Visual Aesthetics

A Model for Visual Aesthetic Inquiry in Television
Author(s): Rogena M. Degge

Source: The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Winter, 1985), pp. 85-102
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3332301
Accessed: 08-02-2016 04:14 UTC
REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3332301?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
University of Illinois Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Aesthetic
Education.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Mon, 08 Feb 2016 04:14:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
A Model for Visual Aesthetic Inquiry
in Television
ROGENA M. DEGGE
Commercial television, a highly complex visual medium, has been called

"the most popular art,"' and scholars have examined a host of aesthetic
factors on the pictorial design, viewer aesthetic response, and signs and
symbols of the medium. This article provides an aesthetically based analysis
of the visual imagery of television and considers the usefulness of current
television literature as a basis for visual aesthetic criticism in an educa-
tional setting. Although commercial television is a major source of aes-
thetic experience for a large sector of the population, the visual aspects of
television have been stressed little in aesthetic education. This study
represents an initial synthesis of information on the visual aesthetics of
television for educators for their use in curricular development. The prem-
ise is that directed, critical inquiry of the medium will extend knowledge
in art and aesthetics and enhance the quality of people's lives as they be-
come more responsive to the visual content and form of television and
understand how television's pictorial images express and reflect culture.
Background
Television has been intensely studied as a social phenomenon. Psycholo-
gists, anthropologists, and scholars in telecommunications and art educa-
tion are concerned with its effects on people of different ages, from varied
socioeconomic groups, and with differing cultural value systems. By con-
trast, writings rooted in television aesthetics are few, although the issues
they address provide a rich source for a structured analysis of the visual
facets of the medium.
Rogena M. Degge is an associate professor in the Department of Art Education, Uni-

versity of Oregon. With June K. McFee, she has coauthored Art, Culture and Environ-
ment: A Catalyst for Teaching. Her essays have appeared in Studies in Art Education
and several anthologies.
Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 19, No. 4, Winter 1985

@1985 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
86 Rogena M. Degge
The literature in television aesthetics examines such factors as ubiquity,
time, design, continuity, and intimacy as well as the commercial, public,
and artistic products of the medium. Artists, critics, film scholars, telecom-
municators, semioticians, social scientists, humanists, and, to a smaller
extent, aestheticians, art educators, and curators have studied television as
art. Drawing from this literature, some higher education programs in mass
media include coursework in television aesthetics, and some college art and
art education departments encourage students to investigate the graphic,
expressive, and aesthetic potentials of television and video.2
Early discussions about television aesthetics relied mainly on the visual
grammar of fine arts, theater, and film. To a degree, this was appropriate,
since much of what has been televised was theater and film, and the meth-
ods developed for analyzing other arts can, in some instances, be usefully
applied to televised images. Thomas Olson, for example, compared the aes-
thetics of television to the aesthetics of painting, theater, and film.3 He
pointed out that both painting and television exist on a two-dimensional
plane, while theater and television include sight and sound, exist within
time and space, and have as primary material the human being in motion.
Film and television both have camera intervention and thus share options
for technical manipulation. Olson cited three major sources for the de-
velopment of a television grammar: (1) the principles of composing for
expressive purposes in paintings, (2) the principles of temporal composi-
tion and performance in theater, and (3) the principles of form in film.
Olson's work, though it excludes many significant factors, is exemplary of
earlier investigations.
Characteristics from theater, film, and fine arts continue to be applied
to discussions of television aesthetics, along with those unique to television
such as immediacy, ubiquity, and many more. Some writers from diverse
fields and perspectives ground their inquiries in aesthetically based ques-
tions, while others seem to ignore that component. Several attend primarily
to the visual features of the medium and its products, some stress viewer
experience, and many emphasize the cultural or commercial aspects. Meth-
odological approaches indigenous to semiology are increasingly evident in
critical examinations of television. But as scrutiny of a wide range of liter-
ature across several disciplines indicates, little pedagogical direction is
offered for the formal criticism of television as a visual art form.4
This study is a theoretical analysis of representative theories and specu-
lations by humanists, television critics, video artists, telecommunicators,
film theorists, sociologists, semiologists, and others who have studied the
aesthetic qualities of television and their impact. The emphasis is on for-
mulating a pedagogical direction for formal, aesthetically directed criticism
and a method for cultural inquiry into the pictorial imagery of commercial
television.
Aesthetic Inquiry in Television 87
In 1978, the National Association of Education Broadcasters Conven-

tion discussed television aesthetics, including expression, perception, visual
literacy, style, and the link between video art and television. That same
week, the American Society for Aesthetics held a plenary session on the
video arts.5 Such proceedings and related literature suggest three main
approaches to the visual study of commercial television aesthetics. The
first emphasizes attention to design factors such as color, light, screen
direction, and close-ups used to organize the visual product. The second
approach is concerned with viewer experience, including such factors as
perceptions of reality and the ubiquitous nature of the medium. These
approaches I have labeled "design operants" and "experiential aspects" for
formal inquiry. A third approach focuses on the signs and symbols of tele-
vision's visual content and form. Considered here as the messages of
television, cultural and formal factors are drawn upon to examine the
meaning and impact of television's imagery. These approaches-formal,
phenomenological, and cultural-compose a format compatible with
methods for art study in the fields of art and aesthetic education. The
model developed here is intended for a critical inquiry into commercial
television as a visual art form.
The Visual Imagery of Television: Formal Inquiry
Design Operants
In art criticism, the language of elements and principles of design tradi-
tionally has been drawn upon to analyze artworks.6 A language of attri-
butes is similarly useful in a critical examination of the visual qualities of
television. In part, these attributes are the design operants, or designing
tools, of the medium. This article takes a design operant of television to be
a visual element, organization, or transition.7 An element would be color
or light; a factor in organization could be composition or continuity; tran-
sition would pertain to such variables as camera switching or movement.
Whether applied to or inherent in the technological character of the
medium, each operant affects the televised image and has an impact on or
meaning for viewers. The characterization and understanding of relation-
ships among these design operants are prerequisitesto formulatinga criti-
cal analysisof television as an art form.
Grammatical. The study of film aesthetics has provided terms to differen-
tiate several designing tools of television. Stefan Sharff has argued that
humans have long had the ability to decipher and follow a cinema syntax
of "chains of shots" which can be interpreted as the grammatical sentence
ordered according to some stylistic rule that secures an aesthetic outcome.
The "grammatical" and artistic tools used for such ordering include cut-
88 Rogena M. Degge
ting on action, extreme close-up, selective or soft focus, freeze frames,

low-angle shots, montage, parallel action, screen direction, slow disclosure,
and zoom shots.8 Some of these internal resources-such as the high-angle
shot, circular camera movement, or superimpositions-are among the aes-
thetically based tools used to shape the content and form for television as
well as cinema. In part, then, the aesthetics of television is the aesthetics of
film.
Formalistic. Herbert Zettl has described and explained how several for-
malistic features can be applied to the aesthetic construction of film and
television.9 Zettl's applied features and Sharff's variables are significant
antecedents for examining design operants in television. Theoretical and
critical analyses of the design of televised imagery might address, for
instance, attributes of light, color, and the area of the television screen
(the distributions of balance of mass) and such questions as how space is
filled, densely or openly, to give certain feelings; how various lenses affect
that condition and convey certain intentional effects; and how staging is
involved are all aesthetic questions. Visualization is useful to examine how
individual shots and varied viewpoints and angles are used for "the clari-
fication and intensification of the event for the viewer."'1 Picturization, a
related feature, "the control of a succession of shots, scenes, and se-
quences,"'11 would give focus to the study of such design operants as cuts,
fades, montage, rhythm control, and editing for transition and continuity.
Motion and timing, too, are factors that create dynamic, rhythmically
stimulating patterns or affect the product by means of pace, tempo, and
rate. The intricacy of even one motion variable is made evident to the
inquirer in a description of the "motion paradox," i.e., the state in which
"an object can be in motion and at rest at the same time, depending on
motion context, that is, against which other body the motion is observed
or measured."' 2 The aesthetic character of the medium's imagery is influ-
enced further by aspects of time such as past, present, and future and by
subjective, objective, continuous, event-dependent temporal elements that
contribute to the aesthetic character of the medium's imagery. Under-
standing the applications of these and related features makes possible a
design analysis of television and its influence in experiential and cultural
contexts.
Other means for aesthetic analysis are the traditional design elements
and principles of the visual arts. These are employed pervasively in the
construction of television imagery and programming to create visual
effects and establish continuity in programs and commercials. Color is
one example. Careful viewing will reveal narrow, deliberate selections of
color, with program environments frequently coordinated with performer
attire. The red suit worn in the series "The Greatest American Hero," for
example, seemed to influence what colors were placed in scenes with the
costumed hero. This weekly program was produced primarily in red,

white, and blue, reinforcing the American theme. The garish coloring of
this program contrasts with the soft tans and aquas of "St. Elsewhere"
and the muted hues of "M.A.S.H." Generally, blue is a basic color, with
variations of orange or red used as complements. Design choices involving
color as well as the technical color limitations of the medium are thus
components of the television aesthetic.
Other design operants are texture or space and principles such as order,
repetition, or asymmetry. Even Gestalt principles such as proximity and
similarity and the organizational laws of closure, continuity, and figure
and ground enhance the impact of scene components.'13 Such variables
add to the number of aesthetic operants useful in examining television
aesthetics.
Formulaic. The designing variables just reviewed form two methodological
clusters. Television formulas comprise another. Horace Newcomb, a scholar
of television, borrows John Cawelti's definition: "A formula is a conven-
tional system for structuring cultural products. It can be distinguished
from invented structures which are new ways of organizing works of art."
Newcomb emphasizes that it is "possible to define a set of artistic tech-
niques, aesthetic devices that contribute to some unique capabilities on
the part of television."'14 Program formulas unique for television are situ-
ation comedies, westerns, doctor and adventure shows, and soap operas,
as well as news, sports, and documentaries. Newcomb's point is that these
formulas contribute to the aesthetics of television. Since each genre
implies specific design intent, a point to be made here is that different
program types can be compared with respect to the formulaic use of gram-
matical and formalistic applications.
Most current commercial television programs match Newcomb's de-
scriptive categories, although at least one newer formula is found in the
successful police series "Hill Street Blues." This formula, while not limited
to the police genre, is still stylistic. Design variables are applied to provide
a kind of layered density in both image and dialogue that can, in part, be
characterized as an intensification of Zettl's variables of "depth and vol-
ume" and "visualization." Requiring the viewer to attend to simultaneous
conversations and several overlapping kinds of action, this formula seems
designed to heighten realism and intimacy and is engaging, subtle, and
effective when contrasted with the more traditional formats.
The formula concept may also be examined in commercials. David
Antin has suggested that nearly every program formula has also appeared
as a commercial, the only difference being in the greater focus, concise-
ness, elegance, and style demanded by the thirty-second limit.' s Video-
graphics used in commercials reflect another set of formulas that has been
made possible, in part, by advanced camera development and computer
90 Rogena M. Degge
technology and that has resulted in dramatic, high-powered, action-packed

imagery which is at once slick and chromatic. An aesthetic analysis com-
paring programs and commercials would need to include these matters as
well as Antin's observations.
David Thorburn, whose attention has been on American television as a
dramatic medium, supplies another perspective in his comparison of pro-
grams and commercials: "Good television melodramas are those in which
an intricately formulaic plot conspires perfectly with the commercial inter-
ruptions to encourage a rich articulation of the separate parts of the
work."' 6 By contrast, Fred Schroeder, a humanist, maintains that "with
few exceptions, the attempts to make the best of the limitations of the
medium have produced frenzied camera effects with concertina zooms,
fanciful angles, freeze frames and garish color schemes."'17 Such diverse
observations whet the appetite for much more constructive visual inquiry
and criticism of the aesthetic features of television.
The formal examination of television's imagery, then, has led to gram-
matical, formalistic, and formulaic orientations, but there are other design
operants, the impact of which on the visual literacy of the viewer can be
examined. Robert Pattison, a scholar of grammar, has observed: "Electronic
media are a powerful stimulant to the development of a literacy centered
on the spoken word. They threaten established literacy by offering a con-
tinuous stream of vernacular raised to the level of popular art-an art with-
out the constraints of correct English." 18 Yet the television medium is
also a powerful stimulant to the development of a literacy centered on
visual imagery. Fiske and Hartley1 9 suggest that television literacy relies
on the semiotics, the language of the medium, which is visual as well as
spoken. Few findings are as yet available on viewer visual literacy as re-
lated to programming or on the expressive intent of applied design vari-
ables. Even so, aesthetic inquiry into design operants can reveal their
influence on program assembly, the visual aesthetic product, and viewer
response.
Experiential Aspects
A second category for inquiry is based on a phenomenological perspec-
tive of people's experiences with the content and form of television. Arnold
Berleant argues that there are distinguishable kinds of aesthetic facts,
among them "experiential facts." These, he explains, are made up of
statements by artists and qualified perceivers alike "that presume to de-
scribe the characteristics of aesthetic experience itself."2 0 A large number
of statements describing certain features of the television aesthetic are
derived from experience and can be categorized and examined.
Immediacy. Three subcategories can be distinguished in this experiential

aspect.
Spontaneity. The feeling that what is being seen on the screen is

taking place at that very moment2" is one of the distinctive features of
television. Television's unique technological capabilities make it possible
for viewers everywhere to watch an event virtually as it occurs. This spon-
taneous quality describes all of early, live television. But since the inven-
tion of videotape, "immediate" broadcasting is generally limited to sports
events, local news reports, and news updates. Yet these too are often on
tape. The unpredictability and surprise of "live" broadcasts have been vir-
tually eliminated. Video artist David Antin suggests that the "discontinu-
ities and ragged edges" of live broadcasting are not commercially valued
because the are "in conflict with the image of smoothness, which has the
semiotic function of marking the producer's competence."2 2
Illusion. Despite the infrequency of immediate broadcasts, it seems that
the industry wishes, or feels obligated, to maintain the illusion of imme-
diacy. In programs such as game shows, talk shows, or musical comedies
great care is taken to avoid mention of dates or time of day. In a few
instances, "sit-com" canned laughter has been replaced by studio audi-
ences to convey immediacy. Immediacy, then, is an experienced viewing
phenomenon which, to some extent, seems based on illusion.
Ubiquity. While many immediacy aspects may be illusionary, some are
real. The ubiquity of the medium derives from its capability of being
present in many places at once. Millions of people on different continents
can simultaneously watch the Superbowl via television. Whether our view-
ing is of recorded or live events, this ubiquitous quality is extraordinary
when we consider that shared human experience on such a scale is uniquely
a television phenomenon. Understanding how this ubiquity influences
mass aesthetic experience may provide important insight into popular
culture aesthetics.
Reality. Immediacy, analyzed within the context of aesthetic experience,

is complicated, at least philosophically, by issues of reality. For instance,
some of what is seen on television might be described as actual events
merely being transmitted to those who choose to watch. Local news pro-
grams or "Saturday Night Live" reinforce this perception. Paul Watzlawick,
a philosopher, suggests that people naively say, "Reality is what is, and
communication is a way of expressing or explaining it." By contrast, he
argues,
Our everyday, traditional ideas of reality are delusions which we
spend substantial parts of our daily lives shoring up, even at con-
siderable risk of trying to force facts to fit our definition of reality
instead of vice versa. And the most dangerous delusion of all is that
there is only one reality. What there are, in fact, are many different
versions of reality, some of which are contradictory, but all of which
are the results of communication and not reflections of eternal,
objective truths.2 3
92 Rogena M. Degge
That different versions of reality do exist for viewers is suggested by
those who mistakenly approach soap opera stars on the street as if they
were the characters they portray and by others who believed the televised
moon space walk was fictitious. How these and other perceived realities
affect viewers' aesthetic experiences depends, in part, on their apathy
toward or empathy with aspects of a program, their experience or literacy
as viewers, and their personal sense of reality. German critic Hans Magnus
Enzensberger uses the moon landing as an example of how "the reality
in which a camera turns up is always faked."2 4 Evelina Tarroni illuminates
this observation in writing that "a televised event passes through a number
of filters [technical and human] which leave it irremediably mutilated and
distorted,"2 s raising further questions for the investigation of television
reality and viewer perceptions.
Authenticity. In the critical literature on television, different versions
of reality are sometimes examined under the aspect of authenticity, a fac-
tor related to concepts of authority, trustworthiness, and genuineness. Wulf
Herzogenrath observes that reality on the monitor is always a two-dimen-
sional reality converted into electronic signals and reproduced in artificial
color. For example, in considering the unique capability of instant replay,
he suggests that the authenticity of an event is affected by the fact that
every television playback replays reality for the viewer according to the
transient technical possibilities of the medium.2 6
We also have the option to adjust television reality. Through the touch
of a button or turn of a knob we can attempt to match (or destroy) our
perception of reality with hue, saturation, brightness, and contrast, recover
it through vertical and horizontal hold, and secure it with fine-tuning-
which, according to Hollis Frampton, suggest that we can adjust a visual
reality to suit ourselves. "Imagine, if you will," he writes, "the delicious
parallel in painting: a canvas of Kenneth Noland . . . sold with a roll of
masking tape and cans of spray paint, just in case the perceiver should care
to cool the painting off, or warm it up, or juice it up, or tone it down."2 7
An intriguing question is to what degree viewers feel they are matching,
making, or distorting reality when adjusting their sets and, further, how
these adjustments may compare with the aesthetic intentions of the cre-
ators of television imagery. Consider, too, that TV viewing may occur at
home or elsewhere, in dark or lighted rooms, alone or with others. One
viewer may watch the Superbowl with fifty people in a darkened tavern on
a monitor that was set to project intense, high-contrast colors and that
often slipped out of horizontal hold. Another may view the same pro-
gram at home alone in gray daylight with the monitor intentionally set
in soft hues. Is the transmitted reality of television altered, then, depend-
ing on a viewer's belief in an event, the kind and condition of the elec-
tronic box, the setting, and the discretion of the viewer? Theoretically,
these factors affect a viewer's aesthetic experience and so should be

examined by those who would understand the experiential aspects of
television.
Time. The notion of reality threads through another aspect of tele-
vision which affects a viewer's experience-that of time. Since time is to
some degree culture specific, concepts and utilizations of time vary with
cultures.2 8 In Western culture, theater and film directors have used a mul-
titude of devices to carry audiences through great expanses of story time
in shorter periods of real time. With little effort, most viewers can follow
time leaps and shifts, responding to cuts, fades, dissolves, and split screens
as well as to the accompanying audio cues. With apparent ease, people
watch and accept compression of time and accommodate the expanded
time of soap operas and weekly series. We may in fact experience real
time, expanded time, and compressed time all within a few minutes of
viewing.
Though many of us may take these alterations of time for granted,
Douglas Davis feels that "TV time corrupts life, politics, and art by speed-
ing it up, brutalizing issues and minds, and, paradoxically castrating the
sense of actual time passing."2 9 Davis's perception provides one basis for
an inquiry into how time is visually represented and experienced via tele-
vision by different individuals as well as by groups within and across
cultures.
The aesthetic and programmatic complexities regarding time and tele-
vision are even more intricate. One aspect of commercial television is a
time standard independent of any imagery or event. Antin describes the
time standard as "a tangible commodity that is precisely divisible into fur-
ther and further subdivisible homogeneous units, the smallest quantum of
which is measured by the smallest segment that could be purchased by a
potential advertiser. . . . the ten-second spot and it seems all television is
assembled from it."3?0 This time standard allows us to see an average of
twelve to fourteen separate commercials during thirty minutes of commer-
cial television viewing time. Commercials, moreover, are inserted according
to a predictable time pattern that allows people to anticipate them from
visual and audio cues. This affects the structure of the plot or program
in a manner unique to television, an aspect worthy of analysis, especially
in contrast to the time standards of film- or theater-viewing experiences.
In discussing time and television, Zettl poses an interesting contrast.
The Greek philosopher Zeno believed that motion was a series of discrete,
static positions and that time was a string of discontinuous immobile mo-
ments-"frozen nows." Henri Bergson, the French philosopher, however,
contended that time is a dynamic process, a continuous flow of dura-
tion.31 These views of time are nicely connected in Frampton's observa-
tion: "Video, like music, is not only articulated and expended in time (as
94 Rogena M. Degge
film is), but indeed . . . its whole substance may be referred to in terms of
temporality, rhythm, frequency.... [In contrast to film] the video field
is continuous, incessantly growing and decaying before our eyes. Strictly
speaking, there is not an instant of time during which the video image may
properly be said to 'exist.' ",32
Yet the images do "exist." Whether they are "authentic" or "real" or
constantly "decaying," people see and record images and events. The pre-
sentation of these events and images can be, as in film, an assemblage or
designing of separate shots. But, unlike in film, these shots are limited in
type and duration and so become particularly influential in characterizing
the time and timing aspects of television. Antin explains:
Because of the poor resolution of the television image (525 bits of

information presented on photosensitive phosphors) and the normal
screen size, the bread-and-butter shots of television are almost all
sub-forms of what film would consider a closeup. Common shot
names illustrate this-knee shot, thigh shot, waist shot, bust shot,
head shot, tight head shot. Or else they count the number of people
in the frame-two shot, four shot, etc . .Shots . of a second and
under are very rare and only used for special occasions, but distinct
shots over twenty seconds are practically nonexistent. "Distinct"
because television's camera conventions include a cameraman who
is trained to act like an antiaircraft gunner, constantly making minute
adjustments of the camera-loosening up a bit here, tightening up
there, gently panning and trucking in a nearly imperceptible manner
.... To this we can add the widespread use of fade-ins and fade-
outs and dissolves to effect temporal and spatial transitions, and
the director's regular habit of cutting on movement to cushion the
switch from one camera to another.33
This description provides a rich sense of one facet of experience knowl-

edgeable directors and production teams provide to the viewer.34 In part,
a director's programmatic and aesthetic goals are subtly to shape the
viewer's perceptions and responses so that experiences regarding time,
reality, immediacy, authenticity, and so forth, go unnoticed and are collec-
tively assimilated in the larger experience of the medium.
The extent to which experiential aspects may be understood depends in
part on our knowing the medium's technological capabilities. A better
understanding of factors like time, continuity, ubiquity, and others de-
pends on some comprehension of how the technical resources of television
can be manipulated artistically to effect an aesthetic experience. Neither
should we neglect Sharff's belief that "there exists on the screen a reality
which, regardless of its stylizations, codes, distortions, and arrangements,
is ultimately decipherable on the basis of everyday human experience."3 5
Such assumptions offer fertile ground for inquiry into viewer response that
would advance present understanding of aesthetic experience.
The Messages of Television: Cultural and Formal Considerations

Interest in the role of images in cultures has held a central place in the
study of art and artifacts. The study of the aesthetic imagery of television
is no less important because, as Gregor T. Goethals notes, "Where tradi-
tional institutions and high art do not provide meaningful public symbols,
television images rush in to fill the void."36 At the heart of Goethals's
observation is the idea that these images are visual symbols that hold
meaning for viewers. This article is based on the assumption that designing,
viewing, responding to, and analyzing television are dependent on recog-
nizing and understanding the visual signs and symbols of this commercial
medium. It would follow, then, that the visual symbols of television pro-
grams convey messages intentionally or subconsciously chosen to affect
viewers in a culturally defined way.
Geertz has suggested that "the power of the symbol, analyzed or not,
clearly rests on its comprehensiveness, on its fruitfulness in ordering ex-
perience."3 7 How experience may be ordered with regard to television
depends on the comprehension, if not the comprehensiveness, of visual
symbols which separately and in combination hold messages for viewers.
If we assume that the imagery of television is technologically unique, holds
symbolic meaning, and conveys messages, three areas of inquiry would be
useful in a cultural analysis of its pictorial features: (1) the relation of the
message to the TV audience, (2) the design and organization of images that
carry the message, and (3) effects of the medium on the message.38
The Relation of the Message to the TV Audience

Relationships of cultural images and symbols to various mass audiences are
presumed by such queries as To whom is the television message directed?
and How does that imagery reflect its culture? Questions such as these
typically arise in discussions of television's role in contemporary society.
Paul Hirsch suggests that the spectacular success of television is partly due
to "content designed to create and attract massive audiences composed of
people from all regions, classes and backgrounds."'39 This, of course, pre-
sumes that someone has successfully determined what that mass-attracting
content is; yet studies of such content in the visual realm are scarce. We
are cognizant of industry's applications of physiological and psychological
research to attract consumers to products;40 but the messages conveyed
by the visual symbols and imagery of commercial television are relatively
unexamined.
Guidelines for such an investigation may be found in Michael Novak's
suggestion that television "seems to conceive of itself as a national me-
dium. It does not favor the varieties in accent, speech patterns, and other
differences of the culture of the United States. It favors a language which
96 Rogena M. Degge
might be called 'televisionese'-a neutral accent, pronunciation, and dic-
tion perhaps most closely approximated in California."' 1 Can we charac-
terize a visual "televisionese" as being as dominant as the spoken variety
and use it to examine television's visual symbolization? Goethals, who uses
icons, rituals, and iconoclasm to interpret the nature of the medium, notes
that "television, as we know it today, seems to be a primary source of
popular piety and public symbols."42 She proposes that "there are still
traditional images on the walls of museums and churches, but secular icons
in the print and electronic media saturate our environment. Their very per-
vasiveness often screens us from traditional sacred images. Inescapably
present, secular icons dominate the sphere of public symbols."4 3 One hy-
pothesis for examination, then, is that the visual television message is char-
acterized through iconographic imagery comprehensible to vast numbers
of people.
Commercial television's successes are based on economics and mass
appeal. But from what cultural traditions the pervasive images come, how
these are shaped for economic and aesthetic ends, how they are culturally
reflective of various subgroups, and whose aesthetic values are involved are
questions the investigation of which promises insight into the relation-
ship of aesthetics and public appeal. Herbert Gans, however, warns that
"whether the media in fact express the values of their taste publics is an
empirical question which still remains to be answered."44
Culturally, the medium is used by advertisers and creators to educate,
indoctrinate, pacify, and entertain in political, economic, even altruistic
contexts. Other users of the medium include theorists, critics, and audie-
ences. Gans describes these "users" as members of several taste cultures
that are "unorganized aggregates that express similar values and standards
of taste and aesthetics." These "taste publics" are composed of people
from different social classes and "are defined primarily in terms of shared
aesthetic values, rather than because they choose the same cultural content,
for they may choose it on the basis of different values." Gans assumes that
"people apply aesthetic standards in all taste cultures"4 5 and that none is
to be judged "more or less desirable or aesthetic."4 6
The high taste culture, for instance, would be "dominated by creators
and critics, and users who accept the standards and perspectives of cre-
ators." Highly educated, they would "place high value on careful commu-
nication of mood and feeling, on introspection rather than action, and on
subtlety." Those critics would be highly regarded who "concern them-
selves with the aesthetic issues which are so important to the culture."4 7
By comparison, the lower-middle taste culture would be that of individuals
who are not generally interested in "culture" (that of the high and upper-
middle taste publics) but who attend popular cultural events. This cul-
ture's aesthetics would "emphasize substance: form must serve to make
substance more intelligible or gratifying." The preferred art would be

"mainly romantic and representational"; preferred dramatic materials
would express this taste public's ideas and feelings; and its heroes would
"accept the validity of traditional virtues.., .and traditional institu-
tions."48
Virtually all of commercial programming is believed to be directed at
this latter taste public, considered America's major body of consumers;4 9
yet programming is created by a comparative handful of men and women
presumably from "high" and "upper-middle" taste publics. We may ask,
therefore, how a designer of aesthetic imagery uses the medium to convey
a message intended to reflect a viewing "taste culture" and what visual
features are taken to reflect viewer disposition in programming selection
and aesthetic preference.
Programming for any audience or purpose contains visual aesthetic
factors that reflect creator influence and viewer attributes. The taste-cul-
ture theory is only one means to gain some understanding of television's
visual symbols. To determine the relation of television's messages to its
audiences requires that we examine the "socio-centrality" and variability
of the medium's imagery.5 0 Such inquiry is particularly important when
we remember that, ultimately, commercial television programmers and
advertisers are almost single-mindedly concerned that program content and
form engage the most viewers in the least offensive ways.s 1
The Design and Organization of Images that Carry the Message

Many of television's messages are directly influenced by design factors.
Some of these are grammatical, as Arthur Asa Berger points out in apply-
ing semiology to television: a "closeup" carries the meaning of intimacy,
a "pan-down" signifies power or authority, a "zoom" implies observa-
tion or focus, and so forth. Such design operants he regards as agreed-
upon signifiers "which we learn and which help us interpret what we see
... on television."5 2
In a study of the formal features of American programming for children,
Aletha C. Huston and six colleagues examined features such as rapid action,
variability, visual tricks, visual change, and zoom duration and found
that "there were significant differences among Saturday morning, other
daytime, and prime time program types on almost every feature.'"s a Sig-
nificantly, the applications of these design features vary with cultures as
well as with program type. (Studies of European television productions for
children "demonstrate clearly that animation does not by definition re-
quire rapid action, rapid tempo, noise, or loud music. Educational pro-
grams have utilized a combination of interesting audio-visual techniques
with features that allow for reflection and comprehension of content.")5 4
These findings suggest that design features function as "signs" that have
98 Rogena M. Degge
meaning according to their use in program types. Further, the uses are not
universal.
Fiske and Hartley write that such signs "mean what they do only
through agreement between members of the culture."s s How the message
is interpreted, then, would depend on the extent of this agreement. That
is, we decode signs, such as color or a "zoom," as intended, or we may de-
code them differently, for, according to Berger, "the transmitters of mes-
sages, because of their social class, educational level, political ideologies,
world view, ethos, etc., do not share the same codes as their audiences,
who differ from the message transmitters in some or even most of the
above respects and who interpret the messages they receive from their own
perspective."5 6 The factors that link the design and organization of tele-
vision imagery to intended and interpreted messages are highly complex.
Although research has shown that, by age five, children are able to decode
basic symbol schemes,5 7 it has yet to confirm how decoding variations
may be culturally and aesthetically influenced.
In a cultural context, this inquiry into what the important signifiers
are and how they signify is clearly difficult. As Fiske and Hartley explain,
"We are dealing with dynamic aesthetic codes which are shaped primarily
by convention or unstated agreement among users." Further, these "signs
can belong to more than one aesthetic code, and so codes can overlap and
interrelate in a network of signification."5 8 Some understanding of cul-
tural factors which influence the design and organization of television's
messages, and their interpretation, seems requisite to the aesthetic educa-
tion of viewers and potential programmers.
Effects of the Medium on the Message

In the critical analysis of artworks, expression is examined in its relation-
ship to the inherent qualities of the medium. Television criticism should
also examine those distinctive qualities of the medium that affect the form
and interpretation of its "expression" or messages. In light of television's
mass viewing public and its ubiquity, a cultural analysis might be made to
learn how this unique technical and experiential attribute may have
advanced a crosscultural aesthetic.
The influence of inherent visual qualities on television's messages has
been remarked on by several writers. Hirsch speaks of the medium's "tech-
nical ability to present an unending montage of moving visual images-of
fictional characters, aspiring political leaders, comedians, wars and disas-
ters in living color" to millions of rapt viewers. As these images are "pro-
duced and controlled by so few"5 9 and as the hours that people spend
"glued" to their sets have increased, the themes, messages, and story lines
that attract such enormous audiences require investigation.
Goethals's theory is that popular culture is influenced by television's
electronic "ritual" images which have the power "to bind people together."
Viewers experience and even participate in a "ritual action" that "has an
aesthetic unity that one does not experience in ordinary life" and takes
place in extraordinary "ritual space" and in time that is "extraordinary in
quality, not the ho-hum clock time of our work day." It offers viewers
"full participation in a world view" which they may interpret similarly to
or differently from others. Further, she writes, the aesthetic experience
occurs in a "sanctuary in which life is intensified" and in which people's
faith (if they are believers) in life is renewed.60
While Goethals's controversial explanation is a phenomenological one,
Fiske and Hartley regard the medium's effect as partly perceptual. Com-
pared to art and film, television is a "more conventional medium... in
the sense that its codes relate more closely to the normal codes of percep-
tion." "Real and fictional codes, or direct perceptual codes and mediated
ones" are interrelated. Television and the culture to which we belong are
different kinds of reality, but "we perceive both of them in a similar way,
and as a result they interact with each other," which gives television its
"position of cultural centrality and ... makes the boundary between tele-
vision and reality difficult to define."6 1 Hirsch, Goethals, and Fiske and
Hartley, then, provide insights useful to inquiry into the medium's effect
on its messages, and thus on its viewers.
Separately and in confluence, design operants and experiential aspects,
including the unending montage, ubiquity, reality, time, perception, and
many more, are resources for constructing aesthetic knowledge about the
influence of television's unique visual qualities on its message.
Conclusions
Grammatical and formal variables from film and art and those influenced
by the medium and its technology are utilized in the design of television's
imagery. This is a matter of artistry. This artistry and the inherent char-
acteristics of the medium impact viewer experience. The content and form
of television are composed of visual signs and symbols that hold cultural
meaning and carry messages. Their meanings vary depending on how the
messages are designed and how viewers interpret them. This study provides
an analysis of representative literature within these contexts to illuminate
a theoretical model for a visual aesthetic inquiry of commercial television
as art. Many factors in the model would also apply in the analysis of video
art, public television, videographics, musical (rock) video, cable access, and
so forth. Not all variables are represented, and a more comprehensive
inquiry would include sound. For such purposes, another model could
emphasize the critical methods of film criticism and semiology-two domi-
nant approaches found in television criticism literature of different scope
and intent.
As viewing hours increase and as television technology and program-
100 Rogena M. Degge
ming continue to change or become more complex with computers, "snor-

kel" cameras, videoprojectors, and more, the need grows to examine the
aesthetic qualities, effects, and potentials of the medium. Significant for
psychological and other investigations of television as well, the aesthetic
aspects of television are primary factors which influence programming,
contribute to the medium's pervasive impact, and influence experience.
Particularly in art and aesthetic education, emphasis has been on aes-
thetic response and extending knowledge about the qualities of created
images and forms. Monroe Beardsley has termed one such enterprise "aes-
thetic apprehension," whereby attention is narrowed to certain features of
a work with "a willingness to engage one's perceptual, emotional and
intellectual powers in grasping those features."6 2 This model for television
inquiry is intended to help educators narrow attention to visual aesthetic
features as a means to facilitating viewer apprehension and some larger
understanding of the complex imagery of television and its relationship to
people's lives.
NOTES
1. Horace Newcomb, TV: The Most Popular Art (New York: Anchor Press/Double-
day, 1974).
2. Brien Williams and Woody Goulart, "The Study of Television Aesthetics and
Criticism in American Higher Education," Journal of Aesthetic Education
15, no. 1 (January 1981): 93-105.
3. Thomas Olson, "A Basis for Criticism of the Visual Esthetic Elements of Tele-
vision" (Ph.D. diss., Wayne State University, 1966).
4. Arguments that the study of television belongs in the art curriculum are found,
among others, in works by Vincent Lanier, The Arts We See (New York: Teach-
ers College Press, 1982), and Edmund Feldman, Becoming Human through Art
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970).
5. Curtis Carter, "Aesthetics, Video Art and Television," Leonardo 12, no. 4
(Autumn 1979): 289-93.
6. See, for example, Robert Clements, "The Inductive Method of Teaching Visual
Art Criticism," Journal of Aesthetic Education 13, no. 3 (July 1979): 67-78.
His views hold as well for television criticism; he says that "for formal analysis
of a work of art it is essential to analyze the color, shape, space, line, texture,
pattern, light: the way they mutually interconnect ... and the way they are
bound together by the principles of design: rhythm, progression, repetition,
balance and variation" (p. 71).
7. Common terms in telecommunications for some of these operants are "formal"
or "grammatical" features. The term "design operants" embodies these and
other designing features and is meant to reflect the dynamic act of formulating
visual images which influence the content and aesthetic form of the medium.
8. Stefan Sharff, The Elements of Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press,
1982), pp. 175-83.
9. Herbert Zettl, Sight Sound Motion (Belmont: Wadsworth, 1973).
10. Ibid., p. 223.
11. Ibid., p. 324.
12. Ibid., p. 289.
13. The Gestaltists' laws of organization are described in Julian Hochberg. Percep-
tion (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1978), pp. 134-41.
14. Newcomb, TV: The Most Popular Art, pp. 21-23.

15. David Antin, "Video: The Distinctive Features of the Medium," in Video Art:
An Anthology, ed. Ira Schneider and Beryl Korot (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1976), p. 180.
16. David Thorburn, "Television Melodrama," in Television: The Critical View, ed.
Horace Newcomb (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 544.
17. Fred Schroeder, "Video Aesthetics and Serial Art," in Television: The Critical
View, pp. 416-17.
18. Robert Pattison, On Literacy: The Politics of the Workfrom Homer to the Age
of Rock, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 202-3.
19. John Fiske and John Hartley, Reading Television (London: Methuen, 1978),
p. 68.
20. Arnold Berleant, The Aesthetic Field (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas,
1970), p. 13.
21. Edward Stasheff and Rudy Bretz, The Television Program: Its Direction and
Production (New York: Hill and Wang, 1962), p. 7.
22. Antin, "Video: The Distinctive Features," p. 176.
23. Paul Watzlawick, How Real Is Real? (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), p. xi.
24. Hans Magnus Enzenberger, "Constituents of a Theory of the Media," in Televi-
sion: The Critical View, p. 491.
25. Evelina Tarroni, "The Aesthetics of Television," in Television: The Critical
View, pp. 452-53.
26. Wulf Herzogenrath, "Notes on Video as an Artistic Medium," in The New Tele-
vision: A Public/Private Art, ed. Douglas Davis and Allison Simmons (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1977), p. 90.
27. Hollis Frampton, "The Withering away of the State of the Art," in The New
Television, p. 35.
28. Cf. Alfred Hallowell, Culture and Experience (Philadelphia: University of Penn-
sylvania Press, 1955), chap. 11; and Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cul-
tures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), chap. 14.
29. Douglas Davis, "Time! Time! The Context of Immediacy," in The New Televi-
sion, p. 78.
31. Zettl, Sight Sound Motion, pp. 249-53.
32. Frampton, "The Withering Away," pp. 30, 34.
34. Cf. John Ravage, Television: The Director's Viewpoint (Boulder, Colo.: West-
view Press, 1978).
35. Sharff, The Elements of Cinema, p. 8.
36. Gregor Goethals, The TV Ritual: Worship at the Video Altar (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1981), p. 4.
37. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 128.
38. These categories are derived from June McFee and Rogena Degge, Art, Culture
and Environment: A Catalyst for Teaching (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt,
1980), pt. 5, "The Cultural Meaning of Art."
39. Paul Hirsch, "The Role of Television and Popular Culture in Contemporary
Society," in Television: The Critical View, p. 249.
40. Cf. Valentine Appel, Sidney Weinstein, and Curt Weinstein, "Brain Activity and
Recall of TV Advertising," Journal of Advertising Research 19, no. 4 (August
1979): 7-15; also the several works of D. E. Berlyne.
41. Michael Novak, "Television Shapes the Soul," in Television: The Critical View,
p. 309.
42. Goethals, The TV Ritual, p. 4.
43. Ibid., p. 85.
44. Herbert Gans, Popular Culture and High Culture (New York: Basic Books,
1974), p. 11.
45. Ibid., pp. 10-14.
46. Ibid., p. 48.
102 Rogena M. Degge
47. Ibid., pp. 75-79.
48. Ibid., pp. 84-89.
49. For a revealing study of the economic, political, and cultural shaping of com-
mercial television, see Todd Gitlin, Inside Prime Time (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1983).
50. On the socio-centrality of television, Fiske and Hartley in Reading Television
observe that television's "colossal output only represents a selection from the
more prolific utterances of language in general within our culture" (p. 89). A
question is, To what degree are television's images similarly represented?
51. Novak, "Television Shapes the Soul," p. 314.
52. Arthur Asa Berger, "Semiotics and TV," in Understanding Television, ed. Richard
P. Adler (New York: Praeger, 1981), p. 110.
53. Aletha C. Huston, John C. Wright, Ellen Wartella, Mabel L. Rice, Bruce A.
Watkins, Toni Cambell, and Richard Potts, "Communicating More than Con-
tent: Formal Features of Children's Television Programs,"Journal of Communi-
cations 31, no. 3 (Summer 1981): 32-48.
54. Ibid., p. 47.
55. Fiske and Hartley, Reading Television, p. 46.
56. Berger, "Semiotics and TV," p. 109. Berger's conclusion is influenced by the
Italian semiologist, Umberto Eco, who suggests that "aberrant decoding... is
the rule in the mass media," in "Toward a Semiotic Inquiry into the Television
Message," WorkingPapers in Cultural Studies 3 (Autumn 1972): 106.
57. Leona Jaglom and Howard Gardner, "The Preschool Television Viewer as An-
thropologist," in Viewing Children through Television, ed. Hope Kelley and
Howard Gardner (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1981).
59. Hirsch, "The Role of Television," p. 61.
60. Goethals, The TV Ritual, pp. 8-10.
62. Monroe C. Beardsley, "Semiotic Analysis and Aesthetic Education," Journal
of Aesthetic Education 9, no. 3 (July 1975): 5-26.

Visual Aesthetics

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Visual Aesthetics

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

A Model for Visual Aesthetic Inquiry in Television

Author(s): Rogena M. Degge

You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

Commercial television, a highly complex visual medium, has been called

Rogena M. Degge is an associate professor in the Department of Art Education, Uni-

Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 19, No. 4, Winter 1985

In 1978, the National Association of Education Broadcasters Conven-

The Visual Imagery of Television: Formal Inquiry

ting on action, extreme close-up, selective or soft focus, freeze frames,

costumed hero. This weekly program was produced primarily in red,

technology and that has resulted in dramatic, high-powered, action-packed

Immediacy. Three subcategories can be distinguished in this experiential

Spontaneity. The feeling that what is being seen on the screen is

Reality. Immediacy, analyzed within the context of aesthetic experience,

these factors affect a viewer's aesthetic experience and so should be

Because of the poor resolution of the television image (525 bits of

This description provides a rich sense of one facet of experience knowl-

The Messages of Television: Cultural and Formal Considerations

The Relation of the Message to the TV Audience

substance more intelligible or gratifying." The preferred art would be

The Design and Organization of Images that Carry the Message

Effects of the Medium on the Message

ming continue to change or become more complex with computers, "snor-

14. Newcomb, TV: The Most Popular Art, pp. 21-23.

You might also like