Critical Dictionary of Film and Television Theory

Roberta Pearson, Philip Simpson

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9781138007079
• eBook ISBN: 9781134716975
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Media Studies

The Critical Dictionary of Film and Television Theory clearly and accessibly explains the major theoretical approaches now deployed in the study of the moving image, as well as defining key theoretical terms.
This dictionary provides readers with the conceptual apparatus to understand the often daunting language and terminology of screen studies. Entries include: *audience * Homi K. Bhabha * black cinema * the body * children and media * commodification * cop shows * deep focus * Umberto Eco * the gaze * Donna Haraway * bell hooks * infotainment * master narrative * medical dramas * morpheme * myth * panopticon * pastiche * pleasure * real time * social realism * sponsorship * sport on television * subliminal * third cinema * virtual reality
Consultant Editors:
David Black, USA, William Urricchio, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, Gill Branston, Cardiff University,
UK, Elayne Rapping, USA

C

cable and satellite

Cable and satellite is a term commonly employed to refer to technologies that are used to transmit a range of data and information including television pictures. Cable systems are usually installed below ground. The cables connect the end user–homes or businesses–to a central point that distributes information. Cable television systems normally require some form of decoder to interpret the information and turn it into television images. Satellites are situated above the earth and beam signals which are subsequently picked up by satellite dishes attached to people’s homes.

The technological significance of satellite broadcasting is that it is extra-terrestrial; this means it has the potential to evade state boundaries and national control. Information beamed from a satellite can be picked up by anyone within receiving distance of the signals who has the necessary receiving equipment (e.g., a satellite dish), allowing television viewers in the United Kingdom, for example, access to French, German or Scandinavian programming. Satellite television is, then, potentially a truly global technology (see globalization).

By contrast, cable technologies operate on a local level. Cable franchises are granted on a regional and local basis by the Independent Television Commission (ITC) in the United Kingdom, and awarded on the basis of competitive tender by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States. Cable television has a much longer history in the United States, where geographical diversity and poor quality terrestrial transmission meant that, in many areas, cable distribution of television was the only means of receiving good quality pictures.

Cable operators install and maintain the cable infrastructure in a given area and provide customers with a range of services–including television channels and telecommunications–that can be distributed via their cable network. One of the main services offered by cable operators is access to a wider range of television channels and services, including the content of the main satellite broadcasters and, increasingly, digital and on-line services.

Globalization

The trend towards increasingly international structures of political, social and economic organization represented by, among other things, the relaxation of controls on currencyexchange and the liberalization of trade have been both enabled by and reflected in the rise of new media technologies that cross national boundaries, such as cable and satellite television.

While in theory the growth of broadcast outlets should give more access to a diverse range of voices and views, in practice only those organizations with sufficient capital to compete on the international scale which satellite requires have succeeded in reaching a substantial audience. Satellite television channels broadcasting across regions mean that cultures as diverse as Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Sweden and Brazil all have access to variations of the same global media channels and brands, for example, CNN, MTV and the Disney Channel. Some cultural and political commentators have voiced concern that this trend has led to a homogenization of culture, lifestyle and formal styles and to the erosion of local cultures and tastes. This is of particular concern in relation to children and young people, who are seen as both more vulnerable and more desirable consumers (see children and media).

Increasingly, the global reach of big media corporations also has implications for how the media report on and represent particular situations and stories. One of the most articulate critics of this process is Noam Chomsky. Chomsky has written extensively about the relationship between corporate power and the control over the ‘public mind’ through the media. Given that global media corporations such as Time-Warner and News Corps are themselves representatives of the global power elite, it is hardly surprising that the coverage of issues relating to free trade and the global economy is likely to come from a particular perspective. A perspective which, as Chomsky (1987) argues, serves the interests of the privileged North American and western European elite who are the main beneficiaries of globalization.

Viewer choice

The power of cable and satellite technologies to transmit a greater volume of information has also created many more television channels unhampered by the limits of the broadcast spectrum. The most obvious implication of cable and satellite television, therefore, has been the provision of more choice for the viewer in terms of the amount of television available to him or her, and thus greater power to choose exactly what he/she wants to watch. For example, a sports fan has access to specialized sports channels twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and is no longer restricted to watching the highlights of matches once a week on one of the main terrestrial channels when it fits into their schedules.

However, the technological advances in cable and satellite broadcasting that took place throughout the 1980s and 1990s and its accompanying rhetoric of consumer choice cannot be divorced from the political push towards deregulation and privatization which occurred in all areas of public life in the same period (see deregulation, the United Kingdom; deregulation, the United States). New technologies, providing the viewer with potentially hundreds of channels and programmes, was hailed by those on the right as the triumph of consumer sovereignty over elitist autocratic institutions, such as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC; see Reith, John).

The cable and satellite ‘revolution’ was given its most convincing ideological justification by Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch successfully managed to link technological progress to populist anti-elitism, thus providing a justification for the rolling back of regulation. In his 1989 address to the Edinburgh Television Festival, Murdoch explained how in the age of spectrum scarcity (before cable and satellite technologies), ‘the people could not be trusted to watch what they wanted to watch so that [television] had to be controlled…by people who knew what was good for us’.

Cable and satellite television has thus been positioned as a more direct form of communication between the viewer and the producer, liberated by the market to respond only to the wants of the audience, unhampered by the heavy hand of a regulating state. However, the claims made concerning the ability of cable and satellite technology to deliver diversity and value to the viewer are problematic. First, unlike universally available terrestrial broadcasting, access to cable and satellite television presents an extra cost to the viewer, either in subscription or in pay-per-view–a cost that not all sections of society can afford. Second, the promise of a diversity of voices and representations enabled by an increase in distribution outlets has so far failed to materialize, largely due to the prohibitively high entry costs of mass media production and distribution, but also because of the free market’s tendency to monopoly and merger. This means that while cable and satellite, and now digital technologies, have brought an end to spectrum scarcity, they cannot address the issue of more relevance to the average viewer–that is, content scarcity.

Fragmentation of the audience

Inherent in the move towards a choice-oriented model of television broadcasting is the erosion of the idea of a mass audience. When sports fans can choose sports channels, children can choose children’s channels, music fans can choose music channels and so on, who is left watching a mainstream channel based on a consensus of what the population wants to watch in general?

Inevitably, the more channels there are to choose from, the smaller the share of the overall audience each channel will get. This simple equation problematizes the model of a public service broadcasting which rests on an idea of the audience as sharing certain common features and interests–national events such as elections or state occasions or defining sporting events such as the FA Cup Final or the Superbowl.

The emergence of specialist television channels enabled by cable and satellite technologies–for example, sport, movie or lifestyle channels–creates specialist markets for particular types of programming and as a consequence assumes a different relationship between broadcaster and viewer. Unlike the days of spectrum scarcity where the choice of prime-time viewing might be between two sitcoms, a popular news programme and a soap opera, with specialist cable and satellite programming a music fan can tune in to MTV, a sciencefiction fan can watch Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and a comedy fan can watch old episodes of his or her favourite sit-com on the Paramount channel.

This audience fragmentation has particular implications for television advertising: general mass-market advertisers will find it increasingly difficult to reach a large, generic audience. However, it has become easier for companies to target a product at specific sections of the audience who are more likely to be watching a specialist channel. This leads to an increased importance placed on market research in the commissioning and production process so that television companies can minimize risk–in terms of investing in programmes that are unlikely to be successful with the target audience–and find out more about their audiences and thus provide more useful information to advertisers.

However, one of the problems with the specialist/individual choice model of broadcasting is that audiences are seldom as regulated as market researchers and advertisers would like them to be. Television audiences frequently have diverse tastes and make viewing choices based on a number of factors to do with their social situations and daily lives. The fact is that the same viewer may enjoy watching a sci-fi channel, CNN and a soap opera such as Coronation Street.

A further implication of content scarcity that cable and satellite television has so far produced is the increasing use of re-packaged and re-run programmes. This means that many channels rely on a diet of television nostalgia as an economic way of filling almost infinite hours of broadcast time.

Regulation

The international reach of cable and satellite television also has implications for the way in which television is regulated. Traditionally, nation states have had a high degree of control over television output–either through direct ownership and editorial control or through the licensing of the broadcast spectrum (defined as a national utility). Satellites broadcasting from outside national boundaries become harder to license and control. Although national bodies are still ultimately responsible for regulating any television output received in the country, there has been a move towards post hoc regulation.

The other difficulty of regulating a post-cable and satellite television landscape is the large amount of television that is now broadcast which makes it more or less impossible for any one body to monitor the complete television output both nationally and locally. Specialized channels and the development of ‘niche’ markets have also required a rethinking of regulatory requirements. For example, it would be difficult to apply the same criteria to the Playboy Channel and a channel aimed specifically at children: if someone chooses to watch an adult channel they are expected to take responsibility for what they might see. In this way, judgements about taste and suitability rely increasingly on definitions of audience that also reinforces the increasing importance of audience research.

Convergence

Perhaps a greater long-term significance of cable and satellite is the potential for media convergence. Convergence is in many ways the offspring of deregulation, allowing companies to operate across media sectors so that a cable television company can also offer telephone services and Internet access. Increasingly, with the expanded capability of broadband networks and digital cable services, it will be possible for television to be available on personal computers and for viewers to access the Internet via television. This convergence at the level of services is also being mirrored by the mounting convergence of media ownership through mergers and take-overs between media companies (which also accelerates the trend towards globalization).

The convergence of media technologies is also reflected in greater conjunction in media content, to the extent that television programmes increasingly use formal devices developed on the World Wide Web, or films use narrative strategies more reminiscent of computer games. An example of this trend is cross-media events, pioneered by companies like Disney, whereby the release of an animated film is often supported by a computer game, a television cartoon and a themed Website, as well as by merchandising.

See also: broadcasting, the United Kingdom; broadcasting, the United States

References

Chomsky N. (1987) The Manufacture of Consent’, The Chomsky Reader, London: Serpent’s Tail.

HANNAH DAVIES

camera style and lens style

The camera and the lens are the devices for controlling the light and the formation of the image in film and video. Their positioning, movement and operation influence the style and meaning of the images and hence our understanding of the text. The camera angle defines the nature of the shot, and in so doing helps to create the style of the film giving it, as part of the mise-en-scène, atmosphere and mood. When there are performers in the scene, positioning of the camera can make the shot appear to be either subjective or objective.

The tendency of frontal wide shots of early cinema, where the narrative would unfold as if on a theatre stage, has, conventionally, been replaced by shots that give the viewer the best possible view of the action (see classical Hollywood cinema and new Hollywood cinema). This view may be from the point of view of one of the characters, thereby making it a subjective shot (as the camera is in the position of one of the characters; see point of view shot), or it may be a shot from a point of view which gives the audience some narrative information or atmosphere from an objective position. Indeed, in certain cases the shot may be from an ‘impossible’ position such as the inside of a cupboard (Blue Velvet, David Lynch, 1986), the inside of a sound cassette (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Pedro Almodovar, 1988) or the back of someone’s throat (Three Crowns of the Sailor, Raul Ruiz, 1982).

The angle of the camera, whether the shot is subjective or objective, can dictate the feelings of mood and atmosphere. A low angled shot can give the image an imposing or dominating effect; a high angled shot the reverse. When the camera looks down at Roger Thornhill from the top of the United Nations building in New York in North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1957), the shot gives the impression of the character as being lost and isolated in the space. An ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• A
• B
• C
• D
• E
• F
• G
• H
• I
• J
• K
• L
• M
• N
• O
• P
• Q
• R
• S
• T
• U
• V
• W