Campus News - Up Front
For the Love of Television
By Elana Levine MA’97, PhD’02
Family lore tells of me happily tearing and chewing on the TV listings book delivered with the local newspaper during my 1970s babyhood. As a preschooler, I started the day by asking when The Flintstones and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood would be on; as a grade-schooler, I enacted episodes of Wonder Woman, Charlie’s Angels, and The Love Boat with my friends; and as a teenager, I papered my bedroom walls with images lovingly cut out of soap opera fan magazines.
My TV-obsessed youth proved remarkably prescient, as my master’s and PhD degrees in communication arts have literally made me a doctor of television. My training in media and cultural studies prepared me for a career of research and teaching about popular culture of all kinds, but my scholarship consistently focuses on TV. I am indeed one of those people who can claim their time in front of the tube as work.
Even while television is my vocation, it is still my pleasure, something that I am most eager to experience during the infrequent leisure time of a conventional adulthood full of the pressures of career, parenting, and home ownership.
Television is a pleasure I share with many others. Despite the proliferation of screens — computer, iPod, cell phone — that now fill so many Americans’ days, market research has found that the hours we spend watching television have actually increased over the years, and our time spent with TV content is also magnified when we factor in programming watched online.
The vastness and democracy of television’s reach is one of the reasons I find it so compelling. Regardless of what we are watching, many of us across the country, as well as around the globe, spend substantial time in front of a TV screen nearly every day. And even while our viewing is fragmented across the wide range of choices now available, we still join with millions of others in consuming stories and images.
We may be different from one another in innumerable ways — and those differences surely carry over to how we react to what we watch — but we have that watching in common. This commonality inspires me not only intellectually, but also personally. When I find myself in unfamiliar surroundings, it’s often comforting to know that surely some of the folks around me also voted for David Cook during last season’s American Idol.
As the millions of my fellow Cook voters might attest, another of the pleasures I find in TV is rooted in the characters that we can know there, characters we can follow through weeks and months and years, their stories unfolding before us. These characters can be real people — reality show contestants, athletes, news anchors — or they can be fictional creations — the Tony Sopranos, Erica Kanes, and Bart Simpsons of the world — but we easily think of them all as friends. Television introduces us to these characters in bits and pieces, slowly revealing their strengths and weaknesses, and their idiosyncrasies, and invites us to invest in their fortunes. As we watch a television story play out, ongoing character traits rise to the narrative fore, affirming our intimate knowledge. Whether I am watching 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon stave off perpetual singledom or Six Feet Under’s Nate Fisher struggle against the forces of death and loss, my investment of time is repaid with the satisfaction of recognition.
As a historian and critic of this medium I love, I explore questions ranging from TV’s representation of social groups, to the maneuverings of the television industry, to the social ramifications of this persuasive force. And the answers I find do not necessarily place television in the most flattering light. But always motivating such questions is my love, my belief that this kind of interrogation is inherently worthwhile because television itself has held — and continues to hold — such a prominent place in my life.
Of course, the cultural experiences television offers are much broader than those of any individual viewer. But my TV friends may very well be your pals, too, and, for that, television has won my unflagging devotion.
Elana Levine MA’97, PhD’02 is an associate professor of journalism and mass communication at UW-Milwaukee and author of a book about the sexual culture of 1970s American TV. Her next book will explore the history of soap operas.
If you’re a UW-Madison alumna or alumnus and you’d like the editors to consider an essay for use in On Wisconsin, please send it to WAA@uwalumni.com.
Family lore tells of me happily tearing and chewing on the TV listings book delivered with the local newspaper during my 1970s babyhood. As a preschooler, I started the day by asking when The Flintstones and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood would be on; as a grade-schooler, I enacted episodes of Wonder Woman, Charlie’s Angels, and The Love Boat with my friends; and as a teenager, I papered my bedroom walls with images lovingly cut out of soap opera fan magazines.
My TV-obsessed youth proved remarkably prescient, as my master’s and PhD degrees in communication arts have literally made me a doctor of television. My training in media and cultural studies prepared me for a career of research and teaching about popular culture of all kinds, but my scholarship consistently focuses on TV. I am indeed one of those people who can claim their time in front of the tube as work.
Even while television is my vocation, it is still my pleasure, something that I am most eager to experience during the infrequent leisure time of a conventional adulthood full of the pressures of career, parenting, and home ownership.
Television is a pleasure I share with many others. Despite the proliferation of screens — computer, iPod, cell phone — that now fill so many Americans’ days, market research has found that the hours we spend watching television have actually increased over the years, and our time spent with TV content is also magnified when we factor in programming watched online.
The vastness and democracy of television’s reach is one of the reasons I find it so compelling. Regardless of what we are watching, many of us across the country, as well as around the globe, spend substantial time in front of a TV screen nearly every day. And even while our viewing is fragmented across the wide range of choices now available, we still join with millions of others in consuming stories and images.
We may be different from one another in innumerable ways — and those differences surely carry over to how we react to what we watch — but we have that watching in common. This commonality inspires me not only intellectually, but also personally. When I find myself in unfamiliar surroundings, it’s often comforting to know that surely some of the folks around me also voted for David Cook during last season’s American Idol.
As the millions of my fellow Cook voters might attest, another of the pleasures I find in TV is rooted in the characters that we can know there, characters we can follow through weeks and months and years, their stories unfolding before us. These characters can be real people — reality show contestants, athletes, news anchors — or they can be fictional creations — the Tony Sopranos, Erica Kanes, and Bart Simpsons of the world — but we easily think of them all as friends. Television introduces us to these characters in bits and pieces, slowly revealing their strengths and weaknesses, and their idiosyncrasies, and invites us to invest in their fortunes. As we watch a television story play out, ongoing character traits rise to the narrative fore, affirming our intimate knowledge. Whether I am watching 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon stave off perpetual singledom or Six Feet Under’s Nate Fisher struggle against the forces of death and loss, my investment of time is repaid with the satisfaction of recognition.
As a historian and critic of this medium I love, I explore questions ranging from TV’s representation of social groups, to the maneuverings of the television industry, to the social ramifications of this persuasive force. And the answers I find do not necessarily place television in the most flattering light. But always motivating such questions is my love, my belief that this kind of interrogation is inherently worthwhile because television itself has held — and continues to hold — such a prominent place in my life.
Of course, the cultural experiences television offers are much broader than those of any individual viewer. But my TV friends may very well be your pals, too, and, for that, television has won my unflagging devotion.
Elana Levine MA’97, PhD’02 is an associate professor of journalism and mass communication at UW-Milwaukee and author of a book about the sexual culture of 1970s American TV. Her next book will explore the history of soap operas.
If you’re a UW-Madison alumna or alumnus and you’d like the editors to consider an essay for use in On Wisconsin, please send it to WAA@uwalumni.com.
Events
- Global Hot Spots Lecture Series - December 11
