3
Audience
"I have my reasons for watching"

The many varieties of research done on the relationship of viewers and television are highly relevant to my study. In many ways, the girls fit the conclusions achieved by much of existing audience research and in many other ways they defy popular theorizing. I rely upon several methods of assessing audience behavior and television use to illustrate and analyze the processes by which the girls view, perceive, interpret and make use of television characters. I also make postulations as to how the girls regard and make use of the characters in ways very different from and contrary to popular and widely accepted research.

Much of the early advertiser-funded audience research which falls within a strict functionalist tradition that focused on 'effects' remains limiting and outdated when currently applied to the questions of what viewers receive from television viewing. Content analysis which originally only quantified instances such as violence and sexual explicitness on television also requires an update to successfully assess program content as related to audience perception. Emphasis that has been placed upon the 'so-called' escapist reasons for viewing are equally inappropriate in original form to my study. Both recognition and identification have been stressed as primary responses in association with each of the limited methods first used in the analysis of television viewing. While these initial attempts are very limiting, they do provide a point from which I am able to build upon and deviate from in assessing just how the girls as viewers may accept televisual texts and what they might do with the information. While I find that certain of the early methods are valid as a starting point from which to proceed I do not agree with their original pronouncements.

Effects approaches have historically focused on the element of the televisual text itself; what circumstances and roles it represented and how its representations combined to produce and offer meaning to the viewer (Laswell). The concentration was most often on the programs and the ideological intricacies of the content therein and not upon the process of viewing and meaning-making. Not much investigation was given to whether the viewer did actually receive the information in the 'intended' way. That the viewer did in fact watch was enough to not only establish but to sufficiently encompass the role of the viewer. Cultivation analysis was a method developed within the effects tradition which claimed to determine the amount of influence television could have upon a viewer by the amount of time the viewer spent watching television (Gerbner and Gross). These types of research methods assumed the viewer to consume as expected and without question or contemplation the content of the texts. This mode of operation defines the viewer as the 'intended viewer' and the viewer's comprehension and contemplation of the text as the 'preferred reading'. Structuralist accounts of the passive, intended viewer discounted differences between the text's account of the world and viewers accounts of it.

Associated with the perspective of the passive role of the viewer is the notion of escapism. The term usually carries a negative connotation implying (again) that the viewer does not have control over the content or meaning of a text. Escapism is traditionally defined as the process wherein a viewer pretends and participates within a situation or environment that is foreign to them, most often it is portrayed as more luxurious, exciting or fulfilling than the viewer's own. At least, though, the notion of escapism represented a change in theory towards asking questions of what viewers do with television rather than what television does to them. 'Uses and gratifications' research began to look into the television audience in terms of how it received and interpreted television and to what personal ends (McQuail, Blumler, Katz, Lazarsfeld). "The uses approach assumes that people's values, their interests, their associations, their social roles, are pre-potent and that people selectively 'fashion' what they see and hear to those interests" (Katz 3).

When the interpretation of the viewer as passive began to be challenged by theorists who asserted a viewer's active involvement with the text, previous reductionist views that precluded a viewer's differing experience and the reference to that experience in the process of comprehension and meaning-making were abandoned. Audience-centered approaches including feminist and ethnic studies showed that the categorization of women as a distinct and definable group is over generalized in many ways. Feminist critiques showed that women do not always 'accept' meaning as conventionally delivered (Brundson, Kaplan). Ethnographic studies of women's media consumption helped in validating that differences in class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, education, religion and environment all contribute to differences in perception and interpretation of media (Morley, Lull, Rogge and Jensen, Kreutzner). As the active viewer stance was taken up more widely in media analysis, the polysemic status of a televisual text was finally explored and articulated as the way in which any meaning is open to various interpretations (Fiske, Allor). The text then began to be regarded as open. A combining of producer and audience approaches allowed the text and the reader more interconnection and flexibility.

It is now common understanding that television's preferred readings are commonly re-read by viewers to accommodate their individual feelings and perceptions and to make sense their own lifeworld. Viewing is not always an escapist activity. It is often quite the opposite. When a lifeworld much different from one's own is presented through a television program and a viewer identifies with the program's characters, their activities, worldviews and ideologies it does not necessarily mean that the viewer is passively coerced into accepting the material as is. Far from being 'spoon fed' information, viewers do actively choose what meanings to assign, who and what to align with or not and in what manner. While this may seem obvious, in theoretical practice there persists an amount of criticism insisting upon viewer passivity and acceptance (Mander). Certainly many television producers and political culture makers aim for and rely upon this ideal situation based upon a universal horizon of experience among viewers.

An elaborated standpoint which asserts an active viewer position illustrates my observation of the girls in their relationships with the televisual texts and characters. The girls are highly active in the manner in which they receive the information from the text, not only by their frequent verbal challenges, opinions and statements made through the course of the program, but by their continued referral to the program's details and characters long after the initial viewing process. The girls talk about the programs after viewing with their friends and even strangers who may also share the same association with a particular program. This process of discussing the programs and the characters extends the realm of the text outside the immediate realm of the television set and the initial point of reception.

I also find relevance in a newer model of uses and gratifications research and an enlightened concept of escapism in my investigation into the girls' modes of viewing. In line with the basic tenets of uses and gratifications, the girls do 'use' the television programs and the characters and often to gratifying ends. What makes their procedure different from earlier definitions of audience use is that they do so in an active sense. They consciously seek the type of character or the attributes of the character that they want to emulate or learn something from. This occurrence of 'uses and gratifications' does not demonstrate a passive reception, rather, it is engineered by the will of the girls. The girls' actions demonstrate a self-controlled desire to engage with televisual situations and characters of their choosing. They give conscious recognition to their role in the process of making their own meaning out of the material offered.

The girls also seek and experience escape in some instances, but this phenomenon is equally nondetrimental as it offers an environment for imagination which can be beneficial in the creation of their everyday lives. A televisual text does not have to be fully accurate in its representation, identical to one's own existence, detail for detail, to be constructive. Imaginary worlds of the media "can become a primary experience, becoming substitutes for missing elements in the emotional and interpersonal spheres.....the media are interpreted against a background of everyday life as it is lived and experienced.....media activities can be understood as an attempt to construct a meaningful relationship between media program and reality as actually experienced" (Rogge and Jensen 94-95). A viewer can consciously experience (even seek) escapism and derive benefit from representation and imagination. Dreaming and imagining can be beneficial activities to one's mindset. The girls often view with the premeditated intent of experiencing a form of escape in this manner. The difference maybe from earlier criticisms of the activity is that the girls as viewers are highly aware of both the activity and their purpose in engaging in it.

The girls explain why they watch television:

Renalda: For somethin' to do. And because they're funny - there are funny shows that I watch. The day shows, the talk shows are really funny. And also because it's not like the movies that cost so much. I can watch TV at home for free.
Keisha: I like to watch MTV, too, to hear the music and see the dancing and the guys. There are fine guys on the videos there sometimes. And I have fun watchin' the videos. I pass time like that sometimes. It's relaxing, too.
Sister G: If you have cable, there is a lot to watch on TV, because there are all kinds of shows. I like to watch 'cause it's like the stories of everybody's life. Sometimes it's like mine - a lot of times it's not, but it's still fun to watch.
Keisha: Yeah, most of all TV is just fun to watch.

The girls talk about whether television presents an accurate depiction of life as they know it:

Keisha: Yeah, I do - but not all of TV does that.
Sister G: A lot of shows are white, you know, they tell white jokes and the ones that they try to sound black or whatever, they don't. They don't sound black. They are just tryin' to do a imitation - but they are no good at it.
Keisha: That's funny, too, though. I even like to watch stuff like that 'cause it's funny to see them tryin' like that.
Elva: Yeah, there are things that happen on the shows that are somethin' like what goes on for me and for the people I know. That's what makes it interesting to watch 'cause you can see how somethin' might happen to you.

The girls describe what they get out of watching television:

LJ: I just get entertained and sometimes I hear about things that I didn't know - mostly that's from learning shows like about nature or places and stuff like that. But mostly I like to watch the shows we were talkin' about (Beverly Hills, Melrose, etc.) because I can relate to some of the people and some of the things they are doin'.
Sister G: That's it mostly - if you can relate to somethin' that's happenin' on a story on TV, then it can mean somethin' to you - like we have been talkin' about the actors and the characters they play, what they do and stuff.
Renalda: I get entertained, too, I guess. I like to watch. I choose what I want to see so I'm lookin' for somethin' that I like. I like to see the things that people are doin' and thinkin'.
Elva: You got to watch TV, really, to know what's goin' on with people.

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