sorry for the delay. the book is great, esp if you are french and watch tv everyday. you know exactly who the people he talks about are. it helps a lot understanding what happens behind the screen. but the critics say if he had really understood how the tv work he would have been able to use it at his advantage. which is obviously not the case. btw, i wish i had reference for what i say, must be somewhere in a magazine (sciences humaines ?) or a paper i read in le monde ? i don't remember. bourdieu expressed a lot of frustration at tv. the interview on arte that eventually led to the writing of the book and its analysis by both parts in le monde diplomatique (although it must be in french only and not online anymore) shows that very well.
a propos, michael says bourdieu argues that tv works only for fast thinkers. it strikes me that the people bourdieu refers to are usually qualified as shallow rather than as fast. would tv work for chomsky eventually ?
jc helary
<Doug Henwood>-----
> jean-christophe helary wrote:
>
> >critics of bourdieu say he never really managed to understand television.
>
> How's that? I liked his TV book
> <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Why_TV_sucks.html>, and I
> thought it showed a great understanding of TV. And his analysis of
> why commercial broadcasting is so bad - that it's more a function of
> profit and audience maximization than concentration of ownership - is
> much more accurate and compelling than the barely shallow Mark
> Crispin Miller's
> <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/MCMillerQueen.mp3>.
>
> Doug