Cavell on Television

Question 1 – Reading Cavell’s “The Fact of Television” was like reading endless definitions of “television” and “genre”. Cavell seemed more interested in defining how he attempted to use each word as oppose to just making the argument, then defining his terms. Hence my first question dismisses Cavell and his definitions and instead focuses on individual responses. While growing up what were you parents’ attitude towards television? Was it a positive or negative view of television?

Question 2 – Cavell states, “My claim about the aesthetic medium of television can now be put this way: its successful formats are to be understood as revelations (acknowledgments) of the conditions of monitoring, and by means of a serial episode procedure of composition, which is to say, by means of an aesthetic procedure in which the basis of a medium is acknowledged primarily by the format rather than primarily by its instantiations.” Now with all the crazy new television episodes, such as “From G’s to Gents” or “I Love Money 2”, how would Cavell define these episodes? What genre would these episodes be a part of? In saying that these episodes are real, does this imply that they are also live? What format would these TV episodes take, if any?