17 - A TV in Every Home: Television “Effects”

Summary

In the early days of television people were proud of their television set and placed it in the living room to entertain guests. They considered it a wonderful and entertaining new addition to their homes and even felt gratitude for it. But by 1958 television viewing was no longer novel. Television use had settled into a routine. Market researchers Ira Glick and Sidney Levy described the change as a shift from excitement and widespread acceptance to uneasiness, dissatisfaction, denial, and criticism. By the late 1950s it was not considered appropriate among college-educated people to admit that one watched television much. They no longer turned on television when visitors came. Instead they placed the television where it could be viewed privately, by children or the family without company, in the recreation room or in the parents' bedroom.

From that time the negative characterizations of television would persist for decades as conventional wisdoms. Culture critics, communication researchers, and viewers asked whether television was a good thing and what was it doing to viewers. This chapter examines how the discourse on television defined cultural capital and reinforced class distinctions. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu used the term “cultural capital” to refer to the possession of cultural knowledge, abilities, and tastes that allowed one to claim higher status in a social hierarchy, distinguishing higher from lower classes by their tastes. The discourse on television demonstrates that one's attitudes toward and use of television have been a common basis for such distinctions.