquitous and so powerful, that it has proved particularly resistant to thought. Not that there has not been an enormous amount of literature written on the subject of tele- vision, much of which is extremely illuminating. But in reading through such work, one fs struck by the fact that as soon as empirical description is forsaken and analysis or Interpretation attempted. the results are generally quite disappointing. They are disappointing not because what they have to say is wrong or irrelevant but because the attempted analysis rarely seems to take sufficiently into account the distinetive specificity of the medium. What we most often find are content-analyses, which could just as well apply to other media, for example, to film or to literature. And where an effort is made to go beyond content- analysis to a discussion of formal elements, the latter In turn are generally borrowed from more traditional aesthetic gen- res—for instance, narrative fiction—thus leaving the question of the specificity of the televisual medium itself unaddressed. 1 [should mention a few of the more notable exceptions to this general ten- dency to ignore the question of the specificity of the medlum: first, Stanley *« 1982 essay. "The Pact of Television’. In Video Culture: A Critical‘Television; Set and Screen 109 And yet, a simple reaction to this neglect or omission, one which would strive to articulate just what it is that makes televi- sion different and distinct from previous aesthetic media. almost inevitably finds itself confronted by another trap: that of ontolo- gizing television. The attempt te work out the differential speei- ficity of the medlum—to get at that which distinguishes it from other media—runs the risk of transforming, albeit unawares, a differential determination into a positive and universal essence. The apparently innocent fact that we use a singular noun. ‘televi- sion’, to designate an extremely complex and variegated phe- nomenon all too easily encourage us to overlook the hetero- geneity of the medium with which we are concerned. This is why it seems advisable at the outset to emphasize that to attempt to uncover something of the specificity of televi- sion does not necessarily mean to suppose that the medium. possesses an invariable and universally valid essence or struc- ture. Rather, specificity here is used as a differential cateyor television Is different, not just from film, as has often been observed and explored, but also from what we generally mean by the word perception. Television—despite tts name—involves the transmission of sight and sound; and yet to take the specifici- ty of it as a mode of transmission inte account is to distingulsh the way the sights and sounds it transmits are apprehended from the way sights and sounds have hitherto been perceived. Television entails artifice, technique and even technology: and 1 (cont.) Investigation, 1986: second. Janc Pcuer’s ‘The Concept of Live Television: Ontology as Ideology’. in Regarding Television: Critical Approaches—An Anthology. 1983: and more recently, Mary Ann Doane's “Information, Crisis and Catastrophe’, ta Logies of Television: Fssays in (Cultural Criticism. 1990. Finally. an as yet unpublished essay by Deborah Esch, "No Time Like the Present’, reflects, to my knowledge for the first time, on the ‘allegortea!’ structure of the medium. 2 Theessay by Janc Feuer mentioned in the previous note deals with this ten-