Monday, September 8, 2014
Traces of the Past
In the last paragraph of Lynn Spigel’s “Installing the Television Set,” Spigel quotes historian Carlo Ginzburg, who writes: “Reality is opaque; but there are certain points—clues, signs—which allow us to decipher it.” Why do you think Spigel closes her analysis of post-war television’s role in American domestic spaces with this quote? How does she describe her historical approach/methodology? What types of “traces” of the past does she examine in this essay and how does she use them? Do you agree with her approach to history?
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I believe that Spigel ended her text “Installing the Television Set” with that specific quote by Carlo Ginzburg to enforce the point that television is not reality. Spigel discusses the way the television acted as a new way for viewers to live and see the world. Watching the TV had begun to replace events outside of the home, such as going to movie theaters, attending sporting events, and watching live theater performances. With the television viewers could now be a part of any type of event they wanted. Spigel states “For more than presenting an illusion of resemblances - early television attempted to present a reproduction of the entire situation of being at the theater – the spectator’s imaginary sense of being placed on the scene,” (16). This new invention created a fake reality. The viewers were manipulated into living vicariously through the actors whose houses, families, possessions, and overall beings were created for entertainment purposes and were therefore not real.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the text, Spigel focuses a great deal on the way the introduction of the television changed the everyday household. Suddenly there were rights and wrongs for everything: how to display a TV, how to position oneself in front of the television, the way women should turn the dial so as not to look inappropriate or unflattering. In addition, the way men and women regarded each other in real life changed. Men began to lose their masculinity and hierarchy in their households because women would put watching the television as their highest priority above listening to their husbands or paying them attention. Likewise, men would lose themselves in sports games or would begin to fantasize about women on the screen for the sole fact that they were being broadcasted through a television. Overall, people saw the TV as a new reality – a way to escape their lives and live in another world for awhile.
“Reality is opaque; but there are certain points – clues, signs – which allow us to decipher it.” I think Spigel wanted to show through that quote that, though the shows shown on television may seem like reality from the screen, they would never truly be real. There will always been a distinct line between reality and television and it is up to the viewer to remember that when desire and total immersion take over.