Televisuality Communications, Media, and Culture Style, Crisis, and Authority George F
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A volume in the series Televisuality Communications, Media, and Culture Style, Crisis, and Authority George F. Custen, series editor in American Television Series Board Larry Gross, University of Pennsylvania Dana Polan, University of Pittsburgh John Thornton Caldwell Virginia Wright Wexman, University of Illinois, Chicago Rutgers University Press New Brunswick, New Jersey Contents Preface vii A version of chapter 5 was first published as "Televisuality as a Semiotic Machine" in Cinema Journal 32:4 (August 1993), and is reprinted here with permission of the Acknowledgments xiii University of Texas Press. Portions of chapter 4 were first published as "Salvador/ Noriega" in Jump-Cut 37 (1992), and are reprinted here by permission of the editors of Jump-Cut. The photographs grouped in the illustrations appearing on pages 17, Part i The Problem of the Image 161, 162, 164, 194, 195, 197, and 226 are from the Terrence O'Flaherty Collection and are reprinted here by permission of Arts Library-Special Collections, UCLA. 1 Excessive Style The Crisis of Network Television 3 All other photographs are by 1.Thornton Caldwell and are reprinted here by permis- sion of the artist. 2 Unwanted Houseguests and Altered States A Short History of Aesthetic Posturing 32 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 3 Modes of Production The Televisual Apparatus 73 Caldwell, John Thornton, 1954- Televisuality: style, crisis, and authority in American television / John Part II The Aesthetic Economy of Televisuality Thornton Caldwell. p. em. - (Communication, media, and culture) 4 Boutique Designer Television/Auteurist Spin Doctoring 105 Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8135-2163-7 (cloth). - ISBN 0-8135-2164-5 (pbk.) 5 Franchiser Digital Packaging/Industrial-Strength Semiotics 134 1. Television broadcasting-Social aspects-United States. 2. Television broadcasting-United States-History. 3. Television 6 Loss Leader Event Status Programming/Exhibitionist History 160 programs-United States-History and criticism. 4. Visual communication. 1. Title. II. Series. 7 Trash TV Thrift-Shop Video/More Is More 193 PN1992.6C22 1994 94-39017 302.23' 45--dc20 CIP 8 Tabloid TV Styled Live/Ontological Stripmall 223 British Cataloging-in-Publication information available Part III Cultural Aspects of Televisuality Copyright © 1995 by John Thornton Caldwell 9 Televisual Audience Interactive Pizza 249 Published by Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey All rights reserved 10 Televisual Economy Recessionary Aesthetics 284 Manufactured in the United States of America 11 Televisual Politics Negotiating Race in the L.A. Rebellion 302 Postscript Intellectual Culture, Image, and Iconoclasm 336 Notes 359 Bibliography 407 Index 423 1 Excessive Style The Crisis of Network Television Television is to communication what the chainsaw is to logging. -Director David Lynch 1 There isn't much out there that looks real. -Director/cameraman Ron Dexter- Disruptive Practice On the Friday September 8, 1989, edition ofABC's nightly news, erudite anchor Peter Jennings bemoaned the advent of what he termed "trash television." Pref acing his remarks by reference to a previous report by ABC on the subject, Jennings described the phenomenon with a forewarning. Norms of quality, re straint, and decorum notwithstanding, the new and ugly genre would in fact shortly premiere. Citing H. L. Menoken's adage about not overestimating the intelligence of the American people, Jennings signed off that evening with an obvious air of resignation. The class struggle, one sensed, might soon be lost. Within two evenings, Jennings's warning was fulfilled. The highly evolved intertextuality that characterized television of the late 1980s was about to wit ness one of its most extreme manifestations to date. On Saturday, September 9, independent station KHJ-Channel 9 of Los Angeles uncorked the one-hour pre miere ofAmerican Gladiators in syndication to stations throughout the country. Two nights later superstation KTLA-Channel 5 of Los Angeles aired its own na tionwide trash spectacular-a two-hour premiere version of a show named Rock and-Rollergames. Later that fall, pay-per-view television made available to cable viewers nationwide a special called Thunder and Mud. This latter trash hybrid featured various low-culture luminaries, and included Jessica Hahn of the recent PTL-Jim Bakker sex scandal, female mud wrestlers, wild-man comedian Sam Kinison, and the all-woman heavy-metal rock group She-Rok, The Los Angeles Times labeled the spectacle "Sex, Mud, and Rock-and-Roll," The producers, how ever, preferred the derivative punch of Thud to the official program title Thunder and Mud. To the show's makers, Thud was a "combination female mud-wrestling act-heavy-metal rock concert-game show with some comedy bits thrown in,'? If any doubts remained about mass culture's reigning aesthetic in 1989, it was cer tainly clear that stylistic and generic restraint were not among its properties. Rock-and-Rollergames was slated, interestingly, to air against the widely popular and front-running network sitcom Roseanne. Such competition was formidable given the vertically scheduled and heavily promoted sequence of shows that fol lowed Roseanne Tuesday nights on ABC. Given trash television's excessive and low-culture pretense, such competition was significant, since Roseanne was be ing celebrated as television's premier "low-culture" hit; a status it had achieved with both viewers and tabloids during the previous season. By late fall, KHJ-TV had shifted Rock-and-Rollergames to Saturday mornings, and had renamed (and 4 THE PROBLEM OF THE IMAGE EXCESSIVE STYLE 5 reduced) the spectacle to Rollergames, still in wide syndication in 1993. Ameri television by 1990 had retheorized its aesthetic and presentational task.f With in can Gladiators found itself shifted later in the year to the weekend schedule, and creasing frequency, style itself became the subject, the signified, if you will, of in subsequent years to late weekday afternoon strips. Together with its primetime television. In fact, this self-consciousness ofstyle became so great that it can more airings, Gladiators found a lucrative niche by actively extending its competition accurately be described as an activity-as a performance of style-rather than as out into the audience. Open trials were held throughout the country in highly pub a particular look'? Television has come to flaunt and display style. Programs battle licized gladiator competitions at places like the Los Angeles Coliseum. Although for identifiable style-markers and distinct looks in order to gain audience share trash television did not turn out to be an overwhelmingly dominant genre in within the competitive broadcast flow. Because of the sheer scope of the broad primetime, Gladiators and other shows continued successfully in production with cast flow, however-a context that simultaneously works to make televised material much successthrough the next four seasons. Musc1ebound, steroid-pumpedwomen anonymous-television tends to counteract the process ofstylistic individuation.8 gladiators like Zap continued to grace the pages of TV Guide and the sets of ce In short, style, long seen as a mere signifier and vessel for content, issues, and lebritytalk showsthrough 1993.4 A medieval variant ofthe trash spectacular, called ideas, has now itself become one of television's most privileged and showcased Knights and Warriors, entered the trash programming fray in 1992-1993. Nick signifieds. Why television changed in this way is, of course, a broader and im elodeon hyped and cablecast its hyperactive trash-gladiatorial clones, Guts and portant question. Any credible answer to the question is only possible after sys Guts: All Stars, for the younger set throughout the 1993-1994 season. tematically and patiently analyzing representative program texts. By closely Although the genre was defined from the start by its distinctive no-holds barred examining style and ideology in a range of shows and series that celebrate the look, trash spectaculars were also symptomatic of a broader and more persistent visual, the decorative, or the extravagant a more fundamental reconsideration of stylistic tendency in contemporary television-one that was not always castigated the status ofthe image in television becomes possible. as trash nor limited to low-culture content. That is, trash-spectaculars can be seen Televisuality was a historical phenomenon with clear ideological implications. as a stylistic bridge between lower trash shows-like professional wrestling or It was not simply an isolated period of formalism or escapism in American tele The Morton Downey, Jr. shock-talk show (series that exploited very low produc vision or a new golden age. Although quality was being consciously celebrated tion values to blankly document hyperactive onstage performances for the fan situ in the industry during this period, the celebration had as much to do with busi ated squarely in the stands or on the sofa)-and higher televisual forms that more ness conditions as it did with the presence of sensitive or serious television art extensively choreograph visual design, movement, and editing specificallyfor the ists.? Nor was televisuality merely an end-product of postmodernism.l'' The camera. Even mid-1980s shows with higher cultural pretension or prestige, like growing value ofexcessive style on primetime network and cable television dur Max Headroom or Moonlighting on ABC or MTV's manic game