Television as ideological apparatus: The power and the pleasure

Many ideological approaches to television criticism assume the power of the medium in securing hegemonic social definitions. This essay attempts to explicate the pleasure which, presumably, motivates acquiescence to this power. It argues that the detachment from television content (which typically characterizes the viewing situation) and the medium's adaptation of the narrative mode of classical realism established in cinema, pose problems not yet being addressed in the developing tradition of ideological criticism.