There is a dialectical tension in the capitalist economic system. The system is the most efficient economic system so far in history and has led to remarkable discoveries and ease of life for many. However, it also perpetrates injustices on many that are not easily reconciled. The primary injustice is often identified as the exploitation of the worker by the ruling class. In the context of media markets there is an occluded exploitation, that the laborers in broadcast media are the audience not the creators of the art. According to Dallas Smythe in his seminal work On Audience Commodity and Work he posits that the work of the audience is to purchase the products advertised during the broadcast program. In effect, the audience is then sold as exploitable laborers to the advertisers. The great inequality is that the laborers (audience) are not aware that they are being sold. Without recognizing that they are being exploited the audience goes on their merry way watching and purchasing without the knowledge that they are being oppressed. The audience loses their identity as individuals and are commodified as market shares or ratings which are then sold off. This insidious relationship is occasionally subverted through the media itself. There are those in the media, the artists, that plant subversive texts in the media that reveals and mocks the oppressive structure. The producers allow the program to continue long enough to give the audience the illusion of emancipation and then cut it to satiate the corporate advertisers. Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is indicative of this type of experience. Through means both overt and covert, extrinsic and intrinsic it represents the exploitative power structure that commodifies the audience as labor for the corporate advertisers.
Most apparently in the cold open of Studio 60, Wes Mendell ,the director of the fictional Studio 60, interrupts a skit to rant about the sad state of the programming on his network. After likening the content of the programs to pornography and snuff films he admonishes us to “Turn the T.V. off!” This is a moment that functions of both an intrinsic and and extrinsic level. Because character has two audiences, the fictional in the context of the show and the real outside that context, the line functions in that duality. He is telling his fictional audience to turn off the TV, to unplug themselves from the oppressive structure, to quit their night job. Additionally he is telling us to quit watching. This is a subversive act. Sorkin is flirting with the cutting of his show. Like the live studio audience on screen, initially we laugh at Wes’ antics. Then he repeatedly says that “This is not a skit.” The audience ceases to laugh and so do we. This is for real. His extended rant on the nature of television and its relationship to its audience bespeaks that terrifying reality of our oppressive relationship. The terrifying reality that we do not turn it off. We stay plugged in and absorb the advertising and go buy those products like good little workers.
Perhaps the most powerful moment is not this, but the moment that it leads to. In the booth, during Wes’s rant, the producer and the head tech have a stand-off. The producer wants Wes‘ rant cut. The Tech holds it for a full 53 seconds. He doesn’t turn off the show. Once again the show functions in that duality. He leaves the show on so that the director can say his piece and so do we. While the great victory would be if we had turned off the TV when he told us to, perhaps there was more subversion in what he had to say after. So then comes a contradiction. We can emancipate ourselves from the broadcast or we can remain plugged in and the makers of the show get to subvert the system and still the system is maintained, the marketing money is coming in and the makers can assuage their conscience that they are doing something about the problem. But in reality we are all just coping.
Then there is the remarkable moment. Finally the tech cuts the rant and they go to the opening of their program. We see, as the imaginary audience sees, the logo for the show. The shot appears as if we are looking at a screen on our screen. Then it fades into our screen alone and then cut to commercial. That moment of transition is what tells us that we are the real audience that Wes was speaking to. There is no fictional audience. It is us. In that sense then we are being asked to subvert the system together with the Sorkin and his crew. But in order to do so we have to abandon him and the subversive means. Ironically we so much enjoy that subversion that we continue to watch and the status quo is maintained and there is no emancipation and we merely cope with the oppressive circumstances in which we find ourselves.
What ultimately occurred is that Sorkin’s show was cancelled after one season. They had their 53 seconds and ultimately we cut. The ratings dropped by half over the course of the season. The sad reality is that the ratings did not drop because people emancipated themselves from the system. They just changed the channel and watched something else, something that was less subversive and better at helping them cope.
Nicholas Garham indicates that that popular culture being represented to subvert the system only leads to coping without critical inquiry. Those who watched the show in its original run enjoyed the subversion and consumed the advertisements and continued in the system. The inquiry, however, was missing. The series has now been released on DVD. This is provided without commercials and we can practice critical inquiry regarding the subversive elements of the program without supporting the system with our labor seeing as how nobody in the room paid for the DVD and there were no advertisements to lure us into that commodified relationship. So the show has moved into its extrinsic purpose and through the critical inquiry now available to the viewers of the recording emancipation is possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment