TELEVISION AND AUDIOVISUAL COMMUNICATION

The module is part of the historical and artistic cluster within the MA in Economics & Management of Arts and Cultural Activities (EGArt).

Upon successful completion of the module, students will have acquired three competences, on a theoretical, analytical and critical level.
1/ They will have acquired a first overview of some of the main seminal paradigms in the literature on television and they will be able to articulate this knowledge critically to various types of television productions as well as to recent forms of digital broadcasting (online video platforms, VOD, etc.) in order to identify the aesthetic, ideological and political issues at stake.
2/ They will have gained a body of empirical and analytical knowledge about a range of audiovisual creations (found footage films, participatory devices, collective creation processes etc.) that have tried to address specific televisual forms and transform them into the raw material for a creative and sometimes subversive approach to mainstream television formats.
3/ They will be able to relate the texts, founding paradigms and creative processes discussed in class, to audiovisual uses and practices that characterize the most recent manifestations of cultural industry, in particular the multiple uses of video on online platforms.

Students are expected to develop critical thinking, so as to be able to recognize the logics and processes regulating contemporary audiovisual artefacts, be they formats, texts or platforms, and put one another in relation. Ultimately, such critical thinking is expected to be individually articulated, constructively structured and collectively discussed using case studies, concepts and module readings alike. This is truly an essential skill not only because it will contribute to favor a respectful and dialogic environment in the classroom, but also and primarily because it is a key transferable skill required by the job market for pretty much each and every professional profile in line with the overall program.

Content-wise, there are no entry requirements requested. Linguistic skills: The course will be taught in English and the texts to be discussed in class, as well as the film excerpts, will be provided to students in English.

Starting with a short introduction devoted to the overall intentions of the course, its methodology and its assessment method, the module will be structured into four chapters addressing successively four of the main issues of (critical) television studies. The first chapter, entitled “Manipulation”, will be dedicated to the roots of the critique of an allegedly manipulative device (first generation of the Frankfurt School, mainly Theodor W. Adorno), the limits of such an approach, and its actuality today despite of the evolution of television. The second chapter, “Claiming the real”, will tackle the reproach, often addressed to television and its recent digital variations, of constructing a second order reality which immerses the spectator in a deceptive and ideologically overdetermined environment. The key authors discussed in this chapter will be Pierre Bourdieu and Jean Baudrillard. The third chapter on “Participation” will focus on some essential authors who have tried to elaborate different thoughts of media participation in order to conceive or theorize participatory uses of the device (Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Peter Watkins, Henry Jenkins). This chapter will also address a set of audiovisual initiatives trying to concretize a collective bottom-up alternative to the state or commercial television (e.g. Indymedia), with a particular attention to some recent uses of the YouTube platform (citizen journalism, guerilla journalism with smartphones etc.). The fourth chapter, entitled “Critique of the critique” will offer an overview of some critiques (Raymond Williams, Hans Magnus Enzensberger a.o.) of the previous paradigms, with the aim of developing a new approach to the device and its contemporary forms that is neither protectionist nor disillusioned.

The last session of each week will be dedicated to the presentation, screening (excerpts) and analytical discussion of one or two documentary or hybrid films that have tried to go beyond mere theory or critical reflection in order to develop a new (subversive) language from the sounds and images broadcasted by mass television (see the section Methodology).

Parts of the texts referenced below will be presented and discussed in class. As such they are part of the course materials. The full versions as well as the handouts of samples will be made available to the students via moodle.

• Theodor W. Adorno, “Culture Industry Reconsidered” [1962], transl. from the German by Anson G. Rabinbach, New German Critique, n°6, Autumn 1975, p. 12-19.
• Theodor W. Adorno, “How to Look at Television”, The Quarterly of Film, Radio and Television, vol. 8, n°3, 1954, p. 213-235.
• Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did not Take Place [1991], transl. from the French by Paul Patton, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1995.
• Pierre Bourdieu, On Television [1996], transl. from the French by Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, New York, The New Press, 1998.
• Hans Magnus Enzensberger, “Constituents of a Theory of the Media” [1970], transl. from the German by Stuart Hood, in Noah Wardrip-Fruin & Nick Montfort, The New Media Reader, Cambridge, The MIT Press, 2003, p. 261-275.
• Hans Magnus Enzensberger, “The Zero-Medium, or Why all Complaints about Television are Pointless” [1988], in Mediocrity and Delusion. Collected Diversions, transl. from the German by Martin Chalmers, London, Verso, 1992, p. 59-71.
• Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture. Where Old and New Media Collide, New York, New York University Press, 2006.
• Peter Watkins, “Notes on the Media Crisis”, Quaderns Portátils, n°23, 2010.
• Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form [1974], London, Routledge, 2004.

Preliminary remark: it is highly recommended to attend all the sessions as the course will revolve around discussions on text fragments and film as well as video excerpts.

Students attending the classes will be evaluated on the basis of a written exam (open-ended questions; 90% of the final grade) that will focus on the texts and theoretical frameworks as well as the films seen and discussed in class. The examination material is thus composed of the lectures given in class, the texts attached to the course and the films from which excerpts will have been screened. A group work (short oral presentation; see next section 8. Methodology) will count for 10% of the final grade.

The students skipping 4 or more lectures will be assessed solely on the basis of a specific written exam (100% of the overall module grade) aimed at checking the correct understanding of a reader comprising full versions of the texts of the bibliography. These students who will not be able to attend the class on a regular basis are asked to contact the instructor via email by February 13 (jeremy.hamers@unive.it).

The module is based on the general principle of a cross-cut between essays and films that respond to each other. Without ever reducing the texts to the status of interpretative keys to the films or, conversely, reducing the films to the role of visual illustrations of the texts, this montage will help the students to discover and understand the stakes of the works discussed, but also to confront them with other works, texts or theoretical and creative devices.

Regardless of the works addressed (either textual or audiovisual), the module will alternate between ex-cathedra lectures, discussions with the students, and presentations of audiovisual objects prepared by the students in groups of 3 (see below).

During the introductory session, students will be invited to form groups of 3 to prepare a short oral presentation (one per group) that will take the following form: at the beginning of several sessions (see “5. Program”), one group will introduce briefly, screen and comment analytically a short video excerpt that they have found on the internet, in a film or in any other audiovisual production. The oral presentations should not exceed 10 minutes in total (5 min. max of excerpt followed by 5 min. of commentary.) This brief presentation will be graded and will count for 10% of the final grade.

Italian

Ca' Foscari applies the Italian law (17/1999; 170/2010) for the support services available to students with disabilities or specific learning disabilities. If you have either a motor, visual, hearing or another disability (Law 17/1999), or a specific learning disorder (Law 170/2010) and you require support (classroom assistance, tech aids to carry out exams or personalized exams, accessible format materials, notes retrieval, special tutoring as study support, translators or else), please contact the Disability and DSA office disabilita@unive.it.

written and oral