1308
The Accessibility of the Visual Code
Unlike print media, which requires years of specialized training to master an abstract code (literacy), television uses a code of electronic signals that produces facsimiles of everyday sights and sounds. This "presentational" form is immediately accessible even to the illiterate or the very young. Because television does not require the sequential, linear learning associated with books, it allows viewers to "stray" into information-systems previously hidden by the barriers of literacy. Consequently, cultures or subcultures that were informationally isolated were suddenly exposed to complex images of modern life without the filter of traditional education.
Merging Private and Public Spheres
Television effectively restructured social "place" by severing the link between physical location and social situation. This had several profound effects:
- Exposure of "Adult" or "Elite" Secrets: Television reveals "backstage" behaviors—the informal, personal, and often unrefined actions of people—that were previously reserved for private interactions among peers. This served as an instrument of demystification, showing the "ordinariness" of authority figures and the details of modern lifestyles to those who had never experienced them.
- The "Middle Region" Behavior: By combining previously distinct social settings, television created a new "middle region" of behavior that merged formal public address with informal personal expression.
- Information Integration: For groups traditionally confined to the domestic sphere, such as women in the mid-20th century, television provided a "mediated consciousness" of the larger world. It brought "male" topics (politics, outer space, global conflict) into the home, creating a sharp discrepancy between the traditional "housewife" role and the wider human reality seen on the screen.
The "Glimpse" into the Future: The North Korean Example
The shock of encountering modernity is most vivid in closed societies like North Korea. Despite government "crippleware" designed to prevent access to foreign signals, citizens used modified sets to watch South Korean television.
- Visual Evidence vs. Propaganda: While North Korean propaganda depicted workers in capitalist societies as "oppressed," viewers of South Korean soap operas noticed that these "oppressed" workers wore jackets with zippers and had ballpoint pens, which were luxuries in their own culture.
- Idealized Lifestyles: South Korean situation comedies offered a glimpse of a world where young women fought over parking spaces—a concept of "modernity" (mass private car ownership) that was unfathomable to high-ranking North Korean officials.
- Technological Marvels: North Koreans who reached China marveled at simple modern appliances like rice cookers, realizing their own country was decades behind the future they were now witnessing.
Para-social Interaction and the "Shock"
Television creates "para-social interaction," a psychological relationship where viewers feel they "know" the people on the screen as intimates or peers. This intimacy made the "shock of the future" more personal. Viewers did not just learn about modernity; they experienced it vicariously through the expressive behaviors and personal lives of televised characters. This shift from a "report on" reality (print) to an "imprint of" reality (television) made the images of the modern future appear inescapable and authentically "real," even when they were idealized.
Ultimately, this informational integration often leads to increased social tension, as people who have been exposed to a wider world of options and rights no longer accept their traditional, isolated "place".
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