CONCLUSIONS

Television characters can be recognized as the virtual family because they have the capacity to convey a high degree of believability and reliability to the adolescent female viewers I researched. The terminologies of 'family' and of 'virtual' carry weighted implications and meanings, yet these terms are aptly applied to the operation of television characters.

The characters are virtual obviously in that they are actors and images transmitted on television. They are family by the manner in which they are confidently regarded and accessed on a regular basis. By being both, they are the 'virtual family' because they have the immense potential to realistically fulfill some of the positions traditionally filled by living people, true family members and because they are, in fact, interpreted and referred to as actual personas by the girls.

This interpretation of the 'virtual family' should not be considered a detrimental phenomenon. On the contrary, the role is very often beneficial; providing emotional companionship as well as counsel and opinion to the girls through an outlet that is often more accessible than their true family members -- or at least alongside the real family, along with the people they physically exist with, refer to and rely upon. The characters are able to provide crucial information to the girls as they design and create their lives. In areas that include social relations, decision-making, career and work related choices and actions, play, leisure time modes of behavior, the characters provide a substantive and believable reference from which to draw from.

I do not ascribe the girls' practice of relating and referring to the television characters as a means of irrational involvement with the televisual text. The girls are not detached from reality. They do not make believe that they are the characters. They retain a firm grasp of the division between their own identities and the identities portrayed by the characters. A blurring may occur during the time of viewing, during a period of recall after the program in conversation with others about the occurrences within the program and even in their individual minds as they re-process the occurrences of the program, but the girls do not come off thinking that they are the characters. No matter what the degree of escapism and longing, pretending or relating may take place, the girls clearly realize the difference between their own lives and the characters' lives. They are highly aware of what happens during their viewing. They know that they identify with certain characters and they actively interact with them both as they watch and sometimes long afterwards. The girls are aware that they regard the characters as definable personas, distinct from the living persons in their lives.

Through the successive process of watching the programs week after week, the girls come to know the characters. They may find similarities in the characters and the dilemmas they represent that are parallel to themselves, other people they know and their own life issues. They are cognizant of television's modes of operation and the several layers of representation inherent within these modes. They are used to the codes which television uses in the creation of the programs, the situations, the characters, the evolution of events, the structure and the elements of genres. They are familiar with the functioning of television and with their processes of interacting with television. They are not passive viewers.

The girls are able to read television in the unique manner in which television is designed to be read and in alternative ways depending on their experience, conditioning and individual associative choice. They can be classified as passive viewers at times, but this label fluctuates. They may sometimes sit back and take in a program and all that the characters or announcer has to say and not question. The topics may be on subjects that they actually do not know the accurate information and they may accept the information given by the television text, they may, during this passive viewing, be thinking of an infinite number of other things related to their immediate concerns and the televisual information may coincide or challenge what they are thinking at the moment. There is an endless array of possibilities that can and do occur while the girls watch television. There is no set prescription by which the girls take in information. The girls construct new combinations of meaning and interpretations by combining the situations they view on television and the situations they live out in daily life. Each realm influences the other. The television characters provide metaphors which aid in the shaping of the content of the girls' worlds. Television is not for the girls an indefeatable force that consumes their minds, leaving them under the control of the intended meaning of its text.

There is also the level of meaning production to be considered. Ratings may be the ultimate goal behind the creation of a television program, but there are creative producers and writers behind the scenes as well. These producers and writers can well be criticized for adhering to the politically correct, conservative status quo in their construction of plot, situation, action and outcome. The familiarity function in which television utilizes the experiences and details familiar to the common citizen/viewer is highly evidenced in the analyzation of any particular series, but this also is not all bad. By standing outside situations that are familiar to ourselves, we are able to see objectively all the issues involved. The characters may make decisions that are contrary to our own, but just that the situation is laid out for us to view, that it does not require our own physical participation, allows the viewer to explore the different ways in which different people in different situations in society can function or make mistakes.

The presentation of situations on the television series offers a useful social tool by which the audience can explore the details of their own lives. Due to the conventions and codes of television, its ability to represent people, emotions and personalities in an up close and personal way, television has a distinct advantage of being able to project meaning to the audience and the ability to make represented situations and actions appear very real. By employing a mode of perception that distances itself from limiting presuppositions, the previously hidden phenomenon of the virtual family is allowed to present itself into reality.

The reality of the virtual family can be further articulated by giving attention to the fact that artificiality has become the operative mode of a technological media culture, of which television is a founding and sustaining member. Virtuality is often more than reality. This distinction has been widely embraced, projecting the virtual existence into the forefront of postmodern human consciousness. The virtual family is but one manifestation within this virtual construct that we have produced from our technological resources and imagination. It is not an odd or strange occurrence, but a practical consequence of our evolution with our technology.

BIBLIOGRAPHY


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