Contemplating Life Without Television

The transition from analog to digital television has me thinking about turning off my TV for good. That's not to say that I'm one of these anti-TV people who thinks that it rots brains and has nothing but stupid content. I just think that we're closer than ever before to having a service that could be substituted for television, namely the internet.

In order to be substitutable, using the Internet has to feel like watching television. It has to be able to create the same affect, that same sense of relaxation, of passivity. That was never the Internet's forte, but as online video sites proliferate, acquire more quality content, and become easier to use, it becomes increasingly clear that, with a few more tweaks, it could become just like television.

The closest things so far that I've seen are Joost and Hulu, mostly b/c they make available the same content that is available on television and their interfaces are very easy to use. Still, the interface needs to be even easier. To me, bookmarked webpages are the equivalent of channels on television. With one click, I can get to a new site with (hopefully) new content. The fact that its one click, that there only has to be one choice made, is crucial to the "channel surfing" experience of watching television. I suppose the creators of the site and sites like it want the entire site to function as the frame of a reduced-choice experience similar to channel-surfing while watching television, but the choice isn't reduced enough. When I go to Hulu, I am overwhelmed with choice. Different programs, movies, genres, producers, the ability to search for actors. Type "Tom Cruise" into their search engine and you get 229 professionally (or semi-professionally) produced clips. Some of them are clips of interviews, others are parodies, others are comic commentary about Cruise, others are web series that riff on Cruise. This is all great, and we can crow about the limitless choice online video gives us relative to that of television, but this isn't necessarily desirable. I think online video takes advantage of the limitless bandwidth/shelfspace of the internet to create a new entertainment experience for viewers, but if it really wants to take a bite out of TV revenue, it needs to offer less choice.

Here's the thing: when I turn on the TV, I have only the vaguest hint of a knowledge of what I want. This is a hard thing to admit. We often define our selves by what we desire, at a given moment or over the courses of our lives. But I certainly get the feeling that sometimes, we just want to provide a general frame for a trusted entertainer or medium to try to entertain us. It is the vagueness of this frame that defines the reduced-choice, passive experience of watching television. I go to ESPN to see if there are any games on, but if I flip by Turner Classics and they're playing Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I'll stop there for a bit. I'll check the news to see if they're doing anything Obama related and to make sure the world hasn't ended, and on my way maybe I'll see a particular part of a Seinfeld episode that I feel like re-watching. I don't doubt that all of these texts will be available a la carte online. But my aforementioned television watching experience is greater (or at least different) than the sum of its parts. I didn't know what genre I wanted. You could accurately tag very show with an emotion and I still wouldn't be able to fulfill the desire that channel-surfing fulfills. Sometimes, we don't know exactly what we want (however, we do know that we don't want most commercials. Most channel surfing is caused by commercial breaks. That shit just gets in the way, and it makes television-watching less competitive in the entertainment experience marketplace, but that's another rant for another time).

Maybe that desire is dangerous and irresponsible. Maybe that desire for less choice makes us more easily controlled. But its a real desire, the desire to be passively entertained for a period of time, and television did not invent it. It is more likely that television, with its limited number of options for content, cultivated a kind of passive close-mindedness, a pathological desire to cede control more and more often to anyone or anything. It is possible that a person who watches 6 hours of television a day and doesn't use the internet has been trained to be more passive than someone who uses the internet for 6 hours a day. Still, I think the choice between television and the internet for entertainment and information (and the choice between real life interaction and online interaction for social fulfillment) prompt us to reconsider our notions of desire, choice, passivity/interactivity, and identity.

Any given site could easily recreate the experience of watching TV. The best I've encounter so far are sites or parts of sites that generate rapidly rotating lists of popular articles or links to other sites. There's always new content and its managed to pass muster with a fair amount of like-minded people at a given moment in time. Maybe the choices aren't as mood or genre-diverse as those on television, but they could be (and, with the careful eye of a good editor, they would be). Either that, or the site itself just gives me something, straight up, no choice. When I go to icanhascheezburger.com, I know what I'm getting. I go to I Can Has Cheeseburger, have a laugh at some cats for 5 minutes, and then I'm on to the next site, done w/ it for the day. However, there is no site can provide as much new quality content as a TV station, unless its some high-profile producer that's probably already on TV.

The point is, more sites need to be more forceful in telling the audience what it wants. They need to reduce choice. A site or suite of sites or some content aggregators could kill TV. All you'd need would be a laptop-to-TV cable so you could watch on your couch.

BTW, great article on Slate on this topic. "Passivity is television's main feature; we love it precisely because it asks so little of us"

3 Questions of Pleasure

Here's a thought:

All communications literature (and perhaps all thinking in the social sciences, cultural studies, and humanities) take one of three approaches to pleasure:

Figuring out How to Produce Pleasure: This is a basic question that lots of formalist or neo-formalist film theory tries to answer. We accept the fact that some movies or experiences bring us great pleasure while others do not, and that one person may take great pleasure in one thing while another person takes pleasure in another. The big questions here are: what characteristics, of the text, the experience, or the individual, bring about pleasure? I think of David Bordwell's analyses of how narratives work to be typical of this kind of research. This type of work is most relevant to people trying to make movies, trying to produce experiences or texts that bring others pleasure, or those seeking short-term or long-term pleasure (figuring out what kinds of movies I like so that I might be better in the future at seeking them out). This kind of work can and should be all-inclusive. Usually, it has certain cultural biases, favoring one genre or time period as "classics," but this needn't be the case. It could just as easily be applied to debased cultural forms or experiences or marginalized people. The role of the theorist is that of master practitioner. The goal is to create the most pleasurable temporary experience.

Figuring out Whether Something that Brings us Short-term Pleasure could Bring us Long-Term Displeasure: This is more the domain of media effects research. There's an assumption of the hedonic principle of seeking out movies, TV shows, or experiences that bring us pleasure, at least in the short term. After the experience fades, people might feel displeasure for an unknown, apparently unrelated reason. For instance, you may have sat down to watch Sex and the City or play Mass Effect because, well, you enjoy watching or playing them. Later, you might feel bad about the fact that you've been single for awhile or you may feel increasingly hostile towards your co-workers (which ends up getting you fired). The purpose of this type of research is to draw previously unseen connections between actions engaged in for short-term benefit which lead to long-term problems for the individual. I think there's a lot of room for this branch of theory to grow, considering two things: there has been a rise in the complexity of our information environments, making it more difficult to intuit the long-term effects of what media we consume on our moods, self-esteem, and general disposition, and there has been a rise in emotional disorders. There might be a correlation between the two, and I think it is worth exploring. The role of theorist here is more like a medical doctor. As a result, these theorists demand a degree of deference, one which psychotherapists seem to be afforded but that media scholars are not. I would argue that this reluctance to afford them the authority is partly b/c they become associated with the last type of theorist, which I'll get to in a moment. The goal is to bring about the most pleasurable life, and to make sure that we know the long-term ramifications of our short-term, hedonic pursuits.

Figuring out Which Pleasure is Superior to Others: This is the domain of many cultural theorists and many who are grounded in Marxist theory. Pleasure, as it is commonly defined (positive affect, either short term or long term), is suspect. True pleasure can only be brought about by reconfiguring the society and the economy, not through simply deciding to watch or experience something else. In fact, the decision to watch something else is not, according to this line of theory, bringing about anything but the extension of undesirable circumstances. True pleasure is forever deferred, at least until after the revolution.

The first group fails to take into account any long term effects for the individual or any social effects. However, it possesses a level of analytical detail that the other groups fail to achieve. The second group gives up some of that level of detailed analysis. Also, if it is strictly about measuring pleasure, it offers no commentary on social problems and how media might be related to such problems. The third group is tricky: it does offer analysis of the broad social implications of media that produces pleasure in the short or long term for an individual or groups, but as that group grows, the complexity of the problem grows. The number of assumptions that must be made about group behavior over long periods of time grows. Quickly, it becomes tempting to make generalizations based on conjecture about behavioral economics (i.e. most cultural theory in the Marxist tradition).

None of these ways is the correct way to look at pleasure, but I think its worth keeping the distinction amongst them in mind when judging the merits of one particular theory. Its also worth thinking about all three of them when asking ourselves whether any media experience is "good" or "bad."