Page 167 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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152 Now
In the context of mass-media audiences, Marshall distinguishes
between the admiring identification cinema encourages and television’s
sympathetic identification (Marshall 1997: 154–6). Admiring identifica-
tion is a useful way of conceptualizing Hollywood’s ability to
domesticate and pacify art’s originally ritualistic/magical/
contemplative quality (as identified in Benjamin’s Essay and Baudril-
lard’s notion of a ‘seductive occurrence’). Sympathetic identification
appositely describes televisions’s more homely contribution to the
role of celebrity. Television’s superficially more domesticated quality,
however, should not distract one’s attention from the crucial ideo-
logical work it nevertheless unobtrusively manages to carry out. Its
primary status as an overwhelmingly domestically situated medium,
in conjunction with its close links to the advertising industry, means
that it plays a major political function linking the expansion of
capitalism and increasingly privatized and domesticated forms of
consumption. The tautological element of celebrity that it symbioti-
cally shares with the equally tautological commodity form is much
more evident in television than cinema. Aura is still present enough
in cinema to allow great performances to create stars, while in
television discussion tends to centre more upon personalities.Inour
previous discussion of Kracauer’s work (particularly his comments
about the essential contiguity of photographic images), we saw how
photography laid the groundwork for the media’s tendency to
privilege contingent detail over more substantial content and the
subsequent naturalization within a widely mediated culture of a
pervasion of discrete, fragmented images with only loose conceptual
connections. Television speeds this process up by technologically
facilitating the seamless joining together of photographic output in a
continuous flow while at the same time slowing down and deepening
the amount of attention that can be given to contingent detail in
such trivia-based personality-dominated formats as chat shows and
lifestyle programmes.
The role of the television personality combines with the structure
of programmes to reinforce televisions role as an ideological support
for commodities. In a domesticated, tamed version of Weber’s
charismatic authority, personality traits become unique selling points.
They play their part within several additional layers of commodifica-
tion. For example:

1 The programme’s celebrity presenter literally becomes an indi-
vidual brand.
2 Presenters work within a show that as an entity is itself branded
and franchised.
3 The strength of the programme brand is used to sell other
brands during the commercial breaks.

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