TV Technoculture: the Representation of Technology in Digital Age Television Narratives Valerie Puiattiy

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2014 TV Technoculture: The Representation of Technology in Digital Age Television Narratives Valerie Puiattiy

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COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

TV TECHNOCULTURE: THE REPRESENTATION OF TECHNOLOGY IN DIGITAL AGE

TELEVISION NARRATIVES

VALERIE PUIATTI

A Dissertation submitted to the Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2014 Valerie Puiatti defended this dissertation on February 3, 2014. The members of the supervisory committee were:

Leigh H. Edwards Professor Directing Dissertation

Kathleen M. Erndl University Representative

Jennifer Proffitt Committee Member

Kathleen Yancey Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements.

This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Laura and Allen, my husband, Sandro, and to our son, Emilio.

iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This dissertation could not have been completed without the support of many people. First, I would like to thank my advisor, Leigh H. Edwards, for her encouragement and for the thoughtful comments she provided on my chapter drafts. I would also like to thank the other committee members, Kathleen M. Erndl, Jennifer Proffitt, and Kathleen Yancey, for their participation and feedback.

To the many friends who were truly supportive throughout this process, I cannot begin to say thank you enough. This dissertation would not have been written if not for Katheryn Wright and Erika Johnson-Lewis, who helped me realize on the way to New Orleans together for the PCA Conference that my presentation paper should be my dissertation topic. I am grateful to them for continually offering a great amount of insight. I would like to thank my dear friend Jessica Lowe-Minor who has always offered an ear when I needed to discuss new ideas. Her cheerfulness and encouraging nature helped keep me motivated. I also wish to thank Alison Calhoun for her friendship, support, and inspiration.

Most importantly, I wish to thank my family. To my dad, Allen, who encouraged me to never give up on the goal of finishing my dissertation despite the many obstacles I faced. To my mom, Laura, who always encouraged me to understand the value and importance of education. To my husband, Sandro, whose love and support is irreplaceable. And finally to our beautiful son, Emilio, who brings me the greatest joy and makes me remember that it is important to take time for fun, silliness, and many hugs.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... vi INTRODUCTION ...... 1 A NEW AGE ...... 8 GENDER AND TECHNOLOGY: TV’S TECHNOLOGICAL BATTLE OF THE SEXES ...... 33 LOSS OF CONNECTION: GENERATION GAPS...... 57 POWER AND NARRATION ...... 84 CONCLUSION ...... 109 REFERENCES ...... 113 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 128

ABSTRACT

This dissertation explores how the relationship between individuals, society, and communication technologies is represented in television narratives and their overflow. My choice in using television as my media case study stems from the assumption that analysis of popular culture and television highlight the significance of everyday life. The selected programs offer a view into attitudes that are in circulation about how individuals and society are being affected by technology. In this project, I identify four primary emphases in television’s presentation of the

Internet and communications technologies: gender, generation gaps, security and privacy, and the impact of the virtual on the physical realm. These areas form the basis for each chapter of the dissertation. Chapter one begins with the idea that we are now living in a new age. It then explores media and scholarly considerations of how digital technology and the virtual have impacted activities based in the physical realm. This chapter seeks to illuminate what value is attributed to face-to-face communication and activities versus those of the virtual as well as to understand if these same concerns are expressed in television narratives. Chapter two explores how gender has been constructed in relation to technology. The third chapter addresses how television representations of generation gaps function to narrate the impact technology has made on the dynamic between digital natives and those who learned—or are learning—to navigate the innovations of the digital era later in life. The final chapter addresses how debates about privacy, freedom, and security have been actively incorporated into television narratives.

INTRODUCTION

In television studies many scholars have discussed television’s role as a piece of

technology and how technological advancements have impacted the delivery of television

content1. Yet, there is still a need to look at the ways in which technology is influencing the

content of television fiction. It should be noted that technology is commonly associated with the

science fiction (SF) genre and, indeed, there have been studies of the representation of

technology in that television genre2. My aim is to focus not on our hopes and fears for the future

(and how those hopes and fears get projected onto technology), but on our satisfactions and

concerns with technology in the present.

This dissertation analyzes selective non-SF American television programs from the late

1990s to the present with the goal of discerning patterns in how the relationship between society,

individuals, and communications technologies is presented by these programs and their

“overflow.” Because the selected programs are set in the present instead of the future or near

future, they offer a view into attitudes that are in circulation about how individuals and society

are being affected by technology. My goal is demonstrate how television narratives across genres

outside of SF are products of a digital age “structure of feeling” about technology and its role in

our lives. Raymond Williams developed this concept to refer to a “common set of perceptions

and values shared by a particular generation” that is accumulated and formed during our lived

experience of the world, which then find expression in social practices as well as cultural forms,

such as art, music, or film (“Structure”).3 Giving critical attention to television’s messages about technology allows for insight into Digital Age values and norms. It further allows for the

1 For more on television as a technology see Williams, 1974; Spigel, and Tichi; for discussions of technology’s impact on transmedia storytelling, see Jenkins, 2006; Newman and Levine; Lotz; and Ross. 2 See Banks and Tankel, Holloway, Johnson-Smith, and Telotte for studies of science fiction television. 3 Williams continually elaborated on this concept throughout his work beginning with A Preface to Film. 1 identification of general perceptions of how technology’s impact on society. I hope to shed light on how television texts contribute to a discourse on life in the digital age; and, further, how they function to maintain longstanding social structures and offer consumption as a solution to social problems.

My choice in using television as my media case study stems first from the assumption that analysis of popular culture and television highlight the significance of everyday life.

Jonathan Gray, author of Television Entertainment, points out “television is remarkable precisely for its “daily” qualities, and for the presence it occupies in our everyday humdrum routines and lives” (2). Second, even as television technology has changed, it still operates as “a tool for cultural storytelling” (Lotz 3). Digital age television has been influenced by a shift from the digital revolution paradigm to the convergence paradigm, a social transformation charted by

Henry Jenkins in Convergence Culture. As television uses incorporates new media technology into its medium, especially in transmedia storytelling, its medium means its content should also be analyzed to gather what messages about technology are being promoted. For example,

Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine argue that television industry professionals, in attempt to elevate television’s cultural status, embrace an essentialist view of technology: “Legitimation is deeply invested in discourses of progress and improvement, and it works by elevation of one concept of television at the expense of another…New is elevated over old, active over passive, class over mass, masculine over feminine” (Newman and Levine 5). My analysis will attempt to show that these same discourses that are used to legitimize television in terms of technology and medium are also guiding the messages underlining television’s representation of technology and its use.

Organization

In this project, I identify four primary foci in television’s presentation of the Internet and

communications technologies: gender, generation gaps, privacy and security issues, and the

question of real communication. Each chapter contains examples from a variety television

programs to address how television is incorporating these issues into its content. The goal is to

show how television represents the impact of the Internet and communication technologies on

American life.

Methodology and Approach

The importance of method derives from its ability frame and guide research, or to offer a

“path of reasoning” (During 8). I use a text-context approach in my analyses. The primary

application of text-context approach by television studies scholars has been in genre and

program-specific research. Text-context analysis begins with sustained engagement with a text,

paying particular attention to generic conventions, narrative patterns, dialogue and images, and

modes of address. What is of interest to television studies scholars using this approach is “the way in which television connects with the character of society where it is watched” (Bignell 4).

Thus, the analysis must be extended to incorporate the surrounding context, the purpose of which is “to go beyond the textually descriptive and evaluative and to use its observations here as a

route to a broader or deeper cultural diagnosis, either of the past or the present” (Corner 8). In

my application of text-context approach, I seek to locate television’s vision technoculture within

the values of the digital generation. My treatment of the texts will be historically situated in order

to demonstrate the impact of socio-political events, in addition to scientific and technological

advancement, on their content and thematic concerns.

While the overall approach to my readings is text-context, each chapter has its own particular theoretical framework. In chapter one, my connection of masculinity with technology and the exclusion of women from production and consumption of technology relies heavily on the work of feminist scholars such as Sandra Harding, Cynthia Cockburn, Sarah Kember, and

Doreen Massey. My claim that technologically proficient women represent a threat to masculinity was influenced by Martin Kevorkian’s Color Monitors. Chapter two’s conceptualization of a digital generation was framed primarily by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser’s

Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives and Don Tapscott’s

Growing Up Digital: the Rise of the Net Generation and Grown Up Digital: How the Net

Generation is Changing the World. The concept of the digital dossier is fundamental for the third chapter. I draw heavily on Palfrey and Gasser’s thoughts on the digital dossier, though the idea is discussed by other scholars as well. Foucault’s theory of the panopticon was also an inspiration for how I conceptualize surveillance across the chapter. The final chapter relies on the explanation of dystopic and utopic fiction offered by Raymond Williams to address the utopic and dystopic dimensions of television fiction when representing technology.

The Selection of the Texts

A wide array of television series has aired between the late 20th century and the present.

Thus, it would be unfeasible to try to address each one. The choice of those that I do examine has been based on the consideration of whether a program fits into the time period, their thematic concerns, as well as other textual and extra-textual elements. Throughout the text, I return to some programs more than once when they were particularly representative of a certain genre or exemplified multiple thematic concerns.

Communication and Cultural Ideals

Scholars studying technology and society have noted the ideals and norms that guide

thinking about technological advancement and change. Patrice Flichy notes that cultural values

drive the ideas about how technology can best serve the needs of society (Flichy). Carolyn

Marvin shows in her work that discussions about communications technologies entail

assumptions about “what communication ought to be like” (qtd in Lister 71; my emphasis).

William Boddy builds on Marvin’s arguments to look at the discursive construction of radio in

the twentieth century. Boddy pays particular attention to the shift in gendered associations of

radio. Close readings of television texts reveal the cultural values behind the representation of

technology and its impact on daily life. Both Marvin and Boddy will affect how I construct my

ideas about how a digital age structure of feeling guides the representation of technology. In particular, Boddy’s focus on gender will be helpful in chapter one, in which I address how

technology is represented as dividing men and women. Overall, my analyses will show that

whether television takes a dystopic or utopic stance, its narratives are dependent upon hegemonic

understandings of gender, age, class, race, and security. Ultimately, television’s representation of

technology functions to maintain the status quo.

Outline of Chapters

Chapter one, “A New Age,” begins by presenting media and scholarly considerations of

how digital technology and the virtual have impacted activities based in the physical realm. A

wide variety of arenas—from education to the gathering of skills and knowledge, from social

communication to spatial relationships, from labor and capital to consumerism and

globalization—have been considered in news media and academic writing. A review of how

these topics have been addressed in media accounts and scholarly works will seek to illuminate

what values are attributed to activities and communication that are based in the physical realm

versus that of the virtual. The ultimate goal is to understand if these same concerns are expressed

in television narratives. To what extent does television present either utopic or dystopic visions

of the effects of digital technology and the virtual on education, communication, the global

spread of consumer capitalism, labor and skills?

Chapter two, “Gender and Technology: TV’s Technological Battle of the Sexes,”

explores how gender has been constructed in relation to technology. It begins by outlining how

feminist theorists have approached gender and technology. Especially emphasized are divisions

of labor and the gender stereotypes associated with technology. The focus then moves to four

key television representations of men, women, and technology. Examples will demonstrate a

consistent positive association of masculinity with technology. Meanwhile, technologically

proficient women are routinely defined as unfeminine. Sexuality is tied in regularly, with these

same women being denied a sexual identity or being labeled as homosexual. Finally, feminine

women are seen using technologies in ways that do not threaten male dominance in the

technological arenas for things like gossip, social networking, or placing online orders.

Television attempts to depict a “modern” world in which technology is ubiquitous, but it

has not created a picture of a society in which men and women utilize technology in equally

valued ways. Instead television reproduces traditional gender roles via the promotion of

consumerism and the organization of the consumer. Televisual representations become vehicles

for the institutionalization of technology consumption while reaffirming male privilege.

Chapter three, “Loss of Connection: Generation Gaps,” addresses how television representations of generation gaps function to narrate the impact technology has made on the dynamic between digital natives and those who learned—or are learning—to navigate the

innovations of the digital era later in life. Family and work settings are the main focus of

generational concerns. Examples will show how television conceptualizes the effect of

technology on family communication, parental authority, and older individuals’ ability to stay

competitive in the workforce. Threats to the family structure and the fear of obsolescence are

ultimately resolved through modes of consumption. Narratives, dialogue, product placement and

accompanying advertisements function to solidify the message that upgrading oneself through

products and skills is the answer.

Debates about privacy, freedom, and security form a major trend in techno-discourse.

Popular media and scholarly discussions of these issues serve as the jumping-off point for

chapter four, “Power and Narration.” The chapter begins by outlining a definition of the term

digital dossier. Then it transitions into a discussion of how television interprets the digital dossier in relation to the dual phenomena of social media and crowdsourcing. The second section considers how voice-over narration and storytelling can document the shift in how we relate to people and our surrounding environment in the wake of advancements in communication technologies. The final section investigates technology in crime drama, the genre par excellence for bringing the privacy/security debate to the small screen.

CHAPTER ONE

A NEW AGE

This chapter begins by presenting the question of whether or not we are indeed in a new digital age that was defined by the digital revolution. Besides the question of whether society has indeed moved forward into a new age, another ongoing debate has been whether technology has had a positive or negative impact on social life. After outlining the arguments for and against the celebration of a new era, I aim to answer the following question in this chapter: To what extent does television present either utopic or dystopic visions of the effects of digital technology and the virtual on education, communication, the global spread of consumer capitalism, labor and skills? These areas may seem disparate at first glance. The common thread is the element of physical space. Much of what is considered fundamental to the human condition is dependent on what takes place face-to-face, in “reality.” This chapter seeks to highlight how television presents the real/virtual dichotomy, as this has been a major point of debate in techno-discourse outside the medium.

Following the “digital revolution,” it has been widely claimed—from newspaper articles to blogs—that we are now living in a new age. June Jamrich Parsons and Dan Oja, the owners of

MediaTechnics, a firm that develops computer science textbooks and educational software, are also the co-authors of New Perspectives on Computer Concepts. Their starting point for this text is a description of the digital revolution and how it altered the course of man’s relationship with technology:

The digital revolution became a significant factor in the 1980s, as computers and other

digital devices became popular and as the Internet opened global communications. The

term digital revolution was probably coined as a parallel to the term industrial revolution,

and in that sense it promises to bring about a similar level of social and economic change.

The digital revolution is creating an Information Society, in which generating,

distributing, and manipulating information becomes a significant economic and cultural

activity. (Jamrich Parsons and Oja 4)

It is important to think of the digital revolution as more than just a singular event; Jamrich

Parsons and Oja go on to refer to it as “an ongoing process of social, political, and economic change brought about by the digital technology” (4). This new era supposedly precipitated by the digital revolution has also been called the Information Age, the Electronic Age, a techno-culture, or the Digital Age. Whether or not we are actually living in a new epoch that is radically different from previous periods is not the main concern here, as the primary interest is the discourses that have emerged surrounding contemporary communications technologies, all of which have suggested or proclaimed the arrival of a new era.

Some do not see the Digital Revolution or the Information Age that followed it as fundamentally different from the period that preceded it. Daniel Chandler reasons, “we have long existed in a symbiotic relationship with mechanisms, and we do so increasingly as technology saturates the environments in which we live and work” (1). Fernand Braudel remarks, “The history of technology is that of human history in all its diversity. That is why specialist historians of technology hardly ever manage to grasp it entirely in their hands” (qtd in Zuboff 125).

Contemporary responses to the impact of digital technologies on physicality and how we conceive of human experience in physical spaces are successors to similar discussions generated by the Industrial Revolution. Developments in the textile industry, agriculture, and to machine tools raised questions about their effect on humanity. The Luddites are perhaps the most well

known example of a group opposing industrialization. Jon Katz neatly summarizes their protest

against the mechanization of the textile industry:

Big mills and factories meant an end to social custom and community, to personal status

and individual freedom. Having worked independently on their own farms, they would be

forced to use complex and dangerous machines in noisy, smelly factories for long hours,

seven days a week, for slave wages. Their harvest and agricultural rituals, practiced for

centuries, would perish. (Katz)

At the base of statements about techno-culture is the notion of change. Indeed, that is also

“nothing new” as much humanities-based research on the modern period has shown. Likewise, reactions to rapid innovation in the digital age include an interrogation of their social impact.

Responses to the relationship between culture and technology in the late twentieth century have often appeared diametrically opposed with some suggesting society proceed with caution until all potential consequences are considered, while others promote what they see as inevitable change resulting from “progress”. Simon During, author of Cultural Studies: A

Critical Introduction, recounts the utopic and dystopic discourses that appeared alongside the burgeoning technoculture:

Who among those who lived through it can forget the apocalyptic rhetorics of doom,

estrangement and revolution that accompanied the emergence of technoculture? And the

opposing rhetorics of renewal, magic and technological bliss which combined science

fiction futurist motifs with the Californian new-age libertarianism most notoriously

promoted by the magazines Mondo 2000 and Wired in the 1980s. (During 137)

Twenty to thirty years later, the initial emergence of technoculture has passed, though its presence and prevalence still draw criticism, adding to a general dialogue on life in the digital

age. Newspaper articles suggest that communications technologies are responsible for the

corrosion of innocence and morality. InsideHigherEd.com has recently questioned the effect that

social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have on education and students’ ability to

learn in traditional ways. Others argue that media culture is undermining human potential or

creativity (Kellner, Media, 2). What are the main qualities or characteristics of these and similar

critiques? Do they contain identifiable patterns? According to Simon During, whether for or

against, discourses about the impact of the web and other technologies on society tend to

exaggeration (142). He further remarks that critiques such as these, “routinely lapse into

speculation and prophecy” (During 142).

Technology is represented in news media, academic writings, everyday conversation, and

popular culture. Representations are never neutral. They are embedded with cultural values. I

seek to emphasize how American television’s representation of technology contains hegemonic

notions of gender, age, privacy and security. A guiding assumption of this dissertation maintains

that novels, films and television, “dramatize our feelings, hopes and fears about technology”

(Chandler).4 Furthermore, the representation of technology in popular culture indicates, “the way

that new technologies are taken up with culture and are hooked into, or have projected onto

them, its wider social and psychological desires and fears” (Lister 70).

Utopian Aspirations

Kevin Robins sees the new technoculture as marked by utopian aspirations and

confidence that technological developments can gradually take us towards the realization of

those goals. There are three points of interest for me in Robin’s approach and arguments. First,

the focus is on “ordinary, spontaneous and commonsensical accounts of what is happening

4 It should be noted that the focus of this dissertation is U.S. entertainment television. The study will not address the televisual representation of technology in other nations and cultures. Any all-encompassing terms such as “we” or “our” do not purport to speak for all cultures. 11 through the culture” (Robins 13). This fits with my focus on television, a central medium of popular culture. Next, Robins states that the “dominant technological imaginary” is utopian in nature. Finally, he observes that what underlines utopian rhetoric is the old, modernist project to master chaos, disorder, and the unknown (Robins 13). In literature, film, and television, the desire to master the unknown has often been articulated through fantastical modes, often in the genre of SF. Studies of the representation of science and technology have frequently focused on that genre. Its most prominent themes, utopia and dystopia, are founded in modernist notions of progress and belief in the rational capabilities of man to apply science, the same notions and assumptions that have been criticized by feminist theorists for their exclusion and oppression of women. While I will not explicitly address science fiction in my dissertation, I recognize utopic and dystopic undercurrents in the representation of technology use in the texts that I do analyze.

Thus, it is helpful to establish the definitions from which I am moving forward.

My definitions of utopia and dystopia are based on those developed in Raymond

Williams’ “Utopia and Science Fiction.” Williams distinguishes between four types of utopian fictions5, one of which is useful for this project (“Utopia” 196). The “technological transformation” is a category of utopian fiction “in which a new kind of life has been made possible by a technical discovery” (Williams, “Utopia” 196). Its dystopic counterpart presents a future scenario, “in which the conditions of life have been worsened by technical development”

(Williams, “Utopia” 196). I claim that television’s presentation of technology is neither wholly utopic nor dystopic. Themes and situations that may be read as utopic or dystopic are influenced by the cultural and textual norms guiding the programs in various genres. Whether dystopic or utopic, fictional accounts of science and technology are rooted in the same essentialist thinking that guides their production. My analysis throughout this dissertation aims to show how science

5 At this point in Williams’ text, he is specifically addressing utopian fiction, distinct from science fiction. 12

and technology have been represented in entertainment television and how those depictions have

failed to break out of hegemonic understandings of gender, age, nation, and so on. These

ideologies feed into the production of the texts and structure their themes and other content.

Questioning the Real

One important question in the digital age has been how the Internet and other communications technologies will affect real communication. Four areas have received significant attention as those most affected by Internet and Communication Technology: education, social communication, labor and capital, and consumerism. Discussion of these areas has consistently included debate on reality and the virtual.

Below I begin by presenting media and scholarly considerations of how digital technology and the virtual have changed human experience in the arenas of education, social communication and relationships, labor and capital, and consumerism. This leads into how those same concerns have been woven into television narratives and their overflow. The latter is particularly important, as convergence culture values have pushed the form of storytelling in the digital age towards a multiplatform, transmedia format. The examples provided will demonstrate three points: 1) how incorporation of technology into television narratives comments on the status of life in the digital age, 2) how networks use technology to propel their most popular narratives beyond the space of the small screen, and 3) how both involve a privileging of digital technology and consumerism.

Education in the Digital Age

As use of Internet and communication technologies has expanded so have considerations of their impact on educational issues. Ways of learning, grammar and other (n)etiquette issues, the gathering and maintenance of skills have been put under the microscope. Pop media writers

and scholars alike have debated educational issues in the digital age. Television has added to that

commentary by providing fictional representations of digital culture while simultaneously using the convergence model to expand story lines. The sections that follow examine the representation of three areas mentioned above in the popular press, academic writing, and television.

Ways of Learning

Professors have grown concerned about students’ ability to receive information in traditional ways. There has been worry that lectures given without PowerPoint presentations, videos, or new media examples will be perceived as boring. Will students still be interested in a lecture that does not have all the bells and whistles of the digital age? There has also been concern that students cannot or will not receive nor engage the material effectively. Are digital immigrant and settler professors speaking the same language as their digital native students

(Palfrey et al)? Are they making sense of information in the same ways? Finally, there has even been frustration over whether students’ attention spans are shorter in the digital age. Many professors put an all out ban on laptops and cellphones during class time to avoid students browsing non-class websites on their laptops, texting, or just checking the time on their phones.

José Bowen, author of Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology Out of Your College

Classroom Will Improve Student Learning, encourages professors to keep technology—including those used as teaching aids—out of the classroom and to use that same time to create a dynamic learning experience.

Technology…by itself does not create engagement. Traditional lecture courses can be

improved by the judicious use of technology, but the primary benefit of technology-mediated

content delivery, communication, and assessment outside of class is the additional time it

creates for more active and engaged learning with prepared students inside the classroom.

(Bowen 185)

Bowen urges professors to recognize technology-based content such as PowerPoint presentations

as “redundant” pedagogical tools. He believes the focus should be on creating interactive classes

through a number of modes including discussions; lab and studio experiences; internships, work

experience, study-abroad and service-learning projects (Bowen 186).

In contrast, much work emphasizes higher education’s need to keep up with a changing world in order to serve a new generation of students. In other words, students do not need to conform; it is the academy that needs to adapt6. Many professors and institutions have worked diligently to incorporate technology into classrooms and course content. The popular press has documented many of these efforts. For example, in a 1993 article for Wired Magazine, Jacques

Leslie writes of the exciting possibilities for education in the digital age:

Teachers equipped with a computer, modem, and phone line can already choose from

hundreds of online projects that enable students to produce a newspaper with stories

submitted from a range of locales, or analyze jump-rope jingles around the world, or

correspond electronically with prison inmates, or participate in an international track

meet without leaving their schools, or calculate the earth's circumference by comparing

the length of shadows cast by a one-meter stick at different latitudes at high noon - almost

any educational endeavor that is enriched by geographical diversity can be carried out on

a network. (Leslie)

Some television classrooms show off the possibilities for a digital age education. For example, in

“We’re Not in Kansas Anymore,” the pilot episode of 90210 (2008), viewers see computers at

each desk and a big screen TV on the wall during a classroom scene.

6 See Mimi Ito and David Epstein. 15

Grammar and (N)etiquette

SMS—or, text message—shorthand has been overflowing for some time into e-mails, papers, and other areas where it may not be welcome. You may be familiar with some of the more common abbreviations: OMG, LOL, LMAO, IDK. To give an example, Sarah Boesveld quotes for her National Post readers an e-mail sent by a prospective student to the director of the

linguistics program at University of Toronto Scarborough: “hi, can u pls clarify smthng 4 me?

say i wnt to take intnl devt study w ur prgm. do i apply to bth prgms or just 1 n which 1 would it

B. evry help is appresh8d. thk u” (“Grammar”). The e-mail is an extreme example. But

techspeak is commonly encountered in communication that is normally expected to be formal.

Traditional grammar and spelling usage is widely accepted as a sign of respect for the person

with whom one is communicating. Besides spelling, e-mails and other “formal” communication

often lack those attributes that mark their formal nature. For example, how many times have you

received e-mail without a subject line, a formal greeting (or any greeting), or even a signature

from its sender? Ms. Mentor from The Chronicle of Higher Education goes through a list of rules

for “grown-up e-mails”: a proper opening, careful proofreading, spell checking, and leaving text

speak for text messages (“Don’t E-mail”). Despite being steeped in digital technology and

proficient in the e-mail medium, Ms. Mentor believes students still need to be reminded of these

basic guidelines. Professional articles also encourage readers to be more mindful of proper e-

mail etiquette in the workplace.

Issues of (n)etiquette are largely absent from television, but the Internet has been

presented as a useful tool for research. Television shows students doing research and other

homework assignments on their computers and on the Internet. Modern Family frequently shows

Alex Dunphy (Ariel Winter) hard at work on her laptop. Alex is highly committed to doing well

in school and recognizes the important role Internet access plays in her success. In the episode,

“Unplugged,” Claire Dunphy (Julie Bowen) decides to ban all technology in the house for a

week after becoming frustrated with her family’s lack of interaction even when in the same room

with one another. Her husband, Phil (Ty Burrell) makes it a contest and promises the winner

whatever he or she wants. When Alex questions how she will do her homework, her parents

argue she can use the encyclopedia. For Alex, not being able to use the Internet is like being

academically grounded. With the print encyclopedia, she is locked in time and unable to expose

herself to the newest information. Despite the promise of a new laptop, Alex quickly gives up in

the contest when she realizes that she cannot research as effectively.

Inside the television classroom, there are examples of students being asked to give up their mobile devices. In a second season episode of Gossip Girl, titled “Carnal Knowledge,” the school administration and parent advisory board decide to ban the use of cell phones during school hours and to confiscate them at the door7. “Football, Feminism, and You,” a first season episode of Community (2009) features a comedic moment regarding classroom etiquette. During a lecture, a cell phone starts ringing loudly. The camera closes in on the professor who abruptly stops the lecture to chide her students. However, in the middle of her reproach, she realizes it is actually her cell phone interrupting the lesson. The comedy in this scene is dependent upon an authority reversal. The audience who has grown accustomed to hearing about distracted, cell phone dependent students witnesses a moment in which the supposed authority figure, a college professor, fails to power down her cell phone and interrupts her own class.

As these examples demonstrate, television has dealt with the issue of education and technology, although less frequently than media and scholarly ruminations on the topic. Viewers

7 For a fuller analysis of this episode and how the students react to the administration’s decision, see chapter three, “Loss of Connection: Generation Gaps.” 17 are more likely to witness narratives that incorporate concerns of communication, labor and capital, and consumerism.

Social Communication and Spatial Dynamics

The expansion of the Internet and mobile devices has increased considerations of interpersonal communication as well as how individuals experience the places they inhabit.

Discussion of this topic is frequent and tends to fall into one of two camps: utopic or dystopic.

As noted earlier, I am using Raymond Williams’ concept of the “technological transformation” category of utopian fiction. This type of utopian fiction suggests in positive terms, “a new kind of life has been made possible by a technical discovery” (Williams, “Utopia” 196). Its dystopic counterpart presents a future scenario, “in which the conditions of life have been worsened by technical development” (Williams, “Utopia” 196).

Utopic visions of the digital age pose a world in which communication is free of barriers.

The anonymity provided in cyberspace allows for creativity and authenticity. One may make connections that are free of pre-conceived or stereotypical notions of another’s race, ethnicity, class, gender, or sexuality. The potential for community building is very hopeful for many. Jon

Katz optimistically wrote in his 1995 article, “Return of the Luddites” for Wired,

Old people talk to old people, lonely gay teens find other lonely gay teens, unpublished

poets trade poems with unpublished poets, physicians swap case histories with

physicians, parents of dying children comfort parents of other dying children, plumbers

order parts from plumbers, truckers chat with truckers.

The promise of people finding one another and making connections regardless of location is encouraging. Mobile devices and the Internet also eliminate the need to be face-to-face in order to communicate. This puts users in a state of disembodiment; frees them of their geographical

limitations. “As people spend more and more time with their telephones, televisions, and

computers,” observes David Trend, “the physicality of experience diminishes” leaving

participants free to focus on ideas, emotion, and experience (123). Katz sums up the connection between physically disconnected individuals as “the truest miracle of digital information.”

Not everyone views this as a positive effect. A popular point of contention is whether social media, the Internet, and mobile devices cause people to be isolated. In 2012, Stephen

Marche explored whether social networks like Facebook are making us lonely. Marche describes digital age relationships as “broader, but shallower” than those pursued in previous generations

(60). He continues:

We are living in an isolation that would have been unimaginable to our ancestors, and yet

we have never been more accessible. Over the past three decades, technology has

delivered to us a world in which we need not be out of contact for a fraction of a

moment…Yet within this world of instant and absolute communication, unbounded by

limits of time or space, we suffer from unprecedented alienation. (Marche 60)

Various news columns and academic publications warn that this detachment and anonymity allowed by the Internet and communication technologies embolden people to act in ways they normally would not in a face-to-face encounter. This includes cyberbullying and harassment. In an article for the New York Times, Jan Hoffman defines cyberbullying as “repeated harassment online.” But cyberbullying is not as easily solved as its face-to-face counterpart. Hoffman continues:

the anonymity of the Internet gives cover not only to schoolyard-bully types but to

victims themselves, who feel they can retaliate without getting caught…But online

bullying can be more psychologically savage than schoolyard bullying. The Internet

erases inhibitions, with adolescents often going further with slights online than in person.

In general, dystopic texts question the quality of digital communication. A higher value is placed

upon face-to-face, “real” communication8.

Television raises similar questions about the impact of mobile devices and the Internet on

social relationships, the nature of communication, and identity. Friends (1994), Sex and the City

(1998), and Modern Family (2009) all contain examples of the use comedy to present

technology’s impact on social relationships and communication. For Modern Family technology

often provides an opportunity to get laughs from the generational digital divide. Comedic

moments are predicated on differences in how digital natives and their parents communicate. Sex and the City continually privileges face-to-face contact and communication. The interpersonal

communication featured in Carrie’s romantic relationships and friendships takes place primarily

face-to-face. It is rarely mediated by technology. Carrie mirrors the questions raised in the

popular media. She explicitly questions if “all these communications technologies are really

helping us to communicate” (“Baby”). In Friends, communications devices meant to provide

ease of access and freedom from physical boundaries required for face-to-face communication

end up causing trouble for the characters.

In “The One with the Birth,” the comedy stems from a common problem: the inconvenience of having a new phone or pager number that is confused with someone else’s

number. One of the episode’s storylines features Ross and his new pager, which he got in order

to be notified when his ex-wife goes into labor. Unfortunately for Ross, a similar number

belongs to a male sex worker whose number spells out 55-JUMBO. Episode seven of season

two, “The One Where Ross Finds Out” follows Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston) on a date even

8 See John Cacioppo, Sherry Turkle, and Steven Marche. 20

though she is still hung up on Ross. This causes her to drink too much and talk at length about

Ross. Her date eventually offers her his cell phone so that she can call Ross and get some

closure. She quickly takes him up on his offer. Granted, Rachel’s drunkenness may have caused

her to do something she may not have normally done. But, the cell phone provided her with the

option of immediate access. Otherwise, she would have been forced to wait and think about her

feelings before taking action. Their ridiculous experiences provide comedic moments for the

audience, although—or, perhaps, even because—they are based in everyday issues with mobile communications technologies. The three examples given here all demonstrate the use of comedy in the representation of technology and interpersonal communication. Dramas also address technology’s impact on social relationships and communication.

Again I choose to focus on teen drama because of the prominent role technology plays in the most recent examples of the subgenre. This may not be surprising considering the target audience of teen dramas, middle-class teens and young women, has almost always had computers, cell phones and text messaging. In the world of teen drama the ubiquitous nature of the Internet and communication technology is more or less accepted as a fact of life at this point in time. Although there are many teen dramas that show the use of mobile devices and computer, such as 90210 (2008) and Awkward (2011), I believe Gossip Girl is the prime example. The

2007 teen drama is recognized as one of the first representations of digital natives. As Jason Gay points out, “it’s technology that truly defines Gossip Girl” (43). The characters’ experience of teenage drama is always done “with a thumb pressed to a keypad” (Gay 43). The CW hit naturalizes the use of communications technology as a way of life, showing the characters continually connected by some form of it. Their social relationships and modes of communication are dependent upon the Internet and communications technologies.

Despite its naturalization of teen dependency on text messaging and social networking,

Gossip Girl can still be characterized as dystopic. Social lives are ruined on the Gossip Girl blog

and through her mass texts, whose sole purpose is to spread rumors about the Constance Billard-

St. Jude students. Further, two of the main characters, Serena Van der Woodsen (Blake Lively)

and Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester), are often torn apart because of what is said on the Gossip

Girl website and must later repair their friendship face-to-face9. The phrase “face-to-face” can be used interchangeably with “heart-to-heart” in the world of Gossip Girl. Face-to-face is when the characters are genuine with one another and reveal their true feelings. Face-to-face is when they soften emotionally. Meanwhile, they are socially ruthless on Gossip Girl and through text messages. Despite its presentation of a world in which ICTs are a way of life, Gossip Girl privileges face-to-face contact. One may glean this simply by paying close attention to the different forms Serena and Blair’s friendship takes face-to-face versus online or via text.

Labor and Capital

Issues of labor have been of concern from the dawn of the digital age. The loss of human contact in customer service, the gathering and maintenance of skills, and the displacement of the worker are topics that have occupied the popular imagination. First, the automation of customer service lines has lead to complaints about the ability to quickly access a service agent. Some find websites as a helpful option. Second, many employees must expand their skill sets to adapt to a changing, increasingly technology-dependent work environment. The failure to adapt technologically means risking marginalization.

In this mythology of the new technological frontier, contemporary society is either equipped

for fast travel down the main arterial lanes of the information highway, or it simply ceases to

9 See the episodes “Poison Ivy” and, “New Haven Can Wait.” 22

exist as a functioning member of technotopia. As the CEOs and the specialist consultants of

the virtual class triumphantly proclaim: “Adapt or you’re toast.” (Kroker, 170)

In the digital age, employees must adapt by gaining new skills. This often means learning to work with new technologies that have been incorporated into the workplace such as e-mail,

PowerPoint or other presentation software, spreadsheets and databases. Many jobs, particularly those in customer service, are also being downsized or eliminated with new technological features that are embraced by corporations.

Job loss is a common worry. Author of Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and

Their War, Kirkpatrick Sale claims “technology and automation have eliminated vast numbers of jobs across all economic sectors, perhaps 35 million in the past decade” (qtd. in Katz). Scholars such as Stanley Aronowitz warn that associating technology only with progress is shortsighted.

He asserts it is naïve to believe that technology can solve all modern problems. On the contrary,

“it exacerbates longstanding inequalities and exploitative labor practices” (Trend 133).

Meanwhile, some scholars and business professionals like Shoshanna Zuboff believe concern over the displacement of workers with automated technology, boredom of workers who don’t use critical judgment, and the creation of an over-monitored work environment are exaggerated.

Zuboff offers alternative futures in which we can work with technology to continue job creation, build new skills, and have supportive working relationships to increase job satisfaction as well as company/product competitiveness. “Choices that appear to be merely technical will redefine our lives together at work. This means…that a powerful new technology, such as that represented by the computer, fundamentally reorganizes the infrastructure of our material world” (Zuboff 127).

Zuboff and critics working from the same position propose an alternative to the replacement of

workers—their critical judgment and skills—by machines. Instead, humans and machines can work in symbiosis.

Television, Technology, Labor, and Capital

Television fiction adopts issues related to technology’s business applications and loss of human contact. As to be expected, it does not delve as deeply into these concerns as the scholars

mentioned above. But this does not mean television representations of these issues do not have

value. Fictional programs can give us insight into popular opinion on how technology affects

business, workers, and clients.

Businesses, Mobile Technology, and the Internet

Cell phones are now ubiquitous in television. It is hard to turn on the television without

seeing a character toting one around. In terms of their effect on business, cell phones are

primarily seen as ways clients, businesses, and co-workers can stay in contact regardless of

location. Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) and Samantha Jones (Kim Catrall) of Sex and the

City; Ryan Howard (BJ Novak) from The Office; Wendy Healy (Brooke Shields), Nico Reilly

(Kim Raver), and Joe Bennett (Andrew McCarthy) of Lipstick Jungle; Phil Dunphy (Ty Burrell)

of Modern Family; Mindy Lahari (Mindy Kaling) of The Mindy Project; Sami Brady (Alison

Sweeney), EJ DiMera (James Scott), and Kate Roberts (Lauren Koslow) from Days of Our Lives

are several characters who are seen using their cell phones for business purposes. Samantha

Jones is able to use hers to conduct business meetings over lunch. Ryan Howard is seen texting

frequently on his BlackBerry—a smartphone which had a reputation as being the best for

business purposes—to keep in touch with Dunder Mifflin’s New York offices while working at

the Scranton Branch. Mindy Lahari carries her cell phone so that she may be contacted if her

patients go into labor while she is out of the office. Phil Dunphy, a real estate agent, uses his to

set up house showings with clients. The characters named from Lipstick Jungle and Days of Our

Lives use their cell phones to stay in touch with their assistants, set up meetings, and delegate

while on the go. While cell phones are shown as keeping employees and clients in closer contact,

the Internet is shown as creating space between companies and their customers.

Like the cell phone, the Internet is also considered an important innovation for the

business world. In addition to being presented as a boon to consumerism, which will be

discussed in a later section, websites are also shown as a key factor in the success of characters

that are building their businesses. This occurs across a wide range of genres. On the 46th season of Days of our Lives (1965), Chad DiMera (Casey Deidrick), Will Horton (Chandler Massey),

and Sonny Kiriakis (Freddie Smith) start a college sports website. Season three, episode six of

Brothers & Sisters (2006), titled “Bakersfield,” follows Sarah Walker (Rachel Griffiths) as she

joins a burgeoning Internet company. Part of the reason websites contribute to businesses’

success is because consumers can quickly access information and products online without going

to a store. This aspect is a plus for customers and corporations, but is sometimes regarded with

suspicion by customer service agents and salespeople. The following examples from The Office

and Modern Family demonstrate ways television is tapping into both the positive and negative

aspects of business websites.

Dunder-Mifflin, the fictional paper company from The Office upgrades its website by adding online ordering services in the fourth season episodes “Dunder Mifflin Infinity” and

“Launch Party.” In the latter episode, the introduction of the business’ website, “Dunder Mifflin

Infinity,” and its online ordering feature threatens the need for sales personnel. The Scranton branch manager, Michael Scott (Steve Carrell), announces that the corporate office predicts

“record high sales” and that by the end of the day, “the website will be the new best salesman in

the company” (“Launch Party”). One of the storylines of this episode involves Dwight Shrute’s

(Rainn Wilson) effort to beat the computer in sales over the course of the day. He boldly

announces, “I’m not going to be beaten by a website…I can make more sales than a computer; in

fact, I challenge that website to make more sales than me today” (“Launch Party”). Dwight

makes sales calls non-stop in an effort to prove that human contact in business is more valuable

than ordering online. At one point, he angrily questions a customer’s choice to order from the

website: “Why would you reorder from a computer when you can have the personal touch of a

salesman” (“Launch Party)? This comedic climax in Dwight’s battle with the website brings that

very question into focus: what are the reasons people may want to avoid a human or “the

personal touch” in business?

The episode “Unplugged” from the second season of Modern Family contains a scene that offers an answer to that question. One of the episode’s storylines follows the Dunphy family’s contest to see who in the family can go the longest without accessing digital devices or the Internet across a one-week period. At a certain point in the week, Claire (Julie Bowen) gives up after a frustrating “conversation” with an automated airline reservation system. The scene opens with a confessional moment in which Claire admits, “the contest was hard”

(“Unplugged”). A cut takes the audience to a medium shot of Claire as she clearly enunciates

“reservations” (“Unplugged”). Subsequent, increasingly faster cuts occur as she pronounces other commands, such as “Orlando,” “Domestic,” and “Representative” (“Unplugged”). The rate at which the cuts take place reflect Claire’s rapidly increasing frustration before she hangs up the phone and opens her computer in order to access the company’s website. The writers use a mimetic approach to this comedic moment; the audience can potentially identify with the frustration of trying to get an automated system to understand human speech. Claire tries to get

to a representative. This does not work out for her because she cannot get the automated system to understand that she would like to speak with an agent. Yet, some people, as depicted by the episode of The Office analyzed above, do not even want to speak to a representative, believing

their needs can be met faster by cutting out the middleman. Sometimes, speaking to a

representative is not an option and customers must choose between the automated self service

line and a company’s website. In both of the above examples, the Internet is shown as a way of

handling business without the assistance of a human employee. Interpersonal communication

among humans as well as the automated replication of human communication with voice

recognition software is presented as creating more difficulty for consumers. Thus, websites are

shown as the best option for customer satisfaction and business growth. Digital age television

presents us with a model of what to buy and consume, and how to buy those items more

effectively.

Consumerism

Television fiction actively encourages unbridled consumption in the digital age. But what

sets this promotion of consumerism apart from its pre-digital age counterparts? Prior to the

introduction of the Internet and the widespread use of mobile technology, television functioned

much like a product showroom. This basic function has not disappeared. Present in

contemporary television, though, is an underlying assumption that we are now living in “a new

economy,” one that is marked by the shift of production, distribution and production from the

physical realm to immaterial or virtual spaces (Castells 154). The digital economy thrives with

the promotion of a consumer capitalist utopia notes David Trend.

Pick up any newspaper, magazine, or turn on a television, and you will see endless

advertisements and new items suggesting that the latest digital phone, palm computer,

minidisk player, or chip-implanted credit card will increase productivity, enliven leisure

time, and enhance communication…With the purchase of the appropriate products and

services, a utopian existence will come from a multinational corporation. (Trend 123)

Of interest for this project is Trend’s observation that one will encounter advertisements and new

communications technologies upon turning on the television. It is worth discussing how these

items appear within various narratives.

Cell phones, computers, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant), and mp3 players appear

routinely across television genres, adding shades of meaning to the characters that use them

while simultaneously promoting them to the audience. For example, cell phones, computers, and

other items in Gossip Girl further drive home the idea that the characters and those who are also digital natives experience their world with “a thumb to the keypad” (Gay 43). Digital communication defines their generation. Modern Family’s Phil Dunphy serves as a vehicle for

showcasing products. His character loves the latest technological gear. His use of these products

enhances his self-description as a “cool dad” who is in touch with the zeitgeist of his kids’

generation. And the Walker family of Brothers & Sisters (2006) constantly stays in touch via cell

phone calls and text messages, solidifying their presentation as a close-knit clan. Scenes of the

family members calling and texting one another across multiple episodes contains a message

similar to those seen in long distance phone service commercials: “Stay close” (Bell Canada),

“Sharing” (AT&T), “Speak Freely” (Sprint). These are just a few of the many television shows

that incorporate ICTs into the larger definition of their characters.

Television fiction paints a picture of the ideal consumer of the Internet and

communications technologies. The digital divide—a term used to describe the gap in access to

digital services, such as Internet use—is ignored. The ability to access the Internet is not just due

28 to one’s income, but also has racial and geographical implications. When the World Wide Web launched publicly, the privileges and opportunities it offered to those who had access were regarded optimistically. But the digital divide soon became clear. “If you were white, middle- class and urban,” remarks Susan P. Crawford, “the Internet was opening untold doors of information and opportunity. If you were poor, rural or a member of a minority group, you were fast being left behind” (Crawford). Within the texts I viewed for this project, the primary consumer of technology is young (typically from teens to those in their mid to late 30s) white, and middle to upper class. Homes of television families are filled with computers, digital televisions, and other technological goodies. Characters stay connected with each other through texts, video and photo messages, social networks, and mobile phones. Yet, the expense of owning various technological items is not regularly discussed. Non-white users of technology are the exception in the majority of television narratives. Older consumers have a more visible presence, but tend to fulfill a comedic agenda. For television, it seems, the average consumer of technology is young, white, and middle to upper class. These are the citizens who form television’s technoculture.

Interactive Opportunities

Not only have digital age products and services been woven into the narratives of particular episodes. They also enhance the narrative as a whole as it “overflows” the bounds of the weekly episode. Overflow is indicative of the growing prevalence of “convergence culture”

(Jenkins). Henry Jenkins uses the term convergence to refer to the “flow of content across multiple media platforms” (2). Since Jenkins’ groundbreaking text was published a growing number of scholars have addressed the impact of media convergence on television consumption

and popular trends in convergence era television programs10. The overflow of television onto

multiple platforms, or transmedia storytelling, is a characteristic feature in convergence culture.

It is partly a product of what Jenkins calls extension: “efforts by the industry to expand potential

markets by moving content across different delivery systems” (19). The producers of many

programs—notably, LOST, Heroes, Gossip Girl, and Glee—have consciously extended their

story worlds beyond the television medium.

This extension assumes there has a change in the consumption of television—specifically

in the interaction with characters, settings, and costuming—in the Internet age. Jenkins describes

the contrast between passive and active consumption.

If old consumers were assumed to be passive, the new consumers are active. If old

consumers were predictable and stayed where you told them to stay, then new consumers

are migratory, showing a declining loyalty to networks or media. If old consumers were

isolated individuals, the new consumers are more socially connected. If the work of

media consumers was once silent and invisible, the new consumers are now noisy and

public. (Jenkins 18-19)

What Jenkins describes is a new, active “participatory culture” (3). In the realm of television,

viewers may go onto the networks’ websites to take “who are you?” quizzes or play Second Life

based on the programs themselves11. Fans may visit on-location highlights of their favorite

shows. Tours companies offering real life engagement with popular programs such as FRIENDS,

Sex and the City, and Gossip Girls have detailed websites promoting their tours. And now

instead of purchasing a poster or a tee shirt with the name or image of your favorite show, you

can go its website to download the music soundtrack or purchase exact replicas of the outfits and

10 See Amanda D. Lotz,, Sharon Marie Ross, and Jonathan Gray for other studies of convergence in television. 11 Gossip Girl introduced its own version of Second Life in 2007. 30

accessories worn by the characters12. Interactive opportunities of this nature present the audience

a chance to extend their experience and piece together identity through personality quizzes,

shopping, and other activities that are all completed by simultaneously occupying the positions

of television viewer and digital technology consumer.

Conclusion

Television reflects and shapes how viewers think about the impact of digital technology

and the virtual on activities based in the physical realm. Outside television, conversation has

honed in on issues in education, communication, consumer capitalism, and labor. Like media and

scholarly considerations of how the Internet and communications technologies have affected

activities formally dependent on being physically present, television has approached these same

topics with ambivalence.

Television fiction contains both utopic and dystopic representations of digital technology.

Computers and the Internet are shown as a useful research tool, helping students to expand their

academic opportunities. Mobile technology and the Internet are presented as convenient ways to

stay in touch and increase interpersonal communication. Still, face-to-face contact is often

privileged across genres. The Internet and communications technologies are depicted as the

reason behind generational disconnect, breakdowns in familial communication, and as the cause

of social drama. Television’s view on how labor has been affected by technological

advancements is also divided. Digital technology helps businesses in the eyes of most television

narratives, but has a negative impact on workers themselves. The fear of displacement is a

recurrent theme. Finally, consumer capitalism in the digital age is television’s strongest utopic

fiction. Products and services are woven into the text and overflow its bounds. Viewers are

12 CW’s online store for Gossip Girl resembles any major clothing store’s websites, but what sets it apart are descriptions of the items that encourage viewer-character identifications. 31

encouraged to fully identify themselves with the characters in these techno-consumer capitalist

utopias.

Television is equally concerned with the idea of the virtual as those in the media and

academia. It reflects considerations of how our world is changing in the wake of digital technology and informing how we conceptualize, in particular, the real/virtual divide. Emerging

generational concerns and values are becoming more visible on television. Issues of

communication in an age dominated by communications technology are of growing importance.

Looking to television, to investigate how that popular cultural medium interprets those issues, is

a way of clarifying the values and questions of the digital age. In the following chapters, I

examine the conceptions of gender, generation, identity, and privacy that affect ideas of

communication, consumerism, education and labor that were discussed in this chapter.

CHAPTER TWO

GENDER AND TECHNOLOGY: TV’S TECHNOLOGICAL BATTLE OF THE SEXES

Feminist authors focusing on gender, science and technology have argued that essentialist thinking has led to the exclusion of women from the production of technology and to their oppression as consumers of it13. A related consequence has been the connection between masculinity and technology. This is problematic as Sandra Harding points out in the opening chapter to her book, The Science Question in Feminism, since, “in virtually all cultures, whatever is thought of as manly is more highly valued than what is thought of as womanly” (18).

According to Margaret Brenston, author of “Worlds Apart: Women, Men and Technology,” men have absorbed a technological worldview that stresses the importance of “objectivity, rationality, control over nature and distance from human emotions” (Brenston, “Worlds”). Feminist critics also assert that what has resulted from the essentialist association of masculinity with technology is a normalization of the idea that women are technologically inept. While women are kept outside technology “because they are too weak or likely to be too emotionally involved,” men are encouraged to associate technology with “manliness” (Kember 230, 234). Cynthia Cockburn argues, “The relationship between gender and technology is part of the process of maintaining the dichotomy between feminine and masculine in the sense that femininity is incompatible with technological competence” (Cockburn 1985 p. 12 qtd in Farrugia 5).

The gendering of technology to sustain an essentialist divide between men and women has also been used in the division of labor and the creation of separate technologized spaces14.

Two particular arguments are especially helpful in probing this notion further. Doreen Massey’s

13 See Cynthia Cockburn, Rebekah Farrugia, Sandra Harding, and Sarah Kember 14 See Doreen Massey, William Boddy, and Cynthia Cockburn for more on the division of labor in relation to technology. 33

“Masculinity, Dualisms and High Technology” explores two primary dualisms of western

thought, reason/non-reason and transcendence/immanence, both of which structure social

relations in the high technology sector of Cambridge, England. Massey raises an important point

early in the article, that dualisms are lived, and are part of daily practice. She states,

“philosophical frameworks do not exist ‘only’ as theoretical propositions or in the form of the written word. They are both reproduced and, at least potentially, struggled with and rebelled against in the practice of everyday living” (Massey 484). The men she interviewed viewed their workspace as a place of isolation and complete absorption. Late nights were described as a consequence of their dedication and the pleasure they found in working with “high technology.”

Partners waited at home and took care of domestic labor. When the men were asked about domestic labor, they responded with “dismissive” answers that lacked the elaboration and enthusiasm when responding to questions about their work. Excitement over technology and dedication to work in that arena was attached to progress, while the home and household tasks were associated with immanence. The transcendence/immanence dichotomy in relation to men, women, and technology remains strong and will be explored further in the case studies of this project.

The second argument useful as a jumping off point for discussion of spatial issues associated with the gendering of technology is “Archaeologies of Electronic Vision and the

Gendered Spectator” by William Boddy, in which the author looks at the discursive construction of radio in the twentieth century. Radio started as a hobby for men and boys that isolated them from women and bolstered their sense of masculinity. Later, the radio became commercialized and “marketed as a piece of furniture” so that it would be more attractive for women (Lister 72).

As the radio was incorporated into domestic space, men had an adverse reaction: “After its

34 heroic ‘attic days’ radio was judged to have become a pacifying, emasculating and feminizing activity” (Lister 72). The same dichotomous relationships produced by essentialist construction of gender and technology—resulting in an association of technology use with masculinity, the division of labor, and other consequences—have also found their way onto the small screen.

Gender and Technology As Seen on TV

Entertainment television similarly engages an essentialist construction of gender in relation to technology, continuing to stereotype men as technologically competent and women as incompetent, as well as perpetuate ideas about gender appropriate technology engagement. Four key representations of men, women, and technology warrant attention. This chapter will address how television programs from the past ten years associate men and masculinity with technology.

Men are expected to be interested in and adept at using technology, which becomes a means for asserting their manhood. Meanwhile, female television characters who show technological fluency are repeatedly branded as unfeminine. Frequently they are also labeled as homosexuals.

As society values femininity and heterosexuality for women, this becomes a negative identification and often a stigma for the characters (they frequently undergo narrative punishment as the butt of the joke or the character who cannot find love). It is important to note that because many corporations producing communications technologies pay large sums for advertising spots, television programs must support consumerism, and women are not to be left out of the consumption of technology. However, television creates limited roles for the woman tech consumer. When (feminine and/or desirable) women use technology in television programs it is in specific ways that limit their power and mobility, confining them to domestic spaces that are not much different from advertisements for the vacuum or washing machine in the mid- twentieth century. Examples show that women are depicted as incompetent tech users, and when

35 they do use communication technology with ease it is mostly for activities traditionally associated with women, such as gossip or family planning.

Traditional divisions of labor and gender roles are promoted under the guise of a modern technoculture, which results in the validation of perceived gender differences, especially when technology is involved. This is a far cry from Donna Haraway’s theory of the elimination of the gender construct through the acceptance of our intimate connection with technology, which allows for the reclassification of humans as cyborgs. Some even argue that people may be considered cyborgs simply from the use of communications technology. But unlike Haraway’s idea that the acceptance of the cyborg model means accepting the dissolution of the man and woman categories, gender constructs and roles appear emboldened by the application of traditional attitudes about gender to technology use in society. Television programs help shape viewers’ understanding of technology use as a gendered activity and make claims about which gender dominates technology. This is accomplished by fusing ideological aspects of gender with ideas about technology.

Below I explore how narrative situations involving technology are used to negotiate the meaning of gender. Because specific characters use technology to serve a larger purpose in the text, it is worth addressing the significance of characters to a text. Hamon (1977) defines character as, “a bundle of relations of similarity, oppositions, hierarchy, and disposition (its distribution) which it enters into…with other characters or elements of the work” (qtd in Fiske

158). The signified of a character results from his or her sustained presence on a program, his or her accumulation of character traits and gradual personal transformation across the span of multiple episodes, as well as by the relationship to other characters in the text.

Fiske points out that a character “is used to make sense of the world by the relations of discourses and ideology that it embodies” (160). Viewers are invited to identify with characters, to acknowledge them as believable representations of real persons and values out in the world.

This reading strategy, encouraged by programs and their overflow, furthers false consciousness under the guise of realism. For this reason, Fiske acutely observes, televisual character identification is “an agent of the status quo” (169). For the purposes of this study, then, I suggest that viewers make sense of the discourses of gender, age, class and consumerism, and technology through characters’ personality traits, actions and costuming, and relations to one another.

The Association of Men and Masculinity with Technology

More frequently since the 1980s, programs present marriage and suburban life as threats to masculinity. For instance, a common trope of TV marriages is the husband’s inability to really fix anything. The wife first hires a professional; the husband protests, insisting he can fix it himself; the husband botches the job, proving that his wife was right in the first place; finally, the professional handyman comes in to do the job correctly15. One may conclude that the modern,

married, middle class man is disenfranchised from both manual labor and, thus, a facet of his

masculinity. In the course of events described above, the husband’s ability to fix things and his

masculinity are called into question by his wife. Valerie A. Reimers claims situations like this in

contemporary programs is due to a shift in power from the father/husband to the mother/wife

characters. She says there is a “tendency for the father of the sitcoms...to be somewhat fearfully

respectful of the wife” (Reimers 117). Sitcom wives have become more dominant and husbands

show concern over potentially disrespecting their will, deferring to them for important decisions

or acting in juvenile ways that require mothering.

15This occurs in several sitcoms such as The Cosby Show, Home Improvement, and Modern Family.

Popular representations imply men have lost the dominant power in relationships to

wives with a penchant for henpecking, or in some cases, emasculating them. Therefore, it is not

uncommon to see the creation of a solitary space for themselves and/or obstacles for their wives

in order to assert their own manliness. Amy L. Klumas and Thomas Marchant observe Tim

Taylor’s (Tim Allen) segregation of his family’s home into male and female areas, most notably putting the garage off limits to his wife in the sitcom Home Improvement, which premiered in

1991 and ran for eight seasons (269). Another example comes from season five of Desperate

Housewives, in which Tom Scavo (Doug Savant), who has continually accused his wife, Lynette

(Felicity Huffman) of emasculating him, rents a rehearsal space for his neighborhood garage

band, playing video games, drinking beer and watching sports. Both use technology orientated

“boys toys,” whether cars or video games, to justify the formation of a segregated space for the

expression of masculinity.

The intentionally created man space is generally associated with technology, something

that goes back even to the days of radio, which started as a hobby for men and boys that isolated

them from women and bolstered their sense of masculinity. Later, the radio became

commercialized and promoted as a domestic technology so that it would be more attractive for

women. William Boddy states that as the radio was incorporated into domestic space, “radio was

judged to have become a pacifying, emasculating and feminizing activity” (Lister 72). In

television fiction, technology often becomes a space of contention for power and dominance. For

example, television is itself a piece of technology, one that was revolutionary. Yet, it is

frequently characterized as a feminine technology due to its location in the domestic sphere of

the home and association with the passive activity of watching a program. The struggle for

power over this piece of technology sometimes becomes a battle of the sexes. Below, I examine

the relationship between Phil and Claire Dunphy of Modern Family and the way their characters’ use of technology is gendered.

A reading of Modern Family’s Phil Dunphy (Ty Burrell) follows to create a clearer picture of men’s employment of technology obstacles for wives in order to bolster their manliness. Digital technology plays a large part in this 2009 breakout comedy. The viewer is exposed to a number of technologies and social media including the iPad, video games, iPod, text messaging, video chatting and home theater systems. The first time the audience meets

Claire (Julie Bowen) and Phil Dunphy, she is making breakfast and shouting upstairs for the kids to come to the table and he is intensely focused on a video game. From this point on in the popular ABC comedy series, Phil is presented as tech-obsessed, dorky guy trying to prove to his kids he is cool by utilizing all the latest gadgets who also is not a supportive partner to Claire in their parenting efforts. His use of technology and attempts to be well liked by the children makes him a pushover with them and simply gives Claire one more child to reprimand16. He is reluctant to oblige her when she requests that he do things like to help discipline the kids, set boundaries for them, and fix items around the house. Phil is not a traditionally masculine man, and he has his fun asserting his manliness by installing items that are difficult for Claire to use, so that she needs him.

An ABC interview with Burrell in the website feature “Dunphypedia: Man vs. Machine” reveals the actor’s thoughts on how his character relates to Claire: “He thinks of her as just, like, the most awesome woman ever...and she can do anything in the world--other than work the

16 Phil does not recognize that he has no authority over the children. The humor of the situation is dependent upon the viewer being placed in a position of superiority when recognizing that Phil’s attempts to be “a cool dad” do nothing to secure the result he wants: his children’s obedience without having to be an assertive parent. Phil is clearly uncomfortable with giving direction, negative reinforcement, or following through on warnings that there will be consequences for misbehaving. He leaves Claire to be the “bad cop,” something she clearly resents.

television.” Burrell refers to a particular episode, “Fifteen Percent” from season one, in which

Claire cannot understand how to work the TV. In a close-up during his confessional moment to

the camera, he says with a smirk that she “struggles with technology of any kind” (“Fifteen

Percent”). The episode follows Claire as she attempts to learn how to even change the channel,

something she must eventually learn from her daughter, Haley, instead of her husband.17 Phil takes on a patronizing demeanor when explaining technology to his wife, using foolish metaphors or ridiculous rhyming songs. This is completely different from how he acts with his children when using technology, which he sees as a way of connecting with them. Technology, then, serves as a method of establishing a hierarchical dynamic between Phil and Claire, whereas it has a leveling effect on his relationship with the children.

Containing a Threat

It has been noted in feminist literary, film, and television studies that progressive female characters often undergo textual punishment for posing a threat to men and masculinity and/or by trespassing the bounds created for women in a patriarchal society18. The connection of technological competence with masculinity has simultaneously created its negative counterpart in women. What is masculine is not feminine. Men are tech savvy while women are technologically inept. Margaret Brenston points out that, “girls and women are not expected to know much about technical matters. Instead, they are to be good at interpersonal relationships and to focus on people and emotions” (Brenston, “Worlds”). One may argue that there are women television characters who are shown to be quite comfortable with technology and social

17Haley is portrayed as pretty and popular, but not so bright. Her personal actions and statements, the contrast with her younger, smarter sister, and her parents’ side comments questioning her intelligence relegate Haley to a common stereotype; that is, women can be beautiful or smart, but not both. The fact that she is the one to instruct Claire on how to use the television demonstrates the technological hierarchy in the household: Husband, children, wife.

18 For more on this topic see Laura Mulvey, 1975; Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, 1979; John Belton. 40

media. Analysis shows, though, that while on the surface these characters are knowledgeable and

adept at technology use, they are marginalized and punished within the narrative.

Technologically proficient women are often given a non-feminine gender display,

experience (heterosexual) relationship problems, and are even labeled as non-heterosexual.

Below, I present characters from Sex and the City, Modern Family, Veronica Mars, and Criminal

Minds to support the claim that notions of gender are incorporated into the current discourse on

technology.

Sex and the City’s Miranda Hobbes

Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) is one of the four main characters of HBO’s Sex and

the City. She has appeared on the program since its debut in 1996. This sustained presence across the life of the successful drama has allowed the character of Miranda to accumulate the traits for which viewers best know her. She is represented as the least feminine in her group of friends.

Since the premiere, Miranda has been defined as cynical, outspoken, confident, accomplished, ambitious and career-focused; but, it is Miranda’ appearance and gender display that work to cement the viewer perception of her as unfeminine, or even masculine. Katarina Kuruc writes in her article, “Fashion as Communication: A Semiotic Analysis of Fashion on Sex and the City,” that the each of the characters’ personalities were first introduced to audience through fashion

(204). Their fashion choices function as a reflection of “various superficial characterizations of females and categorizes women based on outward appearances,” claims Kuruc (194). Miranda’s type-A personality is coupled with a short hairstyle and what one may consider a masculine style of dress; in many episodes, she is seen wearing suits, ties, baseball caps, and baggy clothes. The program’s costume designer, Patricia Field, comments, ‘clothes commonly intervene with

[Miranda] and come in the way of her eroticization’ (qtd in Bruzzi and Gibson, 122).

Miranda’s personality and gender display are placed in relation to the more overtly

feminine Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), Charlotte York (Kristin Davis), and Samantha

Jones (Kim Cattrall). As previously noted, characters “oppositional relation” to one another contributes to how they are read (Fiske 158). The grouping of Miranda, Charlotte, and

Samantha, in particular, presents the most apparent and simplified notions of what is and is not

feminine. Charlotte and Samantha are both explicitly feminine in opposing ways, forming the

virgin-whore dichotomy. The former’s conservative fashion sense helps define her as a good girl

while the latter uses clothing to flaunt her body and her sex drive. Kuruc states, “Charlotte…is

the antithesis of Miranda’s masculinized character and Samantha’s ultra-sexualized persona”

(209). Despite opposing each other in how they express their womanhood, Charlotte and

Samantha’s femininity help define Miranda as unfeminine.

Out of the four friends, Miranda struggles the most with finding and keeping a

relationship. Unlike Carrie the serial monogamist, Charlotte the romantic who desperately seeks

her prince charming, or promiscuous Samantha who has the ability to find a new sexual partner

almost daily, Miranda continually dates the wrong kind of guy or has difficulty sustaining a

relationship with the men in whom she is most interested.

Over the course of its six seasons, Sex and the City dealt with the issues faced by single

women in their 30s and 40s in Manhattan as they search for satisfaction in their love and/or sex

lives, focusing specifically on Carrie Bradshaw and her three closest friends. As noted above,

Miranda appears to incur the most problems out of the group in this aspect of her life, and this is

most often attributed to her traits that are deemed unfeminine. In the pilot episode, interviews

with her and Charlotte offer insight. The women’s gender display places them on opposite ends

of a spectrum of femininity, as does the camera work. The viewer first meets “Miranda Hobbes,

Esq.” in a close-up shot. She sports cropped hair and a blue striped button down shirt with a navy

blue suit jacket. The camera distance frames Miranda as a powerful individual. The viewer sees her from the chest up; only her words, facial expression, and hand gestures are visible.

Noticeably irritated, she recounts the story of a former friend who ended up alone and living with her mother in Wisconsin at the age of 41 when she could no longer get a date in New York City.

The camera then cuts to Charlotte York. Her interview segment begins with a long shot of her sitting with her legs crossed in a mid-length skirt, a cardigan, pearls, and shoulder length hair. In contrast, the long shot of Charlotte emphasizes her feminine appeal; the viewer is able to see her entire body and her bare legs are crossed toward the camera. Her final statement, “If you want to get these guys, you have to shut your mouth and play by the rules,” is made with a knowing smile on her face within the space of a close-up shot (“Pilot”). Miranda and the men being interviewed in this sequence are shot in mid- to close-up range. Charlotte, the most feminine of her friends, is the only one who appears in a long shot in this segment of the pilot.

Charlotte calmly sums up the main problem faced by Miranda and women like her:

“Most men are threatened by successful women” (“Pilot”). Episodes throughout the series suggest Miranda is an emasculating woman, too aggressive, too successful. One in particular, the season three episode “All or Nothing,” focuses on Miranda’s experience at speed dating. After many unsuccessful “dates” that were so only after she revealed her occupation, Miranda tries an experiment--she tells a man that she is a stewardess. According to her, he chose to see her again because a woman working as a flight attendant is not perceived as threatening to his masculinity.

Carrie: You said you were a Stewardess?

Miranda: I was testing a theory.

Carrie: A theory being?

Miranda: That men are threatened by powerful jobs. They don't want a lawyer, they

want...

Aiden: A liar! (“All or Nothing”)

Their short affair ends when she discovers he lied too, he is not a doctor as he pretended

to be. This twist is intended to be funny for the audience, who is supposed to recognize that men

are indeed threatened by the idea of a successful woman, one who might have more education, a

better job, and/or a higher salary than them.

The essentialist line of thought that treats men’s interest in and adeptness when using

technology as a biological given also underlines the role of technology in Sex and the City.

Issues of gender are interwoven with the characters’ relationships with technology. For Miranda,

as with her fashion choices, her comfort with cell phones, Palm Pilot, e-mail, and instant messaging places her in opposition to the other characters, especially Carrie, whose resistance to technology will be discussed at a later point. This results in Miranda again being framed as less feminine than her friends.

She shows excitement over the latest gadgets and pushes the others to share her interest.

In “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” the premiere episode of season two, the then single Miranda grows impatient with her friends after she attempts to divert their attention on to her new palm pilot and away from talking about men. She reprimands the group for the monotony of their conversation and for not being focused enough on their selves: “All we talk about anymore is big balls or small dicks. How does it happen that four such smart women have nothing to talk about except boyfriends? Does it always have to be about them (“Take Me Out to the Ballgame”)?” In their article, “Blurred Sex and the City--An Analysis of Language and Gender in Sex and the

City,” Slov Andersen et al highlight Miranda’s frequent employment of male speech strategies,

such as the use of direct commands, which demonstrate she wants to have authority within her

social circle and does exercise an amount of control over her friends (41). Her outburst shows

her unsuccessful attempts to bring the other women’s attention away from discussing men

toward her new Palm Pilot. It is driven by her inability to control the situation, cynicism about

relationships, and frustration with the monotonous nature of their conversations, which

repeatedly center on men. Miranda poignantly observes that their view of themselves as

independent, single women still largely depends on their interactions with men. Part of

Miranda’s self-image as a successful, single, female lawyer includes her incorporation of technology into her life. As the other women ignore her tries to show off her new toy, it appears to be taken by Miranda as a rejection of her identity. She fails to be authoritative and commanding in this situation. Moreover, the scene makes it clear what the writers consider of interest to women in addition to demonstrating what conversation topics between heterosexual women have been normalized.

Despite her reliance on and excitement about her palm pilot, this is what Miranda leaves behind for a night out. The opening scene of season four, episode one, entitled, “The Agony and the ‘Ex’-tacy,” follows the women as they prepare for a night out on the town. Close-up shots by the camera focus on what they bring or leave behind when going out. For Carrie it is money, cigarettes and lighter, and a clutch; Charlotte quickly puts lipstick into her purse; Samantha grabs condoms; Miranda takes her keys and leaves behind her Palm Pilot. The first three women take items considered crucial to their femininity or sexuality, while Miranda takes something practical and leaves behind an item used mainly for work. Like her briefcase, her favorite Personal Digital

Asssistant, more commonly referred to as a PDA, is an accessory for her professional persona. It completes a wardrobe that “perpetuates female stereotypes that perpetuate the myth that women

have to be masculinized in order to be successful” in a traditionally male-dominated workplace

like a law firm (Kuruc 208). Miranda makes a conscious choice to leave behind the accessory

that associates her with masculine workplace success.

By the end of the series, Miranda undergoes a personal transformation. She exhibits a

softer side in her emotional life, her wardrobe, and her technology use. In later seasons,

following her onscreen pregnancy and the resumption of her relationship with Steve Brady

(David Eigenberg), Miranda’s outward appearance begins to include noticeable makeup, more

skirts, brighter colors and softer patterns (Bruzzi and Gibson, Kuruc). Part of Miranda’s

transformation to a more feminine persona includes her use of a domestic technology, the TiVo.

According to Lister et al, feminist critics have argued that “domestic consumption generally and

communications media like television in particular have been commonly ascribed to the

feminine” (250).

Alex Dunphy and Veronica Mars

Similar examples can be found in Modern Family’s Alex Dunphy (Ariel Winter) and the

title character of Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell). The former is contrasted with her popular older

sister, Haley (Sarah Hyland). Their contrasting identities support the stereotypical notion that

women can be beautiful or intelligent. Alex does not think of herself as attractive like Haley, but

finds solace in being “the smart one” (“Come Fly with Me”)19. She is less focused on being

pretty and popular, instead she is more concerned about getting into a good college. Her smart

girl persona causes her to be mocked by her sister in many episodes. In a short scene from season

one episode five, titled “Coal Digger,” Alex enters the kitchen carrying a cello, a lacrosse stick,

and a heavy backpack and her parents remark she should have chosen a lighter instrument.

19 Even her mother pushes her to wear more feminine attire. The episode “Come Fly with Me” follows Claire’s struggle to force Alex to borrow a dress from Haley in order “to look like a girl for one afternoon.”

Alex: “The cello is more in demand in university orchestras.”

Haley: “You know what’s not in demand?”

Alex: “What?”

Haley: “Girls who play in university orchestras.” (“Coal Digger”)

Although their exchanges are presented as sisterly banter, Haley’s comments reveal what makes a girl attractive to the opposite sex, by pointing out how her sister embodies what is not, such as playing in the band, being smart, or being serious about technology: as Alex pokes fun at

Haley’s need to be with her boyfriend all the time, Haley returns the jab: “Don’t be jealous. I’m

sure you’ll meet someone super hot at computer camp” (“Fizbo”). Haley and Alex’s opposition

is further highlighted by their varying use of technology and media platforms. Alex mainly uses

a laptop for research, while Haley uses her computer to watch movies and access social

networking site. She is rarely separated from her cell phone on which she laughs, chats, and

makes plans with friends or uses to text her boyfriend. The jokes at Alex’s expense often point to

her un-girly use of technology, while Haley is meant to represent the “typical teenager” (ABC).

Veronica Mars, the leading character from the CW teen drama of the same name, does not face as much opposition from other female characters as from her former self. Flashbacks to scenes predating the start of the program show a much different Veronica. The viewer learns from the pilot episode that she was once a popular girl. She sported long hair, dresses, and sheepishly followed the lead of her group of “09er” friends.

Following an overwhelmingly bad year that included the murder of her best friend, being raped by a classmate, a devastating breakup, her mother’s abandonment of their family, and being ostracized by people she used to call her friends, “the formerly shy goody-two-shoes

Veronica became bitter and jaded” (Mars). Her transformation from naive and eager-to-be-

47 popular to perceptive and assertive is visually signified in Veronica’s look, which includes shorter hair, jeans and tees shirts, with a black choker. In addition to her new style, Veronica is extremely adept at using technology. Every episode features her working with some form of technology—from digital cameras and Photoshop to Bluetooth and GPS. Her use of these and other items to solve crimes and mysteries make her a powerful threat to those who are less tech- savvy and/or have something to hide. The new Veronica is less concerned with fitting into the image of a cute, well-liked teenage girl; she is more aggressive and assertive; and, she uses technology to her advantage. For all these “transgressions” she is accused (mainly by male characters) of being “butch” and controlling.

Miranda, Alex, and Veronica all prove themselves to be proficient with technology. Each represented as being less feminine than other female characters in their respective programs, experience relationship issues (or are told they will, as is the case with Alex due to her age).

Finally, each has been mistaken for or accused of being a lesbian at some point. There is an interesting correlation between the common marginalization they incur and their transgression into the male arena of technology with ease.

Criminal Minds’ Penelope Garcia

In crime drama, women are more frequently active participants in technology use, equal with their male counterparts in the production of knowledge that comes from engagement with science and technology. The CSI franchise, Criminal Minds, and other crime dramas feature women analyzing evidence, using the Internet, GPS technology, etc. with impressive competence. This quickly becomes problematic when recognizing how women of crime drama who engage in technology are often seen as having relationship problems or in some cases stripped of their sexuality.

The popular CBS crime drama program Criminal Minds follows the FBI’s Behavioral

Analysis Unit as they help track down serial killers. The BAU team consists of five agents, a media liaison, and a technical analyst. Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness), the team’s technical analyst, can be read superficially as a woman who is both technologically adept and feminine; yet, a closer reading shows she is more girly than feminine and is treated like a little sister by the rest of the BAU team, whose dynamic reflects that of a family. Moreover, Penelope is immobilized by and contained within her workspace. The following is an exploration of these two points.

In episode nine, season three, “Penelope,” the viewer learns that the FBI recruited her in order to co-opt her hacking skills. The tragic death of her parents prompted Penelope to drop out of college (the final phase of the “educational ISA”) and instead embark on a path of self- education in the underground community of computer hacking (Althusser). She leaves one

Ideological State Apparatus of her own volition only to be brought under the control of the

Repressive State Apparatus. Penelope represented a threat—a woman with power through her knowledge and skills. The State contained and appropriated that power through coercion. In his exploration of the overrepresentation of black male computer experts in media, titled Color

Monitors: The Black Face of Technology in America, Martin Kevorkian refers to the work of the computer expert as containing and immobilizing. Scenes with Penelope often include shot- reverse-shots of her looking at her monitor and then full screen shots of the data she is reviewing.

Mid-range shots and extreme high angles show her in a small, dimly lit room surrounded by multiple computer monitors. The small space and the many computers contain Penelope and her hacking skills. She is also frequently seated, contrasting the mobility and activity by the rest of the BAU team.

Similar to Miranda Hobbes, Penelope’s desirability is downplayed through fashion and

her body type. Though her femininity is not denied, her fashion choices are inappropriate for her

age and more like those worn by a preteen. Throughout the series, Penelope is seen wearing

whimsical accessories such as cat-eye glasses, bright-colored tights, colorful bows and flowers in

her hair, which frequently changes color or contains highlights in non-natural tones like hot pink.

Her overweight body type differs from the rest of the women on the team. Their bodies are fit

and active; hers remains unfit and static. Kevorkian acutely notes how “the computer-tainted identity interrupts enjoyment of the idealized...form. To serve in the role of cybernerd is for all intents and purposes to be denied a body” (5). Penelope’s body already does not conform to the ideal promoted by the media, and she continues to be overlooked by Derek Morgan (Shemar

Moore) as a potential romantic partner despite their ongoing flirtation. Criminal Minds fan sites devote entire discussions to their possible pairing. Many fans argue that they simply have a brother-sister type of relationship, flirtation is simply a game, behind which there is “not *that* kinda love or attraction” (“Morgan”). Others express a desire for them to start a relationship as well as frustration that Morgan seeks “pretty girls” and is a “womanizer” (“Morgan”).

For Penelope, romantic engagement occurs in social media platforms like role-playing games and/or in the underground world of hacking. The episode “The Fisher King (Part 1 of 2)” from the first season shows Penelope’s adventures in a Massively Multiplayer Online Role

Playing Game (more commonly known as an MMORPG). Her computer screen fills the entire frame. The viewer is placed in her vantage point and watches as another player, who assumes the role of a knight, approaches her character: “My lady Penelope--wouldst thou allow your humblest servant to adventure with thee again (“The Fisher King”)?” She wonders aloud why the

“real world” is not more like the virtual.

In season three, episode nine, Penelope is sent home for insubordination after

compressing a file intended to remain open for the FBI to monitor. From the comfort of her own home she engages the system while another analyst--a stereotypical white, hipster computer geek--does the same at FBI headquarters. Their hacking and back-hacking evolves into a kind of foreplay. When they meet in person, the camera lingers on them as they gaze at each other, implying that they will soon begin in a romantic relationship. Penelope’s ability to be seen as something more than the child of the BAU family, as a grown woman, is dependent upon her being removed from the office and not having full, authorized access to her files.

Women as Consumers of Technology

Technology is highly important to the capitalist consumer economy. Television supports that capitalist base by presenting us with, to use Mark Crispin Miller’s words, “showcases for various consumer items” (qtd in Gray 138). As characters utilize or refer to their computers, phones, video games, GPS, and other devices, the lines become blurred between the fictional programs and the advertisements that support their consumption. Technology devices are displayed as various items to be bought to maintain one’s status as cool, hip, and/or up-to-date.

According to Jonathan Gray, author of Television Entertainment, television functions in such a way that it can, “normalize” ideas and ways of being, shaping the way we think about ourselves, our immediate environment and our place in that environment” (108). Television programs have often used characters to reaffirm the connection of masculinity with technology use and treated technological competence by women with skepticism. These two depictions help capitulate male dominance over technology and social media and the women should not challenge that control by showing comparable interest and skill levels. However, it is necessary to incorporate women into the technological consumer experience.

Images of women tech users serve a didactic function, teaching them acceptable ways of

consuming technology that do not challenge existing gender norms. Running counter to the

textual punishment of transgressive women who challenge men’s supposed monopoly on the

production and skilled consumption of technology are characters and situations that suggest 1)

women are technologically incompetent, or at least less technologically inclined than men, and

2) women adapt technology and social media for activities traditionally associated with women

and deemed feminine.

Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City is a prime example of a woman character shown to be uninterested in new communications technologies; whose attempts to use them are nothing more than comical; and only uses new media to modify her dating strategies.

Since its debut in 1998, the program presented New York City as a progressive place where dating and gender rules are challenged, even distinguishing itself from the past through

allusions to classic novels set in New York; the opening scene of the pilot began with a voice-

over that declared, “Welcome to the Age of Un-innocence. No one has affairs to remember and

no one has breakfast at Tiffany’s. Instead we have breakfast at 6 a.m. and affairs that we try to

forget as quickly as possible (“Sex and the City”).” Later in the series, Sex and the City made

marked efforts to focus on Old New York, or Classic New York, especially in the season four

finale, “I Heart New York.” Mr. Big, Carrie’s love interest since season one, is leaving New

York to move to Napa Valley. Carrie arranges one last date for them, a night of dinner, dancing,

and a carriage ride around Central Park—all things she considers to be “classic” New York

activities, while Big classifies them as “corny” (“I Heart New York”). The episode was written

before, but aired after, September 11, 2001 and Michael Patrick King notes in his commentary

how well it fit in with that time, due to its focus on significant changes that occur in cities and

52 people. Throughout the series, Carrie is portrayed as having a special relationship with New

York, even going so far as to claim she is “dating the city” in the season five premiere “Anchors

Away.” She is always trying to sustain her relationship with New York, nostalgically presented as an iconic place, and the people in it who constitute her inner circle, even as they change around her. But 9/11 was not the only reason for a renewed focus on the importance of appreciating what is around us, such as the uniqueness of home and friends.

In the late nineties and early twenty-first century, communications technologies took the spotlight. Advancement in such things, such as the cell phone and e-mail, is one source of change in Carrie’s life. She maintains a skeptical attitude when it comes to communications technology; this ambivalence conveys the sense that technology erodes the ‘real’ experience of place and interrupts our relationships with people and places. “Baby, Talk is Cheap,” in particular, highlights Carrie’s issues with technology. The central problem of this episode is

Carrie’s interest in getting back together with an old boyfriend, Aidan, yet not knowing the best way to make contact. When Miranda encourages her to use e-mail because it seems less committal than calling, Carrie responds, “I don’t believe in e-mail; I’m an old-fashioned gal”

(“Baby, Talk is Cheap”). With this declaration, Carrie aligns herself with a generation facing new changes and challenges to how interpersonal communication is carried out. Her resistance further highlights the extent to which she is bothered by what she views as a lack of immediacy and personal contact that comes with e-mail. Finally, she breaks down and gets on AOL; but after sending her first e-mail to Aidan and waiting over 36 hours for a response, she wonders,

“Are all these improvements in communication really helping us communicate?” (“Baby, Talk is

Cheap”).

Despite Carrie’s resistance, her friends, especially Miranda, still encourage her to get a

cell phone and to send e-mails. The climax of the season four premiere episode, titled “The

Agony and the ‘Ex’-tasy,” involves no one being able to make it to Carrie’s 35th birthday for various reasons and also not being able to let her know since she does not own a cell phone. She arrives home, disappointed and feeling alone. The camera centers on her with a long shot while she slips off her shoes and looks defeated. It then focuses in on the answering machine with a close-up—the number 14 blinks in red. Carrie presses the button, but barely listens to her 14 new messages, which mostly consist of desperate apologies and attempts to make alternative plans.

But one message is hostile instead.

Miranda: “I’m stuck in fucking traffic! I don’t know how to spell Il Cantinori for the idiot

at 411! Get a cell phone!” (“The Agony and the ‘Ex’-tasy”)

The contrast between Carrie and Miranda’s use of technology and their outward femininity suggests that feminine women may be tech users, but never tech savvy. Carrie’s behavior betrays her skepticism towards technology, behavior that borders on technophobia.

When she does finally engage with technology, it is due to her quest for love. However, her lack of technical skill and unfamiliarity with the Internet becomes a comic moment. While on the phone with Miranda in the episode “Baby, Talk is Cheap,” Carrie’s computer chimes to notify her that Aidan has signed in to AOL. She ducks under the desk exclaiming, “Oh my God! He’s online! Can he see me?” (“Baby, Talk is Cheap”). Her lack of technical skill and her general resistance towards technology are facets of her femininity in this and other episodes. It is part of the way in which she “does” her gender (West et al). Like the stereotypical image of “"helpless" women next to heavy objects or flat tires,” Carrie’s interactions with technology create a new

54 stereotype for the digital age, one that defines feminine women as not technologically inclined

(West et al 15).

Technically Funny

Scenes of women engaging with technology are often used as a device to draw laughter from viewers. It is therefore necessary to discuss the role of comedy and its function to work towards an understanding of why women using technology is framed as something to be laughed at.

Comedy is part of a social process, writes John Corner, author of Critical Ideas in

Television Studies:

The circulation of humour in a society through the popular forms and themes of the

comic is an important part of the cultural pattern, particularly of public values...Factors of

social division and social change across class, gender, race, age group, and region are

strongly present in comic expression. (97)

Comedy allows writers to engage viewers in a playful commentary on societal conventions. Gray notes that the situations one is presented with on-screen may be “illogical, nonsensical, and surreal, yet the message being conveyed is wholly logical, sensible, and intimately concerned with reality” (118). The use of technology as a narrative device to provoke laughter is connected with its affect on social relations, marriage and family, and gender. To summarize Corner, comedy taps into the common sentiments that underline cultural values and norms (97). In this respect, Carrie’s technophobia and ridiculous misunderstanding of how IM function, Miranda’s emotional attachment to TiVo, and Claire’s frustration with the TV her husband installs or his patronizing explanations of how to use various devices in their home work to reaffirm men’s

control over the technology arena, the notion that women are emotional or lack rational thought,

that women are unskilled and need men’s assistance with more challenging devices.

Limited Roles for Consuming Technology

As the example above demonstrates, women have been shown to use technology or social

media in an attempt to modify their dating strategies. Miranda Hobbes was also featured using e-

mail and the phone for this same purpose. Younger female characters from other programs in the

past decade have been shown using role playing games, text messaging, and Facebook as a

dating mechanism. Texting has been shown as a way to make plans, flirt with, even break up

with someone. Social media sites are featured as places to find information about a potential

partner, discover their indiscretions, to advertise your relationship status, etc. Technology, then,

has recently been presented as a tool for women to find, maintain, and end relationships. Other

activities prescribed for women tech consumers include gossip and family planning. Examples of

both can be seen in multiple programs including Gossip Girl, Sex and the City, Brothers &

Sisters, and Modern Family.

Television attempts to depict a “modern” world in which technology is ubiquitous. Yet,

presentations of women using technology have not created a picture of gender equality or a

society in which all utilize technology in equally valued ways. The examples given reproduce

traditional gender roles via the promotion of consumerism and the organization of the consumer.

Men and masculinity remain connected to the interest in and skillful use of technology, how and

why women ought to use technology is also promoted through the privileging of some characters

and the marginalization of others. Televisual representations, I argue, become vehicles for the institutionalization of technology consumption while reaffirming male privilege.

CHAPTER THREE

LOSS OF CONNECTION: GENERATION GAPS

A perception of a generation gap between young and old has been present in popular and

academic criticism since digital technologies started hitting the consumer market.20 Rapid changes to social interaction and business operations, how we listen to music, read, learn, and other areas of life immediately gave rise to either highly utopic or dystopic criticism of the digital age. Within the realm of dystopic arguments, one trend has been the identification and suspicion of a digital divide between those deemed “digital natives,” those born after approximately 1980, and those who learned—or are learning—to navigate the innovations of the

digital era at a later point in life (Palfrey et al). Digital natives are unified by a common culture

in which major aspects of life are mediated by digital technologies (Palfrey et al 2). Concerns

about “digital natives,” ranging from cyber-bullying to reading strategies, pervade the

technological imaginary. This chapter will address how television representations of generation

gaps, in both family and work settings, function to narrate the impact technology has made on

family relationships and the dynamic between digital natives and digital immigrants.

Television is especially significant as a cultural storyteller because its reflections of

everyday life manage to serve a didactic function. American television tells the story of the

nation’s values through its plots, characters, and settings. We learn how to be American by

absorbing what is and is not included, what is normalized and what is highlighted as marginal. In

order to maximize this social didactic effect, characters and situations must be easy to identify

with for the largest majority possible. As television texts aim to reflect the cultural shifts in the

digital age, they must incorporate common themes found in popular techno-discourse.

20 See Nicholas Negroponte, Don Tapscott, and Palfrey and Gasser for academic treatment of the topic. See Jan Hoffman and Alex M. Johnson for popular discourse on the subject. 57

Television texts capitalize on the common suspicion toward digital natives seen in the

larger technological imaginary. This is mainly done within the framework of the American

family and other group dynamics that are read as being family-like in structure. Scholars have

noted how the representation of television families is primarily done in a realistic fashion, “in

ways that reflect changes in the real American family” (Douglas 2).21 Four trends can be seen when assessing how the impact of communications technologies on the family and other generational concerns are represented by television programs. Many texts appear to challenge social hierarchies or social stereotypes when bringing technology into the mix. Yet, there is also a reinforcement of family role stereotypes that consistently occurs. Another theme that gets exploited, most often for the sake of a comedic moment, is the fear of obsolescence. Finally, television texts function like advertisements, conditioning audiences to accept technological innovations, and creating a techno-consumer.

Technology and Family Dynamics The introduction of television into the home meant family members “needed to come to terms with the presence of a communication medium that might transform older modes of family interaction” (Spigel 36). A similar assessment regarding the introduction of new media is represented in news, magazines, film and television. If, in the postwar era, television signified

“the ideal of family togetherness,” ipods, internet, cell phones and the like have come to signify a threat to that ideal (Spigel 45). Contemporary examples demonstrate the idea that adults and children have distinctive ways of approaching technology, which result in the creation of disparate social spaces. Traditional notions of family togetherness are portrayed as threatened by technology. There is at once a preoccupation with the diminution of physical boundaries and new limitations pertaining to communication. Products of the Internet age such as social networking

21 Also see Justin Lewis and David Marc. 58

and video conferencing have, indeed, been praised for their ability to allow people to stay in

touch and maintain relationships from a great distance. Still, devices for keeping connected and

in communication have also been criticized for making people more disconnected from one

another22. Popular television representations, especially those portraying family relationships, show digital age devices to be a challenge to family dynamics. This is most often presented in spatial terms. Communications technologies are shown as offering kids a greater reach outside the home away from parental authority. Devices and social media are used to create a sense of privacy. Even within shared spaces inside the home, kids’ focus on devices suggests the construction of boundaries. Since it first aired in 2009, ABC’s Modern Family has presented its audience with many examples of digital divisions between parents and children. Below I will specifically examine the pilot episode of this popular comedy.

Modern Family’s pilot demarcates adolescent space and draws attention to differences in communication styles by separating parents and children physically. The episode begins with an establishing shot of the Dunphy home, a two-story house with a white picket fence. Suddenly the audience hears Claire Dunphy (Julie Bowen) bellow, “Kids! Breakfast!” while looking frustrated and hurried (“Pilot”). The camera cuts to a medium shot of her and her husband, Phil Dunphy

(Ty Burrell), through the kitchen doorway. Claire leans out from behind the refrigerator door again, shouting “Kids!” a couple more times. Finally, Phil makes his own attempt: “Kids, get down here!” with a nervous look on his face (“Pilot”). A moment later, their oldest daughter,

Haley (Sarah Hyland) walks in the room. With her eyes glued to her phone as she sends out a text message, she asks, “Why are you guys yelling at us? We were way upstairs. Just text me.”

(“Pilot”).

22 See Stephen Marche. 59

When first introduced to audiences through trailers before its premiere on ABC, Modern

Family’s producers emphasized its multi-generational characters that comprised varying types of

family structures. Scholars such as Lynn Spigel and Cecilia Tichi have shown how television has

often regarded the modern nuclear family unit as its target audience and as a favored subject for

its narratives. The modern nuclear family unit consists of a gendered division of labor of a

working father, stay-at-home mother/wife, and children. Family historians and TV scholars like

Stephanie Coontz note that despite this model being upheld as the ideal family structure, it was

not the reality for most families in the 1950s—the decade that is highly romanticized in the

popular imagination as a golden age for American families. The later decades of the twentieth

century saw the emergence of the “postmodern family” and other family models (two working

parents, LGBT families, single parents, blended families, etc.). Modern Family at the outset

wanted to show its creators’ recognition of other family models. The comedy presents multiple

types of family models in one large family.

Given the title of the sitcom, the pilot must introduce the audience to the reasons why this

is a “Modern Family” and how they differ from families in the past. The home in the establishing

shot, especially with its white picket fence, is symbolic of the middle-class ideal of a suburban

life. Inside resides a two-parent family. The mother is cooking breakfast and calling her kids

down to the table. Claire is clearly the dominant parent, while Phil is juvenile and unsuccessful at

being an authority figure23. She implores him to help her bring the kids downstairs, yet he only

assists his wife in calling the kids in order to avoid getting in trouble with her after she runs into

the refrigerator door open that he carelessly left open. It is when he sees her become angry that

he diverts the attention away from himself by calling for their children to come downstairs. In

23 Multiple episodes focus on Phil’s inability to be consistent in his parenting and to provide support to Claire, who claims to always be “the bad guy” when it comes to the kids. 60

the scene that follows, an interview with Phil and Claire, she makes it clear that she is doing their

job as parents. Despite representing the modern nuclear family unit—him being the breadwinner and her being a homemaker—Claire and Phil manage to deviate slightly from shows like Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best, in which the mother/wife was mainly responsible only for cooking, cleaning, and gentle nurturing. It is difficult to imagine June Cleaver claiming she did her and Ward’s job as parents.

Still, the main departure point from the traditional television family seen in this episode involves the role of technology in the Dunphy’s life and that of the modern American family in a general sense. Haley’s request, that her parents “just text [her],” marks a difference in teen and adult conceptions about effective communication (“Pilot”). Haley’s annoyance with Phil and

Claire, which is evident in her request, informs them and the audience that texting is her (and her generation’s) preferred method of receiving messages24. The blocking, or arrangement of the actors, utilized in the scene also expresses this. When Haley enters the kitchen, she is clearly focused on her cell phone. In the 50-second long scene described above, Haley only looks at her parents for five seconds. The rest of the time she looks down while reading and composing text messages. Modern Family’s writers “embrace technology so it’s part of the story” (Qtd. in

Feiler). As is evident from this scene of the premiere, their aim to reflect technology’s growing importance in and impact on society often results in characters “glancing past one another rather than communicating directly” (Feiler).

Haley’s character is just one example of children and adolescents who are seen manipulating devices with surprising ease in ads, films, and television. Indeed, as Martin

Kevorkian astutely points out, “techno tots and techno teens abound on screen” (5). Television

24 The first episode of Gossip Girl’s second season features this same theme. In order to justify her actions, which involved spreading a rumor, Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester) makes an explicit argument to her father that (gossip via) texting and blogs is normal; “It’s how we communicate,” she pleas. 61

parents exhibit bewilderment and frustration with their children’s newfound freedom and a style

of communication that does not match their expectations. In both humorous and dramatic

situations, this parent-child digital divide is highlighted, helping to further define an adolescent

realm, of which adults are not meant to be full participants.

Challenges to Parental Authority

Television narratives show the world of virtual communication as creating barriers to

parent-child communication and as posing new hurdles for parents who want to be aware of what

is going on in their teenager’s life. Their narratives then become a space to work out potential

counteractive measures. Unfortunately, these stories often aim to resolve challenges to parental

authority in the digital age through a violation of privacy and attempts to reclaim control over

access. Concerned parents are shown engaging technology with the aim of protecting their

children, who are many times presented as being out-of-control. Other times it is to discover

what has not been communicated to them by their children. This desire to be in the know should

be interrogated for what may very well be a desire to maintain traditional family dynamics and,

subsequently, stay in control. The examples given by television do not challenge viewers to

embrace the changes that have come about and to learn from their digital native children. The

overreactions or inappropriate violations of digital privacy by television parents ultimately

reinforce a traditional family hierarchy, support dominant parental authority, and does not

encourage an open dialogue between parents and children about responsible digital participation.

Television programs reflect contemporary parental and societal worries. Popular and academic work addressing digital technologies, especially the Internet and social media, assert that these developments challenge the traditional social hierarchy in which parents hold authority over children. Some parents admit to attempting to regulate their children’s access to and use of

digital devices and the Internet. Challenges to the parental control over access and usage involve

lack of physical limitations, children being especially skillful—and often more skilled than their

parents—in their use of digital technologies, and the issue of ownership. The Pew Research

Center’s Internet & American Life Project has oft-noted that teens use the Internet at school, libraries, and other friends’ houses. Even at home, limiting Internet or mobile device use can be particularly difficult. For many frustrated parents, limiting one device only means their child moves on to a different one for the same purpose. Moreover, many parents feel outmatched by their children, who show greater digital fluency. Popular and scholarly representations imply that digital native adolescents and teens have more power and fewer limitations through technology than their digital immigrant parents.25

Television appears to be quite concerned with parents’ loss of control over their children

within digital society. The thread of techno-discourse that concerns the reach of parental

authority presents a particular challenge to television insofar as writers, directors, and producers

must articulate it within the narrative in order to maintain cultural relevance as well as confront

the necessary evolution of character dynamics when portraying the family. There remains the

possibility that the status quo parent-child dynamic of television may indeed become a thing of

the past. Even as postmodern family models are incorporated, the modern nuclear family unit is

still the most predominate and parental authority is frequently celebrated. No matter the family

structure, technology is presented as a threat to the authority of parents. The traditional parent-

child hierarchy within postwar television representations is seemingly overturned by

contemporary sitcoms and dramas that aim to depict the digital age family.26 I will explore this

25 See Nicholas Negroponte, Pew Center, and Palfrey and Gasser. 26 See William Douglas, Lynn Spigel, and Cecilia Tichi. 63

idea as well as another claim by Douglas that any challenge to parental authority is ultimately

undermined. The outcome functions to reaffirm the power of the parents.

The season one episode of Gossip Girl, “All About My Brother,” draws attention to children’s ability to resist parental authority in the digital age. One of the episode’s storylines involves Rufus Humphrey’s (Matthew Sweet) loss of control over his teenage daughter, Jenny

(Taylor Momsen). He confides in another parent: “I tell her she can’t see [her boyfriend], she calls him. I take away her phone, they’re on iChat. How can you keep them from growing up, if they can have a full relationship from the confines of their own bedrooms?” (“All About”) Many of his challenges stem from her use of technology to evade his rules.

One of Rufus’ largest frustrations is the sheer lack of boundaries in the digital age. Jenny has easily moved from the physical realm to the virtual in order to maintain contact with her boyfriend. It quickly becomes clear that Rufus and his friend, Lily Van der Woodsen (Kelly

Rutherford)—like many parents—equate control with protection. After Rufus admits to having read his daughter’s e-mail, Lily encourages him to do what he must to protect Jenny, even if it means violating her privacy. Gossip Girl’s narrative is so driven by the prominence of digital age technologies and their impact on today’s teenagers that a storyline of this nature was inevitable.

It should come as no surprise that it features many examples of parents logging on to their children’s social networking sites—the Information Age equivalent of reading your child’s diary—in attempt to make up for a lack of communication, to protect them, etc.

Other television parents also blur the boundaries of privacy, protection, and control. Like the parents in Gossip Girl, Keith Mars (Enrico Colantoni) is seen using GPS to track his daughter, Veronica (Kristen Bell), on Veronica Mars and Claire Dunphy (Julie Bowen) of

Modern Family reading her daughter's e-mail and text messages. Both attempt to justify the violation of privacy in the name of protection.

Modern Family also gives a view of a nervous parent using technology to gain knowledge of what is happening in her daughter's life. Claire feels a lack of communication with her family due to their obsession with mobile devices. This gets expressed in many episodes, including "The Kiss," "Unplugged," and the pilot episode. She feels frustration over the digital space that her family members occupy. She especially feels excluded from the digital realm that her daughters, Haley and Alex (Ariel Winter), engage on a daily basis. Their digital life gives them privacy that they might not otherwise have. For example, boys and friends do not call the house phone; instead, they contact the girls on their cells or online. Claire must wait for Alex and

Haley to volunteer information in order for her to know what is going on in their social lives. In episode two of the second season, "The Kiss," Claire "accidentally" picks up Alex's phone and sees "a few flirty text messages." In a confessional scene that follows, Claire claims that even though the texts were probably sent by a boy from school, "they could be from a drifter" (“The

Kiss”). For the remainder of the episode, she tries to get Alex to tell her, then Haley when she will not open up to her, the identity of the boy and the status of their relationship. Her claims of trying to protect Alex from a potential predator are meant to be transparent and humorous despite common worries over Internet predators27. The comedic moments occur from her confession of picking up the phone by accident as shots show her in Alex's room picking up the phone deliberately, as well as scenes in which her ridiculous attempts to communicate with Alex all backfire.

My final example of a television parent using technology to protect his or child is from

Veronica Mars (2004), a teen drama that follows the life of its title character. Veronica is the

27 See Todd Richmond. 65 daughter of her town's former sheriff, who now runs a detective agency. She works part-time for her father and also takes the cases of her classmates at Neptune High to earn extra money for college. In season two episode six, "Rat Saw God," Veronica must go outside of Neptune while working on a case her father disapproves of her pursuing. Because he does not want her working the case, she lies to him in order to carry out her mission. What ensues is an example of a parent using communications technologies to monitor their child's activities and location, and to maintain authority. While Veronica is at a seedy motel outside of town, her dad calls to ask where she is at that moment. She quickly lies and says she is at an art gallery. Keith, who is familiar with the applications of smartphones, asks that she take a picture of herself at the gallery and e-mail it to him. In “Rat Saw God,” Veronica's response to Keith's demand suggests her generations’ thoughts on digital age parenting: "Is this what they imagined when they invented all this technology? A digital leash for nervous parents?" According to Veronica's logic, it seems unfair that parents should be able to use the Internet and communications technology to wield authority, to have a "digital leash" that stretches into the private, virtual adolescent space. In this sense, Veronica serves as a voice for the digital native generation.

In some ways, however, Keith's use of technology differs from the other television parents mentioned here. Rufus is frustrated by his daughter's ability to move fluidly from one device to another in order to evade his rules or restrictions. Claire also struggles with the online adolescent space and how it limits her knowledge of her daughters' social life. Unlike Rufus and

Claire, Keith is seen communicating regularly with his daughter and his knowledge of technology is superior to theirs. His worry for Veronica's safety is genuine, but he also wants to remind her he is the parent. In contrast to Rufus, Keith uses the ability of a communications device to break physical boundaries in order to try to create some. Later in the episode it is

revealed that he knew where Veronica was and the fact that she was lying. His plan to have

Veronica take a photo to prove where she was at is intended to bring her back into the traditional

hierarchy in which children are under the control of their parents. This is where Keith coincides

with Rufus and Claire. Each of them wants to realign their family structure in a traditional

manner under which parents have full authority and knowledge of their children's activities.

Attempts to Reinforce the Traditional Household Power Dynamic

Worries about the impact of the Internet and other communications technologies on their children have prompted “many parents to impose rules on Internet use, to monitor their children’s online activities, and to install software to prevent their children from accessing objectionable material” (Lenhart et al 10). Parents as well as school administrators are defending their position of authority by setting limits over access to and use of communications devices and social media. Examples of this trend of repressive action—some of which go a step beyond the violations of privacy exemplified by the television parents discussed above—can be found in drama and sitcom.

Gossip Girl episode 17 of season two, “Carnal Knowledge,” centers on the drama of a rumor that a teacher is sleeping with a student. The rumor is circulating via a Gossip Girl blast— an announcement that gets mass-texted directly from the Gossip Girl website. In response, the school administration decides to ban the use of cell phones during school hours and to confiscate

them at the door. The formal qualities of this particular scene give a sense of how the students

feel about this ruling. A long shot captures the headmistress making the announcement. She

stands at the entrance of the school up on the front steps. Then a shot-reverse shot focuses back

on the students, in particular the group of girls who comprise the series’ regulars. They are seen

looking on with shock, disbelief, desperation, and disappointment. The focus then moves to a

series of close-up shots of the students crowding the entrance and handing in their phones.

“Mission Control” by The Dandy Warhols plays in the background.

Later in the episode the Parents Council calls an emergency meeting with the school administrators to discuss the impact of the Gossip Girl website on the students. One parent exclaims they should find a way to shut down the site. Rufus, whose son, Dan, was the subject of the rumor, agrees with this idea. The issue of spatiality and clear boundaries lies at the heart of his opinion. He remarks, “This isn’t some note on the bathroom wall,” which is fixed in a certain location and can easily be removed or painted over. He asks, “How long will this follow [my

son]” (“Carnal Knowledge”)? Rufus, like many parents who are concerned about what their children post on the Internet or what is posted about them, clearly fears the lack of boundaries and temporality will render them unable to control the flow of information. He worries that this

Internet rumor could have a negative impact on Dan in the future. As Rufus and other parents on the board throw around ideas of how to control the situation, it becomes clear that they do not know how to respond. Their concerns as well as their inability to respond with confidence reflect those of real-life parents trying to respond appropriately to cyberbullying and other digital age threats such as sexting and Internet predators. Jan Hoffman sums up the predicament well when she states, “Desperate to protect their children, parents are floundering even as they scramble to catch up with the technological sophistication of the next generation”.

Examples from Lipstick Jungle (2008) and Modern Family demonstrate the attempts of

parents to control access to technology in order to protect their children. In the former’s episode,

“Pink Poison” Maddie Healy (Sarah Hyland) asks her mother Wendy (Brooke Shields) why she

cannot have a cell phone. Wendy reasons she is too young. It is not just a phone, “it’s texting, it’s

Internet messaging. It’s—it’s cameras” (“Pink Poison”). Maddie argues that everyone in her

class has a cell phone. She suggests she is behind her peers and their generation’s most popular

technology accessory. This is a short scene, but it provides another example of parents trying to eliminate digital devices to protect their children.

A second season episode of Modern Family, titled “Unplugged,” devotes an entire

storyline to parental control over electronics. The comedy takes a lighthearted view of how to

regulate Internet and communication technology usage. The episode opens with a breakfast

scene featuring a medium shot of Claire looking frustrated as her children and husband are all

engrossed in their gadgets, which include an iPad, a handheld game device, a cellphone with a

pull-out keyboard for texting, an iPhone, and a Macbook. Dismayed by her family’s lack of real

interaction with one another during breakfast, Claire decides to put a one week ban on all

technology. Claire's recognition that her family is not interacting is representative of popular

perception of the Internet's impact on family dynamics. In 2003, the Pew Research Center found

that 64% of teens who went online regularly believed "the Internet takes away from family time"

(Lenhart “Teens”). This episode exaggerates the concern that technology undermines parental

authority and that kids have gained more power than parents in their technological ease and

proficiency. It also attempts to show that parents have the power to buy or not buy devices, to

control access. The power and knowledge attributed to digital natives is part of the generation

gap. This gap—a loss of connection—is highlighted by television. The following section will

explore how a digital generation gap at home and in the workplace is emphasized by television

narratives.

Are You Updated or Outdated? Digital Immigrants in the Home and in the Office

In certain instances, the technological generation gap is used to draw laughter from the audience. This is frequently achieved by highlighting changing communication styles and by

exploiting older generations’ growing fears of obsolescence. Many television shows have

referenced a divide between digital natives and digital immigrants, including the sitcoms 30 Rock

(2006), The Middle (2009), Modern Family (2009), The Mindy Project (2012), and The Millers

(2013); and the dramas Veronica Mars (2004), Gossip Girl (2007), Lipstick Jungle (2008), as well as a number of crime dramas. Below I will present examples specifically from CW’s Gossip

Girl, ABC’s The Middle and Modern Family, and CSI and CSI: Miami which air on CBS.

In the 2007 premiere episode of Gossip Girl, Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley) and his dad,

Rufus (Matthew Sweet), walk along the streets of lower Manhattan together as Rufus posts flyers advertising his band’s upcoming concert on lampposts. The following lighthearted debate ensues:

Dan: “Uh, you know dad, there’s this thing called Myspace, where you post all this

information online. Save some trees, have a blog.”

Rufus: “Maybe if more musicians got off their blogs and picked up their guitars, the

music business would be in better shape.”

Dan: “Spoken like a true relic.” (“Pilot”)

Dan’s suggestion that Rufus get online begins during an extreme close-up shot of Rufus’ hand holding the stapler to the post. Dan contests his dad’s use of physical space when he could be conducting his business via virtual space. As in the pilot of Modern Family that was discussed earlier, this scene from Gossip Girl puts technical and communication differences into spatial terms.

Episode 13 of The Middle’s first season gives a more detailed example of television’s concern over older generations’ place in the digital age. The episode, titled “The Interview,” begins with Mike Heck (Neil Flynn) discovering a dinosaur bone at his job site, the Jasper,

Indiana quarry. It soon follows that the quarry must shutdown for four months to allow

paleontologists to conduct excavations. Because his family cannot afford to be without a second

income, Mike begins job-hunting. He encounters many roadblocks in his search, although his

greatest challenge—and the focus of the narrative thread—is the introduction of online applications and the central role of e-mail. The generation gap is emphasized by a polarization of the job search experiences of Mike and his oldest son, Axel (Charlie McDermott).

Mike stresses to Axel the importance of “[working] the shoe leather,” while Axel informs him of the critical need to get online (“The Interview”). Similar to the episode of Gossip Girl discussed earlier, Mike’s advice to Axel about needing to conduct a physical job search further implies digital immigrants are skeptical that online activity holds the same value as face-to-face interaction. Despite Mike’s insistence, Axel manages to learn about a job at the local movie theater through a Facebook friend and then gets hired following an interview that takes place via text message. Returning to the symbol given at the start of the episode Mike’s wife, Frankie

(Eileen Heisler), remarks in a voiceover that learning how Axel landed a job made Mike feel “a bit like a dinosaur” (“The Interview”). This is a pivotal moment for Mike who then must choose extinction or survival. The latter means calling on Axel to show him how to scan and upload his resume and to provide him with an e-mail address for an application. Eventually, Mike does survive and even gets an instant message interview.

As Freud noted, jokes serve as cathartic release, a kind of pressure valve, for one’s anxieties and concerns. The central problem of this episode—Mike’s job loss, his family’s need for a second income, and his sudden need for new skills—is, of course, dealt with in a humorous fashion. Yet, the issues are serious. The episode appeared when unemployment went to 10.0 percent during the Great Recession. Harvard economist Lawrence F. Katz testified to congress

71 that the economic downturn, which began in late 2007, was “so severe that it has had adverse impacts on almost every group of workers and all regions of the country in terms of both substantial unemployment and stagnant wages” (2). News articles at the time often focused on the fear of obsolescence due to a lack of technological skills that are now seen as basic and indispensable. In “The Interview” Mike is representative of the multitude of (middle-class) workers who faced long-term, and possibly permanent, unemployment due to changing concepts about age and essential skills.

The episode “Dunder Mifflin Infinity” of The Office also uses comedy to successfully represent concerns that technology and the ideology of technoculture actively marginalize older generations and/or those who cannot or will not adapt. This episode features Ryan Howard’s visit to the Scranton, Pennsylvania branch of the paper company. Ryan, who now works at the company’s New York headquarters, returns to announce company initiatives for success in the digital age.

Dunder Mifflin Infinity represents a floor to ceiling streamlining of our business model.

The centerpiece of the campaign is a new business-to-business website interface that will

allow us to compete directly with big box chains.” (“Dunder Mifflin Infinity”)

Close-ups capture the faces of Ryan’s former coworkers as they look on with boredom, apathy, and anxiety. They are not immediately receptive. The branch’s oldest employee, Creed Bratton

(himself), immediately feels threatened. His conversation with the branch manager, Michael

Scott (Steve Carell), captures the “Adapt or you’re toast” concern described by Kroker.

CB: “We’re screwed.”

MS: “Who is?”

CB: “You and me. The old timers.”

MS: “I am not old. You are old. You are like 100.”

CB: “You’re over 40. That’s the cutoff. Are you listening to what he’s saying?

Retraining. New system. Youth…We’re goners.” (“Dunder Mifflin Infinity”)

Interspersed among Michael’s efforts to stand up for “old fashioned business methods” are shots

of the older employees struggling to use the Blackberry phones issued to them.

The episode polarizes Ryan and Michael. Ryan represents the tide of technology, sweeping in changes supported by an ideology that promotes youth, efficiency, adaptability, and the new. He recognizes the strength of what he represents, eventually telling Michael he “should not resist it” (“Dunder Mifflin Infinity”). His advice to Michael echoes claims that we are living in a new age. If the spirit of the digital age is resisted, one risks being left in the past.

"The cool dad"

Unlike Mike Heck, Modern Family’s Phil has technological skills that allow him to stay current in his personal life and at work. For Phil, the most important benefit of being up-to-date is that it allows him to better relate to his children. He is a self-proclaimed “cool dad.” In many episodes, he tries to prove this through his knowledge of popular culture and, especially, his technological proficiency. For example, the pilot features Phil in a confessional scene explaining his identity as a cool dad: “I’m hip. I surf the web. I text—LOL: Laugh Out Loud, OMG: Oh My

God, WTF: Why the Face?” With this, he tries to prove his cultural fluency both to the viewers and to his children. However, his translation of the last abbreviation aims to further underscore that Phil is not as cool as he thinks and to emphasize the generation gap between him and his kids; WTF is text abbreviation for “What the fuck?” A digital native watching Modern Family would likely know this. The writers locate the comedic moment in that anticipated reading and the joke happens at Phil’s expense.

Phil recognizes the importance of technology to his children’s generation and tries to keep up with the latest developments and product offerings. He zealously tries to connect with his kids and to prove why they should view him as a peer rather than as a parent. He reveals throughout the series that he wants them to trust him with their problems by seeing him as a friend. Only his wife and the audience recognize that they find his antics embarrassing. The one exception is the youngest child, Luke, who enjoys playing video games with his dad. Yet, Luke does find other aspects of Phil’s cool dad ways puzzling, such as his living room performance of song and dance routines from High School Musical. Phil’s teenage daughters, on the contrary, consistently show their distaste with his constant attempts to be cool in their eyes. While Phil wishes to fill in the gap that separates him from his children, it is still there; moreover, they—or at least his daughters—seem to want that gap to remain intact.

Another age gap in Modern Family is created in the relationship between Phil and his father-in-law, Jay Pritchett (Ed O’Neill). This generational gap is particularly interesting in that it also involves issues of masculinity. The audience often witnesses Phil desperately tries to connect with Jay. He desires to be fully accepted by Jay, who does not want to have a close relationship with him. Jay communicates throughout the series that friendships with other men should not be too close. This is a reflection of Jay’s homophobia, which is also pointed out in various episodes. The traditional masculinity common to Jay’s generation cultivated a fear of becoming too close with other men. Cooper Thompson remarks that men who are pushed to be overly masculine find it difficult “to take down the walls they have built around themselves”

(55). To avoid an emotional connection with Phil and to preserve his own masculinity, Jay takes steps to keep his distance such as describing Phil as an idiot or making fun of him for not being

manly enough. He resists any emotional connection with his son-in-law, takes action to maintain his patriarchal authority, and refuses to accept help.

Jay’s wife, Gloria (Sofia Vergara), pushes him to connect with Phil and to soften his tough guy persona. In the episode “The Kiss,” she uses Jay’s lack of technological proficiency as an opportunity for them to spend time together. Also she wants Jay to accept that he does need help sometimes, even when he wants to maintain the idea that he can do everything for himself.

One of the storylines in “The Kiss” features Jay attempting to set up a printer in his home office.

When Gloria suggests Jay call Phil for help, he insists he does not need assistance. Jay continues

to express his dominance and self-reliance with the statement, “Phil’s not better than me at

anything” (“The Kiss”). Eventually when Jay gives up, Phil sees that the tables have turned. In his confessional scene, he informs the audience that he has been hurt over the years by Jay making fun of his “delicate hands” and the fact that the smell of paint makes him gag (“The

Kiss”). Jay points out Phil’s feminine features or behaviors to argue that he is less of a man with the purpose of trying to socialize him into traditional masculinity; at the same time, he is able to maintain his position as the alpha male in the family and keep his distance from Phil. Once Jay concedes that he needs Phil for something, Phil recognizes that opportunity to prove his masculinity through technological skill28.

The fear of getting old and out-of-date in this example comes, of course, from Jay. He does not show a concern for being able to keep up technologically with his children and stepchildren or at his job. His grandchildren (and one stepson who is the same age as his

28 As was discussed in the previous chapter, Phil uses his technology skills to exert dominance over his wife, Claire. He shows frustration with Jay’s refusal to see him as a man. At home, Claire refers to him as one of her children and even states in the pilot that she does “[their]” job as parents. She frequently reminds him of his lack of follow through on household duties and parental responsibilities. As a way of pushing back, Phil uses technological ability to create a dominant masculine position. Although Phil is not traditionally masculine like Jay—he shows emotional vulnerability, does not exhibit aggression, is close with his children, etc.—he uses technology as a way to one-up his wife. 75 grandchildren) are digital natives, but he does not have the same worries about relating to them as their parents do. In his career, he is a successful business owner and shows no sign of financial problems. Shots of Jay’s home show that he is quite well-to-do. In contrast with the Heck family of The Middle, one can gather that if Jay’s business closed tomorrow, he would not need to worry about getting another job or if his lack of technological skill would prevent him from doing so. However, Jay does demonstrate concerns about his age. This mainly comes up in his relationship with his much younger wife. For instance, in the pilot, he was mistaken for her father. It also is evident when he attends events with his son such as birthday parties that he has difficulty relating to the other parents, who are roughly the same age as his two biological children. Technology does not appear to be a major concern for Jay. He would rather show off a sports car than a smartphone. Yet there are times, like in “The Kiss,” that Jay must tackle technology. In order to not have to rely on anyone or to have to admit he is behind the curve when it comes to technology due to his age, Jay forges ahead to do things on his own. Turning to

Phil for help is difficult for him. He must admit that he needs help, but also must come to terms with the idea that he came to technology later in life, which is another reminder that his generation, and he, is aging.

In all these examples, the comedy is dependent upon the age gap. Those from Gossip Girl and The Middle both use imagery with terms such as dinosaur, fossil, and relic to associate middle age with outdated modes of communication. They both also reference digital age issues of spatiality and physicality. In Gossip Girl, Rufus notes the need for musicians to get off their blogs and focus on the music. Mike points out the importance of searching for a job in person on

The Middle. Viewers are able to laugh, and feel superior, due to the knowledge that these characters underestimate the value of the Internet and especially social media. Furthermore, the

dialogue between Rufus and Dan, Mike and Axel, Jay and Phil appear funny because viewers are

cued to acknowledge them as exaggerated examples of daily situations in their own lives,

whether identifying with the digital immigrant parent or digital native child29. The comedy in

these narratives is built on digital immigrants’ concerns about technology skills becoming more

important than other work experience, losing the ability to relate to one’s digital native children

as technology developments occur ever more rapidly, and getting older in general. The humor

also depends on younger viewers identifying with an increasing sense of having more knowledge

of technology than their parents. The technological generation gap is, thus, able to be comedic

for audience members of varying skill levels and age, although for differing reasons.

We may apply mimetic theory to most, if not all, narratives representing technology use

in society. The internet and communication devices have grown ever more important in everyday

life. These developments have caused concerns for parents over how they affect family

communication, togetherness, and the safety of their children. As digital native kids gain more

power and freedom through their technological skill as well as how digital devices break down

physical barriers, parents also see their authority being limited. But, these concerns are

successfully received comically because of what Relief Theory proposes is an ability to reduce

emotional tension or fears30. For younger audience members, such as those sought by Gossip

Girl, the comedic moment occurs with the recognition of superiority. The representation of this

technological generation gap as comedic is particularly interesting, then, for its ability to engage

three theories of humor in order to reach audience members of different age and technology skill

level.

29 Although Phil is not technically a digital native, we can locate him within this group when analyzing his interactions with Jay surrounding technology. 30 See Sigmund Freud (1905). 77

Putting the Technological Generation Gap to Work in Crime Dramas

In police procedural dramas the characters and the visual style actively embody the

technological generation gap. Unlike the comedies and dramas above that express anxiety over

obsolescence following rapid technological change, crime dramas use the generation gap to their

advantage by emphasizing collaboration. Although there are many crime drama programs that

exemplify this claim, I will focus specifically on the CSI franchise. Ellen Burton Harrington

notes, “CSI features a familial network of colleagues occasionally studded with sexual tension

and headed by a tough-yet-sensitive older male character who often functions in a paternal role”

(367)31. Each CSI series—CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000), CSI Miami (2002), and CSI

New York (2004)—contains a middle-aged lead detective. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation has had three different lead male detectives throughout its tenure on CBS, including Gil Grissom

(William Peterson), Dr. Raymond Langston (Lawrence Fishburne), and D.B. Russell (Ted

Danson). Grissom led the team for the first nine seasons with Langston replacing him in the middle of season nine. Russell was introduced in the season 12 premiere. Horatio Caine, played by David Caruso, headed up his CSI team for all ten seasons of CSI: Miami. Meanwhile, the

CSI: New York team is led by Detective Mack Taylor (Gary Sinise). While these father figures do not perform the majority of the high tech work that garners much of the attention, they are seemingly necessary to the functioning of the team. For example, the CBS website describes the

Miami show’s team as using “both cutting-edge scientific methods and old-fashioned police

work to solve crimes,” thus highlighting the collaboration that takes place (CBS). One could imagine that both techniques could be used by many individuals, yet the “cutting-edge” work is

31 The patriarchal familial model is also followed in Criminal Minds (2005), with Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin), David Rossi (Joe Mategna), and Aaron Hotchner (Thomas Gibson) representing the team’s father figure. In Without a Trace (2003), Jack Malone (Anthony LaPaglia) fills this role. Special Agent Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) takes on the fatherly role in NCIS (2003). 78

done almost exclusively by the younger members of each team. The collaboration that takes

place between the older lead detectives and the younger members of the CSI teams is shown as a

seamless symbiosis, indicating that an age gap can be productive when in service of a larger

goal.

Looking at each component of this team effort is necessary for a fuller understanding of what crime drama tells its audience about age, technology, and an ideal society. To start, we might ask what defines “old-fashioned police work.” Looking to CSI: Miami’s Horatio Caine, it seems that old-fashioned police work means surveying the scene (with his sunglasses off) while either standing up or crouching down, making one-liner prognoses (while putting his sunglasses back on), and encouraging the CSI’s to “keep digging,” “look harder,” etc. In contrast, the young

CSIs are visibly active, analyzing evidence, taking photos, and using digital technology to put together the pieces of the puzzle.

The growing importance of technology is further suggested by the visual style. Camera work that focuses on the initial surveying of the crime scene consists of steady long and medium shots. These scenes are generally featured in the beginning of television crime drama programs.

For the rest of the hour, though, technology takes center-stage. Crimes are solved with the assistance of computers and specialized criminal investigation tools. Close-ups are used to show exactly how the evidence is being processed. These shots suggest the importance of technology for criminal investigation. The camera work and effects indicate that the future of police work will be dominated by technology.

How crime drama envisions the future of police work runs parallel to more optimistic reactions to the relationship between culture and technology in the late twentieth century.

Responses to this relationship have often appeared diametrically opposed with some suggesting

society proceed with caution until all potential consequences are considered, while others

promote what they see as inevitable change resulting from “progress.”32 Technological advancement is often viewed with skepticism for how it may change the current way of life. The television crime drama component of the technological imaginary is strongly influenced by the

notion of change. But, any threat of change gets transferred to that which threatens the

community. Fear of technological change, and any subsequent changes it may bring to the social

order, is nullified by putting it to work for the “good guys.”

Communication technologies are used to trace criminals and solve mysteries in new ways that alter one’s relation to the State. Even a simple photo from a cell phone—and it does not even have to be the victim or the suspect’s phone—can be used to build evidence. Season four, episode 18 of CSI: New York, “Admissions,” featured a technology called Photosynth, real software that can be used to synthesize numerous photos to (re)create a three-dimensional view of a particular space. In this particular episode, Detective Stella Bonasera (Melina Kanakaredes) walks into a technology lab with a box of mobile phones. She hands the box off to Adam Ross

(A.J. Buckley) and instructs him to build her a high school gym in order to help her solve a murder that took place during a dance. A close-up features Adam picking up a smart phone from the box. This then cuts to a medium shot of him going through the box. A wipe transitions to a full screen view of Photosynth in action, with hundreds of images scattered across the screen that are being reorganized by Adam. As Adam and Stella sit in front of the huge screen, she directs him to focus on various points in the three-dimensional space. She does the actual detective work, while he provides the technological labor behind it. The two agents of different generations work together, suggesting that both are necessary for a positive resolution to a

32 See Simon During. 80

particular case. The technological labor performed by Adam allows Stella to use traditional

detective skills in a more effective manner.

Crime dramas like those in the CSI franchise draw attention away from generation gaps,

concerns over information management and decreased privacy, as well as how the State uses technology to increase its repressive function through the surveillance of citizens. Instead the characters, themes, and other content bring us to focus on the ideals of protection and justice.

Crime drama offers a utopian view of technological advancement, showing the possibilities for solving crime. The technology plays a major role in solving each episodes unsolved crime and even suggests that it is infallible. Yet the role of the detective is invaluable to the success of a program’s team. Despite any idea that technology is rendering older generations obsolete, crime dramas such as CSI continually install a middle-aged lead detective at the helm of the team.

Exposure to these shows, as well as news and other sources, leads to the reconsideration of our identity as a digital citizen. We see the “bad guys” get caught and the flashy new technology that helps that happen.

Techno-Consumers of All Ages

Overall, television conditions audiences to accept technological innovations when digital devices are featured in narratives, product placement, and advertisements. Digital native audience members are targeted specifically as they try to establish a distinct identity through a relationship with technology. For parents who may be watching the programs discussed in this chapter, there are clear messages that the Internet and communications technologies are threatening family togetherness. In particular, television tends to exaggerate the concern that parents and children are not speaking the same language, or communicating in the same fashion; moreover, that technology is making it more difficult to connect with one’s child. Additionally,

programs suggest that parents do not have the same authority over their kids, as the Internet and

mobile devices allow users to create their own separate space. As a result, parents may feel that kids can sidestep the boundaries placed upon them. The message to parents in the programs mentioned here is that to communicate more effectively and connect with one’s children, it is necessary to use the Internet and communications technology with confidence. It is especially clear that the “modern family” is a digital family. The modern family’s home is filled with many digital age devices. For all digital immigrants (parents and non-parents), television relays the message that techno-consumption is crucial for having relevant job skills, for communicating with others, and for staying current with the latest developments in society. By going digital, one may curb the fear of obsolescence.

The ideology of digital age consumerism embedded inside the narratives is bolstered by product placement and advertisements. Product placement in the programs mentioned above include Apple and various PCs; cell phones such as Samsung, Nokia, and Android; Nintendo and other gaming units; televisions, DVDs, and surround sound systems. During commercial breaks, audiences view commercials for these same products, creating a “flow.” The term “flow” was first used in media studies by Raymond Williams. He writes in his 1975 text, Television:

Technology and Cultural Form, “It is evident that what is now called ‘an evening’s viewing’ is in some ways planned, by providers and then by viewers, as a whole; that it is in any event

planned in discernible sequences which in this sense override particular programme units”

(Williams 93). Williams notes that a flow is planned, constructed. As an industry term, “flow” is

used to indicate “the explicit determination of program schedules and marketing strategies”

(White 98). Writing of his experience with flow between narrative and advertisement, John

Caughie states, “the space of the commercial is continuous from the space of the fiction...... they

can be read symptomatically as little contests between commercial logic--the need to deliver

audiences to advertisers--and narrative logic--the need to hold audiences in identification” (50).

Ultimately, the television narratives, product placements, and advertisements all

encourage techno-consumerism. For audience members, one’s digital age identity and

perceptions of social relations are continually renegotiated in a flow of narrative space complete with product placement, external discourse on technology, and advertisements. In the programs discussed here, techno-consumption is a given. How and why someone consumes digital technology is prescribed within the way television imagines generation and technology.

Concerns over how technology is affecting family communication and challenging parental authority are expressed frequently within the narratives. These concerns are ultimately resolved through modes of consumption: parents are seen using cell phones, social media, and the like in attempt to regain control over their children. Other times they are shown banning usage of communications devices and the Internet. When the fear of obsolescence is the issue, characters—and viewers—are encouraged through jokes and narrative situations to get online, get a cellphone, etc. To not buy or use the Internet or other digital and mobile products is never an option. The product placement and accompanying advertisements function to solidify the message. According to television, the consequence of not consuming technology is to be rendered obsolete, to become the butt of a joke, or to lose parental authority.

CHAPTER FOUR

POWER AND NARRATION

Debates about privacy, freedom, and security form a major trend in techno-discourse.

Beginning from the late 1980s and early 1990s, popular media and scholarly discussions focused on the individual, government, and corporations.33 Concerns over privacy, freedom, and security at micro- and macro-levels were considered in terms of the interactions between individuals; individuals and government entities; the US government, other nations, and enemy organizations; competing businesses, businesses and individuals, as well as big business and government. Magazine and newspaper authors writing on technology at this time chronicle the rapid development of the hacker community and debates about cryptography. Pressing concerns over corporate and national security from domestic and international hackers were espoused in articles laced with Cold War rhetoric. Meanwhile, the hacker/crypto-rebel community claimed the need for ultimate freedom and anonymity on the web, viewing the government’s push for control over Internet cryptography with Orwellian suspicion. The consideration of the impact of a fully connected world on the digital dossier, or digital footprint, grew over the late 1990s and is a larger focus for contemporary writers, in both popular media and academia. Over time the digital dossier has become increasingly significant to considerations of the intersections between technology, privacy, freedom, and security.

This strand in techno-discourse, which encompasses privacy and security concerns is the jumping-off point for this chapter. I argue that television has woven these concerns into its

33 Privacy, surveillance, protection, and access are topics frequently addressed by John Markoff in his articles for The New York Times from 1988 to 1994; various articles in WIRED Magazine 1993-1994 also discuss these same topics. Markoff’s tone remains objective, while those in WIRED exhibit a bias toward the position of the technophile, if not the hacker. The title of the magazine clearly shows that its target audience is the computer-savvy generation. Many articles are underlined with an anti-government, pro-cryptography/absolute privacy tone. Also see Ellen Nakashima, and Palfrey and Gasser. 84

fictional narratives. Who has the power to tell your story? In the digital age, is privacy a thing of

the past? Are we ever out of view and/or out of reach? These are a few of the questions that

television poses in its digital age narratives. Popular media and scholarly discussions inform my

analysis of how television incorporates and adds to those debates. Examples used to demonstrate

how television programs expound upon this theme of the technological imaginary are divided

among sections on the digital dossier, voice-over narration, storytelling, and crime dramas. The

chapter begins by outlining a definition of the term digital dossier. Then it transitions into a

discussion of how television interprets the digital dossier in relation to the dual phenomena of

social media and crowdsourcing. An examination of voice-over narration in Sex and the City and

Gossip Girl suggests that a formal quality in television can document the shift in how we relate to people and our surrounding environment in the wake of advancements in communication technologies. These two programs, looked at simultaneously, allow us to think about the issue of personal authorial control over one’s digital footprint and dossier. This is followed by a discussion of technology in crime drama, the genre par excellence for bringing the

privacy/security debate to the small screen.

The Digital Dossier

Digital dossier is a term that became better known following its use in Daniel Solove’s

2004 text, The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age. Palfrey and

Gasser also devote a chapter in Born Digital (2008) to the topic. They summarize the digital dossier as all the digital information about a given person that is held in many different hands

(39). A subset of the dossier is the digital identity, an online persona “composed of all those data elements that are disclosed online to third parties” whether done voluntarily or not (Palfrey et al

40). As information spreads out, passing through many hands and networks, individuals are

gradually losing control over their digital dossiers and identities. For Palfrey and Gasser this means a blurring of public and private in the digital age (58). The digital identity, which one may see as personally created and monitored, quickly becomes public, as it can be accessed, modified, and shared by many users. The television narratives analyzed for this project tend to focus on the more disturbing results of this phenomenon. They present the digital identity’s ability to spread exponentially as negative and damaging to individuals and their social relationships. On the small screen, the digital identity is an avenue for cyber-bullying and other cyber-crimes.

Voiceover Narration

In film and television, voice-over narration is “speech accompanying visual images but not presumed to derive from the same place or time as the images” (Bignell 96). The device can feature first- and third-person points-of-view. To provide a simple definition of these two types, first-person, or “character,” narrators appear within the story, although they may narrate the action in or out of the view of the audience. Third person—or, omniscient—narrators generally appear off-screen. Whether on- or off-screen, the voice-over narrator is a “figure that presents and controls the text” (Kozloff 1). While scholars like Jon Dovey observe a rise in first-person narration, there is evidence of a third-person narration trend. The shift from first- to third-person narration signals another digital identity model, one that emerges from digital age conversations about power, privacy, information management, and surveillance. The narrator—who occupies a controlling, authoritative position—is, indeed, capable of expressing these concerns. Conflating the voice beyond the television screen with the person in front of the computer screen allows for a more nuanced understanding of how television is adding to this area of the technological imaginary. This section explores how notions of power, privacy, information management and

surveillance underlie television narratives within the use of voice-over narration. Below, I

present examples of first- and third-person narrators from the late 1990s to the present.

The Columnist vs. the Blogger

Comparing the voice-over narration style of Carrie from the HBO hit Sex and the City with that of CW’s Gossip Girl provides clues about how television contributes to digital age

conversations regarding the impact of ICTs on the issues noted in the introduction. Both

programs include a voice-over narrator at the beginning and end of episodes with narration

occurring between scenes. There are differences in the use of voice-over narration, however.

Carrie is an on-screen, mainly first-person narrator. Gossip Girl is an off-screen, mostly third-

person narrator. Within Sex and the City and Gossip Girl we may recognize a shift from old to new media in relation to the narrator positions. An analysis of voice-over narration in both programs is used to draw conclusions about how television interprets the ways in which privacy and guarding personal information as well as the ability to narrate our own experiences has changed following advancements in the Internet and communication technologies.

Carrie is an on-screen narrator who uses both first- and third-person point of view. She relates her experiences in addition to those of her friends through voice-over and direct address to the camera. Voice-over narration was used throughout the entire series, while direct address was only employed in the first season. Ashli Dykes describes how female Sex and the City audience members are encouraged to identify with Carrie: “Because the voiceover is firmly embodied in Carrie and oftentimes voiced directly to the audience, a feeling of intimacy and honesty is established between the viewer and the main character” (50). The spaces from which

Carrie addresses the audience and/or narrates the action also encourage audience-character identification as well as a sense of trust and intimacy. She generally speaks from the comfort of

her own home or the coffee shop nearby, often engrossed in the personal space of her laptop.

Many times, lines of her voice-over script appear on her laptop screen. Her voiceovers are in many instances personal thoughts that are the seeds of her latest column. As Dykes notes,

“[Carrie’s] column often intersects with her narration” (50). The audience members are supposed to identify with Carrie; her reflections are meant to be our reflections. Like a new generation of

“Dear Abby” enthusiasts, the viewers become trusting “readers” relying on her column’s advice.

Chances are that the majority of the people who watch Sex and the City do not lead the same type of extravagant lifestyles as its characters. The unrealistic nature of the characters’ lifestyles is a common criticism that the dramedy’s producers have endured since the first season debuted.

For example, Jonathon Gray points out the “laughably high salary” supposedly earned by its lead character (116). Yet, a rapport is achieved through the voiceover narration and direct address.

This mutual understanding—perhaps, even a feeling of friendship, if you will—facilitates “the pleasurable moment of identifying with others which the viewer is not” (Bignell 98).

Unlike the on-screen narrator of Sex and the City, the mysterious narrator “Gossip Girl” is unseen by the other characters and the viewers (Gay 42). Gossip Girl is an off-screen narrator.

Much of the narrative action is driven by the fact that none of the characters know Gossip Girl’s true identity; meanwhile, “she” knows intimate details of their lives.34 She comments on the action and occupies an omniscient position as narrator through her strategic use of crowdsourcing to support her blog. Gossip Girl’s voiceovers relate the written text on her blog and in each e-blast, a mass text message containing the latest gossip that is sent to all who have registered on her website. The information she gathers and disseminates is used mercilessly to show her power. On the Upper East Side, Gossip Girl is everything from social reporter to social

34 The characters speculate more than once that Gossip Girl may not really be a female. In fact, in the final episode it is revealed that Gossip Girl is actually Daniel Humphrey. 88 terrorist. For this same reason, she is an active character interacting with the others and occasionally drifts into first-person narration using phrases spoken in both first-person singular and first-person plural.

Storytelling

As one’s digital dossier and identity grow beyond individual control, the ability to tell one’s own story similarly slips further out of personal control. This carries important implications for how power and authority are entangled with authorship. Television, concerned with bringing stories into our homes, is an interesting place to look for perspectives on storytelling in the digital age. I look again to Sex and the City and Gossip Girl to explore storytelling, the author/authority connection, and information control. Andrew Shapiro claims that the "emergence of new, digital technologies signals a potentially radical shift of who is in control of information, experience and resources" (qtd in Croteau 322). Reviewed together, we may see how the shift in public/private and in control over information, experience and resources is being represented. From Sex and the City to Gossip Girl we can witness a shift in the perception of “storytelling”: that is, from individual, authoritative control over how one’s story is told to a collective, collaborative process in story/digital identity formation and sharing. Sex and the City’s author/authority logic is intertwined with Carrie’s newspaper column. Meanwhile,

Gossip Girl’s blog, which are one and the same with her voiceovers, only exists due to the collaborative action that is now such a large part of social and new media.

Carrie is in control of her own story. She gathers information from her friends and her own experience. At times, we see her promising upon request that she will not report certain aspects of her friends’ lives. While viewers witness those very things, which range from the embarrassing to the egregious, Carrie gives her word that they will not appear in print. On that

note, it is important to recognize that when written about, their experiences appear in an old

media format: the newspaper. Once written, Carrie’s weekly column is final. Unlike today’s

blogs and newspaper articles that appear online, Carrie’s readers do not have a chance to modify her original text in the form of comments, shares, or “likes.” The opportunities for her column to be modified, therefore, are limited, allowing for greater authorial intention and power to control what is released to the public.

With Gossip Girl, all the students of Constance Billard and St. Jude have the ability to

affect the story of another’s life—what gets told and what stays secret. The characters exemplify

Palfrey and Gasser’s description of how digital natives interact with and impact each other’s digital identity. They state, “Digital Natives now add more to one another’s dossiers than ever before through the use of mobile devices that can record digital information, and they post this information instantly to the Internet and track what others are saying online” (Palfrey et al 49).

Gossip Girl’s voice-overs and camerawork give a notion of surveillance; shots of students capturing video and photos, and sending in tips to Gossip Girl imply that someone is always watching. Together, they emphasize the relationship between social networking, crowdsourcing, and power. For example, the pilot begins with scenes of New York, finally focusing on Grand

Central Station, where the camera follows the character Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively).

The voice of Gossip Girl fills the background:

Hey, Upper East Siders, Gossip Girl here, and I have the biggest news ever. One of my

sources, Melanie91, sends us this: ‘Spotted at Grand Central—bags in hand, Serena van

der Woodsen!’ Wasn’t it only a year ago our It girl mysteriously disappeared to boarding

school? And, just as suddenly, she’s back. (“Pilot”)

A close-up shot focuses on a girl, apparently Melanie91, catching a picture of Serena on her phone.

Once a character’s personal information passes to Gossip Girl, it is in her hands. There is no time for pleas or requests that the particulars of one’s life not get released to all, as we see in

Sex and the City. In the voice of Gossip Girl is the intractable space of the Internet. It is there where our personal information and experiences are sent out and become available to others to spread or modify. The characters are always tense about the possibility of being reported on

Gossip Girl. They know that their classmates can use their phones and computers to tip off the anonymous gossip blogger at any time. Yet, this also gives them a sense of power. With the right information, they can make or break someone’s social life. Gossip Girl perpetuates the fascination with gossip and understands the desire to wield social power by dishing on others.

She ends every blog with “You know you love me, xoxo…Gossip Girl.” Indeed, the students do love her and grow dependent on her presence in their lives.

In his discussion of power in network society, Manuel Castells claims that one

mechanism for exercising control over others in a given network involves “the ability to connect

different networks to ensure their cooperation by sharing common goals and increasing

resources” (32). Gossip Girl exhibits this concept throughout the entire series. However, a scene

from the second season episode, titled “The Goodbye Gossip Girl,” poignantly captures how

effectively she controls others via a participation-based network model. When challenged to

identify herself in public, Gossip Girl arranges for all the Constance Billard-St. Jude students to

meet. As they gather she sends a taunting e-blast: “You wanted to meet Gossip Girl, well look

around, you just did. I’m nothing without you” (“The Goodbye Gossip Girl”). Gossip Girl is a

power-holder dependent upon the participation of other actors. Castells states the power-holders

are social actors “organized around their projects and interests” (32). They do not, and cannot,

act alone because the exercise of power in network society depends upon a complex set of joint

action. Castells continues, “More often than not these mechanisms operate at the interface

between various social actors, defined in terms of their position in the social structure, and in the

organizational framework of society” (32). At the Constance Billard preparatory school, there is

a strict hierarchy among the popular girls. One girl is deemed “Queen” as an upper classmen, and

she leads her “minions.” Ultimately, Gossip Girl is the true queen whose minions consist of

everyone willing to play her game of dishing on his or her classmates. Her ability to narrate—

and, thus, be in control of—a sequence of events is dependent on the social network.

In my analysis above, I chose to focus specifically on Gossip Girl because it received specific attention for being one of the first representations of digital natives and the way it incorporated the issue of digital surveillance across its entire story arc. Yet there are other teen programs that also include themes of privacy, surveillance, and the digital dossier. For example, in the premiere episode of East Los High (2013), titled “Mystery Girl,” Vanessa (Tracy Perez) is unknowingly recorded having sex with someone other than her boyfriend. The video is taken with a smartphone and sent to him anonymously. In “Knocker Nightmare,” the second episode of

Awkward (2011), Jenna (Ashley Rickards) is mortified after a jealous schoolmate takes a topless

photo of her in the locker room and mass texts it to the entire school. These programs and Gossip

Girl, especially, reflect the shift in control over information, experience, and resources that

Shapiro describes. Furthermore, one may discern a shift in storytelling, both in cyberspace and in the television narrative. Digital devices, the Internet, and social networking impact the digital dossier in cyberspace. But they can also—as the analyses of Sex and the City and Gossip Girl

92 demonstrate—provide a new mode of storytelling by moving from the individual author or narrator to a crowdsourcing model.

The examples above provoke questions about information control, privacy, and security.

In the section that follows, I will show how the crime drama genre justifies violations of privacy in the name of security by granting the police and the government moral authority.

Technology, Binary Opposition, and Moral Authority in Crime Drama

We may think of narratives, claims Jonathon Bignell, “as sets of relations between terms which are opposed or similar” (92). In this section I will address the use of the good/evil binary opposition in crime drama, how technology impacts that contrast, and how it solidifies the moral authority of the first term in the dichotomous set. Binary opposition is a theoretical concept proposed by structuralism. According to structuralist theory, and Ferdinand de Saussure in particular, thoughts, language and culture are organized via sets of opposing, yet related concepts. For instance, presence/absence, white/black, man/woman, rich/poor, and good/evil are all well-known binary oppositions in American culture. Post-structural theory proposes that the first term is privileged over the second; furthermore, that the dichotomy itself functions to legitimate the status quo.

The good/evil dichotomy commonly underlies the narrative structure of crime and police procedural dramas. Building on Nicole Rafter’s arguments from Shots in the Mirror: Crime

Films and Society, Cavender and Deutsch describe crime dramas as “morality plays which feature struggles between good and evil, between heroes who stand for moral authority and villains who challenge that authority” (68). The police are associated with good, moral, and other positive attributes. Criminals on the other hand are defined in opposite terms. While occasionally criminals in police procedural dramas are given sympathetic dimensions, they are more often

“unsympathetic characters who lack moral values” note Cavender and Deutsch (73). Technology

is often used to further these discrete categorizations of character. While deviant characters use technology for criminal purposes, the police and other characters representing the Repressive

State Apparatus use it to overcome threats both to their power and to the security of the community.35

Internet and Communications Technology at the Hands of Criminals

Although the problems that stem from the amount of easily-accessible personal information available “can be mild—the targeting of advertisements in ways that are arguably attractive to Internet users,” crime dramas such as CSI focus on and highlight “those that are terrifying, such as identity theft, stalking, sexual assault, and murder” (Palfrey et al, 75). A number of crime dramas contain examples of all four, incorporating the news media discourse

about privacy vs. security seen into the realm of television fiction.

Identity Theft

As news stories on television, the Internet, and in newspapers warn citizens about the

prominence of cybercrimes such as identity and credit card theft, television fiction programs

bolster those warnings by creating contemporary cautionary tales. Identity theft and other

cybercrimes provide much material for police procedural dramas. The plot of “Backscatter,”

episode 22 from the second season of Numb3rs follows a format similar to those used to structure news articles written about phishing and identity theft. The episode opens with the capture of two teen hackers who steal identities and credit cards from a laptop in their car by using various Wi-Fi networks. Upbeat dance music fills the background as an SUV at the center of the screen turns down an alley. Once the car turns, the camera cuts to a shot taken from the backseat. We can see the passenger has a laptop. He thinks out loud with urgency, “come on,

35 The idea of the RSA was proposed by Louis Althusser, “Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses.” 94

come on…almost got it…I gotta get a better signal…it’s too weak” (“Backscatter”). A close-up

shot of his laptop shows a phishing e-mail and the term “searching” in bold at the bottom of the

screen. Meanwhile, he reassures his partner, “Any minute now. There are lots of unsecured

networks around here” (“Backscatter”). Then, just as the driver/partner tells him they should be quick, FBI agents trap them in the alley.

In the following scene, Charlie (David Krumholtz) and Don (Rob Morrow) Eppes’ father asks them to explain what entails phishing. Charlie gives him a clear, basic explanation, “Well, it’s spelled with ‘PH’ and it’s when people send out fake e-mails made to look like real e-mails

from banks and financial companies, and then ask people for their personal account information”

(“Backscatter”). He gives a rough estimate that about $500 million a year is stolen via phishing scams. Their father remarks, “Those are scary statistics” (“Backscatter”). His comment

punctuates this scene and points out something important to the audience: phishing is a serious

problem. The next scene takes place the following day. An establishing shot takes the audience

to the FBI office, where Charlie, Don, and another agent discuss the target group of victims,

senior citizens. Account data fills the screen as the following dialogue ensues.

Charlie: “They were working off a particular list of bank customers.”

Don: “Do we know what kind of customers?”

Agent: “Those with large balances and low activity, mostly seniors.”

Don: “Right. Because they respond.” (“Backscatter”)

The plot of this episode mirrors news articles about phishing scams, identity and credit card

theft.36 The first scene provides an example of phishing and the FBI capturing the culprits to

36 Also see Thompson, Connie. “Medicare impostors target seniors for identity theft.” Komonews.com; Rosencrance, Linda. “8 Ways Seniors Can Avoid Identity Theft.” January 15, 2013. Technewsdaily.com; “Beware: Identity Theft” ABC News 03/27/2007; “Lost in Space: It’s 2008. Do you know who has your Social Security number?” US News. 11/10/2008. 95

hook the audience. The next two scenes give a definition of phishing—thus, providing

clarification on the crime that occurred—and describe the target victim group. By mirroring a

common structure of news articles about identity theft, the episode is lent a sense of reality. This

is further strengthened by the good/evil binary convention. “Backscatter” emphasizes that one

may lose control over his or her digital dossier. It taps into a digital age fear. Similarly, loss of

control and uncertainty over who has access or control over one’s digital information is also at

the center of worries about Internet predators, stalkers, and killers. In the section below, I explore

the presence of these criminals in television crime drama.

Internet Predators, Stalkers, and Killers

Internet predators are also commonly featured in crime dramas. Law & Order: Special

Victims Unit, CSI: Miami, and Numb3rs all have episodes about Internet predators targeting

children. The Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode “Chat Room” aired on April 14, 2000.

It follows the Special Victims Unit agents as they uncover an Internet child pornography ring along with chat rooms frequented by child predators. A conversation between Detective Stabler

(Christopher Meloni) and his wife implies that the Internet gives predators an advantage.

Stabler: “I can’t just walk into a room and restrain the guy.”

Wife: “Why not?”

Stabler: “These predators, you tell me…where are they? I can’t hear’em. I can’t see’em.”

Wife: “But they’re out there?”

Stabler: “Honey, they’re in here.” (pointing to the computer) (“Chat Room”)

Throughout their conversation, the camera uses shot-reverse shots. When the audience sees

Stabler, a medium shot includes the family PC in the frame. He motions to the computer as he states where modern predators are located.

CSI: Miami and Numb3rs both contain parents acting as vigilante killers seeking justice for their children who were victimized by Internet predators. Season three, episode 11 of

Numb3rs, titled “Killer Chat” aired on December 15, 2006. It features a woman who kills her husband after learning that he abused their teenage daughter as well as contacted other young victims online. To get revenge, she poses as a teenager in a chat room to lure him to his death.

The CSI: Miami episode “To Kill a Predator” aired on April 21, 2008. This episode follows a father grieving over his daughter’s abuse and death at the hands of an Internet predator. After hacking into private chat room conversations, he goes to the agreed meeting place in order to scare away predators and to warn their potential victims. Plots such as these run alongside articles that focus on the dangers the Internet poses for teens and adolescents.37 The media tend to go for shock value, aiming to startle readers with statistics: a 2005 New York Times article by

Jane L. Levere cited a study that found “one in five children received a sexual solicitation” while using the Internet between 1998 and 1999. The article goes on to describe the rise in the teenage demographic of Internet users, indicating to parents that the pool of potential victims is growing.

In 2006, Joshua Brockman opened his article with a disturbing description of a growing market in the underground economy: “The sexual exploitation of children on the Internet is a $20 billion industry that continues to expand in the United States and abroad, overwhelming attempts by the authorities to curb its growth…” (Brockman). He warned his readers that predators use the

Internet, especially social media sites, “to meet, lure, and digitally stalk” innocent minors who many not be aware of how to keep themselves safe online (Brockman).

Other writers and scholars have argued that these types of stories are overblown and play on our fears. David Pogue wrote the 2008 article, “How Dangerous is the Internet for Children?” in response to his experience of writing an article on Internet safety for a parenting magazine. He

37 See Jane L. Levere, Joshua Brockman, Pete Williams, and Laura Markham. 97

reveals that after writing what he thought was straightforward, reasonable advice in a first draft,

he was asked by the editor to make it “more sensational” (1). Pogue looks to a particular study,

“Online ‘Predators’ and their Victims: Myths, Realities, and Implications for Prevention and

Treatment.” The study—authored by Janis Wolak, David Finkelhor, Kimberly J. Mitchell, and

Michele L. Ybarra—claims that media accounts of online predators are “largely inaccurate” (2).

The authors argue that the public receives a stereotypical vision of an online predator. Rather

than older adults preying on and luring young victims, “Internet sex crimes involving adults and

juveniles more often fit a model of statutory rape” (Wolak et al 2). Like media stories, crime dramas continue to sensationalize stories of older predators that use the Internet as a tool for luring children into situations that may involve sexual assault.

Internet stalkers and killers also provide valuable material for crime dramas. These types

of criminals are central to the plots of the following episodes: “Rear Windows ‘98” (Diagnosis:

Murder, episode 6.8), “Homicide.com” (Homicide: Life on the Street, episode 7.13),

“Surveillance” (Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, episode 3.17), “Cyber-lebrity” (CSI:

Miami episode 6.2), “Risky Business” (Criminal Minds, episode 5.13), “The Internet is Forever”

(Criminal Minds, episode 5.21), and “The Gathering” (Criminal Minds, episode 8.17). They have

real-life inspirations such as John Edward Robinson, who is thought to be the Internet’s first

serial killer; Philip Markoff, Michael John Anderson, John Katehis, and Richard Beasley,

murderers who found their victims on Craigslist, a popular online classifieds site; and, Lisa M.

Montgomery and Thomas Montgomery, who met their victims in chat rooms in 2007.38 These

are just some of the cases that have garnered national attention. News coverage bringing

attention to killers who locate victims via the Internet creates the idea that there are more such

38 Lisa M. Montgomery and Thomas Montgomery share the same last name, but are not related and committed separate crimes. 98

predators out there, which “has resulted in a great deal of public anxiety" states Paul Bocij,

author of Cyberstalking: Harassment in the Internet Age and How to Protect Your Family (20).

While there are dangers out there and people should be mindful of their Internet activity and

safety, television programs encourage that anxiety.

Crime drama is ripe with examples of criminals using the Internet and other

communications technologies to lure victims, commit crimes, and even to evade the law.

Criminals are frequently seen using cell phone jammers; pre-paid “burner” phones; website

masking programs and proxies to hide their search history, online identity, and location to go

under the radar and to avoid capture. Specific examples include an episode from the twelfth

season of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, “Karma to Burn,” that shows the team getting stumped when a criminal organization has a cell signal jammer obstructing their ability to use

GPS technology for tracking purposes. The Numb3rs episode “Killer Chat” features a killer who uploads a video of his victims’ murders to the Internet using a masking program to avoid being traced. The FBI must use an “unrouting” technique to track the videos’ origins. Criminal Minds,

“The Internet is Forever”, contains a detailed scene of the BAU team struggling to identify the killer’s location and other information when they discover he is using a proxy to relay his signals.

Technology “in the Right Hands”

Police are often shown being put on the defense when it comes to the use of Internet and communications technologies. We see them using GPS technology to track cell phone signals; unmasking programs; writing programs to filter out decoy proxy servers and/or track original location of a someone using a proxy server; accessing databases to look for fingerprint, facial recognition, DNA, and other matches. Some programs’ teams even employ known hackers to

give an advantage to the police, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency,

Central Intelligence Agency, and other organizations. Below I address television representations

of hacker employment as well as general use of technology by law enforcement. Examples

include CSI and its spin-offs, Criminal Minds, and Numb3rs.

The CBS network debuted CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on October 6, 2000. The

program centers on a team of forensic investigators in Las Vegas, Nevada. Starting its fourteenth

season in the fall of 2013, it is the longest running series of the CSI franchise. CSI: Miami

premiered two years later on September 3, 2002. It ran for ten years before being cancelled. The

latest installation in the franchise, CSI: New York made its debut on September 22, 2004 and is now in its ninth season. Examining the aspects of setting, narrative action and camera work in the various CSI series will allow us to consider how crime drama is envisioning the relationship between law enforcement and technology as well as that of privacy and security.

As crime dramas have adapted to digital culture, Internet and Communication

Technologies have become redundant details of setting, narrative action, and cinematography, appearing continuously and in repetitive ways; working, as Bignell notes, to “deepen the

consistency and believability of the narrative” (95). They also serve to solidify common opinion about ICTs and how they relate to justice, privacy, etc. Each CSI series features an impressive crime lab, equipped with the most up-to-date technologies to assist the teams’ investigations. The production team has a standing relationship with Microsoft research labs. Microsoft technology that has been incorporated in the shows includes Photosynth, HD View, Microsoft Surface, transparent “walls” with touch screen and video capabilities, and others. These products have been used to construct the crime labs of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: Miami, and CSI:

NY. The impressive, high-tech, and modern crime labs are the setting of most of the

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technological action presented to the viewers. With Microsoft’s help, the CSI dramas give a

vision—and quite possibly a false sense—of the type of technologies crime investigators really work with on a daily basis. In fact, argues Chris G. Andrist, most crime units, even those belong to state branches of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, cannot afford the type of equipment and labs seen in popular programs like CSI. The creator of CSI, Anthony E. Zuiker, notes the importance of the creative partnership between the franchise and Microsoft to the shows’ success: “For us to be able to launch things that haven’t quite been in the marketplace or are new, in terms of visual story-telling with technology—to our fans, those bells and whistles are priceless” (qtd. in Baig 2). Jay Kenny, a Microsoft product manager, describes the company’s role in the programs as “technology advisor” (qtd. in Baig 2). With their help to acquire the newest—and sometimes not yet released—technology, episodes are given a sense of authenticity. The crime lab sets have partially contributed to what is known as the “CSI Effect.”

That is, “the phenomenon in which jurors hold unrealistic expectations of forensic evidence and investigation techniques” (Robbers 86).

As the CSI team processes evidence, technology is brought to the forefront of the action; they solve crimes with the assistance of computer databases, GPS, sound isolation software, and other specialized forensic investigation tools. Computer databases—including the Forensic

Medical Journal, the Dental Society Database, Automated Fingerprint Identification System

(AFIS), and the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS)—are frequently featured on CSI. These

databases often reveal key information…[they] not only help solve crimes, equally important,

they convey the idea that science has the answers, and that they are even computerized

(Cavender 75).

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Cinematographic effects are employed to explain elements of the forensic investigation to the audience. They serve as a visual supplement to dialogue punctuated by forensic jargon

(Cavender 76). In “Anatomy of a TV Hit-The Birth of CSI: Part I,” Director Danny Cannon describes the production team’s vision for the show as a whole and especially for the crime scene shots. “Our expectations…were always, ‘Here comes the detective. Here comes the cop’” (CBS).

The “good guys” are framed as central to the narrative. The camera work solidifies this. All the

CSI series use similar camera shots to film these scenes that begin each episode. Steady long and medium shots give the audience a view of the CSI team getting their first look at the scene, as if we are looking on from behind police tape. Occasionally extreme high angles and low angles are also used to show the police looking down at a body or up at other areas on the scene, bringing the audience closer to the action. While each CSI series uses the same types of camerawork in these scenes, I would like to give a specific example in order to paint a clearer picture.

“Spring Break,” episode 21 of CSI: Miami’s first season, provides a solid example of the use of the more common long and medium shots, but also contains back-to-back high and low angles in its presentation of the crime scenes. In this episode there are two crimes for the CSI team to solve. The review of the first crime scene starts with an extreme high angle of Horatio

Caine and the medical examiner looking down at the body. The camera then cuts to a long shot, showing them again along with a large crowd gathered behind yellow police tape. The second crime scene begins with a medium close-up of the body, which is underwater. The camera pans up to a low angle shot of the CSI team members, who look down into the pool. A cut to a long shot shows the team in discussion about how to proceed. After the body is out of the water, long and medium shots capture Calleigh Duquesne (Emily Proctor) and Eric Delko (Adam Rodriguez) taking initial observations. Close-ups are only used on the corpse. The long and medium shots

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introduce the audience to the scene. They visually convey the start of the investigation as the

cops enter the scene to get an initial picture of what has occurred. Meanwhile, close-ups take the

audience with the CSIs as they go deeper to uncover clues and evidence.

Each episode includes close-ups of the technology and how it is being used, with frequent

split-screen shots and electronic music playing in the background. Of particular significance is

“the CSI shot” in which the camera, using extreme close-up, point-of-view perspective, takes the

audience inside a body, on the path of a bullet, etc. This graphic effect was envisioned by the

show’s creator and is part of what made CSI visually unique. The style “portrays a sense of

forensic realism, and in doing so, asserts the veracity of science” (Cavender 67).

The Employment of Hackers in Crime Drama

The employment of hackers is a way of controlling a threat. Many former and current hackers, some who were arrested for “black hat” activities, are now employed in areas such as national and corporate security. Jeff Moss, known as “Dark Tangent” in the hacker community, now works for the Department of Homeland Security as a cyber-security advisor. He is a well- known hacker who started the DefCon and Black Hat conferences. Kevin Mitnick, called “the most notorious hacker of all time” by some, spent almost five years in prison for the stealing computer codes of high profile tech companies (Frontline). He has since founded his own cyber security company. In 2011, the Washington Post article “NSA is Looking for a Few Good

Hackers” delved into the government’s interest in hackers. Its author, Tabassum Zakaria, explains that the NSA was one of the main suitors of talented hackers at DEF CON that year, seeking to hire about 1,500 people to work in cyber-security, cyber-spying, and other operations.

John Casaretto covered the NSA’s search at DEF CON the following year. He points out that the agency is often willing to look the other way regarding past indiscretions when faced with the

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option of hiring talented hackers or training staff how to hack. Casaretto gives the following

explanation for this practice:

Exceptional talent in this field is extremely difficult to find and difficult to nurture. The

NSA and front lines of cybersecurity need the edge that a hacker brings to the security

picture, outside the constraints of manuals, procedures, and checklists. It is likely such

work would be beyond the simple fortification of government computer systems.

(Casaretto)

Television representations fictional representations of hackers being employed by

government operations are an aim at realism. They suggest that hackers can and should use their skills for the good of the community. As described in an earlier chapter, Criminal Minds’

character Penelope Garcia is a hacker who was caught by the FBI and then offered a job as a

technical analyst.39 A similar situation occurred on the episode “Shadow Markets” of Numb3rs,

in which the FBI catches a well-known, revered hacker, who is then given an offer to work for

the NSA. Charlie Eppes’ (David Krumholtz) gamer and hacker girlfriend, Amita Ramanujan

(Navi Rawat), occasionally consults on cases throughout the series. Skye (Chloe Bennet) of

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013) is another example of a computer hacker recruited to work for the

government. These representations encourage mass opinion that hackers are best off on the right

side of cyber security, intelligence, and warfare in order to be of the greatest use to U.S. society.

They also point out that many government agencies do not have the resources or know-how to

nurture the kind of computer skills they seek to benefit from.

39 See episodes 21 and 22 from season one, eight and nine from season three, and nineteen from season four for reference to Penelope’s status as a hacker within the FBI. 104

Moral Authority

The compound effect of framing one group of people that uses technology to restore order as intrinsically good and another that uses it to wreak havoc as fundamentally bad is a conferment of moral authority upon the former. Likewise, this functions to justify any questionable actions in the name of security. Through elements of visual style and plot that is structured on binary oppositions of good and evil in which the former uses technology to triumph over the latter and restore order to the community, crime drama aligns police and other crime fighters with moral authority. At times this moral authority is used to justify the occasions on which members of law enforcement step around certain privacy protections in order to enforce justice.

Palfrey and Gasser concede it is possible that, “privacy protections—however well intended—could make it tougher for law enforcement personnel to do their jobs in tracking down criminals, who may seek to hide behind the same shields” (77). Television representations support this hypothesis. In the Numb3rs episode, “Take Out,” a number of FBI agents complain

about not being able to access foreign bank record, which is making their job harder. Scenes such

as this suggest that privacy and security are mutually exclusive. One must be compromised for

the other. In the world of crime drama, invasions of personal privacy are generally posited as

necessary for the greater good. Concerns over information management, privacy, and

surveillance technology are obscured. This is accomplished by drawing the audience’s focus

toward the ideals of protection, justice, and the restoration of order. Representations of police

work in the digital age that involve potential violations of privacy in order to reach the end

goal—safety, security, etc.—depend upon the audience’s association of the police and other

government agencies with moral superiority.

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The CSI: Miami episode, “Murder in a Flash,” begins with a student found dead at a golf

course after a flash mob shows up throwing golf balls onto the greens and sandpits. One golf ball

is traced back to a student at an elite preparatory school. In order to discover who initiated the

flash mob, Horatio Caine asks the headmaster for access to the students’ cellphones.

Headmaster: “Look, interviews are out of the question.”

Caine: “I’m only interested in their cellphones.”

Headmaster: “No. Invasion of privacy. Parents’ll have my head, pull their kids.”

Caine: “I understand, and I will do everything in my power to protect you. Okay?”

Headmaster: “Lieutenant. You’d be surprised how aware these kids are of their rights.”

Caine: “No, I wouldn’t.” (“Murder in a Flash”)

In the next scene, the students wait in line as they are instructed to take out and turn on their cell phones and PDAs. The camera cuts to a close-up shot of these items being placed into docks. A

CSI shot takes us through the path of the exchange of information between the station at the school and the CSI crime lab. Another extreme close-up shows the download status bar. As a campus security guard looks on, he apologizes for hovering, and then remarks, “Headmaster wants to make sure you’re not trampling anyone’s rights.” The dialogue continually brings up the issue of privacy rights. In the end, the CSI team finds the killer due to accessing the students’ cell phones, which, in turn, functions to justify the violation and to argue that privacy can and should be sacrificed for protection, security, and so forth.

The same argument can be made about the actions taken by Carrie Mathison (Claire

Danes) in the pilot episode of Homeland (2011). Although Homeland is not a police procedural drama like the other programs discussed in this section, it is worth including here as its themes and narrative action is representative of the larger privacy/security debate generated by

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September 11 and the Patriot Act. The opening scene of the pilot begins with a high angle of

Iraqi streets. The camera cuts to Carrie racing through the streets to a prison where she

interviews a prisoner who supposedly has information about an imminent attack in America. Her

informant tells her that an American Prisoner of War has been turned to the cause of Al-Qaeda.

The episode takes us forward by a year to the return of Nicholas Brody (Damien Lewis), an

American POW who has recently returned to the United States following a CIA raid on a

terrorist cell bunker where he was held. Carrie, who suspects Brody is the POW referred to by her source, sets up unauthorized surveillance in his home.

Carrie’s surveillance of Brody is a source of contention between her and her mentor, Saul

Berenson (Mandy Patinkin). He reminds her that she cannot violate constitutionally guaranteed privacy. In episode two, he pulls some strings to get her a temporary Foreign Intelligence

Surveillance Act, or FISA, warrant. FISA was signed into law in 1978. It has been amended since the events of September 11, 2001. The most significant amendment occurred in 2001 after the creation of the PATRIOT Act. The acronym stands for Providing Appropriate Tools

Required (to) Intercept (and) Obstruct Terrorism. FISA allows for the “electronic surveillance and physical search of persons engaged in espionage or international terrorism against the United

States on behalf of a foreign power” (Towers-Romero 110). Unlike the episode of CSI: Miami

discussed above, Carrie’s actions are not justified until the second season, when her mentor

discovers through hard evidence that Brody has, indeed, committed himself to the terrorist cell

and planned a suicide bombing in the United States of America. In each of these cases, looser privacy protections are made to seem like common sense. Heightening digital age and post-9/11 fears, then solving crimes and stopping would-be terrorists through the use of the Internet and communications technologies, naturalizes the moral superiority of the police and government.

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Conclusion

In this chapter, I have attempted to show how concerns over privacy, boundaries, and how to control personal information in the digital age have become a primary theme in digital age television. An interest in the digital dossier connects all the examples throughout. The ever expanding, digitally maintained file on one’s life is significant to considerations of technology, privacy, and security. The questions encountered regularly in contemporary techno-discourse guide digital age television’s plots, character dynamics, and formal qualities.

In the first main section, I argue that a rising trend in third-person narration indicates an emerging digital identity model. Off-screen narrators can stand as the unknown of cyberspace, representative of the many unseen hands that access and pass on personal digital information. As seen in the example of Gossip Girl, third-person voiceover narration taps into the social networking and crowdsourcing phenomena, showing how many sources can be used to sustain an omniscient position. Social networking and crowdsourcing also impact approaches to storytelling. In the second main section, I examined crime drama for more explicit examples of how issues of digital security and privacy are woven into the plots, themes, character dynamics, and formal qualities. Overall, in all the chapter’s examples, concerns with privacy and security underline the narratives. Ultimately, television provides an understanding of the Internet and communications technology that is consistent with current techno-discourse.

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CONCLUSION

As I complete this project, many of the programs I analyzed have been cancelled. Those

that are still in production include Modern Family, The Middle, Awkward, The Mindy Project,

Criminal Minds, and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Programs like these that feature technology use serve as cultural artifacts, chronicling a particular moment in human and technological history. I believe that the representation of digital technologies will continue, as will interest in the subject. While writing my dissertation, when the topic of my research comes up in conversation, I would continually receive suggestions of shows that fit into my topic. When friends and acquaintances say they are interested in reading my work, I am reminded again that the issues being raised hold significance for a digital age audience.

Recent research trends have focused mainly on television’s use of technology to expand storytelling capabilities, audience participation, and marketing strategies. Scholars like Henry

Jenkins, Sharon Marie Ross, and Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine have been at the forefront of these inquiries. Jenkins defined convergence culture, a term that is now indispensible to media studies. Many scholars have looked to how convergence impacted the television medium. Recently, Newman and Levine argued that convergence was one of the ways industry professionals attempted to legitimize television. I believe such trends will continue in the future and expand to include studies that look specifically at content.

In this dissertation I have attempted to demonstrate the larger digital age structure of feeling at work in our culture, and how our current generation concerns about technology are incorporated into television narratives. Television, as a cultural form, is always a product of its time. To show how digital age television is a product of the contemporary period, I identified

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four main topics that are actively represented in television: issues of real communication,

gender, generation, security and privacy.

The first chapter began by presenting the idea that we are now living in a new age, one in

which communication is fundamentally different than it was in the past. New communications

technologies, especially mobile devices and the Internet have raised questions about the value of

face-to-face conversation, something that has often been validated by being considered “real.”

The issue of real communication has been considered in areas as disparate as education and

business. The first chapter addressed the ways concerns about how digital age communication

trends affect education, business, and consumerism are represented in television. The second and

third chapters delved into the idea of a digital generational gap and issues of gender that are at

play in workplaces, the family, and in consumerism. The final chapter addressed anxieties of

security, privacy, and surveillance. The dissertation sought to show that these points of focus

occur across genres.

The fact that the Internet and communications technologies are being represented in the

content of a variety of genres is significant. Television writers and producers recognize the

substantial impact of these advancements. Incorporating digital technologies into the content of

television allows for the expression of “wider social and psychological desires and fears” about digital culture (Lister 70). While I note that the representation of technology occurs across many genres, this project deliberately excludes examples from science fiction because commentary on our relationship with technology is commonly associated with that genre. This dissertation aims to offer an examination of the representation of technoculture beyond science fiction. My aim was to focus not on our hopes and fears for the future (and how those hopes and fears get projected onto technology), but on our satisfactions and concerns with technology in the present.

110

As my analysis has shown, whether television takes a dystopic or utopic stance, its narratives function to maintain the status quo in the digital age. Television representation of digital age technology and new media in general does not break gender boundaries or show that many non-digital natives are technologically proficient. As Newman and Levine argue, the guiding view of technology that gets privileged by television industry professionals is one that is highly associated with masculinity and progress. This view of technology encourages existing social hierarchies. “Quality” television that actively engages the process of convergence is distanced “from those forms and viewing practices rooted in the medium’s past, and associated with less valued audiences who had previously been seen as central to television’s cultural identity—women, children, the elderly, those of lesser class status, people who spend their days at home” (Newman and Levine 5). If, indeed, an association of technology, progress, and quality are associated with such attributes as masculinity, affluence, and power as industry executives incorporate new media into the production and marketing of certain programs, then it is also important to investigate whether those same assumptions can be found in program content. My dissertation has shown that these assumptions are present, resulting in the maintenance of the status quo in terms of gender, generation, and the power of the State.

Television fictions regularly affirm that we are undeniably in a new age. Yet, it presents stale understandings of gender, age, and citizenship. Masculinity is continually associated with technological proficiency and women who demonstrate proficiency are textually punished in the narrative as a result. Parental authority in the family dynamic is upheld by giving parents the upper hand by the end of most episodes or story arcs. The authority of the government and the police is celebrated. In that respect, television encourages viewers to fear for their safety and give up digital freedoms to gain more security.

111

Overall, consumption is offered as the solution to digital age social problems. We are taught how to properly consume technology (and television, which is now dependent upon the

Internet and other communications technologies for transmedia storytelling and additional aspects of overflow). Ultimately viewers are given a how-to guide for digital technology

consumption: How men can be more masculine and dominant through technology use, how

women can maintain their femininity while consuming technology in gender appropriate ways,

how parents can use technology to spy on their kids, how older people can stay competitive in a

changing workforce. Technological consumerism is not only encouraged, it is shown to be the

only option for a citizen of the digital age.

Critical readings of the representation of technology use offer insight into the concerns,

values, and hopes of the digital age and how they are woven into various narratives. Giving

serious attention to television depictions of how the Internet and mobile technology have

impacted communication—from family to friendships, from education to government, from

labor to consumerism—will reveal the guiding assumptions behind them. What will further

become evident is if the reflections of digital age life are accurate, fair, and justified. My

dissertation has claimed that the stories currently being told maintain longstanding inequalities. It

is my hope that by calling into question the messages about digital age life currently being

promoted, I have shown that new stories are needed for a new age.

112

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Valerie Puiatti received her Bachelor of Arts degree from University of Central Florida in 2003.

She worked for two years before moving to Florida State University to begin working towards

the Master of Arts degree, which she completed in 2006. She then began coursework for the

Doctoral degree in Interdisciplinary Humanities. As a graduate student at Florida State

University, she taught Modern Humanities, Multicultural Film, and assisted with the summer pedagogy program to train new graduate teaching assistants. Her research interests include: film and television studies, technology and society, and gender studies. Since 2009, she has lived in

Bloomington, Indiana where she works as an academic advisor for the College of Arts and

Sciences at Indiana University.

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