Volume 4, Issue 2

The academic discipline of television studies has been constituted by the claim that television is worth studying because it is popular. Yet this claim has also entailed a need to defend the subject against the triviality that is associated with the television medium because of its very popularity. This article analyses the many attempts in the later twentieth and twenty-first centuries to constitute critical discourses about television as a popular medium. It focuses on how the theoretical currents of Television Studies emerged and changed in the UK, where a disciplinary identity for the subject was founded by borrowing from related disciplines, yet argued for the specificity of the medium as an object of criticism. Eschewing technological determinism, moral pathologization and sterile debates about television's supposed effects, UK writers such as Raymond Williams addressed television as an aspect of culture. Television theory in Britain has been part of, and also separate from, the disciplinary fields of media theory, literary theory and film theory. It has focused its attention on institutions, audio-visual texts, genres, authors and viewers according to the ways that research problems and theoretical inadequacies have emerged over time. But a consistent feature has been the problem of moving from a descriptive discourse to an analytical and evaluative one, and from studies of specific texts, moments and locations of television to larger theories. By discussing some historically significant critical work about television, the article considers how academic work has constructed relationships between the different kinds of objects of study. The article argues that a fundamental tension between descriptive and politically activist discourses has confused academic writing about ›the popular‹. Television study in Britain arose not to supply graduate professionals to the television industry, nor to perfect the instrumental techniques of allied sectors such as advertising and marketing, but to analyse and critique the medium's aesthetic forms and to evaluate its role in culture. Since television cannot be made by ›the people‹, the empowerment that discourses of television theory and analysis aimed for was focused on disseminating the tools for critique. Recent developments in factual entertainment television (in Britain and elsewhere) have greatly increased the visibility of ›the people‹ in programmes, notably in docusoaps, game shows and other participative formats. This has led to renewed debates about whether such ›popular‹ programmes appropriately represent ›the people‹ and how factual entertainment that is often despised relates to genres hitherto considered to be of high quality, such as scripted drama and socially-engaged documentary television. A further aspect of this problem of evaluation is how television globalisation has been addressed, and the example that the issue has crystallised around most is the reality TV contest Big Brother . Television theory has been largely based on studying the texts, institutions and audiences of television in the Anglophone world, and thus in specific geographical contexts. The transnational contexts of popular television have been addressed as spaces of contestation, for example between Americanisation and national or regional identities. Commentators have been ambivalent about whether the discipline's role is to celebrate or critique television, and whether to do so within a national, regional or global context. In the discourses of the television industry, ›popular television‹ is a quantitative and comparative measure, and because of the overlap between the programming with the largest audiences and the scheduling of established programme types at the times of day when the largest audiences are available, it has a strong relationship with genre. The measurement of audiences and the design of schedules are carried out in predominantly national contexts, but the article refers to programmes like Big Brother that have been broadcast transnationally, and programmes that have been extensively exported, to consider in what ways they too might be called popular. Strands of work in television studies have at different times attempted to diagnose what is at stake in the most popular programme types, such as reality TV, situation comedy and drama series. This has centred on questions of how aesthetic quality might be discriminated in television programmes, and how quality relates to popularity. The interaction of the designations ›popular‹ and ›quality‹ is exemplified in the ways that critical discourse has addressed US drama series that have been widely exported around the world, and the article shows how the two critical terms are both distinct and interrelated. In this context and in the article as a whole, the aim is not to arrive at a definitive meaning for ›the popular‹ inasmuch as it designates programmes or indeed the medium of television itself. Instead the aim is to show how, in historically and geographically contingent ways, these terms and ideas have been dynamically adopted and contested in order to address a multiple and changing object of analysis.

The article explores why, despite various laudable exceptions, popular fiction still has not received as much attention as its importance would merit. The answer I propose is that popular fiction is caught in the middle between cultural and literary studies. Popular fiction, I argue here, is characterized by a double otherness: as popular fiction it is not what people in cultural studies are chiefly interested in, but what they tend to leave to their colleagues in literary studies; and as popular fiction it is not what people in literature departments are particularly interested in, but what they tend to leave to their colleagues in cultural studies. The former, I argue, is an unconscious form of othering, since most scholars in cultural studies would no doubt agree that popular fiction is important and needs to be investigated. It is simply not what most of them concentrate on. The latter, by contrast, is a conscious form of othering, a means by which scholars of literature continue to define their object of study in a very traditional way. After a short introduction the first part of this essay focuses on cultural studies. It sets out by establishing that many publications in the field implicitly position popular fiction as an other and then goes on to discuss the reasons for this othering. Cultural studies, I argue, has since its inception been driven by the desire to move beyond literature and to expand the notion of ›text‹ to comprise all signifying systems. As a result, cultural studies scholars ›read‹ films, television, magazines, newspapers, advertisements, or football matches, but they hardly ever engage literary texts. This widespread neglect, I suggest, affects not only those scholars who are interested in cultural production and in the texts as such, but also those who study acts of reception and the construction of meaning as cultural practices. The next section investigates why popular fiction is not studied more frequently within literary studies, and suggests that literary studies still suffers from what I call the ›modernist bias‹. The philologies continue to embrace modernism's normative understanding of what constitutes a valuable work of art. They are interested in texts that are subversive in terms of content and innovative in terms of form, texts that are anti-mimetic, ambivalent, and complex – and thus possess qualities that popular fictional texts are said to lack. I demonstrate how this modernist bias entered literary criticism through the close association between the modernist writers and the proponents of the New Criticism, and how it survived into the age of poststructuralism, affecting the practice of criticism, impacting on the construction of literary histories, and leading scholars of literature to ignore, vilify, or recast popular fictional texts in modernist terms. By way of conclusion I argue that we should get rid of the label ›popular‹ altogether – both with regard to popular fiction and to popular culture in general. Not only are there countless differences between many individual texts which are usually included within this category that tend to be obscured when we employ the same label for all of them; what is more, getting rid of the label ›popular‹ seems a promising way to counter the ongoing compartmentalization and marginalization of popular fiction that even those scholars who study popular fiction often unwittingly corroborate. This does not mean that we should stop talking about differences between texts. But ›popular vs. literary‹ is only one possible binary to structure the literary field, a powerful but hardly the most useful one. There are other binaries available – ›subversive vs. affirmative‹, ›conservative vs. progressive‹, ›influential vs. negligible‹, etc. – that fit better the effort to understand literary artifacts in relation to the cultural, social, political, and historical context that produced these texts and that these texts, in turn, also shape.

For some years, it has been possible to detect an obvious increase in studies of objects and products that are considered part of popular culture. Even so, overall, the gaps in research remain considerable. There are numerous subjects on which hardly any work is available – magazines, best-sellers, television programmes, internet pages, for example. What is not lacking at all, though, are definitions of popular culture. At a rough estimate, there must be one to two thousand scholars in the English- and German-speaking countries who have already tried their hand at providing such a definition. Even if precise, sustained consideration of works of popular culture is an exception, abstract reflection about popular culture per se is clearly nothing of the sort. These abstractions are predominantly provided in the form of nominal definitions. The present article identifies a total of twenty-three definitions that in some cases differ considerably from one another and each of which works with a particular component in its definiens (different combinations of such components then yield numerous further definitions). This lack of consensus is notable in so far as the term ›popular culture‹ has a history of some length that provides the background for many of the examples listed; despite this, a routine or exemplary usage has manifestly not established itself. This might give rise to the view that it is impossible to define popular culture precisely – but hardly anyone is prevented by this from presenting their own definition, as is readily apparent from the number of existing suggestions. This kind of definition binds those who make it: the writer makes a commitment, for the duration of the text or speech at least, to use ›popular culture‹ to refer to everything that falls within the scope of the definition. One person will then intend, indeed have to treat as part of ›popular culture‹ all things, games, symbols, festivals, forms of perception, and so on that are popular across all classes, another everything that is entertaining, another again that which they consider low, trivial cultural material, and so forth. The possible confusion could abate rapidly because of this. Far from contradicting one another in an irresolvable sense, the definitions merely use the same sequence of sounds or letters to indicate different quantities. Certainly, a constructivist who denies that the world by its nature breaks down into pieces that are noticed or discovered by human perception is unlikely to have a problem with this, and the same goes for those for whom words refer to invariably predetermined things and states of affairs. It would be unacceptable only for a Platonist, who gives a concept the status of an immutable idea distinct from human postulations. Given that Platonic thought is not widespread any more now, it would be easy to conclude that the many different definitions of popular culture are not a particularly significant problem for most scholars. This, however, is not the case. Many authors insist on their form of language and treat that of others as inappropriate, misleading, and so on. The reason for this lies in the fact that the rubric ›popular culture‹ has for many become a special expression that also has a prominent position on an institutional level. Popular culture is, according to the terminology of discourse analysis, a ›disciplinary invention, a notion circulating in a particular set of disciplinary discourses‹. Even this, though, is not enough to explain why ›popular culture‹ is at the centre of so many debates and why there are such strikingly conflicting attempts to pin the term down. Referring to the ›disciplinary‹ composition of popular culture is not sufficient because nowadays there is no field that is not spared from legislation and critical scrutiny. Community facilities, authorities such as ministries of state and standardization bodies, courts, accredited experts, research institutions, and so on make their meticulous and wide-ranging contributions to the discourse of definitions, yet in the vast majority of cases there are no substantial debates about them. The specific reason for the prominent and furthermore controversial meaning of ›popular culture‹ is to be sought in the central position of the term on the political and aesthetic map. The act of describing or designating something as part of ›popular culture‹ is accompanied very frequently indeed by an unmistakable positive or negative value judgement. This means that it is easy to explain why the definitions of popular culture are of such significance: the definition is often meant to anticipate or subsume the value judgement, or at least point to it. In view of this situation, it is suggested that, before making further attempts at a definition, it would be better to exploit the possibilities that lie in a serious investigation of the areas touched on by the various definitions of ›popular culture‹. The ›theories‹ have done their bit as nominal definitions: they have revealed an abundance of possibilities for providing comprehensive descriptions and seeking explanations for the things described. There are great opportunities to be drawn from the various definitions, some of which are contradictory or in open conflict with one another, for to date they have amounted mostly to brief statements and prescriptions on the printed page. They provide a vocabulary and channel interest and attention in a particular direction – but what comes (or could come) into view as a result, in individual cases or more comprehensively as a result of systematic study, has to date been described very rarely or not at all. What, for example, are the products or artefacts that ›are popular across all classes‹ at present? Do they (still) exist at all? What is the difference between the schemata and formulas that should be highlighted in the analysis of works of popular and high literature? Does it lie primarily in particular textual features or rather in publishers' practice of collecting literature that is classified as entertaining material in series and under headings of genre? These are just a few of many questions that arise from the twenty-three nominal definitions of ›popular culture‹ that are identified. Many more could easily be derived. At least one conclusion thus presents itself: if anything is needed in the field of the academic treatment of ›popular culture and literature‹, it can, at present, only be more empirical research.

How can literature trigger us to take a critical attitude towards our own position in watching the other suffer? This essay explores the issue of what could constitute an ›ethical‹ response to literary representations of suffering, and which features in the literary work itself could be most conducive to such a response. This issue is explored using a poststructuralist perspective. While the debate around the ethics of representing suffering and cruelty is much wider than the poststructuralist framework can address, poststructuralism has been chosen as a theoretical point of departure because it has been dominant within literary scholarship addressing trauma in the last decades. Within trauma studies, (poststructuralist) critics like Caruth have typically claimed that trauma or suffering can only be represented, insofar as it can be represented at all, by the ›gap‹ or aporia, by language that defies referentiality. The question with aporetic narratives, however, is to what extent they still invite an empathic response. In Writing History, Writing Trauma , LaCapra has given an eloquent critique of the poststructuralist idealization of aporia and of constitutive loss. When one is addressing a specific traumatic event, LaCapra argues that it would be preferable to use the type of writing that does not only embody ›acting out‹ but also ›working through‹, »developing articulations that are recognized as problematic but still function as limits and as possibly desirable resistances to undecidability « (La Capra 2001, 22). He expresses a fear that the type of writing that tries to stay faithful to trauma in its ›acting out‹ denies the distinction between the actual victim, the one who writes about the victim, and the one who reads about the victim; thus creating ›over-identification‹ with the victim. While it could be said that radically aporetic narratives carry some inherent dangers when it comes to evoking an ethical reader response to suffering, this does not mean that the use of disruptive techniques like aporia should be relinquished altogether. On the contrary, distortion and disruption within a narrative can incite readers to start challenging normative ways of thinking and being. What is called for is a balance between disruption and engagement. If we cannot relate to the characters at all, how are we supposed to (critically) engage with their suffering, or their cruelty? Indeed, ›empathy‹ may mediate in not letting the aporetic text escape our understanding completely. LaCapra's argument for the notion of ›empathic unsettlement‹ can help point the way to a fruitful ›middle ground‹ between a ›conventional‹ engaging narrative which allows readers to understand the represented other, and disrupting techniques which make clear that understanding the other can never be complete. Moreover, the distinction between ›sympathy‹ and ›empathy‹ is crucial when it comes to determining an ethical response to the suffering literary other. ›Sympathy‹ can be equated to »feeling sorry for you«, while empathy corresponds to »feeling your sorrow« (Eagleton, Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic, 2003, 156). This means that at a metalevel, it is easier to take pleasure in our sympathy than in our empathy. Chismar, in fact, has argued that while sympathy may have the appearance of being the more ethical of the two, empathy has an underexplored ethical potential. Feeling empathy means that someone is »stimulated, disturbed, or even moved by the recipient [of the empathy], but she may not really care about him or agree with him« (Chismar, Journal of Value Inquiry 22: 257–266, 1988, 258). This means that we can empathize with others while respecting their difference from us. What we and the other have in common lies in the realm of physical and emotional pain. While everything that makes us different from the other leads us to have a different validation, interpretation and experience of that pain, our fundamental similarity is that we both are capable of experiencing pain: we are both mortal and fragile human beings. Empathy allows us to feel for, or better: feel with, the other whom we do not know, may not understand, or even like. J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace functions as a case in point of ›empathic unsettlement‹. Disgrace simultaneously evokes and obstructs a desire to know more about Lucy's rape, ›forcing‹ readers to use their imagination but simultaneously addressing the limits of using one's imagination in ›feeling‹, and especially in understanding, the suffering of the other. The novel thus functions as an implicit inquisitor, asking us why we want to know about Lucy's suffering. The other is there, inescapable but unintelligible, bearing her wounds; and we are called upon not to look away, while also not allowed to indulge in this other's suffering. Ultimately, what literary fiction like Coetzee's can accomplish lies within its capacity to confront us with our desire to watch the suffering other while questioning this desire.

Is there a narrator in all fictional narratives or only in some of them (implying that some narratives may be considered ›narratorless‹)? This is a controversial issue for ›communicational theories‹ which claim that communication between a narrator and a narratee is central to the definition of the narrative, and ›non-communicational‹ theories – or ›poetic‹ theories – of the fictional narrative which consider that a fictional narrative, or a certain kind of fictional narrative, and communication are mutually exclusive. In this paper, I shall test communicational and non-communicational or poetic theories of the fictional narrative against an empirical micro-reading. The text I selected to this end is Juan Rulfo's novel, Pedro Páramo (1955), which I shall examine in Spanish and in its English translation by Margaret Sayers Peden (1994). I shall explain why I selected this work in the first part of the article and summarize the reasons for this choice at the beginning of the second. Given that the character Juan Preciado is seen by all critics as the fictional narrator – i. e. the character endowed with the role of narrator in the fictional world – who, then, is the fictional narrator of the second part of the novel? Is the fictional narrator of the second part of the novel also Juan Preciado's narrative's ›reporter‹ in the first part of the novel? In other words, does he assume responsibility for the whole novelistic montage , introduced as the assembling of real-life material? Answers to the first question will be sought in the available critical work on of Pedro Páramo with the conclusion that this critical corpus offers no answer to the second one. I shall then examine the problems raised by the presentation of the second part of Pedro Páramo as issuing from a fictional narrator, just like Juan Preciado's narrative in the first part of the novel, which I shall divide into: 1) problems about the inner consistency of the critical discourse; 2) organizational problems concerning interpretive work; 3) problem of the falsification of erroneous interpretations. In the third part of this paper I shall suggest a possible critical reading of Pedro Páramo inspired from non-communicational or poetic theories of the fictional narrative, and detail its advantages.