When I watched about five hours of Hurtigruten – minutt for minutt back
when it aired in 2011 it was an almost transcendental experience. It was oddly mesmerizing
to witness storms build up and dissipate in real time or observe waves crashing
against brown and gray rock for minutes on end. Later on, watching those
unaware of being watched quickly became a highlight for me that diminished in
pleasure as the program’s growing popularity caused those being filmed to
replace unwitting, passive participation to active interaction. It wasn’t the
loss of this near-scopophilic pleasure that bothered me– I can get that fromwatching CCTV footage of tourists in Times Square– it was the reintroduction of
time that interrupted the show’s existence as a leisure activity.
As Michael Curtin highlights in “Thinking Globally:
From Media Imperialism to Media Capital” by quoting Carl Marx, time plays an
important part in maximizing economic gain in capitalist societies. The regulation
of space in such a way that it can be segregated and measured magnifies the
productivity of citizens and ensures the reproduction of certain social values
in the most efficient manner possible. In many ways traditional television
programming is organized around this latent capitalist philosophy– the space of
a day is organized into programming blocks, blocks are broken into individual
shows, each show is composed of segments, and so on. Editing, then, is an
important tool for delivering content to viewers in the most efficient way
possible that facilitates the incorporation of extraneous information (like
ads) into a whole. The resulting regulation of life into discrete chunks
governs the way we live and in many ways primes us for a faster is better
mentality (“time is money”) where there is time to be productive and there is
time to be idle. Interestingly enough, when some parts of a society are least
active, others are most active. For example, advertisers work hard to target
primetime audiences spending their leisure time watching television because
they compose peak viewership during the day. In that sense even leisure time is
spent being productive to the society because advertisements works to inspire
the consumption that supports the economy.
I see slow television’s real-time structure as
somewhat subversive to the philosophies around which television is composed. By
removing editing from the equation and broadcasting each show as a single,
uninterrupted chunk there is little to no space available for what Marx claims
to be the capitalist regulation of time. Slow television returns programming to
the nonproductive space of leisure time where one gains nothing more than an understanding
of some random coastline for watching and loses nothing by missing a segment. Not
only was watching the program a nonproductive use of time, a large portion of
it was spent watching others use their time nonproductively as well. At the
program’s inception, it was not uncommon to spend entire minutes observing
people fishing, stargazing, or standing around doing absolutely nothing as they
had no idea they were being watched, and it was fun to observe this aspect of
life that’s infrequent on television and somewhat discouraged by the demands of
modern society. But as the program became more popular social media played an
active role in regulating its content in a way that brought it closer to
traditional television. As more people wanted to see themselves on TV,
predicting the boat’s position made it necessary to date and time the places of
its arrival long beforehand. Though this information existed freely beforehand,
before people cared it did little to nothing to affect what was captured during
the journey. Once this information became useful, each port or major location
would have dozens or more spectators waving, dancing, or even proposing to one
another on camera. At that point the surveillance of nonproductive uses of time
was replaced with the shameless self-promotion and “fifteen minutes of fame
philosophy” that’s so prevalent in our ADD infested fast food culture of
instant gratification.
This played a large role in narrativizing the content
for viewers in a way that caused the show do something more than nothing. For
example, people waving the Norwegian flag added a political element to the
program. Before then it was entirely possible to tune in and not know where you
were (from the live stream at least) for an extended period of time. The program
quickly became some sort of celebration of Norwegian culture that made it
well-known internationally and devastated what it was doing in the first place.
So for me, it was the social aspects that brought slow TV closer to traditional
programming. Although at this point I probably shouldn’t be surprised, people
tend to ruin everything.
Interesting post, Damian. I'm assuming MeatBikini is you, since your profile picture is of Britney Spears. Your line, "By removing editing from the equation and broadcasting each show as a single, uninterrupted chunk there is little to no space available for what Marx claims to be the capitalist regulation of time," reminded me somewhat of Bayo's presentation on the problems between FIFA and the US on broadcasting the 1994 World Cup, which is still a problem with the sport in America. Since the sport is made up of two uninterrupted 45-minute halves, sometimes more depending on stoppage and extra time, it undermines common US sport broadcast practices of interruption. So instead, since capitalist structures can't begin to regulate time with regard to soccer, it regulates the space. Every inch of the field is covered in adverts, and companies bid for the rights to advertise on jerseys, literally using the visibility and popularity of the athlete's body as commercial space. Many of these practices are used in American sports, minus the use of the athelete's body. Although, rumor was, when the NBA introduced sleeved jerseys, the motivation and theory was to allow for more advertising space, in translation establish an alternative outlet for revenue. I'm curious to find out, what percentage of that revenue in their CBA is distributed to the players, if at all. I think it would be an interesting question to look at ethically and politically, that if these players bodies are literally being used as commercial space, no different than a billboard, how does the distribution of that revenue get divided up among the team, owners, and the league?
ReplyDelete