Understanding "Liveness"

In the two and three chapters of “Liveness”, the author develops some of the ideas he mentioned in the first chapter.

Some of the major concepts among them are as follows.

Our cultural formation is dominated by mass media in general and Tele Vision in particular. The author argues that it is the TV that predominate all other medias in the modern age. The studies about media and theatre are based on the assumption that this Theatre and Mass media are rivals and not partners. Among these two, it is believed that, the Live events are real and the Mediatized events are secondary and somehow artificial.

                                                    The author  explains the relationship between the live events and mediatized representstions in the process of remediation. Here the interesting thing is that the TV had remediated the Theatre and the Theatre had remediated the TV also. So it is not a one way process. The theatre is remediated because after the coming of TV and Sound systems, the theatrical performances include recorded songs and even Video Clips. This is a commonly seen fact even in our state where we do not have a drama culture like the Western countries have. However this book focuses its attention on the American theatre. In Kerala (and in India also), we do not have a theatre based drama system. Here we have professional drama troupes who present their dramas on special occasions. Now most of them use all these technologies which television uses. Tele Vision gets remediated when they broadcast dramas. It was the case in America. We know what happens in Kerala. We have so many stage shows in our Tele Vision channels. This adds liveness and the Tele Vision gets remediated also. We broadcast many stage shows also which is a favourite programme for people.

                                                       This study is done as if a Thematological study. The author is analyzing the motif of ‘increased incursion of mediatization into live events’. The author puts forward some new arguments and assumptions. He says that the opposition between live performances and mediatized representations are not intrinsic but extrinsic. The author also challenges the traditional assumption that the live proceeds the the mediatized. He also considers TV as the dominant cultural medium of the second half of the twentieth century and not the film.

                                                    Early film modeled itself directly on theatrical practice. Even the narrative techniques and devices like close up, fade-in, fade-out, etc. are taken from drama. Thus the film which is rooted in theatre took up the place of  drama itself. So after when this TV came there was nothing left to conquer the place of theatre. However the author argues that TV was rooted in Theatre and not in Film. The essence of TV lies in its ability to transmit events as they happen and not  in filmic capacity for later viewing. The author furthers this argument by saying how camera works  to provide the direct effect that the Drma has. The author describes in detail how the camera work and editing in television dramas creates an effect  which is similar to dramas and whish are the points where the televised dramas seem not like dramas. When these televised dramas came people began to think that they can watch dramas without losing anything. Nothing is lost and everything is gained – that was the condition.

                                                                                    However it is interesting to see that how one form of expression remediates the other forms of expression in art and literature. In this book the author tries to destruct so many popular beliefs about the remediation of movie, drama and TV. And he does it with a lot of familiar examples like that of the rock music. These examples are theoratized then. All in all, it is a nice work.