“Realism is not a matter of any fidelity to an empirical reality, but of the discursive...
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•“Realism is not a matter of any fidelity to an empirical reality, but of the discursive conventions by which and for which a sense of reality is constructed.” – John Fiske, Television Culture, 21.
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Transcript of “Realism is not a matter of any fidelity to an empirical reality, but of the discursive...
• “Realism is not a matter of any fidelity to an empirical reality, but of the discursive conventions by which and for which a sense of reality is constructed.”
– John Fiske, Television Culture, 21.
Lecture Summary• Realism constructs a “reality” and
presents it as unconstructed
• Realism makes the viewer feel all-knowing
• Realism positions the viewer socially
Reality and Realism
• Reality: The unconstructed, empirical world
• Realism: A constructed sense of “reality” - an imagined world
• (Barthes: Nature and History)
What is “Believable”• conforms to the “invisible
metadiscourse”
– content norms
– formal norms
– ideological norms
Example: Motivated editing
– shot / reverse shot technique
• 180 degree rule
• eyeline match
Colin MacCabe, “Realism and the Cinema,” 1974
• the classic realist text
• (unarticulated) metalanguage and the object language
• dominant specularity
Metalanguage and object language
• “He thinks of nothing,” she said to herself, “but his own ambition (…) – nothing more.” She could see that he was in search of her but had not yet ...
Object languages
• (= “object discourses)
• appear as reality
• “in inverted commas”
• there may be several o.l.’s
Metalanguage
–a.k.a. “narrative discourse,” “dominant narrative”
–often unarticulated
–“denies its own status as articulation”
“Hierarchy” among discourses
• hierarchy: the metalanguage is at a higher level than the object language(s)
• a higher level means more knowledge
Specularity
• the (social) position of the unseen spectator
• Dominant specularity:
–the position of the spectator who knows the truth (reality)
Positioning the Viewer
• “the text produces a socially located position that it invites the viewer to occupy in order to understand it easily and unproblematically”
TV: Social extension
• Britain: working class (often) setting
• United States: middle class setting
TV: In the “Present”• Sense of being “live”
– Film: “a record of what has happened”
– Television: “a relay of what is happenening”
The Quiz Show
• how does it create a sense of “being live”?
• what is the role of the musical score?
Reality TV
• reality or realism?
– an empirical or a constructed world?
