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BAKHTIN'S THEORIES AND TV.   Term Paper ID:29195 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Applies the theory to television sitcoms.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Applies the theory to television sitcoms. Sole purpose of shows to create messages. Role of TV as an instrument to present things to people. Bakhtin's theory and situational comedies such as "CHEERS," "SEINFELD," and "THE SIMPSONS." Bakhtin's "chronotype" in relation to "THE SIMPSONS." Three types: the rogue, the fool and the clown. Paper Introduction: A Bakhtinian Analysis of the Chronotopical Tensions in “The Simpsons” Introduction “Facts, shmacts! Don’t worry about facts Lisa. People can use facts to prove anything. Forget facts and listen to Daddy.” (Homer J. Simpson, 1990) This paper will maintain the generally accepted critical view adopted by certain neo-Bakhtinians that the essential role of television as a medium is an instrument used in order to present things to other people (Hebidge, 1988). Essentially it extends the ability of one person or group to reach other people, and is not a way of social enhancement. Today’s omni-presentational approaches television as a manifestation of certain definite, prescribed and proscribed efforts by people (producers Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Within that conventionality, he suggests that there appear certaindefinite types that are designed and necessary to puncture the pomposityand he proceeds to discuss these types, paying particular attention to "theclown, the rogue and the fool." We learn that these three types wereimportant in the days of Medieval Europe, particularly on Holy Days whenstrolling players would wander from town to town and perform. Some academic purists who refuse to watch the medium (and it is quitelikely that Bakhtin would be among them) argue that present-day televisionhas lost most of its communicative importance. Morreale wrote a fascinating study of the last episode of Seinfeld, asitcom more genetically linked to "The Simpsons" than "Cheers." As shepoints out: Public fascination with both Seinfeld and its closing episode deserves deeper scrutiny. (2 , Fall), Sitcoms Say Goodbye: The CulturalSpectacle of Seinfeld's Last Episode, Journal of Popular Film andTelevision, 66 Voloshinov, V.N.(1986), Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, Trans.Ladislav Matejka and I.R. Hypocrisy and falsehood saturate all human relationships (Bakhtin, 1981, 162). The TV Sitcom, whether structured and presented as an incontrovertibleobject of singular or mass perception or as the art form that would enableTV to go beyond the range of natural vision and hearing is first, andforemost, visual and immediate. Both the intertexts that surrounded the end of Seinfeld and the episode itself demonstrated the blurring of fiction and reality that characterized Seinfeld as a postmodern text. They're about to announce the lottery numbers" (Homer J. He is never predictable, and he oftenmakes profound sense, speaking those thoughts that perhaps stay deep andsublimated in ourselves and our own chronotopes. (1992), Metapop: Self-Referentiality in ContemporaryAmerican Popular Culture, Jackson, MI: UP of Mississippi Feuer, J. (1986), Narrative Form in American Network Television,Chapter in High Theory/Low Culture: Analyzing Popular Television and Film,Ed. (1988), Hiding in the Light: On Images and Things, NewYork:Routledge Herron, J. The weekly shows each featured a "situation" and anoutside impacting force. Simpson is thetrue Renaissance man that Bakhtin talks about, since he is husband, father,undervalued employee (since Burns never remembers his name), a safetyinspector at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant who always sleeps on thejob, and panics when a meltdown approaches, bowler, beer drinker,astronaut, small business owner and dreamer, and makes it all look easy(Herron, 1993.He is "stupid" in all episodes, except when it was discovered during aroutine cat scan that he had a crayola in his brain that had gone up hisnose. Forget facts and listen to Daddy." (Homer J. The last episode of Seinfeld, emblematic of the series as a whole, magnified the discursive relationship constructed between text and viewer; in so doing, it illustrated the way that hypermediated relationships serve as the locus of community in contemporary culture (Morreale, 2 , 66). When considering thetelevision sitcom The Simpsons, which is as far removed from a novel as theOwl is from the Pussycat, within Bakhtin's theories we shall face severalchallenges that are daunting. Homer the Wise Fool"If you really want something in this life, you have to work for it. New York: St. The first is determining the chronotope of the Simpson's town ofSpringfield, a town which has a little of everything, from a huge Nuclearpower plant to a seashore to jungles to huge mansions to odd and quaintmissions. Krusty the Clown This character is a clown in the Bakhtinian sense, full of darkundertone and foreboding. I posit that Seinfeld's postmodern stylistic devices--self-referentiality, intertextuality, parody, and play with the sitcom form--called attention to its discourse, or mode of addressing viewers, as much as its narrative. Burns' chronotope, then, can be seen as consisting of a near-fatalshooting by Maggie Simpson, a brief bankruptcy almost ended his empire butwas saved by Lisa who inadvertantly helped him kill the Dolphins, Mr.Burns returned to the seat of power where he resides to this day. The Rogue, the Fool and the Clown in "The Simpsons""Okay brain! Don't worry about facts Lisa. As Morreale (2 ) observes, TV is not theplace for weighty reflection, since it is, essentially a marketing device.We are not meant to learn from TV, but to gain shopping and productknowledge. When that was removed, he made Mensa members look dumb, and finallydecided that being smart wasn't all that good and had an operation wherethe crayola was jammed back into his brain. Even more important,these characters existed within that particularly Bakhtinian concept, the"Chronotope." It was his belief, stated over and over again in his essays,that metaphoric and narrative texts can best be grasped by formulating themin terms of a chronotope, which he describes as the relationship between"time space" and its intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatialrelationships that are artistically expressed in literature (Dunne, 1992).What counts for us is the fact that it expresses the inseparability ofspace and time (Voloshinov, 1986). Homer J. Now,quiet Bar! That is truly the act of theclown, and the man who is at one and the same time both a rogue and fool.For, as Bakhtin says, "the rogue, the clown, and the fool create aroundthemselves their particular little worlds, their particular chronotopes"(Bakhtin, 1981, 159). He controls local elections, manages a championship-winning baseballteam, hold a chair on the board of Springfield University and build acontraption large enough to block out the sun and plunge the town intocomplete darkness. He has many wonderful"rogue" hobbies, such as money fights with his assistant, Waylon Smithers,cultivating a wardrobe made entirely of innocent animals' pelts andcourting some of Springfield's most eligible seniors. Morreale, J. We knew that Woody would always be stupid,would always miss the point, and that Carla would always be snarly andbitchy. One of these leaps of faith is that when a noted "situation comedy"has endured on television for three seasons or more, then there is acontinuity of characterization that could approach the growth of charactersas we see and perceive them in the novel. Moremisunderstood than evil, Mr. Burns may possess unparalleled power inSpringfield, but he can barely lift a baseball bat. Essentially it extends the ability of one person or groupto reach other people, and is not a way of social enhancement. The time and space surrounding Hershel Krustofski has truly thickenedand grown, since he has won hundreds of awards and has garnered scores ofyoung fans (the most notable being Bart Simpson) and of course the gainingof great wealth through non-discriminate licensing of his image and namefrom products ranging from shoe strings to battery acid. A Bakhtinian Analysis of the Chronotopical Tensions in "The Simpsons" Introduction"Facts, shmacts! Timehere thickens, grows denser, becomes artistically visible; likewise, spacebecomes more intense and drawn into the movement of time, plot, history"(Bakhtin, 1981, 84). He does notgive clear definitions of what he means exactly by these three types, andinstead explains by example, making references to characters in literaturethat have no particular importance or relevance today. It ishelpful to examine the chronotope in relation to the Simpsons. Colin McCabe. You don't like me, and I don't like you but just help me getthrough this as fast as possible so I can get back to killing you withbeer." (Homer J. Bakhtin observed that in the chronotope, "spatialand temporal marks are fused into a meaningful and concrete whole. As Bakhtin observes, "The rogue, the clown and the foolcreate around them their own special little world, their own chronotope"(Bakhtin, 1981, 159). Instead, they claim,television is used as a means of recreation without any interest in its'informational' or 'communicative' aspects. (1993, Summer), Homer Simpson's Eyes and the Culture ofLate Nostalgia, Representations, 1-26. Simpson, 1992) As Bakhtin suggests The vulgar conventionality that pervades human life manifests itself first and foremost as a feudal structure, with something like a feudal ideology downplaying the relevance of spatial and temporal categories. Simpson, 199 ) This paper will maintain the generally accepted critical view adoptedby certain neo-Bakhtinians that the essential role of television as amedium is an instrument used in order to present things to other people(Hebidge, 1988). Monty Burns -- The Rogue To Bakhtin, the rogue was the supreme motivator and the outsider, andif we carry Bakhtin's idea of a feudal structure into this world ofSpringfield, Burns would be the Master of the Realm and all others would beserfs to him. Homer Simpson is at one time or the other, the rogue, the clown, thefool, and more often, the other. There are homeless people, gypsies, lovers, crooks, and, ofcourse, The Simpsons. We knewSam, for instance would always be a lech and would always have lustful eyesfor every woman who came in. Consider, for example, the case of "Cheers" a situation comedy thatran for some 11 years and was a highly successful comedy of manners, eachshow of which took place in a neighborhood bar. It was a classic situation comedy in that it had identifiablerecurring characters, each of which had a reasonable consistency. References: Bakhtin, M.M. The challenge of the act of using Bakhtin, the Russian whoseponderous, weighty, and often boring works of criticism (where the onlygood phrase is the one that obfuscates), and his theories of dialogicimagination in the novel, to analyze something as seemingly flighty and nonessential as "The Simpsons" is one that imposes certain leaps of faith inlogic. In fact, the characters in Seinfeld were more indicative of whatBakhtain called the clown, the rogue and the fool. Today's omni-presentational approaches television as a manifestation of certaindefinite, prescribed and proscribed efforts by people (producers, networks,actors, directors and so on) to create singular or multiple messages for anaudience of undetermined intelligence (Feuer, 1986). (1981), The Dialogic Imagination : Four Essays, MichaelHolquist (Editor), Caryl Emerson (Translator), London: Aucker Dunne, M. He is, after all, Springfield's richest man, built hisatomic energy fortune from the ground up after inheriting his father's atom-splitting factory. Simpson, 1995) Bakhton might have been thinking of Homer Simpson when he points outthat Essential to these three figures is a distinctive feature that is as well a privilege -- the right to be "other" in this world, the right to not make common cause with any single one of the existing categories that life makes available; none of these categories quite suits them" (Bakhtin, 1981,159). People can use facts toprove anything. From this point of view, the television program can be said tohold a mirror up to society, to ourselves. Hebdige, D. (This finalsituation was a chronotope within a chronotope, since the situation, andmany of the scenes were from the movie "The Jazz Singer" which was in turna film treatment (four times) of a short story by Singer). Titunik. Cambridge: Harvard PressNB: All quotes from Homer found onhttp://hosted.ray.easynet.co.uk/homer_simpson/hquotes2.html What Bakhtin calls "chronotope" (a ponderous and pedantic way ofsuggesting the obvious awareness that literary works contain variousidentifiable structures), is really a framework of his own to fit hisconcepts of the changability of language and linguistic constructs. Martin's Press, 1 1-14. The TV audience was askedto get involved with the antics and aspirations of Sam the bartender,Woody, Doc and others. On the down side,Krusty was arrested for armed robbery, went broke with a Chapter 11, andconfronted his father who wanted Krusty to be a rabbi. 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