"So What!"

While reading John Fiske's "Television Culture," I was able to relate to most of his observations. He talks about the ideology behind the attempts television consciously makes for their audience. He begins by discussing the "codes of television." Fiske writes, "A code is a rule-governed system of signs, whose rules and conventions are shared amongst members of a culture, and which is used to generate and circulate meanings in for that culture" ( Fiske 1088). He brings to the reader's attention the various codes of romance, villainy, patriarchy, society, capitalism, etc that film uses. There are implicit and explicit codes. Fiske claims, "the codes of class, race, and morality are working less openly and more questionably:their ideological work is to naturalize the correlation of lower class, non American with the less attractive, less moral, and therefore villainous..." (Fiske 1093). Furthermore, in "Televesion Culture" Fiske finds feminist relations between the heroine and villainess. Both women "pretty themselves [while] the men are planning" (Fiske 1093). You see the patriarchal code being put into play here in a society where there the value of men is placed higher than that of women.

What message is television trying to give us?

Is it a culture of its own?

Does society imitate television's ideology or does television imitate reality?

I believe television does imitate reality and the different social norms and hierarchies, but has a negative way of re-enforcing the capitalist class distinctions. There is a type casting of gender and race that stretches the already existing stereotypes.

So we know all these facts about film codes and ideology; is it something that will ever change?

Fiske, John. "Television Culture."