Week 10- Television, Cities and Gender

First of all I just have to say that Chapter 10 of the Barker text was possibly the least convoluted of all the chapters we have read so far. One line that jumped out at me was “The active audience ‘tradition’ suggests that audiences are not cultural dopes but are active producers of meaning from within their own cultural context (326).” Without knowing whether this is true or not it is still comforting and somewhat vindicating to know that we haven’t been duped by television for all these years. When a show is cancelled for low ratings it is a sign that the viewers are rejecting the meanings of that text in favor of those provided by other shows, hence they are participating in creating meaning. Barker rightly does not make a judgment about the quality of these meanings we create, there is always the potential that they will be flawed, but at least we are the architects of our own destruction. How comforting. Of course there will always be people who are being duped by the media, just like there are people who think they can see Russia from their house. We needn’t worry about them (unless they get elected vice president). Another way we can control and produce meaning is through interpretation. As Barker says, “the production of meaning does not ensure consumption of that meaning as the encoders might have intended (328).”
I found that Chapter 12 was also very interesting, especially because I had never thought of a city as a text before. As Barker says, “Space is a construction and material manifestation of social relations which reveals cultural assumptions and practices (379).” I can see why we read this chapter before our unit on Sex and the City, because a textual understanding of New York and its meanings would enhance our understanding of the show. However I’m not exactly sure on the details of this one because I haven’t seen the show.
Because politics is on the forefront of just about everything these days, when I read the following passage from Butler’s article I immediately thought of the controversy over Prop 8: “The parodic or imitative effect of gay identities works neither to copy nor to emulate heterosexuality, but rather, to expose heterosexuality as an incessant and panicked imitation of its own naturalized idealization. That heterosexuality is always in the act of elaborating itself is evidence that it is perpetually at risk, that is, it ‘knows’ its own possibility of becoming undone…” It is possible that the supporters of Prop 8 are really trying to protect constructs that don’t exist and thus they cling ever more tightly to them for fear that their ideas about gender and relationships will turn out to be nothing more than smoke and mirrors.