Television Texts And Television Audiences In Power Relations

Ever since John Fiske’s heyday of academic studies during the1980s, therehave been heated debates on his theories. Despite his retirement from academia,controversies surrounding his study on popular culture never subside. Voices ofadversaries are reverberating. Stubborn opponents like McGuigan completely denyFiske’s efforts, blaming him for overestimating people’s cultural productivity while“blind to the power relations, the dialectic of domination and subordination”(McGuigan,1992, p.73). Domestically, since Cultural Studies is still at its beginning,present research on Fiske’s popular culture theories mainly concentrate on people’sactive production with an exclusion of control from the power-bloc, whichconsequently conform to McGuigan’s criticism and deepens misunderstanding on thetheories.This thesis makes an elaboration of the integral constituent of Fiske’s popularculture theories-television theories, with power relations entailing both control andresistance to connect each part. The first chapter generally introduces the theoreticalbackground. The following two chapters respectively discuss both the disciplinarypower and producerly potential of television texts, the subordination and creativity oftelevision audiences. The last chapter evaluates Fiske’s television theoriesdialectically and explores possibilities of its application in other media studies.The thesis endeavors to defend Fiske’s television theories from being one-sidedfor ignorance of power relations. He examines the duality of both television texts andtelevision audiences within the historically and socially constructed power relations.Indeed, there are also defects in his theories. It is expected that this thesis wouldcontribute to further studies on Fiske’s popular culture theories and its practicalapplication.