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Mass media: effects research - reception
analysis
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| Mass media: effects research - reception
analysis |
I'm not going to deal here with the conventions of the soap genre. If you're looking
for information on that, check out 
Daniel
Chandler's site.
In the meantime these eight generic characteristics of soap operas might be worth bearing in mind:
Brown M E (1987)
To get a feel for fans' attitudes towards soaps, as well as some knowledge of any soaps you may be unfamiliar with, you may like to check out some of the soaps sites on-line
Although this page is headed 'Ang on Dallas', it actually consists of overviews of:
Before considering Ien Ang's renowned study of Dallas afficionados, I'd like to take a look first of all at a more general British study by Sonia M Livingstone (1988), which provides us with a useful overview of the possible lines of approach to the study of people's soap viewing. Also, Livingstone's study focuses on British soaps, which is of particular interest because, as she points out, British soaps differ quite fundamentally from the American 'glam soaps' to which the most attention has been paid, both in their style and content, as well as, it would seem, in the nature of the viewers' engagement with them.
British soaps have developed within a public service broadcasting ethos and there remains in them something of the Reithian determination to 'inform, educate and entertain', though not necessarily with entertainment so firmly in last place as in Reith's scheme of things. Livingstone quotes a variety of producers and writers of British soaps stating their mission to enlighten the public by 'carefully researched' social comment which has had 'positive results to the community' (Crossroads), by encouraging 'a lot of people [to] ask why' (Eastenders), by injecting 'a cross-section of political opinion' (Coronation Street) and by giving us 'the real, kind of working class view of society' (Brookside).
In her overview of the possible approaches to a study of soap viewing, Livingstone considers the uses and gratifications approach and mentions that US studies of soap viewing have shown broadly similar motivations to those listed by McQuail (see the pop-up), except that surveillance is not particularly salient for soap opera and, curiously, value reinforcement and emotional release are not often mentioned either. Though, Livingstone doesn't mention it, this seems to me to point to one of the shortcomings of uses and gratifications research which has typically depended on the audience member's own account of the media experience and therefore also on an assumption that a 'need' which is 'gratified' by media 'use' can and will be explicitly formulated. If you were asked why you watch the TV news, you'd be most likely to answer that you do so to find out what's going on in the world ('surveillance' in McQuail's terms). I suspect that it's only with a little prodding that you might concede you watch the news for entertainment (you simply enjoy seeing the TV lights reflecting off William Hague's head, you enjoy seeing some pompous civil servant being grilled by a select committee) or even for escape from your everyday problems (seeing Kosovan refugees 'takes you out of yourself' and helps you to reflect that maybe 'things could be worse'). But, of course, if the researcher prompts you, then are the results she gets 'your' self-report or hers? We have an awareness of the avowed purposes of various media artefacts and so tend to tell ourselves that we use them for those purposes. So we read a psychology text book if we really want to learn what makes people tick and a novel for entertainment. Do we really? I think I probably read Proust in part because he's a better psychologist than Freud (and Freud for a laugh). Would you spontaneously say that you watch a soap 'to find out what's going on in the world'? Probably not, I suspect, because it sounds daft, but TV is, after all, part of what's going on in the world -after all, even the people's Prime Minister comments on Deirdre's imprisonment. Certainly the participants in Brown's study stated that 'knowledge' (of the soap) was an important motivation for viewing it.
Livingstone also considers studies of the viewers' degree of involvement in the soaps. Liebes and Katz (see below) distinguished between those viewers who were thoroughly absorbed in Dallas and those who stood at a 'critical distance' from it. Livingstone suggests that this depends on how seriously viewers take soap opera and how they rate its claims to present a realistic portrayal of life. I think that's a useful distinction as long as we don't see these two orientations towards the soap as mutually exclusive, but rather as a continuum from those who see the soap as real life through to those who see it as a media construction. I have only ever seen one episode of Dallas (what an admission from somebody who runs a website on the media!) and was so fascinated by the constant use of over-the-shoulder reaction shots that I hadn't a clue what was going on in the plot. So I guess I was at the far end of the critical distance spectrum in that case. But I can think of movies I know which I find highly absorbing and realistic (though I don't think realism is necessarily a prerequisite for my absorption but I still know which shots the mic is visible in. I find Orson Welles's Touch of Evil absorbing and realistic, but am nevertheless aware of the opening crane shot as a technical tour de force (and as for Robert Altman's The Player ...!). You probably have various friends who have a similar approach to soaps - they are keen fans, know the characters intimately, quite possibly draw inferences from the soaps about their own lives, but can tell you of every continuity error and every bit of wobbly scenery.
Under this heading, Livingstone refers to those studies which have examined the 'carry-over effect' from TV to everyday perception. For example, do viewers 'tend to apply television-relevant dimensions for character perception to everyday person perception'? Livingstone suggests that TV soaps undermine their claims to 'realism' by the fact that the conventions demand that a lot happens fast, that the solutions are highly conventional, the characters too interconnected and so on. The extent of the carry-over effect, she suggests, depends on viewers' awareness of those conventions and, by extension, on their assessment of the 'realism' of the soap.
Here Livingstone considers Gerbner's 'cultivation differential', which suggests that heavy television viewing is likely to lead viewers to endorse beliefs and attitudes more closely related to the TV world than to the real world. The evidence, according to Livingstone, suggests that 'active' viewers are less likely to be susceptible to this effect. In other words, the cultivation effect may in part be related, as Gerbner proposes, to the amount of TV watched, but it is also related to the viewers' orientation towards the TV material. The more deliberate and selective their interpretation, the less likely they are to be susceptible to the cultivation process, though viewers may be 'affected by a programme in terms of accepting its direction, agenda, or its less overt messages', says Livingstone, and 'this is especially likely for programmes with multiple messages or perspectives, such as soap opera ...., for which it is difficult to identify the "messages" required by cultivation analysis.' That's a criticism which is justifiably levelled at content analysis of just about any mildly complicated media product. To test the cultivation hypothesis, you clearly need to examine the content of a very wide variety of TV products over a considerable period and arrive at some sort of view on 'average' levels of violence or whatever it is you're trying to investigate. Once you've done that for each of the five terrestrial channels and the satellite channels available in the UK, you need to know what the individual viewers watch etc.... An enormous undertaking, but it doesn't seem to me to be impossible in principle. If you to start with, say, BARB's viewing figures, maybe even their viewing panel which is about as representative as you can get,a nd are prepared to accept that what you come up with will be broad generalizations at best, then I don't see why such research shouldn't be undertaken. Livingstone's point, I suppose, is that it will reveal only the effects of a wide range of viewing and not of soaps specifically.
Livingstone's fifty-two respondents were all obtained by advertising in the national magazine SOAPS. They were aged between 13 and 62 (mean = 21.61), 37 females and 15 males drawn from a range of occupations (mainly white-collar workers). The selection of respondents may surprise you as the stereotype still persists that soaps are mainly viewed by isolated working-class housewives. That may once have been the case, but over recent years, the proportion of male viewers, as well as the proportion of teenage viewers has increased significantly, with the 'isolated housewives' declining in number as more women are drawn into the workforce. I think it's important to note that they were not just, as Livingstone says, 'regular viewers of soap operas', but clearly soap fans. The concentration of much research on fans (or 'knowledgeable readers' as they are sometimes referred to) has come in for some criticism recently (you might lake to take a quick look at Hermes's comments) because the results of such studies have often been taken to allow us to draw conclusions about the average reader/viewer, which may well be quite unjustified.
Livingstone's respondents were presented with a sheet of A4 headed 'Why is soap opera so popular?' and otherwise blank. Respondents explanations for viewing were then coded, which gave 419 explanatory units in total. These were then sorted into eight superordinate categories. As an example, the superordinate category 'escapism' included 'escape to a world of glamour' and 'escape from own problems and worries'.
You can probably think of a number of criticisms of this method of content analysis applied to respondents' answers. Livingstone herself mentions a number of them. For example, when the texts were divided into units a number of causal relationships in the explanations had to be broken. Some respondents gave descriptions rather than explanations - should descriptions be counted as explanations? Finally, Livingstone also mentions the criticisms inherent in the current qualitative versus quantitative debate.
Livingstone's results are quite fascinating. I imagine I'd get clobbered for copyright infringement if I reproduced them here, so I recommend you go to the original article. The following table presents a broad outline of her results:
| Explanation | Proportion of respondents | Comments | |
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Escapism | 92.3% | A need primarily served by American soaps; includes escaping by 'having something else to think about', which consists mainly of a view of a richer and more glamorous world, as well as drama, intrigue, excitement etc., which are missing from viewers' own lives |
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Realism | 88.5% | Mainly served by British soap opera, generally highly involving, a form of parasocial interaction 'like having a chat with the neighbours'; viewers were appreciative of the focus on contemporary social problems and issues which are relevant to their own lives; thus British soaps are seen as a central contributor to 'televison as a cultural forum' |
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Relationship with characters | 61.5% | Again mainly related to the experience of British soaps. Some viewers felt they could see some characters as like people they knew, others found the soap characters much more involving, seeming like real people to them. Brown's study suggests that viewers enjoy 'sharing' experiences with the soap characters, a process which helps them to determine their own identity (one of the motivations listed by McQuail in his summary of uses and gratifications). Richard Kilborn in Television Soaps (1992) suggests that the intimacy of the relationship which is developed may enable viewers to experience a form of catharsis. |
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Critical response | 51.9% | A wide range of comments were made indicating a critical distance from the soaps. Some commented that they like to laugh at the irreality of American soaps, some viewers commented on the difficulty of making a soap realistic when it also has to be entertaining. Although there was a difference in emphasis there was no apparent difference of degree in the critical distance from American or British soaps. |
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Problem-solving | 42.3% | As viewers can become so involved with characters, this can allow for learning experiences, with the emphasis on problem-solving. In a general sense, the viewer may feel that s/he has learnt about other kinds of people and thereby enriched his/her experience or the experience could be more focused, for example learning about how or how not to deal with a specific problem. If the problem presented is one which the viewer has experienced, they can enter into a community of similar individuals to themselves; if the problem is one they have not experienced, it helps to put their own problems into perspective. Either way, the experience seems to make viewers feel better. |
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Rôle in viewer's life | 40.4% | Respondents recognized their time commitment to soaps, the place they occupied in their daily routine and the pleasure of having something to keep up with on a regular basis, which provided a regular topic of conversation. |
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Entertainment | 34.6% | This was considered together with 'escapism' by Livingstone |
Quite how 'realistic' British soaps are is, as far as I know, an open question - I haven't seen any research which compares them with real communities. Raymond Williams was certainly none too impressed by Coronation Street's claim to realism, describing it as 'a distanced and simplified evocation and prolongation of a disappearing culture' (1990 : 61). Williams wrote that description in 1975. I grew up during the fifties in a working-class terraced street in a Midlands town, a street my family moved out of in the early sixties to a Brookside cul-de-sac, as the working-class areas of town were gradually abandoned to immigrants and the old. Thirty-odd years on, the Coronation Street residents are still there, still predominantly white. On this point, see below: Ang on 'empiricist realism'
The acceptance of the realism of British soaps is interesting especially as the respondents seem to approve of soap operas' treatment of the issues raised in them. As it is the professed intention of the makers of the soaps of raising current issues and airing them in a 'responsible' manner, there is a suggestion here that the soap opera viewers are accepting the 'preferred readings', which raises disturbing questions about television's rôle in the social construction of reality. However, Livingstone's results show a wider range of responses than normally appears to be revealed by uses and gratifications studies and also show rather more involved and cognitive responses from British viewers than have been revealed in American studies, as well as a high degree of 'critical distance' from the programmes, all of which suggests that viewers do not uncritically 'use' the programmes' content to 'gratify' their needs.
Livingstone's investigation gives us some pretty useful information in our attempt to pin down the soap opera viewer. However, you should bear in mind that the portrait it gives us is of the fan, the 'knowledgeable reader' so it's a bit difficult to know whether we can legitimately generalize from these results to other, non-knowledgeable, soap users. The research, as Livingstone herself points out, also doesn't tell us a lot about what viewers do with the meanings they get from the soaps. There is certainly evidence of a critical stance, but also some evidence that viewers are not negotiating their own meanings for the British soaps, even though they are clearly capable of reflecting on and articulating their responses. This would appear to lend support to a view of those soaps as transmitting the dominant ideology successfully by the use of the social realism which has become the established model for British soaps (and much British cinema). Such a view would see British soaps as succeeding in presenting people in soaps as 'just like us' with the 'same problems as ours', thereby also succeeding in presenting the values and stereotypes intrinsic to the soaps as 'just common sense'. That is certainly one reading of Livingstone's research, from which de Certeau's and Fiske's semiotic guerrilla tactics seem depressingly absent.
One factor which is not investigated by Livingstone is the use of soaps in establishing a routine. People may have TV on in the background so that they know when it's time for their children to be packed off to bed, viewers will re-organize their daily routines if the soap is rescheduled.
OK, I'll come clean and admit that I've never read the originals of Katz' and Liebes's works, so what follows is only going to be a very brief summary of notes I've made on them from other sources. Their work seems to be considered so important to contemporary research that you'll find them referred to in virtually any report on soaps. If you would like to take a look at some more extensive and better informed comment than what follows, then you could do worse than looking at Daniel Chandler's excellent site (where, I seem to recall, you'll need to take the link to 'Radio && TV')
Using cross-cultural focus groups with whom they watched and then discussed an episode of Dallas, which the respondents were requested to retell, Katz and Liebes were able to identify very considerable differences in the ways that the different groups approached and interpreted Dallas. Their research demonstrated that viewers were a good deal more critical and creative than many media commentators had assumed. Katz and Liebes studied critical distance from Dallas by attending to the 'critical' statements made by respondents about the cinematic and artistic value of the program on the one hand and 'referential' statements which referred to characters as if they were real or potentially real. Western and Russian audiences seemed to make greater use of the 'distancing' mechanisms. Katz and Liebes suggested that those groups which were most removed from Western culture were the most likely to become involved with the drama because they had not learnt to use the set of rhetorical tools with which Westerners are familiar. Note, though, that the tendency to respond to the drama as if it were real does not imply uncritical acceptance of the perceived message.
Of particular importance was the fact that the various groups discussed the programme amongst themselves (an activity which 40% of Livingstone's respondents identified as an important function of soap viewing). The polysemy of the original text and the 'tertiary text' of the local oral culture allow the development and elaboration of meanings which serve the viewers' purposes (as Brown has shown in the use of daytime soaps in women's talk), regardless of the producers' preferred readings. Whether we wish to celebrate these differing interpretations as examples of semiotic guerrilla resistance or not, they do make quite clear that the gloomy assumptions of cultural theorists from the Frankfurt School to Baudrillard are not obviously and immediately justified. What they do clearly show is that the meanings of a TV programme are not fixed and cannot simply be read off the 'text'; at the same time, they do show that the process of meaning generation is not totally open-ended and one can trace similar patterns of meaning amongst viewers who are within the same social group (which may perhaps be construed as an interpretive community). Despite the claims of some cultural theorists that soap opera's realism leaves no space for the viewer to avoid the dominant readings, it seems to me that the soap opera form itself may well encourage a variety of readings as well as discussion of those readings since it is structured quite differently from the classic realist text. Being designed so that the viewer can drop in and out of them at any point (pop out to make a cuppa, pop in while the spuds are boiling), soaps have a variety of narrative threads; they have no clearly defined 'hero' or 'heroine'; characters' decisions and actions are presented to us from a multiplicity of viewpoints (elaborated on in the local pub, shop or market place); and, of course, no resolution of the drama is ever reached. There is a kind of reflexivity in soap operas which invites critical distance. I say 'kind of' because I'm not at all sure that it's the right term here (no doubt someone will correct me). Certainly, it's not the case that the constructedness of soap operas is deliberately foregrounded by their producers, but the conventions are so familiar to viewers, not necessarily regular ones, that we all immediately recognize the elements which are satirized in Soap or Acorn Antiques. Students generally have no difficulty at all in enumerating the conventions of soap opera (including the often less than persuasive acting, the sometimes stilted dialogue and the wobbly scenery) whereas they often find it more difficult to state the conventions of genres with which they are equally, if not more, familiar, such as 'yoof' tv or news broadcasts. Adorno criticized the products of the culture industries for their standardization which stifles individuality. I suspect that where soaps are concerned it is the very obviousness of that standardization which allows us to step back from them, examine them critically, elaborate on them and even laugh at them and ourselves (I sometimes wonder whether Adorno ever laughed).
ethnic group |
Israeli Arabs | recent Jewish immigrants to Israel from Russia | first- and second-generation Jewish immigrants from Morocco | Israeli kibbutz members, mostly second-generation | matched second-generation Americans in Los Angeles |
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motivations for actions |
Blamed individuals: individuals responsible for their own actions |
The most important topic for this group Blamed society: social roles determine behaviour |
Blamed society: society in which individuals have to fend for themselves |
The most important topic for this group Freudian psychological explanations (thereby not ‘blaming’ the characters) |
The most important topic for this group Freudian psychological explanations (thereby not ‘blaming’ the characters) |
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kinship/relations and norms |
The most important topic for this group, characters normally being referred to by their family positions ('father', 'daughter' etc.) than by their names* |
The most important topic for this group |
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moral dilemmas, mainly to do with the price of success |
The rich are unhappy. Americans are immoral, but have no choice - the programme teaches that immorality pays; moral evaluation often in terms of ‘moral degeneracy’ |
The rich are unhappy; moral evaluation often in terms of ‘rotten capitalism’ |
The rich are unhappy. Americans are immoral, but have no choice - the programme teaches that immorality pays; moral evaluation often in terms of ‘moral degeneracy’ |
The rich are unhappy |
The rich are unhappy |
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business relations |
Only this group made frequent references to business relations |
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Critical distance |
‘referential’ interpretation, i.e. relating to real life, as if characters were real1 Argued against its moral values. Personalized the programme, relating it to their we-groups or to themselves. More statements about the content than the form. |
‘analytical’ interpretation, i.e. questioning its representation of real life; concern about ideological manipulation. Generalized the characters to abstract categories, such as ‘businessmen’, ‘women’, ‘Americans’. More statements about the content than the form. |
‘referential’ interpretation, i.e. relating to real life, as if characters were real1 Argued against its moral values. Personalized the programme, relating it to their we-groups or to themselves. More statements about the content than the form. |
Mixed ‘referential’ and ‘analytical interpretation; less involvement; Personalized the programme, relating it to their we-groups or to themselves, but more playfully than the Arabs; light-hearted2 More ‘ludic’ (playful) statements than other groups (e.g. imagining what characters might be like) |
Mixed ‘referential’ and ‘analytical interpretation; less involvement; Personalized the programme, relating it to their we-groups or to themselves, but more playfully than the Arabs; light-hearted2 More ‘ludic’ (playful) statements than other groups (e.g. imagining what characters might be like). More statements about the form than the content. |
|
Re-telling the story |
Linear, focusing on action-oriented sub-plot ‘defining the hero’s goals and adventures in trying to achieve them’3 Closed; determining force referential |
thematic and involved the application of a deductive political organizing principle and a suppression of detail: these viewers were concerned with the ideological motives of the producers (which they tended to stereotype as capitalist propaganda), whom they saw as manipulated by big business. Closed, but determining force seen as ideological and involved the application of a deductive political organizing principle and a suppression of detail: these viewers were concerned with the ideological motives of the producers (which they tended to stereotype as capitalist propaganda), whom they saw as manipulated by big business. Closed, but determining force seen as ideological |
Linear, focusing on action-oriented sub-plot ‘defining the hero’s goals and adventures in trying to achieve them’3 Closed; determining force referential |
segmented, often focusing on selected 'evocative' characters or relationships in relation to the psychological interests of the viewers. Open-ended, often focusing on selected 'evocative' characters or relationships in relation to the psychological interests of the viewers. Open-ended |
segmented, often focusing on selected 'evocative' characters or relationships in relation to the psychological interests of the viewers. Open-ended, often focusing on selected 'evocative' characters or relationships in relation to the psychological interests of the viewers. Open-ended |
* Liebes suggests that these groups' pre-occupation with power relationships in the family may reflect their position in Israeli society, 'the one a politically suspect minority and the other an ethnic minority with experience of status deprivation'
1 Katz and Liebes suggest Arabs and Moroccans are culturally the most distant from Dallas
2 Katz and Liebes suggest that these more ‘modern’ groups are familiar with the conventions of the soap genre, therefore able to take it less seriously
3 Liebes sees such linear retellings as being a consequence of the perceived reality of the characters. Such retellings tended to make the characters appear more stereotypical than the producers intended and presumably also supported a dominant reading in which 'the reality of the story is unquestioned and its message is presumably unchallenged'.
The Katz and Liebes study also raised a number of questions about the often presumed cultural homogeneity of a national audience as well as the assumptions which underlie the thesis of cultural imperialism. In this connexion a study by Lori Yanish (1995) is very interesting. Yanish studies the reception of the US-made sitcom, Seinfeld, by audiences in Canada and in the Netherlands, both nations in which considerable concern has been expressed about the possible swamping of national culture by US media. Like Katz and Liebes, Yanish used focus groups. In the case of her (? the first name is Lori - make up your own mind) audiences, the participants were demographically quite homogeneous, aged between twenty-five and forty-five and having a level of education beyond high school. The goal of the study was to discover whether negotiation strategies (i.e. negotiation of meanings, see the comment on preferred / negotiated / oppositional readings) are in fact used, and, if so, how they are unique to each national culture. Yanish was not dealing with 'knowledgeable readers' (fans), but a possible criticism of the study is that Seinfeld was quite popular in Canada and hardly known in the Netherlands, with the result that a certain imbalance is introduced as the Dutch respondents were reporting on first impressions and the Canadians on several viewings. Another possible flaw which Yanish notes is that she is herself Canadian.
The episodes shown were chosen so that their interpretation would not be dependent on intimate knowledge of US culture. (In her introduction, Yanish mentions a study of Danish viewers watching Dallas: "When discussing one episode in which the Boston Tea Party is mentioned, they searched their memories for a previous episode in which the characters might have had tea in Boston.")
Yanish's research convincingly establishes that a variety of different interpretive strategies are deployed by viewers and, furthermore, that these differ quite markedly between the two national groups. They show also that the issue of cultural imperialism is not as straightforward as some commentators assume it to be. The results are presented below. I am conscious of having done some violence to Yanish's detailed study by summarizing them in this way. The original may be found at the
University of Calgary, Alberta
| Interpretive Repertoires | Canadian | Dutch |
| Contextualization | prime-time slot | late-night slot |
| familar fare; TV trailers for it; well established media discourse about it; show's demographics known and known to be similar to their own; expectations that Seinfeld would be sophisticated and entertaining | first season only; relatively unknown | |
| in native tongue | sub-titled | |
| broadcast by privatized RTL5 - perceived as being for 'less intellectual' viewers | ||
| quality production, cleverly written and creatively edited, admiration for inclusion of several sub-plots; participants commented on attention required | simple construction at best; thought to be mildly entertaining by some participants and irredeemably bad by others; commented on lack of attention required | |
| experience with stand-up comedy | stand-up comedy is new and not widely used | |
therefore different cues for humour recognized |
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| General Expressive Strategies i.e. used to frame participants' discussion of their use of television | 'I do not usually watch television' commonly used as opener; sets up critical distance - but the critical distance is articulated differently: |
|
| talking about the artificial plot lines of situation comedies; often these comments are a play with the nature of situation comedy and not a criticism of Seinfeld (cf Liebes' comments on 'ludic' nature of American audience's engagement with Dallas) | dislike of Seinfeld expressed through discussion of canned laughter; this is used to support genuine distaste | |
| Organizational Strategies i.e. categorizations of value of television programmes | drew upon an established hierarchy of television genres and an image of the kinds of audiences that various kinds of programmes attracted; almost all participants placed themselves in the audience of 'quality' programming, but understanding of quality differed: |
|
| Seinfeld placed on a scale of sophisticated versus mass or low culture American television and labelled as sophisticated | scale that contrasted all British programs as sophisticated with all American programs as low culture, and Seinfeld was therefore deemed low culture expectation that it would be a poorly made, low culture product | |
constructed categories of audiences who would likely watch the different categorization s of programs within their framework |
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| more Canadian participants were comfortable in expressing membership in the Seinfeld audience, since it was perceived to be a relatively distinguished group - young, intelligent, urban professional | fewer Dutch participants admitted to being a part of the Seinfeld audience; audience seens as having low level of education, and an associated lower income and a somewhat less cultured taste | |
| Expressions of Domestic Context | compared the level of funding that their domestic broadcasting systems receive to the levels of financing in Hollywood and criticized the quality of the programs made in their own countries |
|
| focused discussion of their public broadcasting system on the issue of the representation of their national culture; considered television to be an arena in which negotiating a national identity is possible; considred that television and national identity have some relevant relationship | did not relate the issue of domestic public broadcasting to the
representation of their cultural icons saw television as involved with other issues |
|
Ang's study (1985) is of forty-two letters she received from Dallas viewers in response to an ad. she put in a magazine. Her respondents were not necessarily fans, indeed some claimed to think Dallas was rubbish, but watched it anyway. It's interesting that quite a few of Yanish's respondents prefaced their comments by asserting that they didn't watch television much, but in many cases betrayed during the discussions considerable familiarity with the conventions of the sitcom genre. It would be interesting in itself to discover just how many avid television viewers claim not to watch TV much.
Personally, I tend not to watch any kind of serial because it would irritate me to have to watch again at a certain time, though I was once a keen Doctor Who fan. I tend to enjoy programmes like Police, Camera, Action and You've Been Framed. For non-British readers, I should explain that the first of these is a half-hour programme featuring clips from police squad car videos and the second features a series of clips from home video tapes, mostly of people tripping over their dog, falling into the swimming pool and so on. I am quite prepared to admit that these are 'rubbish', 'tabloid television', so I ask myself why I watch them rather than getting on with something 'useful', 'edifying' or whatever. One reason is certainly that they fit my schedule. By the time they come on in the evening, I need a rest, so it's quite pleasant to be able to flop down on the couch and watch something completely brainless, the 'ritualistic' of TV. (The distinction between instrumental and ritualistic use is discussed elsewhere. Incidentally, this 'flopping' in front of the TV induces a pretty peculiar state in that it can be
a metabolic state unique to TV watching. Temperature, pulse rate and muscle tension go down so much that a truly focused TV watcher is soon in the extraordinary position of burning about 13 per cent fewer calories than if he or she were doing nothing at all.
Bodanis (1997)
I think another reason is that I enjoy my amazement at the incredibly stupid behaviour people can display. I don't feel a sense of superiority in that, indeed I often recognize myself in those behaviours. Rather, it's just the sheer amazement I enjoy. For the same reason, I think, I used to enjoy watching Tomorrow's World, a lightweight half-hour programme showcasing the wonders of modern technology. It's this kind of rather vaguely defined pleasure in the viewing experience which Ang sets out to investigate.
Ang starts her study by stating her intention to attempt to discover what it is that makes Dallas-watching a pleasurable experience. She makes clear at the outset that the dour Marxist theorists' approach to the enjoyment of mass media with its gloom and angst over the proletariat being duped by the culture industries is an approach which she views as one-sided. On the other hand the pleasure which audiences take in watching TV products is not something entirely natural and automatic; the producers must work from the basis of a certain confidence that their own definition of what is pleasurable will coincide with the viewers' definition. From the viewers' point of view,
What matters is the possibility of identifying with [the object of pleasure] in some way or other, to integrate it into everyday life. In other words, popular pleasure is first and foremost a pleasure of recognition. But what do Dallas-lovers recognize in Dallas?
(1985 : 20)
That is the question she sets out to answer.
Part of the pleasure derived from viewing Dallas is simply due to its function as entertainment - the right to flop out in your own living room and be entertained. Part of the pleasure derives from Dallas's special place within the 'flow' of television (for comments on 'flow' see the section on Hermes). Part of the pleasure derives from the pressures on commercial TV to take account of the audience's preferences. This does not mean that the audience has to consume what it is given in a passive way. Once it has been given Dallas, it starts playing with it.
Dallas is a text which the viewers have to read in order to derive meanings from it. The possible readings they may derive are constrained by the use of certain conventions which audience members are already familiar with, for example a music track, titles, the presentation of characters one after another, all of which distinguish it from, say, a documentary.
It is a necessary precondition for the involvement of viewers that they should be able to see the characters as real people. Ang notes that those of her respondents who like Dallas write about the characters just as we would comment on a real person, i.e. in terms of character traits etc. Nearly all respondents, whether they are positively or negatively oriented towards Dallas comment on the 'genuineness' of the characters and judge them accordingly, though in all cases it is quite clear that they are well aware they dealing with fictional characters. this criterion of 'genuineness' seems to be the necessary prerequisite for involvement in Dallas.
The world these 'genuine'-seeming characters inhabit must also be 'realistic'. Some viewers comment that Dallas is unrealistic, others find it realistic. In a simplistic sense of course it is unrealistic - would these people who are constantly feuding 'really' continue to live in the same house? are there 'really' that many plane crashes, accidents, weird diseases etc? So do we say that those viewers who perceive it as realistic are suffering from false consciousness? Ang criticizes what she refers to as this 'empiricist conception of realism', firstly because it simply overlooks the fact that any text is a selection from, a processing of, the real world:
[T]here can never be any question of an unproblematic mirror relation between text and social reality: at most it can be said that a text constructs its own version of 'the real'
37
Secondly, it will not do simply to dismiss as 'dupes'those viewers who do find it realistic. Ang explains this by use of the notion of 'realistic illusion'. The presentation suppresses its constructedness. She refers here to Colin McCabe's explanation of such a classic realistic text giving pleasure by enabling us to deny the textuality and the fictional nature of a film and forget it, just enjoying its transparent narrativity. However, Ang's research suggests that this in itself is insufficient. Viewers are not only concerned with the transparency of the narrative. 'What is told in the narrative must also play a part in the production of pleasure.
It seems quite clear that many of Ang's respondents do not perceive Dallas as realistic on the simple denotative level. However, if the programme is read at the connotative level, the people, relations and situations can be seen as entirely recognizable, while at the denotative level they continue to be seen as unrealistic. (If you are uncertain about these terms, see the section on meaning under denotation and connotation, as well as the section on semiotics.) Thus Ang concludes that the two notions of realism discussed above are inadequate to an understanding of her respondents' pleasure in viewing Dallas:
For however much the two approaches are opposed to one another - for the [empiricist conception of realism] realism is a token for a 'good' text, and for [classical realism] for a 'bad' text - in both a cognitive-rationalistic idea dominates: both are based on the assumption that a realistic text offers knowledge of the 'objective' social reality. According to the empiricist-realists a text is realistic (and therefore good) if it supplies 'adequate knowledge' of reality, while in the second conception a classic-realist text is bad because it only creates an illusion of knowledge. But the realism experience of the Dallas fans quoted bears no relation to this cognitive level - it is situated at the emotional level: what is recognized as real is not knowledge of the world, but a subjective experience of the world: 'a structure of feeling'.
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This 'structure of feeling' is what Ang refers to as the tragic structure of feeling, tragic in that happiness is perceived as precarious, always endangered. Emotions occupy a central place in such a structure of feeling.
Fiske draws attention to the 'playfulness' of this viewing attitude which sees the characters as simultaneously real and unreal: Ang, Hobson and Tulloch and Moran all found evidence of fans' belief in the 'reality' of the represented characters, but also found that the women knew what they were doing when they made this confusion. It was a playful, controlled self-delusion that increased their pleasure, and put them in a position of greater power within the process of representation. It also enhanced TV's intersection with their oral culture.
Play of this sort is a form of empowerment because it devolves the final stage of the process of representation to the subordinate. This power may not in itself be oppositional or radical, but it is, at the very least, the power to be different.
Fiske (1987b)
The subtitle of Ang's Watching Dallas is soap opera and the melodramatic imagination. This relates to Tania Modleski's comparison of soaps with nineteenth century melodrama, rather than with the nineteenth century realist novel, melodrama's main concern being with stirring up emotions. Ang is careful to avoid the standard condemnations of melodrama on the basis of bourgeois literary values which are inappropriately applied to popular genres. Some of the characteristics of soaps which I've mentioned above are also characteristics of melodrama, except that, as Modleski point out, soaps never have a resolution, an ending. Ang draws on Modleski's emphasis on the prevalence of the so-called hermeneutic code in soaps. The term is drawn from Barthes' analysis (1970) of a story by Balzac:
Let us call 'hermeneutic code' all of those units whose function is to articulate, in various ways, a question, the answer to it and the various accidents which may either prepare the question or delay the answer to it; or: to formulate a puzzle and bring about its solution.
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Hence the paradoxical nature of the textual dynamic, which is, in Barthes's words, a 'static dynamic' (75). The soap opera viewer is thus in an unusual position when compared with viewers of other narratives which promise eventual resolution of the plot:
in soap opera it is precisely the tragic knowledge of the holding off of an end satisfactory to all the characters which is the basis for narrative pleasure
Ang (1985) : 75
The soap world is entirely ambiguous in that the personal is all-prevailing and yet at the same time no individual is free to construct his or her own life history. This is especially clear to the viewer because, whilst the characters live their own lives without necessarily being in touch with any of the other characters, the viewer is aware of everything that's going on. The melodramatic soap is not high-flown Greek tragedy, but rather a means of expressing the 'ordinary pain of living in the modern welfare-state, ... the vague sense of loss', which is not ordinarily recognized as tragedy at all and therefore so rarely expressed.
Ang makes some interesting comments on the 'ideology of mass culture', by which she means the widespread view that mass culture is lowbrow entertainment and therefore bad, a view which she says has become an 'official aversion to American television series'. Despite the fact that cultural studies theorists often criticize the argument of crude economic determinism which supposedly forces these series to address the lowest common denominator in audience tastes, the core of the theory still tend sto be accepted. A number of respondents are clear Dallas haters, who rely on this representation of mass culture to be vehemently critical in the views they express. If such viewers are angrily critical of the commercialism, the stereotyping, the sensationalism of Dallas, then one might wonder why they watch it. Ang suggests it gives them a sense of security in that the categories they use to condemn it enable to legitimize their dislike, the ideology of mass culture fulfilling a comforting and reassuring role:
it makes a search for more detailed and personal explanations superfluous, because it provides a finished explanatory model that convinces, sounds logical and radiates legitimacy
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It is not the case, though, that acceptance of the ideology of mass culture necessarily leads to hating the programme. Several respondents indicated that they accepted the ideology whilst at the same time greatly enjoying watching. They resolved the apparent paradox by adopting the 'ironical viewing attitude'. It is also the case that melodrama is always particularly vulnerable to an ironic stance, the melodrama only working if the viewer identifies with the excessive world of the soap.
Dallas fans themselves are also not unaware of the ideology of mass culture, but they react to the pressures of the ideology neither by hating Dallas nor by adopting an ironical viewing attitude. They react by defending themselves from the ideology using a range of strategies, though ultimately their problem is that they do not have a countervailing ideology with which to defend themselves by presenting a negative image of those who hate or mock Dallas. At best they can only try to defend themselves against the negative image which is presented to them of themselves: 'they can easily be reduced to silence because they can literally find no words to defend themselves'.
Some of Ang's writers seem simply to be unaware of the strictures of the ideology of mass culture, yet others actively resist it in a variety of ways. Some argue that those who rubbish Dallas do so only because they think they should, though they watch and enjoy it anyway. Others show a degree of truculence in resisting the ideology which is foisted upon them insisting that they have the right to make up their own minds about what is good and bad. This position is taken by few of Ang's respondents, but Ang suspects that that is due to the fact that the populist view that 'there is no accounting for taste' strikes people as sheer common sense, entirely natural, whereas the ideology of mass culture is clearly articulated as a theoretical position.
Ang concludes her discussion of the ideology of mass culture Gone for a cigarette.... ...will come back and complete this at some point. Sorry.
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