Television and Moral Discourse

In his article about television and discourse, Richard Wilk makes the claim that you cannot understand the effect television has on society without studying the accompanying discourse that comes with watching t.v. People talking about what they watch is just as important as the content they are actually watching, and he uses the arrival of television in Belize for his case study.
The video invasion, or television mania, began in 1981, when the public got a hold of t.v. broadcasting for the first time.The government attempted to control television broadcasting and its social impact, claiming that it was a deadly force for the youth and kept people from being educated. This attempt failed, and the second wave of frenzy began in the late 80s with a flood of media scholars visiting Belize to conduct research. Television theory continued to develop from this point on, and the fact that it developed within the global economy of meaning, television must be studied differently. Commodities and consumption need to be understood more than production of culture, especially in a connected, global society, where the meaning changes drastically depending on context.
Media scholars understand that messages conveyed through television are mediated in the social context of talk about the program. Therefore, the way people talk about a program creates its cultural meaning. I think this is interesting to consider with reality tv in the US, especially Jersey Shore. I feel like more than watching the show to engage in a deep analysis of it, people simply watch it because they find it amusing. And the way they talk about it prescribes meaning to the characters and episodes. Therefore these characters are not seen as idols or celebrities or icons, but rather as individuals who don't value their own image, and thus can be made fun of. In the article, Wilkin writes a viewer who is dominated places no distance between himself and the program, and thus is identifies with the characters and events of the show in a completely uncritical way. Reality tv, on the other hand, shows us characters dominated by constant survelliance and the drama that surrounds their lives, allowing us to view them from a detached critical perspective, and thus making a joke out of their lives.