Television Autobiography

1. Television Autobiography

Word limit: 1200 words

Horrifying, isn’t it, to be asked to submit written work so soon, but for one time only you will be writing an essay that requires no reading.

You will be writing your television-viewing autobiography. One of the main themes of the course is a critical self-reflection about television viewing, so to get you thinking about this immediately, use this first essay as a chance to think about your own relationship with TV-watching, how it has changed over time, and what your attitudes towards television say about the kind of person you are.

We don’t want to be too prescriptive about what you include in the essay, but some of the points you might want to cover are:

·      Your early memories of watching TV

·      Family attitudes towards TV:  did your family approve/disapprove of TV-watching?  Did they encourage you to watch only certain kinds of programmes and discourage (or even forbid) others?  Did they steer you towards particular channels or genres, and away from others?  Have any or all of those attitudes stayed with you, consciously or otherwise?

·      Ways of watching:  when young, did you watch alone, with family, with friends?  Did these circumstances vary according to the type of programme or the time it was broadcast?   Have there been periods when you watched little or no TV, and if so, why? How do you generally watch TV in your current household?

·      Peer-pressures, fashions, guilty secrets, etc: have there been times when your TV choices were strongly influenced, even dictated, by the need to conform to the tastes of your peer group(s)?   Have there been series or genres you felt you had to watch in order to ‘fit in’?  Are there shows or series you love but don’t admit to watching  - and are you able to do so in this essay ?   (Would your friends stop talking to you if you told them you never missed BBC South Today or Midsomer Murders?)   And are there texts so taken-for-granted as popular in your peer-group(s), past or present, that you feel uneasy criticising them?  Or do none of these apply  - are you a lifelong individualist in terms of TV viewing?

·      Technology:  did you grow up in a single-set or multi-set household, and how did that situation affect how TV was used?  What role have video recorders played in your TV consumption?   What about satellite/cable channels?   What is your relationship with that most sacred and fought-over totem, the remote control? Do you watch TV programmes now mostly online and/or via streaming services rather than actually ‘watching television’?

·      Changing tastes: how have your TV preferences changed over the years?   To what would you attribute those changes? Are you nostalgic or embarrassed (or, through some strategy of smart-arse student irony, both) about once-favourite programmes? How do you negotiate taste conflicts if you are obliged to watch TV in communal contexts (families or other shared households).

·      Watching TV as a Media student:  has studying the media affected your everyday consumption of TV? Can you be an ‘innocent’ viewer any more, and if not, would you like to be?

·      TV and identity:  do you have any sense in which your own sense of cultural/social identity (your gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality, etc) shapes or determines your TV consumption?   Are there shows, genres or performers that you follow in a way that you can relate to the identities that you inhabit?  Or is this something that does not enter into your calculations when consuming TV?

That list is offered as a set of guidelines  -  you are not obliged to cover all those points or only those points. 

Television has always been a big part of my life. We had a tiny old tube TV in the lounge and regularly watched educational programmes together as a family in the evenings, such as nature series and films. I remember as a very young child watching television every day after school, at my child-minders until 6pm when I would be collected. Annoyingly, this was when my favourite programme called The Simpsons would start on BBC Two! I watched a lot of children’s television shows back, cosuming games shows, animations and adventure themed programmes.

My parents never worried about what my sister and I watched at our child-minders because the child minder was an excellent carer with old-fashioned standards. For example, if we hadn’t done our homework we weren’t allowed to watch TV till it was all done. I can remember my parents disapproved of me watching any wrestling-related TV shows when I was a child as they thought I would be influenced by the behaviour of what I saw on screen and get myself into trouble. Any violent cartoons were also frowned upon and they didn’t allow me to have a TV in my room till I was 14 [and had saved up for half of it myself, doing jobs!] Once I had my TV, I started buying PS games and watching DVDs we borrowed from the library, bought in charity shops, or borrowed, or rented.

Being the younger sibling in my family, I never had much of a choice over what we would watch together. At weekends, my sister and me were allowed to get up early and go and watch cartoons till they got up and made breakfast and took us out for the day. When I finally had my own TV with a built in VHS recorder, my sister had moved out of my bedroom, this was a time in my life where I’d consume far more shows of my own choice and went to watch TV downstairs as a family less and less.

My friends and school peers have continuously had an influence over what TV shows I would watch.

I remember when I first started working full-time as a Film Technician when I was 18 years old, at my former secondary school, I asked my head of department to recommend a TV show he liked. I believed he would have an elite taste in TV due to his extensive knowledge and understanding of media, film and television. He recommended I watched a show called Suits. I realised whilst watching the first couple episodes that the scriptwriting in the first season of the show was of amazingly high quality and the cinematography was superb. This was a seminal moment as these were things I would’ve never looked out for in the past, had he not pointed them out.

Another show that I have watched without fail all my life from secondary school is Match of the Day. This was because all my male friends at school watched it and it was the topic of conversation most of the time. I never used to enjoy watching football, as I just loved playing the sport back then. However, I started to watch it to in order to ‘fit in’ to their conversations. Now that I’ve stopped playing football, I find myself watching it all the time and reading up about it too. It’s a show that will continue to be an important part of my television viewing in the future. Arsenal is my team and I am obsessed with them.

The advancements in technology in my lifetime not only have had a major impact on the television industry, but also in the way I now consume television. My house in London became a multi-set household when my parents bought me a second hand tube TV when I was about 9, so I could play on my PlayStation One. I was finally allowed a TV set in my bedroom and not hog the family TV in the lounge. This gave me a lot more freedom about the choice of TV shows I could watch. As I mentioned earlier, this resulted in me watching TV a lot more, and without my family. We became segregated as a family and spoke less and less, apart from family meal times, days out, going to the theatre and cinema, and holidays.

Mum always held the remote control. She would read the Radio Times every Wednesday [and still does] and set up the shows to record all week. She would decide what would be good to record. Now that VHS recorders are a thing of the past, at home we now use a hard-drive recorder as these have a far superior storage size, space and shows can be burned onto DVDs.

Another technological advancement in the television industry was the invention of satellite TV. I love satellite channels as they have such a broad range of shows available to watch compared to just the terrestrial.  It wasn’t until Sky+ was available that my sister and I were able to convince my parents to convert from terrestrial TV into the digital age. When our household installed Sky TV, the amount of time I spent watching TV rapidly increased as well as my tastes since we had a far more extensive range of programmes available to watch.

I now live in time where we no longer I need a TV to watch TV shows. There are multiple ways by which audiences can digest their favourite programmes away from their television at home. For instance, I can now watch Match of the Day on my phone or computer screen on any journey, as long as I have Internet connection. The evolution of the Internet and online streaming has completely changed my viewing experience on the go. By having more methods of screening TV, the demands and consumption of TV as a mode of entertainment has dramatically increased globally.

Since I started studying film at A-level my tastes for television shows have altered. I still love animation series such as The Simpson, Futurama and more recently Rick and Morty. I have broadened the range of genres that I watch on TV but I’ve also become more selective about the shows that I watch. I have a strong passion for crime themed shows such as The Wire, Sherlock, Breaking Bad and The Sopranos. I love the way the narratives are constructed as well as the way they are produced with their big budgets. Nowadays, I look more at who produced the shows and films and who stars in a shows than anything else or ask my fellow media students what they’d recommend.

I can now appreciate a TV show a lot more of late for its visual aesthetic than I could when I was younger and I’m hoping that by taking this module, it will expand my knowledge about television even further.

I can no longer watch TV as an ‘innocent viewer’ any more. I am always thinking about the mise-en scene, camera angles and the manipulation of sound and lighting. I’m more critical of the overall production and I pick holes in shows and films, that I would never have done in the past, although I don’t mind this progression in my consumption of film and television as it means I am watching even more closely and its far more engaging.