Television Studies by Jonathan Gray & Amanda D. Lotz

Author:Jonathan Gray & Amanda D. Lotz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2018-02-03T16:00:00+00:00

The ritual uses of television

Several other lines of – at times – starkly different audience research stem in part from the work of Roger Silverstone, a key name in British media and television studies whose work at Brunel University, the University of Sussex, and the London School of Economics helped to make all three schools centers for the study of media in the UK. Much of Silverstone's more famous work was theoretical, not empirical, but his continuing legacy is seen in an interest in the role of ritual in media, and in the ways in which audiences and the media alike structure the relations between each other.89 Silverstone wrote poetically of television as the primary storyteller and mythmaker of our current era and was interested in audiences’ ritual uses for such stories and myths. Television, he noted, “accompanies us as we wake up, as we breakfast, as we have our tea and as we drink in bars. It comforts us when we are alone. It helps us sleep. It gives us pleasure, it bores us and sometimes it challenges us. It provides us with opportunities to be both sociable and solitary.”90 It is not simply something we look at when bored, but something that serves a whole range of quite intimate ritual purposes in our lives; or, rather, its many stories and genres serve such roles.

To make sense of some of these roles, Silverstone drew on sociologist Anthony Giddens's writings on “ontological security.”91 Giddens observed that contemporary society is replete with risk – as you read this, for instance, a gas leak could be threatening your life; a terrorist attack might be seconds away from affecting your city; the financial markets could be imploding, taking your and/or your parents’ savings with them; and so forth. This risk society therefore requires coping mechanisms and requires us to find ways to feel okay, to feel safe. This feeling of safety and comfort is called “ontological security,” or security in one's being. Silverstone regarded television and its stories as key ways by which we establish ontological security, as alluded to in his above-quoted list of waking, beginning the day, having a break, and sleeping with the medium. So, for instance, one might ease out of the hardships of the day by watching a late night talk show, or one might wake up with the idle, upbeat chatter of a morning show. One might find connection to others through watching sitcoms with “people like me” or use the news to otherwise situate oneself in time, space, and a community. Given these multiple ritual uses, television has also taken on a distinctly domestic feel, “a member of the family in a metaphorical sense but also in a literal sense insofar as it is integrated into the daily pattern of domestic social relations, and insofar as it is the focus of emotional or cognitive energy, releasing or containing tension for example, or providing comfort.”92 In the process, television has become central to how many of us

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