>>> <d-m-c at worldnet.att.net> 02/02 1:54 PM >>>
At 04:10 PM 2/1/1999 -0500, you wrote:
>On empirical evidence, Prof. Frithjof Bergman once pointed out in a class
on philosophy of science, that social sciences are sometimes plagued by a
tendency to make statements that tell us less than we know already. Most of
us have enormous (and sufficiently random) samples of what is on television
in general. We don't need a sociological data survey to tell us what we
already know at least in some dimensions. Social scientists should be
resourceful in using facts we already have from our experience.
Prof.: Well, now here's a marxist understanding of 'empirical reality' For heaven's sake Charles, if anything, Marxist theory suggests that empirical reality is not something that we can easily ahd happily grasp isomorphically and re-present unproblematically in our telling of what we observe.
Charles: I take it you are paraphrasing something in "Marxism". Have you got any references as to where Marxist theory suggests this about empirical reality. Maybe you are referring to Marx's comment that abstraction must be used in place of experiments in political economy as opposed to natural sciences. I'll get abstract and complicated later ( The state is an instrument of class oppression and the police are part of the repressive apparatus of the state , and all that). We're just starting out now. But still I thought Marx read a lot of the Bluebooks in the British Museum and Lenin poured over stats in economics and they all kept their eyes open as to what was actually happening around them. Engels was walking around Manchester checking out the housing problems or whatever. Sure religion was an upside down version of the secular world, but they didn't get too fancy beyond inversions and maybe double inversions, the Leninist theory of reflection, you know.
Prof.: Obviously, there are going to be different interpretations here because you're interpreting the genre of cop shows through a social location/ subject position that is quite different from that of Paul's. (cf the work of cultural studies scholars on various international interpretations of Dallas and Cosby; don't have refs right now)
So it seems to me that positing *your* experience against an entirely different kind of *experience* --namely positivist social science (surveys, polls, etc) is hardly the point. BOTH are claims about our capacity to somehow isomorphically grasp what it is that we observe. Neither approach utilizes a critical theoretical approach to science.
Charles: In this case, I am claiming objectivity from my location as to the actual images broadcast. It is something like me being a native speaker of English in a linguistic analysis. I am an objective source of English grammar , all by myself. You know, structuralism, culture has a grammar like language.
I guess I didn't say that other people have the same observations as me on the tv stuff. That's replication of results meeting the scientific demand of objectivity through repeatability of results. The objective facts as to what television shows consist in are fairly generally accessible. In fact , in this case, one can see such a high percentage of the shows, that the sample is very large, just for an individual (checking with friends). It is sort of do it yourself science at home.
Are you disputing my claim that there are a disproportionate number of cop shows compared to other occupations ? Are you saying that people in other social locations are not seeing cops portrayed as heroes more than oppressors ?
We have to be resourceful in setting up methods of critical analysis, experimental designs and all.
Prof.: And yeah, we might want to use social science surveys and other forms of gathering data to tell us something different about what we already think we know, to wit:
--that most rapes are perpetrated by people the victim knows --that most violent crime is between people of the same race
And so on. And so forth.
Chas.: This is premised on the assumption that I said all social facts are obtainable without these other methods. I didn't say that.
Prof.: Dismissing social science research in such a facile way and saying that we already know it all is pretty lame. Now, there are of course other ways in which to critique positivist social science as part and parcel of the processes of capitalist domination. But what you've offered us here is NOT a very sophisticated critique now is it. Referencing Prof F is hardly convincing to me because profs have ideological commitments as well and it seems to me, from what you've said, he's a flaming interpretivist positivist.
Charles: I didn't dismiss all social science research. I would dismiss some though. We have to be picky about it, critical so to speak. For example, I don't need a survey to tell me that there are a disproportionate number of cop shows as compared with other occupations. That is evident. The burden of proof is on those who deny that to show me it is something I think I know but not true. Other social facts are not discernible except by survey, statistical and abstraction methods. What is on television is not one of these.
Charles:
>Another fact I feel sure in is that there are a disproportionate number of
cop shows relative to other occupations. I haven't seen any shows based on
auto or steelworkers lives. There are very few or none on busdrivers, etc.
, etc.
Prof. K Who cares??!! As if this will matter one wit. And what about Roseanne? And Grace Under Fire? There are a slew of other shows that depict the working class and, indeed, cops are working class in TeeVee land. They are considered working class in 'not' TeeVee land as well.
Charles: Who cares. Cops are not objectively the same as autoworkers and steelworkers in capitalism. That's why TeeVee land tries to slur over the difference. I think Roseanne is a shining exception to the accurate generalizations. Valid social scientific generalization can be less universal than in physics, as you well know. For example, MOST (not all) marriage is endogamous with respect to race in the U.S., n'est-ce pas ? (page 196 _Society_ by Ian Robertson)
Prof.: The entire genre comes out of the hard-boiled detective genre:
The cop is the lone hero struggling against bureaucratic regimes of rules and regulations as well as the bureaucratic incompetence that these effect.
The cop is also struggling against the self-serving rhetoric of the managerial professional class (the parade of expert witnesses, psychologists, social workers, etc). Cop shows that follow this genre in the strictest sense reinforce our commitment to individualism: the idea that individuals can struggle against oppression, that society and collective struggle is somehow inherently impure and corrupt, that society--in effect--corrupts us rather than makes us who we are.
Charles: That sounds a good hypothesis to me. It is significant that PRIVATE detectives have a special place in this literary/electronic media history. As you say, it is promoting individualism, entrepreneurial spirit.
Prof.; Cops *are* working class. And yeah they are often portrayed as loveable complex human beings, so the fuck what??!! Cops *are* human beings in real life for pete's sake.
Charles: Here you have forgotten that I discussed cops as a contradiction heroes/oppressors. I am serious about both sides of the contradiction. Televisions is totally unbalanced in portraying only one side of what is real. Demogogy does not work by telling total untruths, rather by telling powerful HALF-truths, as exactly in this case. I know real life cops and even have friends; I was even in criminal defense practice for a moment; but I also know the objective role of the police in the repressive apparatus of the state. That I know by abstraction, not television facts.
Prof.: And all this nonsense about cop shows and whether they're exceptions to the genre rules or not is just plain silliness. Firstly, in order for the 'working against' to work in the first place, there has to be an understanding of the genre. This is how irony works and this is how shows that go beyond the boundaries of the genre work on us. They play with the genre rules, winking at us subtly and not so subtly. In some ways this fissure can make us open up and reflect on the genre rules. Maybe. I tend to doubt it for the most part.
Charles: Yea, that's good. Please elaborate. Where did I say cop shows are an exception to the genre rules ? I was generlizing about the copshow genre rules: half-truths about cops.
Prof.K: What's going on here Charles is TeeVee's use of gaps and fissures inorder to convey a multiplicity of meanings so that lots of different audiences can relate to and identify with a show. Sometimes the relation is one of enjoyment out of feeling superior to the fools on the show (HS students enjoying episodes of 90210 perhaps?). Then there's the "hey look at us, we're different we're going against the grain, we're so hip and kewl." sucks ya right in, doesn't it? In either case you're watching ey? so, expecting that something is going to be radically changed by the infusion of shows about bus drivers or waitresses (I'll add waitresses since the little list of what counts as working class was pathetically penocentric {c-paula}.
Charles: Yes, this is ok, but it is still an accurate generalization that cops' status as the teeth in the repressive apparatus of the state is not at all featured for any of the audiences. No audience ends up feeling repressed by cops. They feel sad for the cops, smarter than the cops, laugh at cops, saved by cops - all true about cops - but not beat on the head by cops, which is also true.
I know lots of women autoworkers. Things are changing in that regard. Autoworking is no longer penocentric. My facts come from standing in front of plant gates and handing out papers and observing a high percentage of those going in are women. Pat Jones is a friend of mine who works in a Chrysler engine plant. She says there are a lot of women in that plant now. I know some women busdrivers too. But I got some stats. somewhere too, as I work for the city and we keep 'em. I almost said waitresses, but then I was thinking there are a few shows on them. I was thinking of nurses, but then there is ER and soaps.
I never said things would be changed by a radical infusion of shows. I said the revolution will not be televised. I said the powers-that-be wouldn't allow such shows which would make too many working class heroes and stars.
Kelley, feeling Marcuse today
Charles: So, this is why people turn their heads when a cop calls, as Althusser and Judith Butler ask. :>)
CB