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November 06, 2005
"Live" Debate - what's real?
West Wing is crossing some interesting boundaries in television and it raises some interesting issues that relate to the material we cover in class.
They're having a "live" debate for their program tonight which I suppose means it's like theatre - one live take of a rehearsed script with a live audience but that isn't how it feels because it's being presented in a form that we normally translate as real. In the same way as the images of 9/11 seemed in a gruesome way like images from a movie because that's what we undertood such horrific images on our televisions to be - unreal.
Interestingly, the network has a "LIVE NBC NEWS" logo in the bottom right corner of the screen as they would with a real live debate. And the candidates are debating real current issues - spending & tax cuts, CAFTA, Headstart & schooling, border patrol, healthcare, medicare, prescription drug costs, AIDS in Africa, debt relief etc. And are debating along current - republican and democratic - party lines.
I can't wrap my mind around this new style. Will this affect reality? It relies heavily, surely too heavily, on the viewers literacy and ability to contextualize the material. I wonder if this will change people's opinions of the real political parties? Or is this a good way of getting folk involved in politics by really making it entertainment? Is this coming from a desire we have to explore these issues? Or is this another, new form of campaigning?
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at November 6, 2005 08:14 PM