In the spirit of television's fragmentation, my post tonight is incredibly fragmented. A few main points came up for me with this week's readings.

First of all, I was very interested in Feuer's use of the word "aura" in describing the videotape as eliminating aura, as well as the relationship between aura and the sense of liveness we see in television. It seems to me that the images shown on television have some semblance of aura whereas the images of a film do not; regardless of the ways in which television can manipulate these events - in terms of replaying them over and over again, using slow-motion, etc. - the fact that they ocurred once - and once only - in time has an organic and authentic quality, a uniqueness, to it, that film cannot.

Secondly, I was really in the relationship between spectator and television, and the relationship between this relationship and that between spectator and film. When Feuer discusses Good Morning America, she discusses how David Hartman acts as a link between us and the guest he is interviewing. She writes: "David sets the circuit of address: he may look into the internal monitor and he may look at us; but the guest looks only at David - so that David mediates all discourse. The format denies the possibility of direct address from the interviewee to spectator" (18-19). In this sense, it seems that television does not offer its spectators the same ability to conquer the individuals onscreen as does film. In film, the spectator can possess the female celebrity, both directly and indirectly. In television, by contrast, there is only indrect contact with the indvidual being interviewed, and indirectness underscored by the technical shots used in these interviews. I guess the issue that came up for me in observing this relationship is how television seems to overpower its spectator, yet previous texts we have read equate television with femininity and film with masculinity.

Lastly, in the readings and in the lecture, the idea of aperture kept on coming up in relation to television, contrasting the closure of film. However, I remember aperture as being an element of counter cinema, and I am curious about the relationship between the aperture of counter cinema and the aperture of television.