are we better off?

i posed this question in class tonight with respect to the presence of television (specifically) and media (broadly). i think we only scratched the surface of this question. other questions still remain, namely: what do we mean by "better off"? and who does or doesn't from the existence of tv?

thoughts??

"learning from television" - working definitions

- learning is inflected by intent and interest of viewers and producers. can be highly thought inducing or passive flow

- the conscious or unconscious/intentional or unintentional gathering of knowledge from television

- can learn a great deal of emotional, cognitive, technical skills from tv; can be negative or positive

"the downfall of society!"

i vividly recall my grandmother uttering those words to me during a visit to india in the spring of 1988. michael jackson was still a very big deal, and mtv was growing in popularity, much to my extended family's chagrin. my grandmother overheard me having a conversation with someone (who i'm sure was related to me somehow) about mtv and exceitedly proclaimed her views on the channel in a half-english, half-tamil blend.

many years later, the views of the "older" generation don't seem to have changed all that much. that split is made more evident in people of my parents' generation who emigrated to the US in the late 70s - there's a strange obligatory nostalgia that longs for a place in time (india of yore) that no longer exists. they, too, blame mtv.

mtv represents to them a palpable generational shift/split - a new generation is now vibrant, visible, and willing to engage with the nuances of global influences. these "new voices" call me up on the phone and, with accents audible, introduce themselves to me as "lisa" or "daniel." the world is not only changing but there seems to be more ways to participate in changing it.

the face of mtv is changing, too. gone are the hours of music videos - now relegated to mtv2, 3, 4... - replaced by hours of reality television, marathons of the original reality show ('the real world'), informational programs, interviews, music news, and award shows. is mtv still ruining society? or does mtv bring to the margins of the center those topics, realities, identities, questions, and issues that we may not always want to hear or know about? if anything, mtv seems to have softened in it's old age. tho, that might just be my clouded vision talking...

School Age Children Dimensions

1. What moral lessons can be taken away from television shows? How can these shows teach moral lessons?

2. In planning after-school programs, how can tv complement school-based learning?

3. How are children's perceptions influenced by the portrayal of different characters, especially in regards to racial and cultural stereotypes?

room for 9/22

hi all

just a note that we're in GD 365 this evening.

doodavadi

that's what my younger cousin used to call the show dukes of hazzard. several of my uncles still pull out that bit of family history when they want to catch his attention - i.e. "hey! doodavadi!" i was thinking about this while reading the texts for this week... especially as i began to consider what exactly has changed over the last 25+ years that i actively recall being a "tv watcher." talking about this over dinner last night, i found myself in a conversation about the tv of the past and tv of the present. this was not the usual dichotomous and woeful accounting of how tv has changed, but rather a discussion on whether "we" needed the visually projected stimuli in our lives to serve a different function than it does now. that is, with shows like leave it to beaver, dennis the menace, mr. ed, my favorite martian, etc. (all, by the way, staples in my household as i was glued to NickAtNite), were television executives more explicit about their desire for tv to serve a socializing function? while entertainment was certainly a major factor, so, too, were the almost aesop's fable-like morals at the conclusion of many of these shows.

what about programming, now? given the proliferation of venues, stations, and formats available for "tv viewing", has entertainment superceded education as the purpose of television? if i were to answer my own question, i would say that a couple of things are happening. first, i have never seen an interview with a show creator who has noted that there is no lesson to be learned or purpose for a show. no, not even seinfeld, whose "show about nothing" mantra gained legions of fans, was without an educative purpose - that is, you can have smart dialogue about everyday lives and that pushing the envelope is indeed a skill. (now, seinfeld connoisseurs will surely berate me for that simplistic assessment, but i will move on nonetheless...) but for whom is that educative? the television audiences? reviewers? award show people? future/past show creators? in addition, about *what* was this show educative? content? style? personalities?

finally, in this ramble, i wonder - do we expect too much of tv? what if there were only "good" shows on? and not "low brow" types of programming? what if another season of "the bachelor" never aired? and if we never heard another

what then?

and who decides these labels anyway??

class tonight - 9/14/05

just a reminder that we're in RH 306 this evening.

the smart debate...

ok, another confession: i watched a lot of tv as a child, an adolescent, and now still do as an adult. many of my memories involve tv shows - case in point: i became more excited about high school chemistry and physics due to my avid viewing of the show macgyver. this was a key text of one of my important adolescent friendships. i spent a bit too much time, perhaps, deciphering the science behind using chocolate (a base) to stop an acid leak. and excitedly answering correctly the question about what element combusts instantaneously upon contact with the air (phosphorous).

so, am i smarter or dumber than someone who didn't watch quite as much tv? does it matter what i watched? and how sense do i make of the countless hours spent watching hunter with my grandmother? or watching equally countless hours of the mclaughlin group? (i should note that one of my favorite moments was when john mclaughlin said, with earnest, to a then-regular panelist: "lawrence kudlow...wazzzzzzup??" this, following on the then-popular budweiser commercial)

tv, as many in this course have noted, is a part of life for many people, and especially for many young people. just what does it do and what is it for still remains open for debate...

pop culture takes it in the gut (again!)

i was talking with a colleague today about last night's class and told her that during class i revealed my obsession with the o.c. as i said so, i also noted my degree of hesitation and possible embarrassment as i explained the premise of the show to her and at the re-realization that i am an adult who rents and/or borrows dvds of the oc to watch on my laptop. hmmm... perhaps there is something valuable here - the reasons why we associate certain emotions to particular cultural artifacts may be significant for understanding how these texts (broadly defined) are situated in our lives.

for me, i can't seem to get enough of teen drama in part b/c i wasn't allowed to watch such programming during my actual adolescence. im sure there's more to it - maybe that's my question for the semester:
what exactly makes a guilty pleasure so guilty?

it also seems that pop cultural texts evoke more feelings of guilt and certainly more explanation than the "high" cultural texts, yet as i keep hearing, shakespeare's works were pop culture at the time he wrote them. so maybe we need to stick around for another two hundred years to see mtv's the real world revered in the same way...??

about this blog

this blog is an accompaniment to a course being taught at teachers college at columbia university titled "television and the development of youth." the title of the blog has parantheses strategically placed in order to reflect the dimensions of this course that will reach beyond questions of development, as well.

this evening we had our first class meeting. several themes were introduced as we reflected on television programs that stood out to us from our own adolescent experiences. among them:

desires and dreams
identifiability of tv shows
escapism
tie in to other artifacts - e.g. toys

and many more...

we will use this space to make notes about the course content, post updates regarding class logistics, and other uses that we might not have imagined as yet.

i look forward to the conversations ahead.