Most of the readings for this week latch onto the construction of the domestic sphere as a site through which the feminine becomes commodified through various techniques. According to both Lipsitz and Haralovitz, commercial network television, in conjunction with government and cultural policies, worked to create an idealized suburban space through which modes of consumption were encouraged via a range of representational strategies and appeals to memories of traditional living. Whether it was the creation of the feminine “suburban object of desire” (Haralovitz, 134) through stylish middle class interior design and the layout of domestic consumer goods, or the persuasive enticement of buying on credit, the television industry had a centralized role in the “resolution of the conflict between consumer desires and family roles” through the offering of “commodities as the key to solving personal problems”(Lipsitz, 83-84).
We can see the reincarnation, and even reinvigoration, of the early 1950s urban family sitcoms, that Lipsitz focuses on, and their appeals to working class taste cultures through the Home Shopping Network strategies of product marketing that White discusses. Here the viewer’s domestic space becomes the staging ground for their own productive and actualized forms of consumption, an engagement with the products and people seen onscreen. What is particularly interesting (I admit to my own outsider fascination with how these networks function) about White’s discussion is how she critiques the “conventional denigratory paradigms”(91) that characterize feminine consumer participation as precisely lacking the proper distance required to discern the “real” worth behind a product and its promotion. Even though White never engages them, this echoes some of the psychoanalytic feminist theories we encountered earlier (primarily Doane), but would position them in way that ascribes to them a similar level of condescension and derision.
Some questions are raised in relation to White’s work that might help us expand upon the ideas of the female viewer and televisual modes of consumption. As White comments on the prevalence of testimonial callers on HSN, one might question how much the labor of the consumer/viewer gets factored into the pedagogical function of online and televisual forms of marketing and commodification. How then, as these viewer-consumers are participating in the construction of these televisual marketing environments, are they also actively cultivating a larger taste culture?
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