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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By using Carlo Ginzburg’s quote at the end of the article, Spigel is trying to say that although it is hard to examine history of television, popular media can be used as “clues” to help us understand the attitude toward television in the postwar era. For instance, one of the discourses is about the massive migration from the city into rural areas. Television, as a new communication technology, supplants transportation and brings the world to the home. Another popular discourse involves “isolationism” and “ideology of privacy.” Television creates an illusion that audiences are connected to the world outside even through they are physically alone in their homes. Furthermore, one popular discourse is about hyper-realism. It suggests that television enables its viewers to enjoy the view from the best angle with a sense of intimacy through close-up.
ReplyDeleteIn the article, Spigel perceives the arrival of television in the context of a history of representation. She talks about a variety of popular discourses about television and the “domestic space” distributed media institutions (magazines, magazine advertisements, television narratives and etc.), including both utopian view and dystopian view of the installation of television in the home. Through examining the popular media, she wants to see the meanings of television and the modes of use that the media advised in the early period. Spigel’s approach to history is problematic because media coverage about television does not express public’s response to the television when it first came out.