MC2505 Media Analysis Robert Andrews

CHEWING GUM FOR THE EYES.

THE PASSIVE AUDIENCE AND WHAT HAPPENS WHEN IT MEETS NEW!MEDIA TEXTS.

The allegation that television is merely 'chewing gum for the eyes' can be levelled at other
media, too. Crucially, the statement refers to the passivity with which die reader of mediated
texts receives messages. It concerns a low!intensity process of readership in which the receiver
is not entirely burdened by the nature of the programming being received or the extent to
which he attempts to negotiate the text's meanings.

That television can mediate content only intended to satisfy the passive element of the
audience's motives for media use closely associates chewing!gum media texts with
'entertainment!based programming ! "our leisure activities predominate in our consciousness,
and most of them appear to be based around the media." w Entertainment is usually passive
by nature ! Blumler and Katz's media 'diversion' or 'escape' on the rise. P>

To be 'passive' is to be "acted upon, not acting; showing no interest or initiative; submissive."

P) These descriptions can often be attached to most television viewers ! the very one!to!many
nature of the medium forces its audience into being the subject of a monologue, the
submissive party being acted upon, not acting for itself! Therefore, the interactionist theory !
that the viewer is active because he works to decode the text ! can become a fallacy... because
tile medium itself is not interactive, it does not engage the viewer in deconstructive dialogue,
so any meaningful (communicable) decoding of the programming's meaning is only carried
out in the situated culture of the place of viewing, with fellow viewers via two!step flow. The
audience is not 'actively active.'

And with Hall's assertion that "texts are structured in such a way that they contain a preferred
reading" comes an acceptance that broadcasters would rather reject polysemy. (4) For example,
in news, the sender positions himself in such a way as to interpellate the audience from a place
of authority, designed to reduce the reader's scope to interpret 'facts' differently ! else, the
ability of newsgafherers to tell stories, and the modernist project of journalism, would be
undermined.

So, chewing!gum reception comes about because many media provoke a passivity in the
viewer which the storyteller sees as desirable in reinforcing the authority of the sent text ! via
'perfectly transparent communication.' <5) This low level of reader activity may leave the
audience open to manipulation by the producer because closed texts impose reader alignment
with the dominant!hegemonic reading. And the passivity also exists because of the
interpellative characteristics of the technology, which has traditionally fitted the one!way
model of broadcast.

Despite this, it is true that if allowed, me receiver would arrive at an agreed, negotiated or
oppositional interpretation of the text. In fact, the argument here that television encourages
passivity counters, in part, even McLuhan's belief that TV is a 'cool' medium because it
requires greater mental participation than, say, the 'hot,' low!demand media like radio:

"McLuhan^s vocabulary is counterintuitive. A cool medium creates more participation,

but more involvement also means more passivity. Complaints that today's young people
have a short attention span are just acknowledgements of the increase in participation
associated with a general cooling down of the media." (6)

But if the media are becoming cooler, in what sense does participation also encourage
passivity? Surely "an urge toward involvement" would animate the chewers of passive media
from their sofas into engaging with both the text and its producer? <7)

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MC2505 Media Analysis Robert Andrews

Well, it must be noted that there is occurring now a rapid development of media that give the
audience more empowerment ! media said to enable engagement between the reader and the
producer, between readers, and between the reader and tlie text.

TV is now watching me audience, and me conversion of viewer to participant is something of

a trend, with audiences invited to use occasional telephone votes, enter discussions, interview
stars, and so on. Because 'real life' plays an increasing role in broadcast, and because, in the
audience's everyday lives, this is potentially seen as either intrusionary or flattering, the
audience's awareness of its place in a new duality is intensified:

"In the electric age, when our central nervous system is extended to involve in the whole
of mankind, and to incorporate the whole of mankind in us, we necessarily participate...
in the consequences of our every action. It has heightened human awareness of
responsibility to an intense degree." P)

Therefore, the audience's realisation that it is becoming the content of media, and the producer
or controller of truly interactive media, is beginning to undermine the notion that screen media
are merely 'chewing gum for the eyes.'

Though it does not satisfy definitions of true interactivity ("the possibility of an audience
actively participating in the control of an artwork or representation" w), the trend of the
inclusion of 'real people' ! the sort of people who use media ! in television programming itself
is a worthy, if late and comical, precursor to a more active audience. Television has turned its
attention to the people whose attention it wants most by airing the events of 'real people.'.

When people apparently more identifiable to the audience become the content of real!life
genres, broadcasters believe they are doing a service to 'you, me viewer,' by representing life
and people closer to the mass reality. What they are actually doing, as they promote their
'ordinary' subjects as characters in order to produce a narrative hook, is creating a new cast of
stars, people whose ultimate aim is to be distant from me audience. Doesn't class association
and familiarity affect the audience's negotiation of this preferred meaning? Well, given that
audiences are prepared to both hurl abuse at and praise these new 'ordinary stars' as they make
their judgements, the separating barrier of the text remains ! TV!watching becomes more of a
social!bond experience, yet simultaneously, perhaps, this produces in me viewer an engrossed
new kind of entertainment.

That new kind of entertainment can be called 'voyeurism,' rather man democratisation. When
the audience is encouraged into engagement with the media text and its subjects, "the ritual
being observed on television at large is a mapping of classic small!town dynamics onto the
media global village." t9) As television wants real life on its own terms, and while the audience
becomes the text by virtue of inviting the world into its habitat, much of the new!media
environment urges its audiences to mock up an instant opinion about the dreaded Other and
become part of the biggest mob in history ! intertextuality becomes a living enactment in the
conflicts between subjects, and the preferred ideology is constructed by the mass!majority
opinion of the host and the studio audience. This cyclically returns the non!studio audience to
the earlier, chewing!gum situation: the resultant product engages this viewer no more than any
other media text ! the conflict has become a spectacle to be watched, not taken part in, so the
viewer can again attempt to decode the text alone.

So, that television makes present an event or lifestyle from which the audience remains
abstracted, while still feeling as though it is involved and represented, may account for the
claim that 'more involvement also means more passivity;'

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MC2505 Media Analysis Robert Andrews

Well, it must be noted that there is occurring now a rapid development of media that give the
audience more empowerment ! media said to enable engagement between the reader and the
producer, between readers, and between the reader and the text.

TV is now watching the audience, and the conversion of viewer to participant is something of
a trend, with audiences invited to use occasional telephone votes, enter discussions, interview
stars, and so on. Because 'real life' plays an increasing role in broadcast, and because, in the
audience's everyday lives, this is potentially seen as either intrusionary or flattering, the
audience's awareness of its place in a new duality is intensified:

"In the electric age, when our central nervous system is extended to involve in the whole
of mankind, and to incorporate the whole of mankind in us, we necessarily participate...
in the consequences of our every action. It has heightened human awareness of
responsibility to an intense degree." w

Therefore, the audience's realisation tliat it is becoming the content of media, and the producer
or controller of truly interactive media, is beginning to undermine the notion that screen media
are merely 'chewing gum for me eyes.'

Though it does not satisfy definitions of true interactivity ("the possibility of an audience
actively participating in the control of an artwork or representation" <8)), the trend of the
inclusion of 'real people' ! the sort of people who use media ! in television programming itself
is a worthy, if late and comical, precursor to a more active audience. Television has turned its
attention to the people whose attention it wants most by airing the events of 'real people.'.

When people apparently more identifiable to the audience become the content of real!life
genres, broadcasters believe they are doing a service to 'you, the viewer,' by representing life
and people closer to the mass reality. What they are actually doing, as they promote their
'ordinary' subjects as characters in order to produce a narrative hook, is creating a new cast of
stars, people whose ultimate aim is to be distant from the audience. Doesn't class association
and familiarity affect the audience's negotiation of this preferred meaning? Well, given that
audiences are prepared to both hurl abuse at and praise these new 'ordinary stars' as they make
their judgements, the separating barrier of the text remains ! TV!watching becomes more of a
social!bond experience, yet simultaneously, perhaps, this produces in the viewer an engrossed
new kind of entertainment.

That new kind of entertainment can be called ^voyeurism,' rather than democratisation. When
the audience is encouraged into engagement with the media text and its subjects, "the ritual
being observed on television at large is a mapping of classic small!town dynamics onto the
media global village." (9) As television wants real life on its own terms, and while the audience
becomes the text by virtue of inviting the world into its habitat, much of the new!media
environment urges its audiences to mock up an instant opinion about the dreaded Other and
become part of me biggest mob in history ! intertextuality becomes a living enactment in the
conflicts between subjects, and the preferred ideology is constructed by the mass!majority
opinion of the host and die studio audience. This cyclically returns the non!studio audience to
the earlier, chewing!gum situation; the resultant product engages this viewer no more than any
other media text ! the conflict has become a spectacle to be watched, not taken part in, so the
viewer can again attempt to decode the text alone.

So, that television makes present an event or lifestyle from which the audience remains
abstracted, while still feeling as though it is involved and represented, may account for the
claim mat 'more involvement also means more passivity:'

Fri13/Nov/1998 2
MC2505 Media Analysis Robert Andrews

hypermedia in general, since a hypertext welcomes the audience's freedom to direct the story
from point to point. So, in contrast to a television news broadcast, hypertext ! the founding
ideology and operational principle of the worldwide web ! could see the audience deciding
which stories should go in which order and, therefore, lets it determine what is of most
importance to itself... the hypertext interpellates the reader as though it were the less!capable
servant of the master media user, not the authoritative figure described earlier. When the
individual news report is consumed, however, the sender!reporter does take on the role of that
figure, with some negation of the user's new empowerment; but the exchange of authority
between he and the receiver creates a. more intimate relationship, based on value economics,
because the user is aware of the power he has consented to return.

Hypermedia sees uses!and!gratification theory being played out in real!time as the receiver
makes continual new choices about which content will be most attractive or useful next
(though we may argue that this is only the case because me global scale of content production
for new!media gives the audience more choices to make about what to watch, read or use than
does national television). Although the receiver tends to become the producer of her own
narrative, as her choices create a 'flow' of programming (quite the antithesis to that of
Raymond Williams), the ability to select the next message from those me text offers does not
necessarily equal interactivity. In hypermedia, the audience spits out the passivity gum only if
there are sufficient 'forking paths' that the viewer or user has freedom enough to choose her
route. Else, the promise of audience activation is again a myth because of limited engagement
with the text. Discussing Borges' 'Garden of Forking Paths,' in which sufficient choices exist
so that "all things are conceivable and all things take place," Barbrook describes the narrator's
subsequent insanity and condemning to death upon learning he would have to produce infinite
permutations within the text to make such interactive freedom available for the reader ! the
'death of the author' comically realised:

"If the reader chooses his or her own pathway through the story, then the narrator ! or
director ! can be done away with; in effect, the function and authority of authorship is
usurped by the reader."

That is when me medium is no longer chewed like an anaesthetic.

So, in conclusion, it would seem that the extent to which the screen!media are 'chewing gum
for the eyes' depends not just on the practical ability of the medium to let the receiver engage
with sender or text, but also then, the availability of choice signposts within me text itself! too
limited a number of predefined options and the text gives itself away as offering a phoney
interactivity.

The crucial element in exploring audience passivity versus interactivity is to say that the
hallmark of those impassive new!media texts may be that they require effort on the audience's
part ! both to seek out and use me content and then to decode the arrived text. By nature, this
differentiates interactivity from the texts we call 'chewing!gum.' It is true that, in many cases,
interactivity is just a result of the reader being offered sufficient predefined choices, which
may simply relax the narrative and interpellative noose. But in this situation, and particularly
where greater freedom is given and a narrative is not imposed, the user is forced to negotiate
and deconstruct me text in order to make a decision about the next stopping point within it !
the penalty for not doing so is the termination of the media content flow, and the discovery,
entertainment or knowledge that goes with it

Passivity pushes content at the viewer. Empowerment of an active audience means shifting
responsibility and workload onto media users.

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 MC2505 Media Analysis Robert Andrews

1) Mclver, Gil] (1998), 'Media and the Spectacular Society.' Westminster University Hypermedia Research Centre,
http://ma.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/kids/ma.theory.1.3.db#3.
2) Blumler, Jay & Kate, Elihu (1974), 'The Uses of Mass Communication.' London: Sage Publications.
3) Oxford Dictionary of Current English (1993). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
4) O'Sullivan, Tim; Dutton, Brian & Rayner, Philip (1996) ! 'Studying the Media.' London: Arnold. p163.
5) Hall, Stuart (19NN)! 'Encoding, Decoding' in Oct 5th lecture hand!out. p101.
6) Wolf, Gary (1996) ! 'The Wisdom of Saint Marshall, The Holy Fool' in Wired 4.01. San Francisco: Wired Magazine
Group Inc., rittp://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.01/
7) McLuhan, Marshal! (1964) ! 'Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.'Kentledge & Kegan Paul. p344.
8) Cameron, Andy & Barbrook, Richard (1998), 'Dissimulations.' Westminster University Hypermedia Research
Centre, http://ma.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/kids/ma.theory.3.2.db#1.
9) Sinus, R.U. & !Jude, St. (1994) ! 'The Medium is the Message and the Message is Voyeurism' in Wired 2.02. San
Francisco: Wired Magazine Group Inc., http://www.wired.com/w'red/archive/2.02/
10) Hamilton, Andy (1998) ! 'Huw Wheldon Memorial Lecture.'London: BBC TV.
11) Groombridge, Brian (1972) ! 'Television and the People: A Programme for Democratic Participation.'
Harmondsworth: Penguin. p71.
12) McQuail, Denis (1997) ! 'Audience Analysis.' Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. p22,

^~~' 2000 ? 2434 < 2500

words

Fn13/Nov/1988 5
ROBERT ANDREWS

You have taken the essay title and produced a stimulating and original piece of work
that provides an interesting discussion of the notion of the 'active audience' and
'interactivity"'. You provide a competent discussion of some of the alternative
perspectives of the active audience debate although it is possibly rather ambitious to
try and cover the complexity of this debate in the amount of space you have here.

You also provide a thoughtful and perhaps rather generous (?) view of the interactive
nature of hypertext's possibilities. In theory much of what you argue in terms of
viewer autonomy and activity seems possible but I feel that in reality this does not yet
happen ! perhaps it will as we become increasingly more comfortable with what the
Internet and hypertext has to offer us ! especially if and when it is linked to the
television set and becomes part of the domestic furniture of the living!room rather
than as currently a separate 'office' utility.

Again there is much more that could have been included in this debate and perhaps a
2000 word essay is rather limiting to do full justice to the issues that you raise. I
would have liked to have seen some recognition of the criticisms or reservations that
have been expressed towards the Internet.

Some of your readings are a little dated McLuhan (1964) and Groombridge (1972) I
think that there has been quite a lot published recently that might have addressed
specifically the Internet. You quote from Barbrook but do not give the source.

Philip Rayner.
 CHEWING GUM FOR THE EYES: THE PASSIVE AUDIENCE AND NEW!MEDIA TEXTS
DRAFT ESSAY PLAN

"CHEWING GUMFW THE EYES'

^ ^(hat does this claim refer to?
>» Define this in terms of a low intensity of reaction to a text, a passivity in the audience.
• Only goes as far as the senses, not the thinking mind.
• i.e. "passive" is ' 1. acted upon, not acting,' '2. showing no interest or initiative; submissive.'
• Who are the exponents of this claim?
• Find more theoretical models to associate wrth chewing!gum reading.
• Denis McQuail on 'Audience Analysis.'

IMPLICATIONS OF CHEWING!GUM READING OF TEXTS

• Problems with passive reading of texts. For a start, open to manipulation.
Re: Dominant!hegemonic / Negotiated / Oppositional interpretations. Does chewing!gum
passivity amount to Hall's concurrent agreement with the dominant!hegemonic encoded
text?
Wide sender!receiver divide... 'Fordist production of media, ifs reliance on economies of
scale, creates a vast division between producers and consumers.' Medai and the spectacular society,
P5
Screen media seen more as leisure media... increase in leisure time and separation of
leisure and work.
'What we really fear is the fact that we are enslaved to a television culture, we rely on it to
palliate us, entertain us, inform us, narcoticise us and recreate us in the fashion of the day.
Yet we feel powerless before its seductive glamour. We don't realise that, in its essense,
television is as simple picking up a video camera and sticking a transmitter on top of a tree
or tower block.' Medai and the spectacular society, p7. So, fear and alarmism over the content
carried by television are just unnoticed attempts at spitting out the gum given to the
audience by a model which tends to reject the notion of the audience having a real say.
'The plethora of useless 'information' that constantly bombards us turns us away from
knowledge, which we can only come by through critical judgement.' etc. Medai and the spectacular
Society, p11

THE PASSIVE/ACTIVE AUDIENCE OF TODAY AND TOMORROW

• To challenge the passivity that wrings its hands at, yet accepts... we must be able to
"\ discuss ideas, tactics and know what is being done. We need media which will facilitate
this.' Media and the Spectacular Society, p13
Ra,o^ ! "J! . !r^ig attention has turned to the viewer, raising awareness of implications and responsibility
^S!aA , in non!chewing!gum text!readership.
J
• When mobilised to spit out the gum by rejecting passivity, the audience becomes voyeurs,
with small!town moralising on each other's lives ! "each other" is now the subject of our
media. !i

! ^!^ ^^^
^,^ ~ <' '! ! ^ ^ \r^/''^

<^.^————— ^^^! <<^

y' ! •' '?°' <!!

"By definition, the audience as a mass is passive, because it is incapable of collective action, whereas any
tme social group has the menas and may have the inclination to be active in the sense of choosing a
shared goal and participating in its pursuit." p22
This is justification for the new!media communities making appearances in media like the Internet being
'true social groups,' more than broadcasters claim their audiences to be ! the audience!community is
capable of identifying new goals and frequently see that they are brought to fruition.

"Active audiences provide more feedback for media communicators, and the relationship between
senders and receivers is more interactive." p22

"New types of community could emerge, based on interactive communication, untrammeled by cultural
barriers." p24

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