it's not tv

Last week, in my discussion of television and/as therapy, I forgot to mention an important facet of this analogy. That is, that in psychoanalysis, in order to facilitate transference, the therapist becomes (whether subconsciously or consciously) the “subject supposed to know” in the eyes of the patient. This is not to say that the therapist is actually in the know or knows deep secrets about the analysand, but that the analysand begins to believe in the therapist’s superior facility over the patient’s unconscious thoughts. In regards to television, I could posit that shows are sometimes approached as more veracious than real life (who hasn’t thought, at least fleetingly, “well that’s not how couples act on [pick you show of choice], so we must be doing something wrong”); however, while television may approach that “subject supposed to know” status, it’s really the internet that’s already there. Or is it just me who gets angry with Google if it can’t find exactly what I’m looking for? We expect a lot from the internet as a form of collective intelligence: to know what we’re looking for, to have solutions to our problems, to understand our perspective, etc… But I’m starting to get off-track here, because we’ve come to expect more and more from television too these days. In fact, we often expect television to not be television at all. And that’s what I want to talk about today.

Traditionally, television is a commercial medium and a serial one. Among a few other things, I would argue that television’s episodic structure—the cycle of shows, one after the other, along with the weekly repetition of new episodes of the same show—defines it as a medium. Obviously, there are a few exceptions to the weekly configuration: television movies, news programs (usually daily), competitions (i.e. American Idol’s extra elimination shows), rerun marathons, etc. However, even these exceptions fall within the overarching cyclicality of the medium as a whole, and most shows of a certain ilk (read: narrative shows) stick to a weekly format.

Lucky for HBO, then, that “it’s not TV” (as its tagline proclaims), so it can undermine some of the very qualities which make television television. First, there are no commercials, which is certainly part of the appeal of pay cable channels like HBO and Showtime. Secondly, HBO can offer shows like In Treatment, which I mentioned last week and which attempts to imitate daily life more closely than most narrative shows. Instead of a once-a-week condensation of goings-on in the character’s lives, In Treatment airs five nights a week for half-an-hour, showing a slightly abridged version (25 minutes instead of the conventional 50) of a therapist’s session with his patients. Each day's show corresponds to a different patient and on Fridays the therapist, Paul (played by Gabriel Byrne), goes to his own therapy session. Thus, In Treatment eschews the weekly televisual format in favor of the professional therapeutic format—the same patient only once a week, but different patients each day, offering us more fully developed characters and long blocks of time in which to contemplate them without the distancing breaks of either parallel action or commercials.

Of course, even before In Treatment, there were ways to mold television to our will, to subvert both the episodic structure and the commercial interruptions. The earliest manifestations of this subversion came in the rather clumsy form of television shows on VHS, which quickly (thankfully) evolved into TV-on-DVD and On Demand (digital cable’s answer to popular “commercial-free” networks like HBO and perhaps an attempted stop-gap against DVD sales curbing actual television viewing). And, of course, who can forget DVR and the beloved TiVo.

TiVo, especially, has enough cultural relevance that it’s still routinely mentioned in television shows themselves—which I don’t doubt has something to do with strategic, wily product placement. Unlike TV-on-DVD and Netflix’s Watch Instantly feature—both industries which could theoretically give people a reason to cancel their cable—TiVo necessitates a cable subscription and indulges viewers with that ever-seductive mirage of choice. Instead of being forced to watch whatever’s on TV, have to schedule yourself according to certain shows, or, god forbid, have to set a cumbersome VCR, with one click of a button TiVo records what you want when you want it and may even suggest other shows based on what it thinks you like.

In an amusing episode from Sex and the City’s final season (1997-2003, episode 6.2, “Great Sexpectations"– another HBO show, this one used the pay cable, not-TV system to its advantage by showing a fair amount of nudity rather than altering episodic convention), the character of Miranda panics when her nanny accidentally deletes her entire TiVo hard drive. Still recovering from a break-up with the father of her child, Miranda can’t quite fathom losing the only thing that’s there for her whenever she needs it in whatever way she wants it: her TiVo. Eventually, Steve, Miranda’s ex, fixes her TiVo much to her relief, and all is well with the world. However, TiVo’s seductive allure remains a constant, prompting Alex Richmond over at Television Without Pity to explore her own love of TiVo in her recap of the aforementioned episode:

TiVo is an amazing invention; it's really taught me a lot. I'm working on a story called "Lessons TiVo Has Taught Me," which include being selective, learning to let go, when to dump shit you know you don't really need, and really focusing on something. When I first got TiVo, I felt so liberated; I was forever freed from commercials, and no longer a slave to the delayed instant gratification of watching the news live. I can now watch a half-hour show in twenty minutes by zapping the ads, but now if I watch TV and am on the internet at the same time, I know I'm missing a lot. So, because of TiVo, I choose carefully and know when to move on. It's changed me.

I’m personally torn about the TiVo/DVR technology. On the one hand, how wonderful to be able to walk up to my television, sit down, and watch exactly what I’m in the mood for when I’m in the mood for it. On the other hand, how tragic to lose the adventure of flipping channels, the chance operations of what’s on now that I associate with television and, indeed, with some of the pleasure I get out of the medium. And if a machine’s making all my choices for me—what I might like to watch, what’s ready to be discarded, etc.—what’s the point of having all those other options? Television spoils us for choice, but doesn’t TiVo just encourage us back into a bunch of niche markets?

Of course, then there are new internet-based programs like Hulu, which serve as repositories for all the legal streaming video of television shows, films and favorite clips provided by various networks and production companies. This television-on-demand-online may be my favorite it’s-not-TV format because it keeps my television adventure—flipping channels on the actual set—intact, while allowing me the choice to watch something I really want to watch when I want to watch it. The best of both worlds. But if television isn’t only on television anymore, is it still television? Is this a “if a tree falls in a forest” kind of question? (Does anyone care?) Or do we have to come up with a new name, like, webervision? Telenet? Intertelevisinet?

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(NEXT WEEK: “IMHO,” in which I engage in a self-reflexive exploration of television bloggers—how we write about what we see.)

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once upon a time

When I was a kid in the early 1990s, there were these obnoxious Trix cereal commercials. You may remember the general theme: the white Trix Rabbit would plot yet another cockamamie scheme to get his hands on some cereal, only to be caught by a gaggle of cruel children and told “Silly rabbit! Trix are for kids!” Not only did I hate these commercials because I felt sorry for the poor, cereal-deprived rabbit, but I was also irked by the company’s penchant for serial advertisements in which two or three ads would be connected by the same narrative. (Trix cereal wasn’t the only product employing serial advertising; if I remember correctly, the Keebler Elves and others were also guilty-as-charged, but the Trix commercials really stuck with me). For example, in ad number 1, the Rabbit would devise a plan, often involving elaborate disguises; in ad number 2, he would execute his plan, his fingertips inches away from the bowl of Trix; in ad number 3, he would get caught and the kids would snatch the cereal away from him laughing while the Rabbit lamented his bad fortune. These serial cereal ads (pun intended) were such a nuisance to me because I never seemed to see more than two of them; even though I knew the Rabbit would never get his Trix, I held out hope time and again. Besides the fact that I think the Rabbit ad campaign was seriously flawed—catering only to mean, vindictive children who liked denying pleasure to cute, cartoon animals; I felt so bad for the Rabbit, I’m not sure I would have eaten Trix if someone had paid me—my childhood memory of these Trix commercials provides a useful springboard for a consideration of our (my?) desire for narrative closure in the televisual universe.

Think of the uproar inspired by the spectatio interruptus series finale of HBO’s The Sopranos (1999-2007). If television were real life, this is exactly how things would end, in mid-sentence, because real life doesn’t have a plot and, hence, can’t have any closure. Of course, television by necessity must offer us a narrative structure. Most, if not all, of the plot points in the majority of narrative television shows serve a purpose in the grand scheme of the episode or series. Very little is arbitrary on television; too many loose ends and viewers begin to complain.

Part of this is necessitated by the hour-long format: we’re only shown what we need to know. Can you imagine what CBS’s CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000-present) would be like if we watched every aspect of the investigation? Besides the fact that every episode would probably be about two weeks long (if not longer), we’d also find that ninety percent of the evidence collected is completely useless, all false leads and red herrings. And where’s the fun in that?

In the crime show especially, this question of fun—viewing pleasure—is also crucially linked to narrative. I would wager that the average person would not find watching someone being murdered—especially multiple times, as CSI’s flashbacks often facilitate—very entertaining or pleasurable. Granted, CSI and other shows of its ilk are fictional, which is significant, but these murder sequences are also narrativized (implicitly through context or sometimes through the investigator’s descriptive voiceover). They’re stylized for our comprehension and easy digestion. Without an overarching narrative structure, murder scenes in crime shows would be grotesque, pointless and visually inapprehensible to a viewing public. The contextual framing of violence and the promise of narrative closure (e.g. the impetus to catch the killer), allows violence to become part of the story—entertainment rather than trauma.

On a less gruesome note, the same narrative framing that structures the collection and presentation of only crucial evidence in crime shows also motivates the editing techniques used in most reality TV shows. Even reality television is predicated on a narrative framework—from competitions like Fox’s American Idol (2002-present) with elimination rounds leading up to a finale, to lifestyle shows like MTV’s Real World (1992-present) and The Hills (2006-present) which have tasks or career goals or relationship issues for the protagonists to deal with each week. Furthermore, it’s no secret that reality shows are often fictionalized through creative editing and rigged situations, not to mention the trope of the solitary interviews with contestants/participants that help frame the “action.” Okay, so why is any of this interesting? Because the popularity of reality shows (and not just those in the competition genre) may signal how compelling we find the idea of narrative in our real lives as well as in fiction. We don’t want to see every mundane detail of a reality-celebrity’s life, only the highlights. Who says you can’t experience just the good bits—the interesting bits—a desire which television, reality or otherwise, feeds.

In conclusion, the short-lived Fox show Andy Richter Controls the Universe (2002-2003) represents to me one of the ultimate narrative fantasies offered by television. Each episode, Andy, an aspiring novelist in a dead-end, boring job writing technical manuals, imagines creatively kooky versions of the most mundane aspects of his life: his friends ask him about his date Broadway musical-style, with choreography and in four-part harmony (versus their actual bored disinterest at the water cooler) or he suavely approaches the building receptionist with James Bond-esque flair (versus his actual inability to say more than a meek “hello”). These imagine scenarios, juxtaposed with what actually happens, seem to give Andy real pleasure even when reality turns out to be a monumental failure vis-à-vis his fantasies. Even though his real life is relatively dull and pointless, the imagined narrative of his life is fascinating and hilarious.

Television must by necessity boil down its narrative to only the essential plot points. What’s our excuse? Do we live week-to-week, setting goals, points of contextual interest, creating an imagined framework on which to rest the chaos of our lives? Is narrative—translated into the search for meaning or “purpose”—an ingrained human desire? Does television fuel that desire or sate it somewhat? If we compare ourselves to the characters in television shows, who comes up lacking: us or them?

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(NEXT WEEK: “Vast Wasteland, Part 1.” An introduction to an experiment in televisual seriality and visual/sensorial excess. Taking the narrative out of narrative television: a day in the life.)

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