Television Amongst Friends: Medium, Art, Media Sarah Cardwell Abstract From the perspective of analytic philosophical aesthetics, this paper disputes the commonplace practice of referring to television as a ‘medium’. It proposes instead that television be regarded as an art composed of many media. Individual works employ various media available to television and also to other arts. The paper evaluates the usefulness of these distinctions for our conceptual understanding of television, appraisal of television works and appreciation of television in relation to other arts. Via its reconfiguration of ‘medium/media’, it challenges narrowly contemporary notions of the televisual, positing a more historicised model and situating television alongside other arts - amongst friends. Key words: television, televisual, medium, media, art, aesthetics As the editors of this special issue note, there has been insufficient attention paid to the aesthetic relations between television and other arts. I would suggest that, in part, this arises from a paucity of commonly agreed, precise vocabulary, which reflects a deeper lack of coherent conceptual groundwork. My title pinpoints two key terms in relation to television: ‘medium’ and ‘art’. In many other arts (their practice, criticism and theory), these terms are relatively precisely distinguished (e.g. the art of painting uses various media). In contrast, television is frequently referred to as a ‘medium’, and somewhat less frequently as an ‘art’. The choice of one term over the other is often unthinking, little more than a matter of habit or tradition; sometimes ideological/polemical (in scholarly television studies, even the choice between two apparently innocent technical terms - medium and art - is politically loaded); or merely, and quite reasonably, a result of the writer's desire to avoid repetitious vocabulary. But this article explores how a reconfiguration of these terms, or at least a more careful Critical Studies in Television, Volume 9, No. 3 (Autumn 2014) © Manchester University Press http://dx.doi.org/10.7227/CST.9.3.2 Television Amongst Friends 7 delineation of ‘medium’ from ‘art’, might open up, for both critic and scholar, new ways of seeing and thinking about television in relation to other art forms. This paper aims to undertake some of the conceptual spadework necessary to underpin a more nuanced understanding of television's relationship with other arts, and the concomitant appreciation of specific television works. It seeks to initiate a more precise understanding of what television-as-art is, its constituent parts and its aesthetic interrelations, via an examination of ‘medium’ and ‘art’ as they relate specifically to television, and indeed (inescapably) to each other. Necessarily limited in length, this paper isolates the under-attended notion of medium as an avenue towards understanding and further development. In the spirit of this special issue, it not only considers television as a singularity but also looks to the ways in which other arts have been theorised specifically in relation to notions of ‘medium’, by artists, art critics and aestheticians. ‘Art’ is a necessary partner and interrelation in this venture, but is limited here to a basic, functional role, helping only to clarify the notion of ‘medium’, and setting aside its wider connotations. In particular, this paper is not concerned with debating whether television is an art or not an art in terms of ‘value’. It is concerned with categorical, ontological and logical, rather than evaluative, distinctions. Nor does it attempt to ‘define’ TV (although it is hoped that the work herein will suggest ways in which that project might be appropriately tackled). Indeed, ultimately, via its reconsideration of ‘medium/media’, this paper rejects narrowly contemporary notions of the televisual and instead situates television alongside other arts - amongst friends. What is in a Name? Talking About TV and (Analytic) Philosophical Aesthetics1 A name isn't just a descriptive label. It works to define, delineate and determine the object to which it refers. Choices of vocabulary, especially when we are dealing with the fundamental objects of our study, are powerfully and intrinsically connected with conceptual delineations and explications. How can we talk more carefully about television and its specificity but also its connections - and indeed parity - with other arts? This paper proposes one simple starting point: that we develop an essential shared vocabulary, beginning with redefining the term ‘medium’ in relation to ‘art’ as this distinction already functions in other arts.2 This paper's approach draws explicitly on the long-established tradition of investigation found in analytic (Anglo-American) philosophical aesthetics.3 Analytic aestheticians have long been concerned with tracing the links between common language, conceptualisations and those ‘fuzzy ideas’ which determine our understanding and analysis of the art(s): ‘What is peculiar to the analytic movement is its emphasis on language analysis as the proper tool of philosophy’, aiming explicitly ‘to make philosophy more logically, conceptually precise and exact’4. Following this, the exploration herein is no mere linguistic exercise 8 Critical Studies in Television 9/3 but a recognition that the language choices we make have profound implications for our conceptual, interpretative and evaluative practice as scholars of television. A close study of commonplace terms of debate reveals enduring, underlying conceptions, connotations, even prejudices which can unintentionally impede the development of television study. Specifically, this paper highlights some of the conceptual problems of defining television as a medium, and the concomitant ramifications for the discussion of television programmes and television as a (art)form, before proposing an alternative formulation.5 There are of course other more familiar paths (that is, within television studies) which one could take into the question of television-as-medium. One might accept at face value its terminology, and launch an examination of the relationships between production, textuality and reception. But this is just one possible route, and a well-trodden one. This paper recognises the eclectic uses to which the term has been put, but seeks to maintain its own, alternative focus, offering a categorical analysis, via the linguistic, to the conceptual, which touches inevitably but necessarily very briefly on ontology.6 The aim is not to impose wholesale ‘new’ material (in the sense of being unfamiliar to many, though not all, in television studies) from another field. It is the method of conceptual investigation from analytic aesthetics which is of interest. Of course, since our topic touches upon matters explored within that other field already (what is art? what is a medium? and so on), references to material within philosophical aesthetics are inevitable. There are resources of enormous value to us there, especially in terms of detailed conceptual analysis. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Appropriately chosen material can support television studies - especially television aesthetics, with which it shares a natural affinity. But for the moment, this paper's modest aim is to propose categories (medium, art) which align with existing intuitions and with other arts as far as possible, and which I hope will act as simple referential shorthands for those not interested in conceptual matters, and as preliminary, provisional demarcations, open to further exploration, for those who are. Above all, I hope to be useful. ‘Medium’ and ‘Art’ within Television Studies Many commentators have recognised the difficulty of ‘defining’ TV. Where is it to be found: in its technology, its apparatuses, its ‘texts’, the viewer's experience? Television is an ontological and phenomenological curiosity, as sensitively elucidated by Jostein Gripsrud, who avers that TV can be understood only as a metaphor.7 The quandary is by no means unique to TV, of course; all arts face similar concerns. But in the absence of sustained formal attempts to develop an ontology of television comparable to that found proffered in other arts,8 the term ‘medium’ has played a central explanatory role in the attempt to grasp what precisely TV is. Television Amongst Friends 9 Television is more often referred to as a ‘medium’, both within and outside the academy. In everyday speech, TV is commonly categorised as part of ‘the Media’: one of various forms of mass communication. This is verbally neat and simple, and in some contexts conceptually sound: if one is concerned, for instance, to examine television news in relation to print or new media, it makes sense to place TV alongside them. Here, the term ‘Media’ has a specific and clearly defined meaning. But to slip from this particular usage to the notion that television is therefore best regarded as a ‘medium’ has dangerous implications. An over-emphasis on TV's communicative rather than artistic functions separates ‘the media’ from ‘the arts’. As one's interest turns to the dramatic content of television, especially fictional content, does it really make sense to place television within a different category from other narrative arts such as theatre and film (and isolate it completely from non-narrative arts such as painting and sculpture)? The distinction between television-as-medium (television-as-conveyor of popular/mass communication) and ‘art proper’ serves to sustain the barricades between television and other arts. The characterisation of television as medium is one of the reasons for the lack of attention to inter-art aesthetics noted in this issue's CFP. Moreover, the traditional subsumption of television studies into ‘media studies’ or ‘communication studies’, as if the fields are synonymous, has had a powerful impact on the nature and direction of television research. Whilst traditional, cultural-studies-inspired television studies taught us much about television's social and ideological importance, it historically downplayed aesthetic concerns and the question of television's impact as an art (a gap now being filled by a fresh focus on the close analysis of television works).9 Within this context, however, the choice of the word ‘art’ to refer to television has always existed alongside, as an indication of alternative - and eclectic perspectives and approaches. Early scholars of television studies Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel, Horace Newcomb and Colin MacCabe proffered powerful, passionate and provocative arguments for the valuing of television as a distinctive, popular art - not ‘just’ a medium of communication.10 Recently, TV aestheticians have found the term similarly valuable.11 Despite their significant differences of emphasis and focus, these writers understood the power and impact of their choice of vocabulary. Today, television studies has gained respectability to the extent that it is now a stand-alone discipline within the academy. TV-as-art has thus been strategically crucial. But its deployment has been in primarily evaluative terms, defending the quality of television, or its works. And thus it has its detractors. In the ideologically-charged arena of television studies, the use of the term ‘art’ to refer to television has long been provocative to both conservatives (who regard television as unworthy of the term) and relativists/ popularists (who reject the supposedly ‘elitist’ connotations of the word ‘art’). This is another reason for the longevity of television-as-medium. ‘Medium’ remains the less contentious, less ideologically-laden choice, capable of seeming neutral, especially when used in the singular e.g. ‘the medium of television’ 10 Critical Studies in Television 9/3 rather than ‘the Media’. Yet the necessarily cursory history above reveals just how little conceptual groundwork exists beneath our feet. When we use the term ‘medium’ to refer to television, we do so most often in the hope that we have selected a baggage-free, disinterested term. But it is a vain hope. For even as we try to think through that definition more carefully, we venture, whether we like to acknowledge it or not, further into an art-theory context within which the term ‘medium’ is far from unproblematic. In particular, we soon run up against another instance in which ‘medium’ is used a synonym for art - the thorny issue of medium specificity (or its stronger cousin, medium essentialism): broadly, the attempt to pinpoint the ‘essence’ of an art form. ‘Medium Specificity’ within Television Studies: The Power (and Problem) of the Televisual In classic terms,12 medium specificity is a way of conceptualising and appreciating the singularity, distinctive possibilities and achievements of different art forms. It avers that ‘each art form has its own domain of expression and exploration [. . .] determined by the nature of the medium’.13 Confusingly, here ‘medium’ loosely equates to what we might think of as an ‘art form’, such as painting, sculpture or theatre. To speak of the ‘literary’, ‘theatrical’, ‘filmic’ and, in this case, the ‘televisual’ - to suggest that such a thing as ‘televisuality’ can exist - is to gesture towards some kind of conception of medium specificity. The act of pinpointing ‘medium’ has long been considered crucial to the considered appreciation of artworks. As David Osipovich puts it, in his analysis of theatre: ‘In analyzing any art form, one of the most fundamental questions is: what is its medium? Poems are made of language. Paintings are made from the application of pigment onto a surface. Music consists in sound - acoustic vibration in air. What is the medium of theatrical performance?’14 His reference to ‘the’ (singular) medium is somewhat distracting; actually, he clarifies that medium is neither sufficiently nor (implied) exclusively, but necessarily definitive. That is, an art form might comprise more than one medium, but there is only one medium which is essential to its artistic singularity: ‘One cannot have literature in the complete absence of language, or music in the complete absence of sound’.15 Many of the most powerful and engaging accounts (scholarly, critical and popular) of television, its genres or programmes, rely upon a formative perception of the ‘distinctiveness’ of the televisual form. A pre-theoretical notion of medium specificity lies beneath attempts to define, celebrate or interrogate the singularity of television. Such accounts are exciting, often inspiring. They speak to us of our intimate engagement with television. But they are too often taken beyond their reasonably-defined contexts. Consider John T. Caldwell's oft-cited work on early 1990s US TV, which heralded the arrival of ‘televisuality’: ‘an aesthetic based on an extreme Television Amongst Friends 11 self-consciousness of style’, and conveyed more than a hint of technological determinism as it traced television's development towards its contemporary form.16 His account is now outdated and more of (art) historical than conceptual interest17 - and indeed it was always parochial in its vision, uninterested in other kinds of television which co-existed. Caldwell's selective notion of televisuality, as taken up by other scholars way beyond its original context, veers dangerously close to functioning as an idea of ‘what television should be’. Medium specific theories, though exciting and inspiring, have always been susceptible to charges of ahistoricity and essentialism. The problem is that not that individual writers' versions of the ‘televisual’ are flawed or inaccurate. It is that the very concept of medium-specificity as commonly conceived is inappropriate to television. Medium specificity was developed with reference to arts in which it might have been feasible to identify one singular ‘medium’ as the art form's essence (thus the synonymity between medium and art), as Osipovich suggested. It was never intended to cope with, as Noёl Carroll demarcates, the self-consciously invented arts. Moreover, and importantly for our purposes here, a rudimentary notion of medium specificity underlies (and can undermine) scholarship driven by a contrary impulse: to attend to television's relationships, interactions and crossovers with other art forms, celebrating its hybrid and eclectic nature, rather than its uniqueness and separateness. Take the study of television adaptations of literature. An emphasis prevails on inter-media and inter-textual interrelationships, a downplaying of boundaries and distinctions between art forms, as one might expect. Yet fascinatingly, medium specificity remains resolutely decisive in the appraisal of specific programmes by viewers, critics and programme-makers. Adaptations that are stylistically unpersuasive are still condemned for being ‘literary’ or (perhaps worse) ‘theatrical’, whilst the converse is also seen, as ‘televisual’ adaptations are lauded18. Thus even when we wish to trace commonalities, forge friendships across the arts, the ‘televisual’ persists. The categorisation of television as a medium, and associated idea of television's medium specificity or ‘televisuality’, can become limiting, especially if the mutable, transient nature of the televisual is insufficiently acknowledged. This is true far beyond the examples above. In television studies and popular discourse one detects a current trend favouring programmes that encapsulate a very specific, contemporaneous notion of the televisual, built on an fashionable and ephemeral vision of ‘what television is’ (widescreen, filmic, multiplatform, ondemand etc).19 Even if we avoid essentialism, this is to build the notion of television-as-medium on ever-shifting sands, and leads to an ahistorical overvaluation of the contemporary and an under-valuing of television's creative, complex and enduring relationships with other arts. If we are to find a way sensitively to appreciate television which appears to be ‘literary’ or ‘theatrical’, or which forges relationships with other arts including painting and architecture, we need to revise our very notion of medium specificity and television. Indeed, we need to disassemble the very notion of television as a medium. 12 Critical Studies in Television 9/3 From Television-as-Medium to Television-as-Art There is no long-term advantage in grasping desperately at a ‘neutral’ substitution which pacifies those TV scholars who baulk at the word ‘art’, but which precipitates its own problems. Let us embrace ‘art’ for television. The question of television's ‘status’ need not concern us here; let us set it aside for a rainy day. Television-as-art is a non-evaluative category designating a particular kind of cultural practice and cultural form; it includes good, bad and indifferent works. ‘Art’ is the commonplace alternative to ‘medium’, and has the advantage of emphasising television's continuity with other arts (Raymond Williams' ‘cultural form’20 would be equally apt, but is more of a mouthful). Herein, the term art functions as a logically and conceptually necessary category - a corollary to ‘medium’: the two are defined (following historical precedent in both fine art and aesthetics) in relation to each other. And in defining TV thus, it gains access to all of those other things endowed to arts: artists, art practices and traditions, art history and also the philosophy of art, including aesthetics and all that entails (aesthetic objects, experiences and judgments, for example). Relatedly, we can find a far more valuable use for ‘medium’. In television studies, we persist in using the term in a way that is quite different from its other familiar manifestation within the fine arts, where it refers, broadly, to the materials used within/to create an artwork. In abjuring this possible denotation, something is mislaid - something I want to retrieve here: the very materiality and fabric of a work and its connections to (works in) other art forms. Medium specificity enjoins us to pay attention to the specific materials from which a work is made, recognising that ‘every work of art has, as one of its ingredients, the material in which it is embodied’21. Yes, the theory is awkward and messy - and has frustrated philosophers of art since Aristotle.22 But let's not rashly cast out the baby with the bathwater. Whilst contemporary aestheticians (unsurprisingly) disagree on the definition, limits and value of medium specificity as a tool for aiding our appreciation and analysis of artworks,23 there does seem to be some kind of emerging consensus concerning the terms ‘medium’ and ‘art’ as they relate to one another, and a discernible continuity with the definitions found in traditional art practice. The position I recommend we use as our fresh starting point follows important work by aestheticians Noёl Carroll and Dominic McIver Lopes, who between them offer the most cogent refiguring of the art/medium relationship so far. Carroll's persuasive argument that ‘artforms generally involve a number of media, including frequently overlapping ones’24 is extended by Lopes into more traditional medium-specific turf to suggest more particularly that every ‘art kind’ has a medium profile and no two arts share a medium profile, though they may share media.25 What does this mean in practice? A relatively straightforward example might be the art of painting, which incorporates the use of various media, from watercolours, to oils, to pastels. Moreover, one might also consider the painting surface as a medium: paper, or canvas or copper. Lopes is Television Amongst Friends 13 concerned with how these distinctions help us identify art forms. I would argue that it also enables us to examine interrelations between arts e.g. television and painting, television and theatre, since each of these media is also available to artists working in other arts, who will use and combine them differently. Even such a simple example raises immediate questions;26 once we turn our attention to television, the challenges are multiplied, as we shall see. But let's try taking up the idea of television as an art, and reclaim the term ‘medium’ as something(s) of which the art is composed. Television - An Art of Many Media ‘Medium’ now has far more important work to do than was previously the case, redeployed not as a synonym for television-the-art but with reference to the artistic materials of television - its bread-and-butter constituents. Even the most cursory glance confirms that television is an art of many media. So we can expect to encounter some challenges and difficulties when we begin to tease the latter apart. Some of these will be already familiar within the field of philosophical aesthetics; others pertain specifically to television. Television's ontology has long fascinated scholars, and early television's unique appeal has been explored evocatively in terms of its peculiar technological features and its characteristic forms.27 Recently, however, rapid changes in television technologies of production and broadcast/dissemination have cast doubt over whether a ‘definition’ of our object of study is even possible anymore. Change is of course common to all art forms, but television's mutability is particularly striking. We are not seeking an ‘eternal’ definition of television, but still, when one encounters the sheer breadth and pace of changes that television has undergone in recent years, it seems impossible to pinpoint even the key media of television except in the baldest and broadest of terms. We may be on relatively safe ground to claim that, at least since the introduction of sound, television uses moving images and a polyphonic soundtrack, but what about the fact that the material constituents of those appear to be constantly changing (e.g. analogue to digital images, the size and aspect ratio of the television screen, the move to high definition, mono to stereo to surround sound)? Moreover, television is an amorphous object; indeed, it is not straightforwardly an ‘object’ at all. The task of seeking out the media of television cannot stop at the boundaries of the television work. If ‘every work of art has, as one of its ingredients, the material in which it is embodied’28, then in the case of television, the work's embodiment includes not only the media of creation, above, but also the media of transmission or dissemination. ‘Medium’ must refer to both the materiality of the work and also the mode of ‘realising’ the work, for each work exists only in the moment of its transmission and reception by, or manifestation upon, an apparatus (a TV set, a laptop, etc). Television thus differs from most other arts in its composite realisation through media of both 14 Critical Studies in Television 9/3 creation and dissemination. Quite unlike a framed oil painting in a gallery, whose context is aesthetically arbitrary (it can be moved from gallery to gallery without compromising the integrity of the work itself - the context is not considered part of the work for ordinary interpretative or evaluative purposes), television exists only in its intended realisation upon a screen somewhere.29 Again, the comparative paucity of ready conceptual vocabulary in television studies rears its head. We lack even the equivalent distinction between ‘film’ (or ‘movie’) and ‘cinema’; ‘television’ must carry far too much weight and do too much work. Much work is needed to determine what the media of television include and how they should be defined.30 But at this juncture my questions are: how does this rather chaotic medium profile affect the integrity of our object: the art of television? And how does television's mutable, multifaceted media profile impact upon our scholarly activities? It may seem that changes in the apparatus of television, especially in terms of its dissemination/manifestation, undermine any sense of television's enduring ontology. Some might rather dramatically announce ‘the end of television’.31 It is not. Traditionally, television works were disseminated using broadcast technology. Now, other technologies are also employed. The ‘difficult cases’ which arise from our using the same term ‘television’ to refer to both content and method of transmission always existed. We could always ponder whether a film shown on television becomes ‘television’, or whether a made-for-television programme screened on a set in the Tate Modern is still ‘television’, or is now ‘gallery art’. It is no great leap to question whether television viewed on the screen of a laptop, rather than on that of a television set, is television or some other thing (a webcast, perhaps). It is not that the answers are obvious - far from it but that the questions are not so new. Television-as-art appears to be changing beyond all recognition, but what is actually happening is that it is putting aside some media (of creation and of dissemination) and taking up others. As Carroll observes of this process in art more generally, ‘some of the relevant media may not have been invented yet. Media are added to artforms as times goes by [sic]’.32 Rather than regarding television as a singular medium, we can build a more nuanced picture of it as an art of many media, taking a balanced view of its changing ontology. Our picture will be a fluid and flexible one, but it is a picture of ‘television’ nonetheless: ‘television’ simply refers, as in so many other arts, to a rich and varied art form which draws upon a wide and expanding range of media. The ‘medium profile’ of television is multifaceted and mutable. Our grasp of television-as-art is not ‘exploded’ by changes and innovations in the technological domain. It will necessarily contain consistencies and continuities. As Diarmuid Costello carefully elaborates,33 whilst no medium has an unchanging ‘essence’, it does exhibit internal coherence: innovation always arises from existing conventions and indeed from our attachment (as creators and viewers) to those conventions. Our conception of a medium is thus not arbitrary, spontaneously and irrevocably transformed by new and ephemeral Television Amongst Friends 15 incarnations, but based on a bedrock of convention. For example, television uses many media of dissemination today, but its broadcast form is historically predominant, and is still a powerful part of common pre-theoretical conceptions of television. The television set, in its varied forms, plays a similar role as familiar touchstone. We should not underestimate how much both creators and ‘consumers’ of television value specific media like these. The Value of ‘The Medium’ (to The Artist) Artists and practitioners, such as those working in ‘fine art’, speak more confidently of arts and media with a sense of distinction. They know the tools of their trade, even as they experiment with new ones, and they have perhaps a clearer sense of the boundaries of their art before what they have made becomes a work in another art entirely. Above all, throughout history artists have engaged with ideas of ‘medium’, questioning and interrogating the relation between medium and art, and seeking inspiration in the raw materials of their craft. Bernard Bosanquet, writing about the traditional craftsman, speaks eloquently of the creator being ‘coaxed’ towards creation by his medium: he ‘feels the peculiar delight and enjoys the peculiar capacity of his own medium. This delight and sense of capacity are of course not confined to the moments when he is actually manipulating his work. His fascinated imagination lives in the powers of his medium; he thinks and feels in terms of it; it is the peculiar body of which his esthetic [sic] imagination and no other is the peculiar soul’.34 Reflecting upon modernist art of the 1960s, Alex Potts notes that even as artists aimed to defy the limitations of medium-specificity, their endeavours spoke of a simultaneous fascination with notions of medium; he observes that even in postmodernism, we see a ‘modernist privileging of medium and medium specificity’; and he himself champions an emphasis on ‘materiality’ (arising from the medium) as vital counterpoint to the consumerism of postmodernist culture.35 Colin MacCabe's plea for creative television practice as an integral part of the critical and educative project of media studies interestingly realigns media education with other arts education, and turns scholars' attention back to the creative tools of the trade.36 In each case, the same belief: that medium is a source of inspiration and an integral part of artistic endeavour. Whilst Carroll condemns Gotthold Lessing's formative theories of medium specificity, set out in 1766, as a ‘zeal for distinctions’37, a more charitable reading might appreciate Lessing's desire to explore the profound and distinctive pleasures proffered by different arts in terms of the media that inspire them. These writers characterise ‘medium’ in various and mutually incompatible ways, but they touch upon an emotional truth: the medium matters. When we recognise television-as-art as an umbrella term for its many different incarnations, each employing a different medium profile, suddenly the oddly 16 Critical Studies in Television 9/3 impassioned arguments over ‘what television is today’, upon which so few agree, make sense. It is not only that it is impossible to define one singular form that is (the art of) television. It is that those media which television employs have aesthetic and emotional value for each viewer, just as the media of other arts have value for their creators. Artists and audiences, critics and scholars continue to prize works which rejoice in their artistic and cultural specificities and locus their media. Tracing and Evaluating Media in Television Works: Some Considerations How does all this impact upon our interpretative practice, particularly when considering television works in terms of their relationship with other arts? Each work crystallises its media of creation and dissemination and draws our attention to its key ‘materials’. Thus our engagement begins with those works: we focus on what is actually present, what is manifest in front of us - what television actually is, in our experience, rather than what it might be in larger conceptual or essentialist terms. We are not trying, here, to establish the unique and enduring specificity of TV or establish precisely what contemporary television's medium profile would look like.38 Instead, a keen focus on television artworks, combined with our revised conception of the media/art relationship, will enable us to trace more precisely the interrelations between television and other arts, each understood as composed, similarly, of various media. I am advocating that we examine media employed in an artwork (e.g. programme) rather than those found in the broader art form (television).39 Crucially, I am proposing that there are no specific nor exclusive ‘media’ of television.40 Television employs myriad media which are available across the arts and which frequently overlap; media are shared amongst friends. In particular, television shares with other arts countless media of creation, many of which have ancient roots and enduring vitality. Taking a broad view, television shares with radio and theatre the spoken word and polyphonic sound; with literature the written word; with photography the indexical image. These qualities are so often perceived negatively: works are criticised for being too ‘theatrical’ because too there is ‘too much talking’. Yet the spoken word does not ‘belong to’ theatre; theatre is an art which exploits that medium; the medium is equally available to television. Once we grasp media as components that are open to various arts, including that of television, it becomes easier to circumnavigate qualms about what is and is not ‘televisual’; to appraise with open minds literary, theatrical or painterly television; and to delight in tracing the echoes and overlaps between television and other arts. We become increasingly sensitive to the mutual reciprocity that marks television's artistic context, even observing in other art forms the emergence of media found more familiarly in television.41 Relatedly, media come and go, wax and wane. One programme might employ the medium of widescreen digital film and another video in aspect ratio 4:3; our task is not to evaluate the medium used in each case, but the use made Television Amongst Friends 17 of that medium. Rather than taking a teleological view of video footage as a primitive, coarse antecedent to newer digital images, for example, we perceive that each medium has its own texture, and neither is inherently better or worse. Thus a coherent conceptualisation of television art/media encourages evenhanded critique that is sensitive to the specific art-historical moment of each work, its artistic, cultural and technological context, complementing and supporting and extending existing work on television history. We reconfigure the artistic life of television. Rather than regarding television as an ever-developing singular art, always advancing via technological innovation towards its best manifestation (a position which relegates earlier works and media to the status of ‘historically interesting’ but artistically inferior), we see that technological changes open up new potential media for use in television (and other) arts, and that these new media may or may not precipitate successful new works. The media of creation are in the hands of their creators. But in the case of television we, as viewers, have some leverage to manipulate the media of dissemination/manifestation. Our power should not be overstated: under ordinary circumstances and assuming our desire to apprehend the text as it was intended, we do not affect its significant content. But we can influence things such as the duration of a text (we can watch a programme one episode at a time, once a week or gorge on an entire DVD box set over one weekend), the screen size, and image or sound quality. As television diversifies, the impact of media choices made by viewers increases. Importantly, these choices are not based merely on convenience. Just as the avid reader of literature may prefer to read one kind of book on a e-reader and another in hardback (and this writer is doubtless not alone in owning multiple copies of the same novels but in different versions - hardback, paperback, new, second-hand), the television viewer chooses from a range of possible media of dissemination. The work itself may not be altered by our decision, but our experience of the work certainly is, and viewers are far from careless about their role in ‘staging’ the television work. Medium becomes more, not less, important. As viewers, our personal preferences are adequate guides in these decisions. As scholars, though, we have a responsibility to reflect upon our viewing practices and how they may influence our interpretative and evaluative work. Can we fairly assess a programme created in 1972, which uses the creative and disseminative media available at the time, and was intended for weekly broadcast to a relatively small, 4:3 domestic television set if we watch it in one sitting from a DVD box set, on a wall-mounted, giant plasma screen? Sensitivity to historical media of dissemination may be as interpretatively important as sensitivity to changing media of creation. Conclusion: Televisual Art? This paper takes as its inspiration the editors' CFP and the idea of placing television within its ‘art context’ - amongst friends. Of course, there are still many 18 Critical Studies in Television 9/3 gaps to be filled: not least, the task of defining the limits of the term ‘medium’. However, this paper proposes a working vocabulary and conceptual framework which I hope others will further develop and refine. This article rejects the commonplace practice of referring to television as a ‘medium’ and proposes instead that television is an art of many media. Within television-as-art exist works that utilise and are embodied within the various media available to television and also to other arts. These media can be roughly divided into media of creation and media of dissemination. The media themselves constantly change and diversify, and as scholars we must remain appreciative of creative media that fall outside our most common, modern-day experience and expectations, and sensitive to works which were (or are) intended to be manifested (disseminated and watched) in specific contexts, via specific media. The delineation between the art and media of television helps us to conceptualise television whilst avoiding the pitfalls of traditional medium specificity. It accommodates television's mutable and multifaceted nature, positing a vibrant art that embraces different media at different times and in different places. Television is hugely differentiated across the world and across history. So is painting. And sculpture. The art of television is encompassing: its media can be selected, combined and recombined to transform the art each time a work is made. In this way certain forms of (the art of) TV will exist differently at different times and in different places. It is a logical consequence of our formulation. At the same time, television-as-art exhibits internal continuities, returning again and again to certain creative media (the moving image, the spoken word). Particular disseminative media also persist (live broadcasts, the persistence of some version of ‘television set’ apparatus within most homes) alongside new alternatives. Indeed, perhaps counter-intuitively, this delineation of art/media can even reopen the possibility of reasonable talk of ‘the televisual’. Previous notions of television's specificity relied heavily on particular incarnations of TV and those qualities which proved so powerful for many viewers, but which diverge from the actualities of so much of today's television: liveness, simultaneous broadcast, flow and so on. These qualities might seem dated, even redundant in a multichannel, multi-platform context, but once we conceive of live broadcast, for example, as a medium in its own right - one which has a proud history particularly within television art - it becomes reasonable to refer to that medium as ‘televisual’ in historical and conventional terms. It is associated with television more than with other arts, even though it does not define the televisual in a medium-specific sense. That is why television works still often employ conventions to suggest ‘liveness’ to us, even when is technologically ‘untrue’; these works depend upon viewers' awareness of the televisual as an art-historical concept, manifested via particular media. Thus this paper undermines the idea of ‘televisuality’ as something essentialist or ahistorical; it instead celebrates myriad Television Amongst Friends 19 possibilities of television-as-art, none of which ‘define’ TV but all of which are manifestations of the art of television and form part of its continuing history. For above all, in defining television as an art which employs many media media that are shared amongst other arts - we emphasise television's continuity with its friends. This perspective understands television as an art that stands within art history and culture. It does not narrowly prioritise the specificity of TV at the cost of recognising television's enduring reciprocal relationships with other arts. Nor does it judge the achievements of individual television works according to their use of inter-art media per se, condemning ‘theatrical’ elements or lauding ‘cinematic ones’. Instead, we can trace within television works, via shared media, the echoes and influences of other arts. And just as we can remain open to television works that are non-televisual, so we can spot a work in another art form - a film, or a book - that is televisual: the work has borrowed a medium conventionally strongly associated with television. The influence of the televisual is assured, even as a medium-specific notion of the televisual wanes, and even as we realise that television's media are not unique but part of a common artistic context. Thus it may be that, ultimately, it is in television's ongoing enthusiastic adoption of a plethora of media that it finds its vibrancy and distinctiveness as an art. Acknowledgements I acknowledge with gratitude those people who offered valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this paper, especially Jason Jacobs and Steven Peacock (editors), Derek Johnston, Andrew Klevan and Ted Nannicelli. Notes 1 Thank you to the anonymous readers whose frank feedback suggested the need for this section. 2 Including art practice, history, criticism and philosophy. I do not imply that ‘medium’ and ‘art’ are used uniformly therein, but there is greater agreement than in TV studies. 3 For an excellent introduction to analytic philosophical aesthetics, see Oswald Hanfling, Philosophical Aesthetics: an Introduction, Open University Press, 1992. 4 E. Gene Blocker and Jennifer M. Jeffers, Contextualizing Aesthetics, Wadsworth Publishing, 1999, p. 108 5 In analytic philosophy the analysis of language and concepts is not intended as a corrective, nor is it meant to influence artistic or critical practice. Nevertheless, one can hope that this investigation might aid future scholarly work in the limited ways suggested herein. 6 I undertake a similar investigation into the term ‘adaptation’, in Sarah Cardwell, Adaptation Revisited: Television and the Classic Novel, Manchester University Press, 2002, and to theatrical television in Amanda Wrigley and John Wyver (eds), Theatre Plays on Television, Manchester University Press, 2015 (forthcoming). 20 Critical Studies in Television 9/3 7 Jostein Gripsrud, ‘Television, Broadcasting, Flow’, in Christine Geraghty and David Lusted (eds), The Television Studies Book, Arnold, 1998, pp. 17–32. 8 The question of the mode of existence of a work of art, for example, has been tackled thoroughly in literary studies: see especially Roman Ingarden, The Literary Work of Art, Northwestern University Press, 1973. But in television studies the topic is generally overlooked. A notable exception is Ted Nannicelli's groundbreaking essay ‘Ontology, intentionality and television aesthetics’, Screen, 53:2, 2012, 164–79. 9 See for example Steven Peacock and Jason Jacobs, Television Aesthetics and Style, Bloomsbury, 2013; also book series such as BFI Television Classics and I. B. Tauris' Reading Contemporary Television. 10 Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel, The Popular Arts, Hutchinson Educational, 1964; Horace Newcomb, TV: The Most Popular Art, Anchor Books, 1974; Colin MacCabe, The Eloquence of the Vulgar, BFI, 1999. 11 For a useful purview, see Jacobs and Peacock's editorial ‘Introduction’, Television Aesthetics and Style. 12 For a critical overview of medium specificity, see Noёl Carroll, Theorizing the Moving Image, Cambridge University Press, 1996. 13 Ibid., p. 26. 14 David Osipovich, ‘What is a Theatrical Performance?’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 64:4, 2006, 461–70: 465. 15 Ibid. 16 John T. Caldwell, Televisuality: Style, Crisis, and Authority in American Television, Rutgers University Press, 1995, p. 4. 17 Other influential accounts, such as Raymond Williams on ‘flow’ and John Ellis's ‘glance’, which in their time captured something significant about the singularity of particular, contemporary manifestations of television, now seem similarly – and unfortunately – outré. 18 See my own celebration of the cycle of 1980s–90s ‘televisual’ adaptations which sought overtly to exploit qualities of contemporary television – liveness, immediacy, etc. (Cardwell, Adaptation Revisited). 19 Consider Jason Mittell's work on ‘complex television’ (recent US TV), http:// mcpress.media-commons.org/complextelevision/. The value and integrity of Mittell's project are not in doubt, but the term ‘complex television’ strongly implies that earlier (or ‘other’) television was merely straining to attain current heights. 20 Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form, Schocken Books, 1975. 21 Morris Weitz, Problems in Aesthetics, 2nd ed., Macmillan, 1970, p. 292. 22 For a historical overview, see Noёl Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures, Wiley-Blackwell, 2007, pp. 210–21. 23 Carroll offers the most sustained critique, focusing upon problems of definition and ambiguity about what a medium is. See Theorizing the Moving Image, Cambridge University Press, 1996. 24 Ibid., p. 51. 25 Dominic McIver Lopes, Beyond Art, Oxford University Press, 2014. 26 For example, how do we distinguish medium and materials? Are tools, such as the paintbrush, media too? Still, the broad distinction between medium and art remains a valuable starting point. Television Amongst Friends 21 27 See for example Jason Jacobs, The Intimate Screen: Early British Television Drama, Clarendon Press, 2000. 28 Weitz, Problems in Aesthetics, p. 292. 29 I recognise that my choice of counterpoint is simplistic for argument's sake, and that much modern gallery art is contingent upon its space of presentation. 30 See note 26. 31 Unsurprisingly, the end of television has been heralded mostly online (and the popular press); see http://henryjenkins.org/2013/05/is-this-the-end-of-television-aswe-know-it.html http://www.theendoftelevision.com/. Also, see Toby Miller's rebuttals http://cstonline.tv/tv-is-dead and http://cstonline.tv/tv-is-dead-2. 32 Carroll, Theorizing the Moving Image, p. 53. 33 Diarmuid Costello, ‘On the Very Idea of a “Specific” Medium: Michael Fried and Stanley Cavell on Painting and Photography as Arts’, Critical Inquiry, 34:2, 2008, 274–312. 34 Bernard Bosanquet, ‘The Importance of the Medium’, in Weitz, Problems in Aesthetics, pp. 300–6: 302. (Italics in original) 35 Alex Potts, ‘Tactility: The Interrogation of Medium in Art of the 1960s’, Art History, 27:2, 2004, 282–304. 36 MacCabe, Eloquence of the Vulgar. 37 Carroll, Theorizing the Moving Image, p. 26. The 1874 English translation of Lessing's Laocoön (1776) is available online: https://archive.org/stream/ laocoongott00lessuoft#page/n9/mode/2up. Accessed 25 November 2013. 38 Though not couched in these terms, I would suggest that Karen Lury's Interpreting Television, Bloomsbury, 2005, offers one thoughtful starting point. 39 This distinction follows aesthetician Robert Stecker, ‘Is It Reasonable to Attempt to Define Art’, in Noёl Carroll (ed.), Theories of Art Today, University of Wisconsin Press, 2000, pp. 45–64: 61. 40 Some media, especially of dissemination, may seem specific to television, but there is no logical reason that a new art may not come along which uses one or more of these media, but which is not television. 41 For example, RSC Live, which broadcasts theatrical performances live to cinemas. Sarah Cardwell is Honorary Fellow in the School of Arts, University of Kent. She is the author of Adaptation Revisited (MUP, 2002) and Andrew Davies (MUP, 2005), as well as numerous articles and papers on film and television aesthetics, literary and theatrical adaptation, contemporary British literature and British cinema and television. She is a founding co-editor of ‘The Television Series’ (MUP) and Book Reviews editor for CST.