Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

What is television? It is an object that is produced in a factory, then distributed physically (via transportation) and virtually (via advertising). At that point it transmogrifies into a fashion statement, a privileged (or damned) piece of furniture – a status symbol. Finally, it becomes outmoded junk, full of poisons and pollutants in search of a dumping ground. In short, television has a physical existence, a history as an object of material production and consumption in addition to its renown as a site for making meaning. That renown is the focus of most sociological theory and research into the media. Prior to the emergence of TV appliances and services, people fantasized about the transmission of image and sound across space. Richard Whittaker Hubbell made the point by publishing a book in 1942 entitled 4000 Years of Television . The device even has its own patron saint, Clare of Assisi, a teen runaway from the thirteenth century who became the first Franciscan nun. She was canonized in 1958 for her bedridden vision of images from a midnight mass cast upon the wall, which Pius XII decided centuries later was the first broadcast. As TV proper came close to realization, it attracted intense critical speculation. Rudolf Arnheim's 1935 “Forecast of Television” predicted it would offer viewers simultaneous global experiences, transmitting railway disasters, professorial addresses, ... log in or subscribe to read full text