David wrote:
>I think you have a point,the poor image suggests an
>authenticity through 'presence'. What is interesting
>is that this is something that i would say was media
>other than the television news, particularly cinema
>and the net. The 'haptic', sensory quality is in
>itself an authenticating rhetoric (Laura Marks''Skin
>of the Film' is great for this debate).
>
>Basically, what traditionally evoked a fidelity of
>information, a truthfulness, to the news seemed to me
>to be the voice of the reporter (very important if you
>consider the RP voice training BBC reporters
>conventionally receive) and the clarity of image.
>
>Recently, significantly poorer images seem to connote
>authenticity with entirely different means, and the
>extensive use of scrolling text seems to act as an
>associative 'anchor' which grounds the dynamically
>variable quality of image.
>
This subject (footage from video phones) came up briefly last month.
But the use of scrolling banners/headlines that you mention is, I think,
an important one for considering spectatorship. Not having cable, I
(like many Australians, I think) only get to watch continuous news
coverage from U.S. and other channels at those times when free to air
stations broadcast live feeds (from CNN, NBC and the rest, BBC, etc),
which is only when 'world shattering' events happen. So: '91 Gulf War,
Sept 11 2001, and now the Iraq war. Sept 2001 was when I noticed a new
array of techniques being used on these channels, including the
scrolling text but also the splitting of the screen in other ways: a
talking head reporting on location, say, in one part, with a shot of
studio anchors in another maybe, and/or images from the scene in
another, often going without comment. What really fascinated me was the
discontinuity between these various media elements, presented
simultaneously. It was tv as multimedia. Their out-of-synch nature
offered a range of interesting possibilities at the time for reading
across the different 'sources', something I did extensively, especially
because the technique was unfamiliar to me. (I note that our free to
air channels have now picked up the scrolling text thing.)
So while recognising that the grainy, low-fi images are the focus of
this thread, I'd wonder whether the scrolling texts you're referring to,
David, are always referential, purporting to explain the images or
whether their disjunctiveness might suggest something other than an
anchoring function?
Melanie
|