Television Narrative and Discourse

I.  Because of television's context of production (an economics which demands interruption and continuing series), its context of reception (in the home, expecting distraction), and its signifying system (a flow of seemingly "live" images), TV narratives tend to follow particular conventions:

A.  Because TV must accommodate interruptions, it has a segmented form that disallows tight linear development.  Instead, it has loosely knit narratives that are circular and repetitive, and, across its narratives, it is organized in terms of “flow” (more precisely, the dialectic of flow and segmentation:  a sense of continuity through discontinuity, as described by Raymond Williams).

B.  To compensate for the lack of suspense, TV relies on variety between and within segments.  The segments must be entertaining on their own, so they are relatively self-contained (shot in "real time" through the multiple-camera system), and they follow one another in succession rather than strict causality.  One might say that TV focuses on "clinches" rather than resolutions, or that TV is "menu-driven" rather than "goal-driven."

C.  Because of the reduction of suspense driving us toward closure--and even more importantly, for economic reasons (to maintain programs and audience loyalty)--development is curtailed and no problem can ever be finally resolved (there is a limited narrative aperture to allow for program repeatability and/or continuity).  That is, there are "mini-climaxes" and resolutions, but the narrative problematic (the on-going dilemma) must never be closed or solved.  TV deals with this in distinct ways in its distinct narrative forms:

1.  the serial:  an ever expanding middle with no beginning or end; trapped in an endless present.

2.  the series:  the same imbalance is maintained, and events are repeated with no memory.

D.  This categorization of media texts into particular genres serves both the industry (allowing for standardization, product similarity/difference, consumer identification, and marketing) and the audience (allowing for easy recognition and accessibility).  However, by calling our attention to only certain intertextual relations and horizons of meaning, genres have an ideological effect:  they regulate signification, provide "pre-readings" for texts, and take the place of an interpretive community by providing a delimited interpretive context.  Television's genre divisions, however, seem to be looser than those of other media forms:  it is common for television programs to appropriate conventions from other genres, to reference them through strategies of television self-reflexivity, and/or to bolster their own authority by tying themselves to other TV forms.

E.  TV, in all of its forms, provides a continual update on a familiar state (either the constant reintegration of the family as in the series, or the constant disintegration of the family as in the serial).  This feeds into television's illusion of liveness, immediacy, and discourse.

F.  To maintain interest, TV narratives multiply their plots and characters, proliferating storylines and narrative existents:  our interest shifts from the syntagmatic axis of suspense to the paradigmatic axis of relationships between plots, characters, settings.

G.  Thus, TV tends to focus on groups rather than isolated individuals (on multiple rather than singular protagonists).  While the form is segmented, a different kind of continuity is provided through the repetition of a character group.  This helps to establish the family as "normal":  the repetition and stability creates a sense of consensus and "ordinariness" that again makes TV seem co-present with life itself and normalizes this social form.

H.  TV’s presentation of character works to emphasize the TV personality:  the actor’s (presumed) personality lends substance--and familiarity--to the character role (in distinction to cinema's star system in which the character role lends substance to the constructed "star image").

I.  This familiarism/familialism is aided by TV's habit of breaking its own diegesis (that is, by having permeable diegetic boundaries).  There is not a sense of a self-contained fictional world; rather, the world of the fiction, the world of the ad, and the world of the viewer are all equated (the better to get you to buy and the better to insinuate television into "life itself").

J.  TV presents itself as discourse (acknowledging speaker and listener) rather than as story/history (which hides the source of enunciation so that it seems to happen all by itself), and all of its stories are framed by its "superdiscourse" of scheduling.  This discursivity mimics oral culture, yet structures it into a rigid form.  It also works to draw us into the industry's presentation of social meanings and to present them as a consensus.  Through the device of direct address, an illusion of actual contact is created which works in TV's interest and promotes certain ideologies.  But just as cinema only presents the illusion of history (it does really have a source and is artificially created), TV gives only the illusion of discourse (we don't see the real source and it isn't real conversation).

II.  The potential effects of television's narrative and discursive forms?  There are (at least) two opposing assessments:

A.  TV is naturalizing and normalizing; it promotes a white, bourgeois family ideology and promotes itself as the way to reach this ideal: 

1.  Its repetitive structures/formulas offer ritualistic reassurance but inscribe a static view:  the lack of development (particularly in the series) reinforces the status quo and, in particular, presents the family as unchanging.

2.  TV sets up a community of address in which we delegate our look to TV itself (we only look in on its proceedings).  So TV constructs our worldview--not as an individualized, masterful spectator (as with cinema's construction of realism), but as an already socialized family member constituted with and through TV itself.  That is, TV may subsume its ideological problematic into its mode of address, the better to gain our acceptance by positioning audiences as part of the televisual family.

3.  Television programs/genres draw upon or reference other television programs/genres in a cycle of self-referentiality by which TV maintains its own order and status in the face of any threat.  Its self-reflexivity operates as self-enclosure and self-promotion. 

B.  TV may allow more room for viewer negotiation and resistance than other media (like film): 

1.  Because it seems co-present and blurred with life itself, we can more easily insinuate our own lives/perspectives into it and thus (depending on the discourses and cultural competencies we bring to bear on the text), produce potentially resistant readings.  In other words, TV narratives are not absolutely structured, but involve a process of structuration in which we are co-producers.

2.  Television's use (and modification) of genres opens up creative possibilities (for both program producers and viewers): 

a.  The repetitive structure of the series allows television to create parodies and ironic commentaries on American life and values--including those of TV itself. 

b.  The continuing structure of the serial allows TV to handle complex social issues.

c.  Television texts often seem to disrupt or cross genre lines, allowing for the historical evolution of narrative forms (for example, the "serialization" of most television genres.

3.  Television self-reflexivity may open up space for irony, denaturalization, and/or critique, allowing viewers distance themselves from television's illusions.

4.  Our psychic fascination with the text is interrupted so we're less drawn in to TV's way of seeing.

C.  Ien Ang:  both attacks on TV's totalizations and celebrations of TV's diversity are reductive.  The "global village" is necessarily chaotic--producing and exploiting differences--but this chaos and uncertainty does not indicate an escape from power.  To the contrary: this is precisely how power operates in capitalist postmodernity (and its associated media forms).