tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5512870689197311087.post7502291865916938509..comments2023-05-09T02:31:07.268-07:00Comments on CTCS 587: TV Theory 2017: Core Response - Television While You RideTara McPhersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09874394027026185133noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5512870689197311087.post-13971443820522121892017-02-13T19:19:50.313-08:002017-02-13T19:19:50.313-08:00Your response is great example of how productive ...Your response is great example of how productive it is to look at different variations of public TV (programs, watching experiences, etc.) in waiting areas, in order to follow up on, think further, or criticise McCarthy’s approach and specific research focus. <br /><br />To be honest I found the first part of her essay far more intriguing than the latter part where she zooms in on the Accent Health Network’s presence in the context of a New York hospital. The reason being that the first half offered glimpses into a rich, complex, and diverse set of approaches and research questions related to the temporal dimensions of TV, and the experience of waiting, from the (interdisciplinary) perspectives of psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology, and media studies; while, the second half, in my reading, switches to a fairly one-sided (as in programmatic) analysis with few arguments or conclusions made beyond those usual ones, quite calculable in advance, on the "promotion of consumption" (207) and the "normative alignment with... self-discipline” (203), for which the actual empirical research and extended description of it do not seem too necessarily or adding much to (I’m being a bit cynical here, yet that is how I see it these days). While for the most, McCarthy presupposes TV’s and its public placement as a satellite of consumerist capitalism, and, accordingly, approaches it as evil and reactionary, I appreciate her occasional considerations that aren’t always already foreclosed and directly entailed by her (legit) political perspective. For instance, her bringing up the idea that the sort of waiting less fortunate people are forced to endure on a regular basis might actually be made more comfortable, less stressful and exhaustive, by what is identifiable as "distraction”, thus, as a possible instance, public TV might, in some cases and in certain forms, be operating in waiting areas as something else than, as not merely an evil tool of capitalist ideology. <br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05176370085096625626noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5512870689197311087.post-9629476932026162852017-02-12T22:14:24.895-08:002017-02-12T22:14:24.895-08:00Interesting that you brought up TV in elevators, A...Interesting that you brought up TV in elevators, Alia. When I was reading McCarthy, I thought of a different "waiting area" that TV frequently occupies: the taxi cab. At least, I found that televisions were pretty commonplace in the taxis I'd occasionally take when I lived in Chicago (before Uber and Lyft were things). Though I wonder if we could call a taxi a waiting area. On the one hand, you are waiting to arrive at a destination and are basically inert, but on the other, your body is "traveling" (being transported?). This grey area certainly makes me think of the Morse reading, and how we can be both passive and distracted while nevertheless being in some sort of motion...<br /><br />Anyway, I find the TVs in cabs to have a similar effect as the hospital waiting room programming McCarthy talks about, because they loop through the same five-minute smash of talk show clips, commercials, weather reports, and news coverage. For me at least, this always heightens my awareness of "waiting," and it helps demarcate the amount of time I've spent in the cab (i.e., this is the third time I've seen this particular clip.) And I also see some parallels in terms of privilege--one can assume that many people taking cabs over public transportation have some degree of privilege over those who can only afford the subway or bus. I suppose, then, these segments appeal to demographics with higher buying power, who are more likely to opt for a private transportation option. I think there are ways to tie Morse and McCarthy more cleanly / tightly here, but I haven't quite sorted it out yet!Josie Glorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06664167482075409980noreply@blogger.com