Boom!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHDVSW5OpI4

In relation to Joyrich's Hypermasculinity article and the article on TV sound, I want to examine a show that my (very masculine) friend put on during some down time and a drink. This show, Destroyed in Seconds from the Discovery Channel is one of many sort of "live camera" TV catastrophe shows, in this case focusing on technological and natural disaster that (as they claim) happens in a matter of seconds (as opposed to feral animals, wild criminals, etc). Since every spectacle happens only in a matter of seconds, they take their time to rewind, replay, analyze, and dissect the horror inside out.

In contrast to Good Morning America or soap operas, these shows focus so much on the visual spectacle, calling for rapt attention of the gaze, lest the viewer "miss something". The replays serve to emphasize the importance of making sure the viewer catches every detail. Yet the disembodied sound narrative is necessary to carry out the act of precise analysis and almost scientific authority to explain this all to us. And just as these disasters are slowed down and analyzed for us, they are also shot at us at a pace of one per every one to three minutes. The onrush and sheer amount of videos given to us between each break shell shock us, until every explosion looks the same, yet each one is meant to incite, excite, glue, sensationalize, and horrify. Furthermore, the fact that most of these videos are taken by home cameras, surviellance cameras, etc. parallels to TV's own lack of high visual quality, such that part of the spectacle is the video's grainy "realness".

This is certainly a masculine show, but does this show cut against the grain of "essential television qualities" of sound and feminine reception? I would argue the opposite, for I think shows like these that are non-narrative, fragmented, and ADD also build upon inherent qualities of the TV as medium, and very much reinforce the visual over the aural. However, this does not negate Joyrich or any of the other theorists, but rather merely serves to reinforce the idea that television is full of polysemy.