ethnography a method of nuanced qualitative social research “in which fine grained daily...
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ETHNOGRAPHY
A method of nuanced qualitative social research “in which fine grained daily interactions constitute the life blood of the data being produced
Simon’s work from back to the Baltimore Sun could be described as ethnographic from the beginning
METHODOLOGY FOR THE CORNER
Long-term, one year stay in the field where a particular set of social relations can be observed
The observer learns the visuals and the habits of the culture by following selected individuals in their work and daily lives
Police culture and drug culture
Stand-around-and-watch-journalism
GEORGE MARCUS
Inherent problem with the ethnographic method
Concentrates on a specific location of study
“single site” ethnographers have recourse to a larger whole that has not been studied in so deep a systematic fashion
Researchers do not have data for the whole
This amounts to an abstraction: “the state, capitalism and so on.
Enables some sort of closure
He and others developed an ambition to undertake a multi-sited ethnography
One that can approach the system as a whole
THE PROBLEM…
No single ethnographer has enough knowledge of enough worlds or enough time to map this constantly evolving world system
“ETHNOGRAPHIC IMAGINARY”
World enough and time
Simon’s unique fabrication of ethnographically informed serial television melodrama speaks to this according to Williams
Makes arguments, sets up contexts that could not be managed in journalism alone
Serial television melodrama, according to Williams, makes possible the larger canvas of the ethnographic imaginary
Combined factual, ethnographically observed, and detailed worlds of cops and corners into one converged fictional world
With the exception of Spike Lee’s 1995 adaption of Richard Price’s novel Clockers there had never been a film that had given equal time to both sides of the law
SEASON 1
Breaks crime story conventions
Introduces a crime
A cop who pursues solving the crime
Higher ups who have no interest in solving the crime
Doesn’t stay with the cop, but moves to the complex world of the committer of the crime
Humanizes that character as well
Equally important procedures of cops and dealers are introduced
COMPARISON BETWEEN TWO MICROSITES
Cops who want to be good and cops who just want to bust heads
Competent drug dealers vs. ones who lack the discipline to avoid capture
COMPLEXITY OF THE SERIES’ MICROSITES (PLOTLINES)
Politics
Different police details
Education
Co-ops
War on drugs and “Hamsterdam”
Etc.
The vivid and interlocking stories from so many concrete ethnographic sites is what fiction affords, what ethnography aspires to, and what newspaper journalism can rarely achieve
Multi-sited ethnographic imaginary that no longer needs to depend on allusions to abstract ideas of “the state,” “the economy”, or “capitalism” as its “fiction of the whole”
The many sites reveal a vivid picture of that “whole”
Simon had to quit the business he loved and turn to television
Hasn’t fully embraced the form
Hence the comparison to Greek Tragedy?
JOHN CARROLL AND BILL MARIMOW
From Baltimore Sun (criticized “The Metal Men—1995”
Said it was too much like “The Corner” and that it wasn’t hard enough on the thieves
Simon believed that newspapers should adopt a wide sociological approach to the city’s problems
His editors thought he should be more clear and focused on right and wrong
RIFLE-SHOT JOURNALISM
One story is small and self-contained and has good guys and bad guys
The other is about why we are where we are
About who is being left behind
Harder to report
Carroll and Marimow saw them as performing a public service that can’t reach for the larger ethnographic complexities
RIFLE-SHOT VS. MULTI-SITE
Rifle shot is like a half hour of episodic television whose world is necessarily narrow and whose time is limited to a half hour or hour
In contrast, Simon’s reporting presented an expanded world view
Transforms a social “type” to a human being
WHITE MIDDLE CLASS EDITORIALIZING
In The Corner, his editorializing has an identity
In The Wire he shows instead of telling
(Which is more truthful?)
In place of the five-paragraph rifle-shot story he would eventually create a five- season cumulative serial whose primary outrage-a futile war on drugs-encompasses myriad others
Serial melodrama can show us, in a way sociologists and ethnographers cannot, how much as Detective Lester Freamon puts it, “all the pieces matter.”
CRIME STORY VS. MELODRAMA Controls knowledge
The genre aims to create curiosity about past story events
Suspense about upcoming story events
Surprise with respect to unexpected disclosures about either story or plot detail
We learn what the detective learns when he or she learns it
Focus tends to be on finding out who committed a crime
Closure—leading towards full knowledge
Story can rely on broad emotional impact
Evokes pity, sometimes irony or distanciation. Sirk and Bertholdt Brecht
Maximizes the viewer’s urge to know what will happen next—and, especially, how any given character will react to what has happened
The emotional expressiveness of the film issues partly from the narration’s tendency to be omni--communicative
To wring every emotional drop out of the narration employs omniscience
Various characters discover what viewers already know
Unrestricted knowledge: of multiple storylines
Crosscutting different plotlines
Following several characters from one locale to another
Expanded range of knowledge
Plot will inform us of initiation of a chain of action and then skip over some time or move to another line of action
RELIGIONArt
Music
Icons
Ritual
ENTERTAINMENT
Are all of these things entertaining?
Is there another word?
“Enchantment”
By endowing these things with “magic” enchantment is the means through which we may gain access to sacredness
Entertainment is the means by which we separate ourselves from it
TELEVISION (OR ANY SCREEN)
Has a strong bias towards a psychology of secularism
The power of a close-up face makes idolatry a hazard
Brings personalities into our hearts and not abstractions into our heads
Walter Cronkite plays better than the Milky Way and Jimmy Swaggart better than Jesus
Attracts viewers by the millions (good thing?)
TELEVISION COMMERCIAL Assault on capitalism
Capitalism was originally an outgrowth of the Enlightenment
Its principal theorists believed capitalism should be based on the idea that both buyer and seller are sufficiently mature, well informed, and reasonable to engage in transactions of mutual self interest
Legally, companies are supposed to tell the truth about their products
That law is destroyed when commercials come into play
The discourse of “true” and “false” is discarded in commercials
Empirical tests, logical analysis, and any elements of reason are impotent
Commercials
If a seller produces nothing of value, as determined by a rational market place, then the seller loses out
The assumption of rationality among buyers that spurs competitors to become winners, and winners to keep winning
Television commercials made linguistic discourse obsolete as the basis for product decisions
Images are substituted for claims
Pictorial commercials made emotional appeal not tests of truth, the basis of consumer decisions
The distance between rationality and advertising wide
The truth of an advertisement’s claim is not an issue
The commercial insists on unprecedented brevity
Disdains exposition
Complex language is not to be trusted
The argument is in bad taste and leads only to intolerable uncertainty
Politics as show business
What if we didn’t know anything about the politicians except their policies, voting history etc?
What do we know primarily about politicians?
WHAT MAKES A BETTER POLITICIAN?
Capable in negotiation?
More imaginative in executive skill?
More knowledgeable in international affairs?
More understanding of the interrelations of economic systems?
The reason we almost always believe a politician is better is because of image
A politician does not offer an image of himself
A politician offers himself as an image of the audience
Reach out and Touch Someone: Most powerful example of the TV commercial on political discourse
Reach out and Touch Someone
The lesson of most TV commercials like “Reach out and Touch Someone” They provide a slogan, or a symbol or a focus that creates for viewers a comprehensive and compelling vision of themselves
We are likely to vote for people whose personality, family life, and style, as imaged on screen, reflect our most positive images of ourselves
VOTER INTERESTS
TANGIBLE INTERESTS
Supreme Court Appointments
Investment in programs that have positive effect on the populace
Protection from Bureaucracy
Support for one’s own union community
Support for poor and homeless
SYMBOLIC INTERESTS
Image
Charm
Good looks
Celebrity
Personal disclosure
TV AND (LACK OF) HISTORY
“The past is a world, and not a void of grey haze” --Thomas Carlyle
The past is not just a world, but a living world
The world of the present is the most shadowy and difficult to understand
The world of television is all about immediacy
The quickness of information and TV communication removes contextual and historical content from politics
HUXLEYAN VS ORWELLIAN
Television does not ban books it displaces them
With a limited ability to interpret, contextualize (historically and conceptually) we have way of protecting ourselves from corporate America