Who am I?

I’m writing this blog for my Television Criticism class. Why should you care? After all I am just a student. In this blog I would like to persuade you to think that my thoughts funny enough to make you laugh and more importantly make you think. We had to read various readings for class in the last two weeks by John Butler, John Corner, Charlotte Brunsdon, Victoria O'Donnell, Malcolm Sillars & Bruce Gronbeck. I would like to say that I can identify or strongly disagree with O’Donnell, Butler, Gronbeck and Sillars, and Corner but most of all I mostly agree with the style of writing that O’Donnell wrote because it is relatable to me. In this blog I will briefly discuss each author(s) saying why I agree or disagree, then what my goals are as a critic, how I view television as an object of study, and how I can make my audience relate to me.

While I agree with Gronbeck and Sillars that ‘The environments around you – political, economic, social, ethical – are constructed and maintained through a variety of communication practices and media’ (pg. 3&4, Gronbeck and Sillars) there is so much citing of other readings and things they say but put in citations that I can’t concentrate on what they are saying. Why do you have to say something to us in a citation when you could just put it in a sentence? On one page for example they cite Havelock, Preface, Muse, 1331b, and Rhetoric 1362a. I don’t even know what any of that means! The language used is also boring and makes me feel uninvolved because I cannot relate to a bunch of citations.

I found Corner’s reading to be super lame because of the large meanings behind the large words being used. It took explanations from Kristina for me to comprehend that ‘centripetal’ meant to disperse meaning through television and ‘centrifugal’ meant to unify all the meaning in the world into one source called television. Either I should have known what these words meant by seventh grade or Corner could have just explained it exactly in those simplified terms. I’m sick of reading things that take me googling words to get through. I’m in college I don’t have time for that shit.

‘Television is dead’ (pg. 3, Butler). I disagree. It’s sitting in my room; it is turned on and very much alive inviting me to watch intently or to fall asleep to the nothingness that I found not entertaining. I don’t want to use a lot of theory crap in my writings because it is boring to me. If I find it boring then I will use the little logic God gave me and assume that other people also find it boring. I don’t need to hear how TV is dead. It isn’t. And we haven’t replaced it, we have enhanced it.

I like O’Donnell. O’Donnell wants me to ‘make informed judgments’ (pg. 3, O’Donnell). I want this too. I really like all the references to Law and Order, X-Files, and CSI. Why? Because I watch this crap. Television most of the time is for pure entertainment. You are supposed to get lost in it. It is supposed to capture you and sometimes if you are lucky, you learn a little something. O’Donnell talks to me like we are friends. We are buds, comrades. She says things to me in a way that she knows I’ll understand, because I do understand.

From these four readings I have derived goals for this blog and for myself. I do not want to cite unnecessarily because I don’t want my blog to be full of citations as my audience is trying to read my blog. I want to use everyday language so the audience can easily understand and comprehend what I’m trying to say. I do not want to babble about theories…this is a fun blog! I want to talk about topics I can relate to like examples from my favorite TV shows like Top Chef, Real Housewives of Atlanta, Keeping up with the Kardashians and many others shows. I want to talk to my audience like were friends, because that’s where my sense of humor really comes out. Lastly, even thought this is my blog, I want to have conversations with people about their thoughts as well.

Specifically I am constantly looking at a few things when I am watching television. First, how is television representing women, gender, and sexuality? I’ve taken quite a few women’s studies courses and I can pick up on when something just isn’t quite right with a show. For example the show The L Word. While this show is commendable for its lesbian portrayal in a groundbreaking way, most the characters are thin, white, mid to upper class women. In the segment from the show below you can see what I mean:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BBaIGgoehs

Second, I want my shows to be relevant to what is going on in our culture right now. Does everyone live an upper class lifestyle like they do on Gossip Girl? No, some of us grew up in small towns and graduated with 69 kids in our class. Is it relevant? Also, does it captivate me? Why do I like shows that sometimes are not relevant at all to my life?

How am I going to relate to you? I certainly hope my goals of language use and speaking like we are friends will help that. I will be able to connect with you only if you also share your thoughts so we can have an open honest conversation about what we are seeing in our culture on television.







Bibliography
Butler, J. (2002). Television: Critical Methods and Applications (2nd ed). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Corner, J. (1999). Critical Ideas in Television Studies. New York: Oxford University Press.
O’Donnell, V. (2007). Television Criticism. New York: Sage.
Sillars, M. O. and Gronbeck, B. E. (2001). Communication Criticism: Rhetoric, Social Codes, Cultural Studies. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.