In this important new book, Jacques Derrida talks with Bernard Stiegler about the effect of teletechnologies on our philosophical and political moment. Improvising before a camera, the two philosophers are confronted by the very technologies they discuss and so are forced to address all the more directly the urgent questions that they raise. What does it mean to speak of the present in a situation of "live" recording? How can we respond, responsibly, to a question when we know that the (...) so-called "natural" conditions of expression, discussion, reflection, and deliberation have been breached? As Derrida and Stiegler discuss the role of teletechnologies in modern society, the political implications of Derrida's thought become apparent. Drawing on recent events in Europe, Derrida and Stiegler explore the impact of television and the internet on our understanding of the state, its borders and citizenship. Their discussion examines the relationship between the juridical and the technical, and it shows how new technologies for manipulating and transmitting images have influenced our notions of democracy, history and the body. The book opens with a shorter interview with Derrida on the news media, and closes with a provocative essay by Stiegler on the epistemology of digital photography. In Echographies of Television, Derrida and Stiegler open up questions that are of key social and political importance. Their book will be of great interest to all those already familiar with Derrida's work, as well as to students and scholars of philosophy, literature, sociology and media studies. (shrink)

This chapter offers a critical overview of philosophical debates concerning the nature of the television medium, television’s art status, and television’s aesthetic value.

This article lies at the intersection of two problems: the one concerning the potential of fictional works to inform us about our social reality and foster our understanding of its various aspects, and the one concerning their potential to engage with philosophical issues. I bring these two together by analyzing the hit television series Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. According to my interpretation, the series is informative about our social world, and it raises philosophical concerns about it. This (...) makes it well-equipped to fulfill the educative function attributed to mass art by Noël Carroll, and to stand out as an example of what he calls popular philosophy. To support this interpretation, I rely on contemporary views regarding the nature of our engagements with fictional narratives. I then explore how philosophical concerns are generated and I elaborate on the role they have in deepening one’s understanding of one’s social circumstances. I further show how the series provides innovative and independent philosophical knowledge by means specific to the medium of generic serialized fiction. The central part of my argument is an analysis of the narrative strategies which enable the informative and philosophical aspects of the series to generate the series’ educative function. (shrink)

Seventeen television journalists from Indianapolis and Terre Haute responded to a computer simulation of a situation involving privacy of an AIDS testing site. Seven different forms of reasoning were used to deal with elements of the situation. It was found, using a 3D scale for analysis, that consequentialist forms of reasoning were dominant for respondents in this sample. Noncosequentialist thinking was also demonstrated and the nature of ethical reasoning was highly individualized.

On the basis of the results of an ongoing research project on the activities of the Chinese media company StarTimes in Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire, this paper analyses the fluid and fragmentary dimension of the engagements between Chinese media and African publics, while equally emphasizing the power dynamics that underlie them. Focusing on a variety of ethnographic sources, it argues for an approach to the study of Chinese media expansion in Africa able to take into account, simultaneously, the macro-political and (...) macro-economic factors which condition the nature of China–Africa media interactions, the political intentions behind them, and the micro dimension of the practices and uses of the media made by the actors in the field. (shrink)

Since 2009, the Norwegian public service broadcaster NRK has produced a number of slow TV shows. Some of the programmes have had a surprisingly big success in terms of public engagement and audience share even though the majority of the audience was from the oldest age groups. These programmes are not only slow, lasting a long time and lacking dramatic development and progress, they also engage in a particular, traditional version of national identity. The current article argues that, through slow (...) TV, the Norwegian public service broadcaster has found a new way to reflect a particular version of Norwegian identity and to tap into the central values of Norwegian culture. Taken together, the shows cover all regions of the country—the coastal areas as well the inlands and mountains. In terms of representation, the programmes highlight nature and traditional Norwegian values such as closeness to nature, rural life, and “friluftsliv” (living the outdoor life). Urban areas and the non-white population are conspicuously absent. (shrink)

The study aims at exploring the salience and functions of media and television contents in children’s lives by focusing on their uses as a discursive resource in naturally occurring peer talk. We observed and recorded Israeli children talk in everyday, natural settings in two separate studies, in 1999–2002 and in 2012–2013. Detailed discourse analysis of television-based interactions from an ethnographic, child-centered perspective reveals the enduring centrality of television as an enjoyable, available, and shared cultural resource with valuable (...) social, cognitive, and discursive affordances: it is frequently mentioned during everyday adult-free interactions; utilized as the basis for drawing and negotiating boundaries and hierarchies within the peer community; and facilitates experiencing a variety of discursive literacy skills, ranging between practicing adherence to original texts and creativity and distancing from them. These findings provide further evidence for the mediatization of everyday life, and may have educational implications, which are discussed. (shrink)

In this important new book, Jacques Derrida talks with Bernard Stiegler about the effect of teletechnologies on our philosophical and political moment. Improvising before a camera, the two philosophers are confronted by the very technologies they discuss and so are forced to address all the more directly the urgent questions that they raise. What does it mean to speak of the present in a situation of "live" recording? How can we respond, responsibly, to a question when we know that the (...) so-called "natural" conditions of expression, discussion, reflection, and deliberation have been breached? As Derrida and Stiegler discuss the role of teletechnologies in modern society, the political implications of Derrida's thought become apparent. Drawing on recent events in Europe, Derrida and Stiegler explore the impact of television and the internet on our understanding of the state, its borders and citizenship. Their discussion examines the relationship between the juridical and the technical, and it shows how new technologies for manipulating and transmitting images have influenced our notions of democracy, history and the body. The book opens with a shorter interview with Derrida on the news media, and closes with a provocative essay by Stiegler on the epistemology of digital photography. In Echographies of Television, Derrida and Stiegler open up questions that are of key social and political importance. Their book will be of great interest to all those already familiar with Derrida's work, as well as to students and scholars of philosophy, literature, sociology and media studies. (shrink)

Through analysis of film sequences focusing on DNA in two British Broadcasting Corporation nonfiction science television programs, Wonders of Life and Bang! Goes the Theory, first broadcast in 2013, contrasting “religious” and “secular” representations of science are identified. In the “religious” portrayal, immutable scientific knowledge is revealed to humanity by nature with minimal human intervention. Science provides a creation story, “explanatory omnicompetence,” and makes life existentially meaningful. In the “secular” portrayal, scientific knowledge is changeable; is produced through technical (...) skill in expert communities; and is ambiguous, potentially positive and negative for society. Television representations of science affect audience understandings, and this is particularly the case for nonfiction representations of science, as they are likely to be “taken more seriously” than fictional representations. The consequences of the “religious” representation of science are discussed, and it is argued that a widespread understanding of science as presented in the religious portrayal would negatively impact democracy. (shrink)

The $120 millwn libel suit brought by General William Westmoreland against CBS has been the focus of considerable press and public attention. It was Westmurelad's claim that the CBS broadcast, "The Uncountd Enemy: A Vietnam Deception, contained intentional distortions of fact. CBS stood firmly behind the broadcast, although conceding journalistic flaws. During the trial the procedures followed when making the documentary were closely scrutinized and the nature of teleuision journalistic practice was called into question. The ethical implications of the (...) Westmoreland v. CBS controversy are discussed in this article. (shrink)

This paper argues that the concept of soap-opera realism, as developed in some of the recent critical writing on soap opera, is central to the understanding of this form of television drama. However, in its present form, this concept is insufficiently nuanced. In developing the concept, the work of Raymond Williams is drawn upon to delineate three sub-types of soap-opera realism: soap-opera realism in the subjunctive mode, soap-opera realism in the indicative mode, and soap-opera naturalism. The latter is then (...) discussed in detail with particular attention being paid to Coronation Street. In the course of this analysis, two key naturalistic elements in Coronation Street are considered: the nature of living spaces and the connection of character to environment. (shrink)

Proclaimed the “greenest television programme in the world,” the award-winning soap opera Coronation Street is seen as an industry success story. This paper explores how the integration of carbon literacy training led to a widespread transformational change of practice within Coronation Street. Using the theoretical lens of Communities of Practice, this study examines the nature of social learning and the enablers and barriers to change within the organization. Specifically, how boundary spanning practices, objects and people led to the (...) transformation on both a personal and group level. Based on a qualitative analysis of 22 interviews with Heads of Departments and other staff, the paper argues that CLT is a boundary practice which has evolved into a boundary spanning CoP. The importance of infrastructures supporting boundary objects and practices is highlighted as reinforcers of the CLT, both as a boundary object and a community, with the “ultimate” boundary spanning object being the show. A significant enabler in social learning and change in practice is the creation of discursive and creative space, both within CoP and across the boundaries. Findings also highlight the role of “self” in the process of social learning and organizational change. Distinct patterns emerged in the relationship between self-identity, social learning and change across a range of boundary objects, practices and communities both in the CLT and CoP. This suggests that in a diverse social learning setting such as CLT there are different transformational catalysts within the CoP and these identities can influence how knowledge is translated into practice. (shrink)

Television medical dramas sometimes depict medical professionalism and bioethical issues, but their nature and extent are unclear. The authors systematically analysed the bioethical and professionalism content of one season each of Grey's Anatomy and House M.D., two of the most popular current television medical dramas. The results indicate that these programmes are rife with powerful portrayals of bioethical issues and egregious deviations from the norms of professionalism and contain exemplary depictions of professionalism to a much lesser degree.

The concept of media events continues to generate widespread debate among scholars around the globe. Studies that have challenged the concept’s functionalist foundations have undoubtedly sharpened our thinking. Conversely, approaches that have sought to expand the concept tend to confuse rather than clarify. In this paper, we argue that events that are planned, anticipated, and involve external organizations in their design demand a specific set of analytical tools. Furthermore, we draw a further distinction between one-off events and those that are (...) cyclical in nature, with the latter being theorized using insights from studies of the television format industry. This approach not only focuses much needed attention on the production side of media events but also on the struggles between different interest groups. We illustrate our arguments by drawing upon ethnographic material from the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest. (shrink)

The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis's masterpiece in ethics and the philosophy of science,warns of the danger of combining modern moral skepticism with the technological pursuit of human desires. The end result is the final destruction of human nature. From Brave New World to Star Trek, from Steampunk to starships, science fiction film has considered from nearly every conceivable angle the same nexus of morality, technology, and humanity of which C. S. Lewis wrote. As a result,science fiction film (...) has unintentionally given us stunning depictions of Lewis's terrifying vision of the future. In Science Fiction and the Abolition of Man: Finding C. S. Lewis in Sci-Fi Film and Television, scholars of religion, philosophy, literature, and film explore the connections between sci-fi film and the three parts of Lewis's book:how sci-fi portrays "Men Without Chests" incapable of responding properly to moral good, how it teaches the Tao or "The Way," and how it portrays "The Abolition of Man.". (shrink)

Purpose of the article The issue of creating advertising that is culturally congruent has been considered to be very important to experts dedicated to the field in the past years. Culture is an important internal factor of customer behavior that needs to be fully considered if the advertising campaigns aim to address its target audience effectively. The goal of this article is to contribute to existing knowledge in the area of culturally congruent advertising. More specifically, to find out what advertising (...) appeals are preferred in Slovak television advertising. Methodology/methods Main scientific method of the present research was conceptual content analysis. The results are based on the sample of 133 TV commercials broadcasted in Slovak televisions during the 2012 in selected four segments. Scientific aim Aim of this contribution is the introduction of preferences and frequency of usage of advertising appeals used in Slovak television advertising. Subsequenty, the exploration of the links between the selection of advertising appeals and cultural dimensions of Slovaks are analyzed. Findings The largest representation in analyzed television commercials in all examined segments has the appeal to relaxation.), followed by the appeal of suitable, then the appeal of saving, the appeal to patriotism, the appeal of natural and the appeal to affiliation. In the surveyed segments the preferences of individual advertising appeals are somehow different and reflect existing influence of product category on creative strategy. The findings show the positive relation between selection of advertising appeals and Slovak cultural dimensions. Conclusions The preset contribution shows the importance of studying cultural aspects of advertising and applying findings to the field of advertising. Some limitations of the study are stated and recommendations for further research are added at the end of the article. (shrink)

This article consists of textual analysis of a highly successful television series, Inspector Morse, combined with qualitative audience study. The study of Morse and the fan culture surrounding it is presented in the context of a discussion of recent feminist work on the texts and audiences of popular culture. The textual analysis focuses on those elements of the programmes which contribute to its success as ‘quality’ television, and particularly on Morse as an example of the role played by (...) nostalgic representations of Englishness in ‘quality’ media texts of the 1980s. The article goes on to discuss whether the presence of such representations in these programmes leads inevitably to a convergence of ‘quality’ and conservative ideology. The discussion of the ideological subtexts of the programmes then focuses on the area of gender representation, and on the extent to which feminist influences are discernible in this example of quality popular culture, particularly in its representations of masculinity. The second part of the article presents an analysis of a discussion group involving fans of the series, which was organized as part of a larger qualitative study of the fan culture surrounding the programmes. There is a detailed discussion of the impact of the social dynamics of the group on their readings of Morse. The analysis also focuses on the ways in which the discourses identified in the textual analysis, such as gender representation, quality and Englishness, are mobilized in talk about the programmes. Finally, the nature of the group made it possible to discuss the construction of a feminist subcultural identity in talk about a mainstream media text, and to identify irony and critical distance as key components of that identity, particularly in the discussion of the pleasures offered by the romance narratives of the programmes. (shrink)

In 1951, the eight o’clock nightly news reported on Jean-Paul Sartre for the first time. By the end of the twentieth century, more than 3,500 programs dealing with philosophy and its practitioners—including Bachelard, Badiou, Foucault, Lyotard, and Lévy—had aired on French television. According to Tamara Chaplin, this enduring commitment to bringing the most abstract and least visual of disciplines to the French public challenges our very assumptions about the incompatibility of elite culture and mass media. Indeed, it belies the (...) conviction that television is inevitably anti-intellectual and the quintessential archenemy of the book. Chaplin argues that the history of the televising of philosophy is crucial to understanding the struggle over French national identity in the postwar period. Linking this history to decolonization, modernization, and globalization, _Turning On the Mind _claims that we can understand neither the markedly public role that philosophy came to play in French society during the late twentieth century nor the renewed interest in ethics and political philosophy in the early twenty-first unless we acknowledge the work of television. Throughout, Chaplin insists that we jettison presumptions about the anti-intellectual nature of the visual field, engages critical questions about the survival of national cultures in a globalizing world, and encourages us to rethink philosophy itself, ultimately asserting that the content of the discipline is indivisible from the new media forms in which it has found expression. (shrink)

This article explores the emergence of standards and regulation associated with the provision of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) surveillance systems in the United Kingdom. It argues that despite the intrusive and controlling nature of CCTV technology there is limited formal intervention in the form of legislation, governing its introduction and use. Instead government has sought to influence the regulation of the technology indirectly through its ability to shape and govern policy networks in the policy arena. In doing so, (...) it is argued here, that government remains the dominant actor in the policy process. (shrink)

Fertile grounds for theoretical inquiry can be found in the oddest corners. Contemporary television programming provides viewers with several talk shows of the grotesque, as I will call them, in which the aim of each episode is to put some monstrous human phenomenon on display with the help of a host and a participating studio audience. In this paper I will try to support the unlikely claim that these talk shows, which include The Jerry Springer Show and Sally Jesse (...) Raphael (among others), provide remarkably fruitful foci for theoretical attention. My plan is to give a reading of the ideological structure of talk shows of the grotesque. In particular, my interest lies in a relatively recent strand of ideological theory that has treated questions concerning the nature and reproduction of ideology as serious ontological questions: questions that go to the heart of our philosophical understanding of subjectivity, autonomy, and the metaphysics of belief and other intentional attitudes. Here I take the work of Louis Althusser, Judith Butler, and Slavoj i ek as paradigmatic and seminal representatives of this type of theorizing. My eye, in this paper, will be turned toward showing how the contemporary talk show of the grotesque provides us with a case study through which we can productively interrogate this new theoretical turn in our understanding of ideology. After spending a substantial amount of time laying down some theoretical groundwork, during which I take a selective and usurious tour through recent theories of ideology, performativity, and the constitution of subjectivity, I will analyze the talk show phenomenon by dividing it into four levels of participatory activity: those of the host, the guests, the studio audience, and the television audience. I will argue.. (shrink)

When is it ethically justifiable to mislead participants about the nature of a film or television program? Producers of the 2006 film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan used brilliantly crafted releases to undermine potential fraud claims from participants misled about the comedy. This article argues that if portraying participants can result in foreseeable, substantial negative consequences for them, the portrayal must serve an overriding public interest. The test is applied to scenes (...) in Borat. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to test a general interpretation of television series as narrative epics, in the sense defined by Aristotle’s Poetics and canonised by Renaissance literary theorists.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:'You Belong Outside':Advertising, Nature, and the SUVShane Gunster (bio)And which driver is not tempted, merely by the power of his engine, to wipe out the vermin of the street, pedestrians, children and cyclists?—Theodor Adorno, Minima MoraliaImages of nature are among the most common signifiers of utopia in commercial discourse, tirelessly making the case that a certain commodity or brand will enable an escape from the malaise and (...) drudgery of urban existence. The invocation of natural themes has been especially prominent in the marketing and promotion of sport utility vehicles over the past decade. Speeding through deserts and jungles, fording raging rivers, and even scaling the heights of Mt. Everest, the SUV is routinely depicted in the most spectacular and remote natural locations. These fanciful themes now attract the scorn of many who draw upon them to underscore the rather glaring contradictions between how these vehicles are marketed and how they are actually used: the irony of using pristine images of a hyper-pure nature to motivate the use of a product that consumes excessive amounts of natural resources and emits high levels of pollutants lies at the core of the growing public backlash against the SUV. While generally sympathetic to this critical perspective, I argue that we need to think through the role of nature in constructing the promotional field of these vehicles in a more [End Page 4] rigorous fashion than is often the case. Otherwise, we risk failing to fully understand the complexity of the SUV's appeal; even worse, simplistic criticism can have the perverse effect of reinforcing the ideological conceptions of nature that constitute a cornerstone of that appeal. Through an examination of recent print and television advertising campaigns, I develop an alternative account of the significance of natural imagery based upon the dialectical relation between nature and society that dominates the SUV's promotional field.1 Instead of reifying the conceptual distance that divides these two categories, we must look to how they flow into and define each other, often blending together into a dense cluster of associations in which the images of one connote and invoke ideas of the other.Welcome to the (not So) Great Outdoors: The Many Faces of NatureSince the emergence of the automobile as a commodity in the early twentieth century, natural themes and imagery have been used to attach a utopian flavor to movement through space. From the 1920s onward, car advertising has often invoked the fantasy of leaving behind the constraints of a crowded, mundane, and polluted urban environment for the wide open spaces offered by nature. In words that have guided advertisers (and urban planners) ever since, Henry Ford once quipped, "we shall solve the city problem by leaving the city."2 Charting the evolution of automotive promotional discourse, Andrew Wernick argues that the reliance upon natural imagery intensified in the 1970s and 1980s as people grew disenchanted with technology (and its militaristic overtones) and expressed concerns over growing traffic congestion, energy consumption, and road construction. Among the easiest tactics for advertisers wishing to deflect the negative associations invoked by the car was, and remains, an image-based rearticulation of cars with nature.3 Invoking nature as the endpoint of vehicular travel affirms one of automobility's most precious and fiercely guarded illusions, namely, that spatial mobility offers access to places, experiences, and events that are fundamentally different from everyday life, that one can escape to somewhere other than where one is now. Furthermore, as Martin Green explains, the use of nature to frame flight to the countryside summons up a powerful nostalgia for the simpler times and lives connoted by idealized scenes of rural life.4Nevertheless, SUV marketing takes the appropriation of natural themes and imagery to new 'heights,' with epic campaigns that place vehicles atop [End Page 5] mountain peaks, in the midst of dense forests, or racing across vast deserts. Leading the way in this appropriation of nature has been the Ford Motor Company. Although its market share has suffered recently, Ford spearheaded the promotion of the SUV in the 1990s with the Explorer which quickly became the best selling family vehicle of the decade, producing immense... (shrink)

ArgumentFranco's fascist regime in Spain offers the possibility of exploring the complex relationship between media communication practices and the processes of production, circulation, and management of knowledge. The regime persistently used film, and later on television, as indoctrination and disciplining devices. These media thus served to shape the regime's representation, which largely relied on the generation of positive attitudes of adherence to the rulers through people's submission and obedience to experts. This article examines the changing nature of modernization (...) discourses and practices, as a fundamental element of the regime's propaganda strategies, and as portrayed in documentaries produced under its rule. The rhetoric of modernization involved an explicit deficit model of knowledge management, which aimed at legitimating the regime's deeds and policies in its first decades, as we shall see regarding colonial-medical documentaries produced for the official newsreel in the 1940s. However, the focus of such rhetoric, despite its enduring political aims, had to somehow open up as the relationship between experts and non-experts changed, both in epistemological and practical terms, such as in wildlife documentary films produced for television in the 1970s, the regime's last decade. (shrink)

This study uses the television show Cash Cab as a natural experiment to investigate gender differences in decision making under uncertainty. As expected, men are much more likely to accept the end-of-game gamble than are women, but men and women appear to weigh performance variables differently when relying on subjective probabilities. At best men base their risky decisions on general aspects of their previous “good” play (not all of which is relevant at the time the decision is made) and (...) at worst fail to condition their risky decisions on any of the relevant information available to them. In sharp contrast, women appear to consider all of the information available to them, including previous “poor” play as well as their most recent confident “good” play, which, by design, is likely the most relevant information to consider. (shrink)

This article addresses the conversational process taking place during a TV interview in which the contrast shows up between the canonical procedure overseeing the succession and nature of conversational roles and turn-takings in contemporary media contexts and the preservation of an atavistic attitude tied to a traditional culture, Albanian tradition of oda. The discourse in these chambers is a revered phenomenon in the Albanian culture. The interviewee uses the traditional code of oral communication in the oda as a strategy (...) for saving his honour in public, while the interviewer uses another code, the language of investigative journalism. In this paper, a detailed analysis of this interview shows how the sequences built on a basic adjacency pair operate to allow the interviewee to attempt to save face in a compromising situation. We see how the oda structures override normal turn-taking rules and how the face-work process (Goffman Interaction ritual. Essays on the face-to-face behavior, Doubleday, New York, 1967) is reflected in expanded sequences. We consider this topic as an extension of a potential CA analysis when describing how cultural forms with different procedural rules affect general turn-taking. (shrink)

In a sense, all technology is biotechnology: machines interacting with human organisms. Technology is designed to overcome the frailties and limitations of human beings in a state of nature -- to make us faster, stronger, longer-lived, smarter, happier. And all technology raises questions about its real contribution to human welfare: are our lives really better for the existence of the automobile, television, nuclear power? These questions are ethical and political, as well as medical; and they even reach to (...) the philosophical and spiritual. On the whole, we seem pretty well adapted to our technology, at least on the face of it -- but there have always been doubts about whether the human soul thrives best in the oppressively technological world we have created for ourselves. (I am continually struck by how much time I have to spend fixing the machines that supposedly improve my life.). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:'You Belong Outside':Advertising, Nature, and the SUVShane Gunster (bio)And which driver is not tempted, merely by the power of his engine, to wipe out the vermin of the street, pedestrians, children and cyclists?—Theodor Adorno, Minima MoraliaImages of nature are among the most common signifiers of utopia in commercial discourse, tirelessly making the case that a certain commodity or brand will enable an escape from the malaise and (...) drudgery of urban existence. The invocation of natural themes has been especially prominent in the marketing and promotion of sport utility vehicles over the past decade. Speeding through deserts and jungles, fording raging rivers, and even scaling the heights of Mt. Everest, the SUV is routinely depicted in the most spectacular and remote natural locations. These fanciful themes now attract the scorn of many who draw upon them to underscore the rather glaring contradictions between how these vehicles are marketed and how they are actually used: the irony of using pristine images of a hyper-pure nature to motivate the use of a product that consumes excessive amounts of natural resources and emits high levels of pollutants lies at the core of the growing public backlash against the SUV. While generally sympathetic to this critical perspective, I argue that we need to think through the role of nature in constructing the promotional field of these vehicles in a more [End Page 4] rigorous fashion than is often the case. Otherwise, we risk failing to fully understand the complexity of the SUV's appeal; even worse, simplistic criticism can have the perverse effect of reinforcing the ideological conceptions of nature that constitute a cornerstone of that appeal. Through an examination of recent print and television advertising campaigns, I develop an alternative account of the significance of natural imagery based upon the dialectical relation between nature and society that dominates the SUV's promotional field.1 Instead of reifying the conceptual distance that divides these two categories, we must look to how they flow into and define each other, often blending together into a dense cluster of associations in which the images of one connote and invoke ideas of the other.Welcome to the (not So) Great Outdoors: The Many Faces of NatureSince the emergence of the automobile as a commodity in the early twentieth century, natural themes and imagery have been used to attach a utopian flavor to movement through space. From the 1920s onward, car advertising has often invoked the fantasy of leaving behind the constraints of a crowded, mundane, and polluted urban environment for the wide open spaces offered by nature. In words that have guided advertisers (and urban planners) ever since, Henry Ford once quipped, "we shall solve the city problem by leaving the city."2 Charting the evolution of automotive promotional discourse, Andrew Wernick argues that the reliance upon natural imagery intensified in the 1970s and 1980s as people grew disenchanted with technology (and its militaristic overtones) and expressed concerns over growing traffic congestion, energy consumption, and road construction. Among the easiest tactics for advertisers wishing to deflect the negative associations invoked by the car was, and remains, an image-based rearticulation of cars with nature.3 Invoking nature as the endpoint of vehicular travel affirms one of automobility's most precious and fiercely guarded illusions, namely, that spatial mobility offers access to places, experiences, and events that are fundamentally different from everyday life, that one can escape to somewhere other than where one is now. Furthermore, as Martin Green explains, the use of nature to frame flight to the countryside summons up a powerful nostalgia for the simpler times and lives connoted by idealized scenes of rural life.4Nevertheless, SUV marketing takes the appropriation of natural themes and imagery to new 'heights,' with epic campaigns that place vehicles atop [End Page 5] mountain peaks, in the midst of dense forests, or racing across vast deserts. Leading the way in this appropriation of nature has been the Ford Motor Company. Although its market share has suffered recently, Ford spearheaded the promotion of the SUV in the 1990s with the Explorer which quickly became the best selling family vehicle of the decade, producing immense... (shrink)

According to Marx, "at any given epoch of a given society, [there is] a quantity of necessaries [recognized as] the necessaries of life habitually required by the average worker." The variations in the type and amount of goods recognized as necessary for life between different epochs and different societies is due to the different 'physical conditions' and to the different 'degrees of civilization' and 'comfort' prevalent. In advanced capitalist societies, the necessities of life include a heated dwelling, food, clothing, and (...) access to some means of transportation, be it public or private. However, the average laborer in advanced capitalist societies has access not only to the necessaries of life but to a variety of luxury items as well. For example, the average worker has access to fine food and drink, an automobile, a television, and a stereo system. In my paper, I explain Marx's theory of the nature of capitalist exploitation. I then indicate how the phenomenon described above may be interpreted as evidence against Marx's theory, and then sketch an interpretation of this phenomenon that reconciles it with Marx's theory. My interpretation will suggest that the average worker's access to luxury items can be explained by the necessity in capitalism of reproducing the working class. (shrink)

Where to begin? I’ll take three books from my shelves. First, now nearly forty years old, a little book of television lectures by the great physicist Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law. He talks about the laws of motion, the inverse square law of gravitation, conservation laws, symmetry principles and the various ways these all hang together. Feynman obviously takes it that it is a prime aim of science to discover such laws. But what are laws? He writes (...) – and this is about his one and only shot at a characterization at the level of abstraction that we might think of as philosophical –. (shrink)

Seinfeld (1989–1998) and it’s co-creator’s Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000–present), are each considered groundbreaking television. Critics regard their humor and intellectual comedy as Twain-like and creative. While both shows have been criticized for their character’s indifference and apolitical attitude, the programs resonate with those in society who more subtly consider law and politics. This project argues that Seinfeld and Curb present a unique theory of justice. These two shows constitute a common and current image of what is just in society. (...) While critics have argued that Seinfeld and Curb are not shows about nothing, I argue that these comedians offer us a legal philosophy. For those who view these characters as merely “self-absorbed, superficial, and immature,” I posit that they represent the obscure area between what John Locke termed “the state of nature” and what legal scholars call “legal culture.” I propose that these sitcoms demonstrate a way of speaking about law that provides a constitutive theory of law and justice. (shrink)

Though active in the arts herself, Dr. Richards (psychology, Saybrook Graduate School, San Francisco; psychiatry, Harvard Medical School; McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts) views creativity more broadly and as essential to survival. As someone who helped break new ground in the assessment of creativity in the general population, she introduces 13 chapters in which interdisciplinary thinkers probe the "originality of everyday life" in individual and societal contexts. Perspectives range from Piaget's developmental stages and the more positive aspects of television viewing (...) to chaos theory and Zen Buddhism. In integrating these views, the editor enumerates the benefits of living creatively. (shrink)

In the television show Deal or No Deal a contestant is endowed with a sealed box, which potentially contains a large monetary prize. In the course of the show the contestant learns more information about the distribution of possible monetary prizes inside her box. Consider two groups of contestants, who learned that the chances of their boxes containing a large prize are 20% and 80% correspondingly. Contestants in both groups receive qualitatively similar price offers for selling the content of (...) their boxes. If contestants are less risk averse when facing unlikely gains, the price offer is likely to be more frequently rejected in the first group than in the second group. However, the fraction of rejections is virtually identical across two groups. Thus, contestants appear to have identical risk attitudes over (large) gains of low and high probability. (shrink)

Better Call Saul and Philosophy is an anthology, a collection of essays exploring the philosophical themes present in the hit television show Better Call Saul. Premiering in the Spring of 2015, Better Call Saul serves as a prequel to the much beloved and critically acclaimed television show Breaking Bad in a which mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher, Walter White - through a series of poor, albeit strained decisions - slowly but steadily becomes a monstrous drug kingpin. In Better (...) Call Saul, a struggling but cocksure attorney, Jimmy McGill goes through a similar transformation to become a cunning, devious criminal lawyer for the underworld. Beyond this, Better Call Saul is populated with a number of additional characters going through their own evolution - from a brother burdened with a psychosomatic(?) ailment, to a former police officer delving deeper into the wrong side of the law to provide for his family. -/- Much like the beloved show, Better Call Saul and Philosophy is an anthology-- a collection of snippets and essays that slowly reveal a much more complex story. Premiering in the Spring of 2015, Better Call Saul serves as a prequel to the much beloved and critically acclaimed television show Breaking Bad. Critics of the series have noted that its storytelling is emblematic, or "The New Golden Age of Television": programming that not only rewards multiple watches, but also calls for a careful, reasoned analysis of characters, plots, and themes. Better Call Saul is the type of program that is so rich with these elements that it not only calls for a book like Better Call Saul and Philosophy, but might even feel incomplete without it! -/- Now, readers can join alongside struggling-but-cocksure attorney Jimmy McGill as he goes through a series of transformative experiences and scenarios. Featuring the work of contemporary philosophers, Better Call Saul and Philosophy offers its readers a chance to delve deeply into a wide range of philosophical issues the show presents, including the nature of good and evil, personal identity, free will and determinism, the law as it relates to morality, the ethical implications of the war on drugs, death and dying, and many, many more. Fans of the show will love a chance to appreciate the show on much deeper level--and, for those hoping to learn a bit about philosophy as well as the show, the book perfectly marries the two together in a unique and engaging way. -/- This book is the latest edition (#8) in the series Pop Culture and Philosophy. (shrink)

Enter The Expanse to explore questions of the meaning of human life, the concept of justice, and the nature of humanity, featuring a foreword from author James S.A. Corey The Expanse and Philosophy investigates the philosophical universe of the critically acclaimed television show and Hugo Award-winning series of novels. Original essays by a diverse international panel of experts illuminate how essential philosophical concepts relate to the meticulously crafted world of The Expanse, engaging with topics such as transhumanism, belief, (...) culture, environmental ethics, identity, colonialism, diaspora, racism, reality, and rhetoric. Conceiving a near-future solar system colonized by humanity, The Expanse provokes a multitude of moral, ethical, and philosophical queries: Are Martians, Outer Planets inhabitants, and Earthers different races? Is Marco Inaros a terrorist? Can people who look and sound different, like Earthers and Belters, ever peacefully co-exist? Should science be subject to moral rules? Who is sovereign in space? What is the relationship between human progress and aggression? The Expanse and Philosophy helps you answer these questions—and many more. Covers the first six novels in The Expanse series and five seasons of the television adaptation Addresses the philosophical issues that emerge from socio-economics and geopolitics of Earth, Mars, and the Outer Planets Alliance Offers fresh perspectives on the themes, characters, and storylines of The Expanse Explores the connections between The Expanse and thinkers such as Aristotle, Kant, Locke, Hannah Arendt, Wittgenstein, Descartes, and Nietzsche Part of the popular Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series, The Expanse and Philosophy is a must-have companion for avid readers of James S.A. Corey’s novels and devotees of the television series alike. (shrink)

In the television show Deal or No Deal, a contestant is endowed with a sealed box containing a monetary prize between one cent and half a million euros. In the course of the show, the contestant is offered to exchange her box for another sealed box with the same distribution of possible monetary prizes inside. This offers a unique natural experiment for studying endowment effects under high monetary incentives. We find evidence of only a weak endowment effect when contestants (...) exchange their box for another box with the same distribution of possible prizes. (shrink)

A narrative analysis of a sequence from a documentary on the withholding of treatment in persistent vegetative state allows the discernment of several characteristics of the approach of the media to medical ethical problems: (1) The arrangement of the story units in the film sequence corresponds to established patterns of movie dramaturgy. (2) The documentary ”hollywoodizes” morality; it interprets the arena of the problem in the realm of the movie theatre and not in the realm of ethical discourse. (3) The (...) moral decision occurs in the return to mythical narrative structures which show a tendency to confirm perceived established world interpretation. (4) Morality is reduced to black and white characterizations. (5) The ethical conflict is transmitted through the plane of personal action which tends to blot out complex interdependencies. (6) Private happiness forms the basis for an essential set of criteria for all actions and decisions. The rational weighing of criterion is not easily transmittable by television; instead, television, due to its audiovisual sensory nature, has a great potential to awaken insight into and understanding of specific situations and personal experience. Thus television can supplement the philosophical discipline of hermeneutical bioethics in generating sympathy and deeper understanding. (shrink)

The stories we tell and show, in whatever medium, play varied roles in human cultures. One such role is to contribute to moral understanding. Moral understanding goes beyond moral knowledge; it is a complex cognitive achievement that may consist of one or more of the following: the ability to understand why, to ask the right questions, categorization, the application of models to specific incidents, or the capacity to make connections between morally charged situations that have a common underlying meaning. -/- (...) While the disciplines of communication, psychology, philosophy, and film and media studies have all made significant scholarly progress on this issue, they make different grounding assumptions and use different terminologies. Screen Stories and Moral Understanding approaches the topic from an interdisciplinary perspective and explores the conditions under which stories we view on screens-movies, streamed series, and television-can lead to moral understanding in viewers. -/- In five sections, this book explores the nature of moral understanding in relation to screen stories, the means by which moving image fictions can transfer knowledge to and cultivate perspectives in viewers, the role of affect in generating moral understanding, the viewer's engagement with characters, and what we do with screen stories after viewing them. (shrink)

Television pictures of starvation and depredation are not the only way that famine and political instability in the horn of Africa have affected the United States. Many people from that region of the world are seeking political or economic refuge here, and they are exposing us to a culture that is in some ways — most notably, in the practice of female circumcision – so radically different from the prevailing American cultures that we have been stunned. They are also (...) forcing hospital ethics committees to face issues that cannot be resolved by the facile application of the settled principles that have guided those institutions for the past several years. Autonomy and multiculturalism, long the foundations of most ethics committee decision making, have started to give way to a list of formally articulated rights and wrongs – perhaps to a restatement and adoption of rules said to be based in natural law. Female circumcision, argues one newspaper letter writer, “is just a sickening display of male power disguised as legitimate dogma. (shrink)

This work is aimed to identify the cultural changes that have occurred as a result of informatization. The article investigates the strategies of contemporary screen culture aimed to satisfy human needs in information. The analysis of technical improvement of information possibilities of screen media is based on J. D. Bolter's and R. Grusin's theory of remediation. The article identifies informational potentials of visual novel, which is the result of remediation of TV, movie and literary novel. In addition, the article investigates (...) the process of informatization by means of screen space formation or, in other words, by screen aesthetics. The article identifies and analyzes the hybridization strategy and the strategy of visual eclecticism. Hybridization strategy is a method to combine information of different nature, whereupon more truthful visual stories are created. It is mainly used in movies and video games. The strategy of visual eclecticism that allows viewers to perceive multiple information flows, mainly related to the screen space of modern television. The article, basing on G. Deleuze's concept of cinematic images, analyzes the informational characteristics of medium shot and the reasons of its frequent usage in modern movies. The comparison of essential characteristics of close-up shot and medium shot is made. It is determined that the change of emphasis on medium shot and full shot in contemporary cinema is related to the change of priorities in aesthetic human needs, because today the sense of presence of information becomes more important than emotions. The article notes the important problem of attitude changing towards information - the loss of its essential content characteristic. Screen aesthetics that now is served under the guise of information gradually replaces the value of the latter. The transition of information to the field of aesthetics says that its main essence is lost, because quantitative characteristics and the fact of presence are becoming more important than its quality. (shrink)

Landscape and brandingexplores the way landscape is conceptualised, conceived, represented and designed by professionals in a brand-driven age. Landscape - incorporating tangible physical space as well as intangible concepts, narratives, images, and experiences of place - is constructed by a number of creative industries. This book tests the hypothesis that place branding, a powerful marketing and management practice, increasingly blurs the distinction between the promotionof landscape and its production in design terms. Place branding involves the strategic and systematic composition of (...) single-minded, experiential and market-friendly place identities which are consistently communicated across various media, including physical space. How does this implicate or transform notions of place, nature, landscape experience, and the qualitative value of landscape itself? How does this affect the role of landscape architecture? To answer these questions, place branding theory and practice is critically examined alongside an in depth case study of one specific landscape - the Blue Mountains (Australia). Projects undertaken between 1995 and 2015, including a branding strategy for the region, media campaigns, television, cinema, and several landscape architectural works in the public and private domain are comparatively analysed, focusing on the discourse, conventions and values informing their production, and the landscape narratives they convey. (shrink)

A television nature programme a year or two ago contained a striking sequence in which a giant squid was under threat from some other creature . The squid responded in a way which struck me immediately and powerfully as one of fear. Part of what was striking in this sequence was the way in which it was possible to see in the behaviour of a creature physically so very different from human beings an emotion which was so unambiguously (...) and specifically one of fear. (shrink)

In autumn 2009, BBC television ran a natural history series, ‘Last Chance to See’, with Stephen Fry and wildlife writer and photographer, Mark Carwardine, searching out endangered species. In one episode they retraced the steps Carwardine had taken in the 1980s with Douglas Adams, when they visited Madagascar in search of the aye-aye, a nocturnal lemur. Fry and Carwardine visited an aye-aye in captivity, and upon first setting eyes on the creature they found it rather ugly. After spending an (...) hour or so in its company, Fry said he was completely ‘under its spell’. A subsequent encounter with an aye-aye in the wild supported Fry's judgment of ugliness and fascination for the creature: ‘The aye-aye is beguiling, certainly bizarre, for some even a little revolting. And I say, long may it continue being so.’. (shrink)

The article considers the nature of series as a narrative, focusing especially on its chronotope, i.e. its spatiotemporal coordinates. The concept of chronotope can be applied at at least two different levels of the interpretation of a narrative: the real world of reception and the expressive form of narration. The impact of series entails both aspects. It is for this reason that series, once on television then on the internet, represented a revolutionary turn in the modern experience of (...) storytelling. Series are therefore bound to the progressive spread of a new form of sociality known as a digital “total mobilisation”. Since the era of TV series up to the emergence of web series, seriality has been able to regulate the increase of interaction in the use of visual devices. Series play the role of a dietetical regulator, which designs the spectators’ attention. An artistic, i.e. experimental, exploitation of this new form of storytelling is possible when one considers the emergence of a new narrative genre, which we propose to call the “short form”. (shrink)

Using 129 natural conversations and 185 episodes of television drama conversations as well as the theoretical frameworks of usage-based theory and grammaticalization, I investigate two forms of ‘or’ in Korean, tunci and kena. Generally believed to be largely interchangeable, these two forms’ actual usages have never been compared. I demonstrate that the two are selectively used in conversation, and propose that three types of factor influence the selection. The first factors are genre and setting. In formal settings and formal (...) descriptive writing, kena is preferred. The second factor is the presence of negative markers: while 43% of kena tokens were used in negative sentences, only one token of tunci was. The third factor is the distinction between ‘propositive’ tunci and ‘descriptive’ kena. In conversation, tunci occurs mainly in making suggestions and presenting plans, and hence is oriented toward the future tense and the irrealis domain. Kena occurs mainly in describing present and past situations, facts, or premises, and hence is oriented toward the present and past tense and the realis domain. This study confirms the usage-based theory’s argument that speakers possess extensive procedural knowledge of language: Korean speakers may not be conscious of it, but they differentiate tunci and kena with high regularity. Lastly, I explain their differences based on their history. The older form, kena, dates back to the 8th century, whereas tunci became widespread only in the 19th century. Because tunci retains its original semantics of probability, tunci tends to occur in presenting suggestions and plans and not in factual descriptions. (shrink)

Few can imagine a world without telephones or televisions; many depend on computers and the Internet as part of daily life. Without scientific theory, these developments would not have been possible. In this exceptionally clear and engaging introduction to philosophy of science, James Ladyman explores the philosophical questions that arise when we reflect on the nature of the scientific method and the knowledge it produces. He discusses whether fundamental philosophical questions about knowledge and reality might be answered by science, (...) and considers in detail the debate between realists and antirealists about the extent of scientific knowledge. Along the way, central topics in philosophy of science, such as the demarcation of science from non-science, induction, confirmation and falsification, the relationship between theory and observation and relativism are all addressed. Important and complex current debates over underdetermination, inference to the best explaination and the implications of radical theory change are clarified and clearly explained for those new to the subject. (shrink)

The interest in television programming, its content, even its semiotics and at times the various levels of rhetoric, economic context and controlling interests, have been thoroughly analyzed. This is even the case with the analyses of the phenomenon of reruns, although one could surmise that the analyses are somewhat artificial. What has been left out of these important contributions are some of the most fundamental compositions of media in general and television in particular. These compositions will be called (...) ontological, i.e. explicating the presumed nature of media, all the way to its very substance. The latter can only be intimated, since the more comprehensible aspects will be offered first. (shrink)