graham, 11/15

I thought that the Bordeau reading was fairly interesting, but the Power Point that was shown in class really helped me to understand it a lot more clearly. I think the main focus was that similar to Althusser because a similarity in both readings was ideology. In this weeks reading, the ideology that we follow seems to be what the those on television are telling us. I also found it similar to Marx, because he says “he who has gold, rules!” And in this case, I believe those on television are ‘those with gold’ and power. Therefore, they are able to tell us what to do, and we give them power, allowing them to “rule”. Bordeau discusses the fact that television hosts, news anchors, and sports announcers “have turned into two-bit spiritual guides, representatives of middle-class morality. They are always telling us what we ‘should think’ about what they call ‘social problems’”. This means that since they have the power of television (which Bordeau mentions is crucial in having an influence in society) that they are able to influence individual’s way of thinking and feeling, because we tend to relate to those we see on television even if they are not in the same social class as us. Since we relate to them, we tend to assume that we have the same viewpoints in life, therefore we do not find out for ourselves, we just agree with them. He even discusses the fact that we believe these individuals to be intelligent and worthy of respect, despite the fact that we are not able to determine how smart and worldly they are by how well they read a teleprompter. Because they get the opportunity to “speak” to the country, we feel that they are superior to mainstream society, and therefore we must treat them accordingly. Someone gave the example of Oprah, and the way that she is extremely wealthy and powerful in society. She is now getting her own channel, because people love and respect her so much that a television show that comes on once a day was no longer enough. He also mentions that although many people read the printed press, news does not really become as big of a deal until the television stations get a hold of it and begin to air the story. Even if the story is not something that is a huge deal, many people will become very interested once television stations pay attention to the story and deem it important. We rely a lot on what we see on tv. I have to assume that it is because people are getting too lazy to do the research themselves, and therefore the television is the next most reliable source. When I did the reading I understood that he was discussing television and news, but I was honestly unsure of where he was going with it. I found Tuesday’s class to be very beneficial and informative.