If there is one thing that I am very familiar with, it’s television. Ever since high school I have been known as a pop culture guru. I can pull out so many random facts about shows I don’t even watch it’s kind of ridiculous. However being a good critic involves more than just loving television. Don’t get me wrong, it is majorly important that I actually like television, but more importantly is how I view it and interpret my view so that you can get a broader understanding of a program that you might have watched. My goal as a critical writer is to persuade you, the reader, into at least considering my criticism as valid, while looking into the cultural context of a program, and relating my argument to the viewer.
The whole point of criticizing something is not so that I can sit at my computer and type what I think just for kicks, it is so that I can persuade readers to consider my perspective on a certain program. According to Sillars and Gronbeck “A communication critic makes an argument that describes, interprets, or evaluates the messages to which people are exposed in public or collective ways” (5). As a critic I will be looking at a program as a “text” whereas normally a program would be viewed as just entertainment. Through my descriptions and interpretations of a program I hope to give readers a different perception/conclusion from the one that they came up with. This is not to say that I believe that my stance is the only correct one. “Criticism is subjective” (6) according to O’Donnel, and I completely agree that there can be more than one correct way to view a program. Even though one may have a different perspective on the same program that I viewed, the fact that I had a different viewpoint will hopefully give someone a new way of thinking about a program.
One of the main ways in which criticism is subjective is how it is researched. There has constantly been this notion about television that it is a strong influence on culture. However I take the same approach as Corner does when speaking about how culture influences television in the fact that culture affects television and television affects culture. Corner discusses television as having a centripetal and centrifugal action to it. Centripetal action means that culture is taken in, and centrifugal means that culture is outward. For example, take a show like Gossip Girl, a show about wealthy teens living in the Upper East Side of New York. It’s clear that the general idea behind this program was based on the fashions and lifestyle of real teens living in this area influenced the plot, this would be the centripetal action. Since Gossip Girl is a national televised program it is spreading the culture of the Upper East Side to other areas in the country such as the Midwest, which is the centrifugal action. I strongly believe that the two actions together are what cultures influence is on television, not a straight cause-effect relationship. In my criticisms I will be taking this relationship into account.
Okay, now I know that using terms like “centripetal” and “texts” when discussing television doesn’t seem like it’s exactly “reader-friendly”, so why bother reading my blog? Well if there is one thing that I want to do in my criticisms, it is to relate to you. Sillars and Gronbeck say that in good criticism you have to “demonstrate that your critical analyses are significant, relevant, and coherent”. As a 20 year old college student, I sincerely hope that I can do all three of those tasks in order to gain your attention. I hope that my arguments are significant enough where one would be curious as to why I took a certain position on a program, my unusual interest in watching both CNN and E News continuously will be able to relate to a wide range of audiences, and the fact that I am just an average 20 year old college student leads you to trust in my abilities as a critic not just in a scholarly light, but as a normal viewer of television.
From someone who watches the classy Grey’s Anatomy to the not so classy (but just as good) Family Guy (actually I’m not even sure if Grey’s Anatomy is all that classy either) I can tell you that as someone with a large variety of interests that you will be able to find something in my blog that you agree with or can relate to. My goal however is more than just being able to write something that is relatable, it is also writing something that maybe provokes more thought than what goes into the normal television viewing process (but don’t feel like you have to think every time you watch TV, we all need a little break sometimes). By evaluating a program and discussing it one can get a bigger appreciation for what goes into making a television show or even for the show itself. As O’Donnel says “Critical acuity enables you to move from casual enjoyment of a television program to a fuller and richer understanding” (3) which is my hope for myself as a critic and maybe for you as a reader.
Corner, J. (1999). Critical Ideas in Television Studies. New York: Oxford University Press.
O’Donnell, V. (2007). Television Criticism. New York: Sage.
Sillars, M. O. and Gronbeck, B. E. (2001). Communication Criticism: Rhetoric, Social Codes, Cultural Studies. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
15 years ago
