the television ‘spectacle’

Books TV FAQ promises ‘uncommon answers to common questions about TV’, though the writer John Ellis (a Professor of Media Studies at Royal Holloway University) is more interested in the kinds of problems given to Media Studies students, so rather than attempting to explain the confusing rules of Jasper Carrott’s miserable gameshow Goldenballs, he concerns himself with why sitcoms aren’t as good as they used to be (they are), what a ‘precinct drama’ is (tends to be workplaces) and considers whether TV exploits people (yes).

The result is a bit like reading a Socratic debate with the less sarcastic, more serious version of Charlie Brooker who turns up sometimes on his BBC Four programme Screenwipe to explain how television works. Each section opens with a question and then Ellis offers three or four pages of essay that usually begins with the perceived wisdom or expected answer and then offers the ‘real’ answer or in some cases confirms what we suspected anyway.

Sometimes the question is simply provocative way into talking about the subject: Ellis asks ‘What is the point of Jade Goody?’ but he can’t really tell us (the book was published in 2007). It’s instead a good hook into a discussion about transient celebrity of the sort which drifts through reality television and how few permanently gain a foothold in ‘public’ life. When he wonders why 'foreign television such rubbish’, what he’s really considering is the jarring difference between one nationality’s perception of the grammar, style and reach of television with anothers. Not rubbish necessarily, just different.

As you'd expect, what you gain from reading a book like this really depends upon your level of media literacy. I’d consider myself to have a good working knowledge about television, certainly stronger than most, and whilst there wasn’t much I didn’t already know in the sections about the nuts and bolts of making television, I still drew a lot from Ellis’s chatter about the psychological effects television has on the viewer, either in changing their perception of the world, their personal security and in shaping their aspirations.

He inevitably mentions the coverage of 9/11 (and choice of that all encompassing label), and how even though most of us weren’t involved directly we still became witnesses that day, and felt a high level of guilt, not simply because we knew that to an extent we were intruding on someone else's tragedy, but because to an extent we'd perceived it in much the same way we might a fictional drama. I was deeply effected for some time after watching the towers fall that day, live on television, and I wonder now if it was for this very reason; the television ‘spectacle’ (for want of a better word) had cushioned me from having to consider the horror of what had really happened until the next day.

And the next.