CRISIS AS COMMUNICATION -BY COURTNEY HANLON
      
         The notion of crisis in television is a continuum of knowledge mediated through the “liveness” of broadcasting.  There is a constant current of information presented to viewers (some of which may be urgent or negligible) that has become a definitive from of television; its basis is both temporal and continuous as it shapes viewers understanding of the world and of television (Doane 225).  What makes the television so special, however, is its ability to blur the lines between the transience of an event and the steady flow of information that distinguishes the medium. The audience’s continual witness to crisis situations—both real and imaginary—evoke an interrogation of what is “real” in the televisual realm and how this urgent delivery of information offers an effective approach to the transmission of knowledge through the television.

          Crisis as a means of knowledge has become a staple of television’s informational networking because it “deals not with the weight of the dead past but with the potential trauma and explosiveness of the present” (Doane 222).  Using short, anxiety-provoking clips from different realms of television programming, I will attempt to show how the natural form of television demonstrates the notion of crisis.  Three seemingly unrelated clips from shows with entirely different structures, applications, and informational motives will show how the use of the crisis mode shapes the viewing experience.

Clip 1: BANKING CRISIS 

          Local and national news broadcasts present one of the most common instances of the crisis mode in television.  Whether reporting about a natural disaster or a shortage of chocolate milk at the local elementary school, news channels repeatedly engage their audience in a crisis-type narrative. 

 

          The clip at hand, albeit a substantial financial crisis that merits the appearance of calamity, illustrates a fine example of a televisual presentation framed by the crisis mode.  The clip is administered not by a customary news anchor, but rather only an audible narrative entity that delivers information while supplemental text and visual elements fill the screen.  The dialogue of this indistinguishable being is instantly visualized by pictures and texts blurbs about the nation’s financial situation—the clip literally points out to audience members that financial troubles in Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac will cause “potential problems” for the nation’s marketplace.  Similar to the points that Emmanuel Levinas makes about the notion of the infinite, the direct congruence between what the incorporeal reporter says and what appears on the screen demonstrates the supreme knowledge of television and its ability to instantly convey that knowledge to its audience.  In this sense, the acquisition of knowledge and the experience of the television becomes a “correlative to that of the finite,” a perpetual presence that brings about the question of its own meaning (Levinas 67).

 

          Furthermore, there is a previously aired clip within the news report of the treasury secretary speaking about the crisis that is itself set within the frame of a television screen. This screen-within-a-screen visual reminds the audience that they are indeed watching the television in order to get their information, and that television programs are the normative source of catastrophic information.  The image is both self-referential and infinite—the report is “channeling in” to its former self in order to reshape the crisis within the present tense. An additional insert of television's infinitely connective acuity is the scroll bar at the bottom of the frame, augmenting viewers' relational co-existence with not only this crisis but many others across the televisual scope as well.  Overall, the image reflects the infinity of television that is entirely connective while remaining altogether self-contained; the crisis mode directs the “absolute though that determines itself of itself” known as televisual knowledge (Levinas 56).

 

CLIP 2: BANANA CRISIS

         The next example of the crisis mode comes from the unlikely case of Arrested Development.  Season 1, episode 2—“Top Banana”—begins by cutting from the regular commercials of the network directly into a fake news broadcast about how the Bluth family’s famous frozen banana stand has mysteriously burned to the ground.  The fake news report is given by real-life KTTV FOX-11 news castor John Beard; his involvement in the show was most likely an attempt to fool audience members into thinking they are watching a live news development.  The multiplicity of texts that is shown in this clip brings to mind Mimi White’s notion of “cross-referentiality” and the mechanisms of continuity in television.  Arrested Development (originally shown on FOX) incorporates another show from its own network to assert a diegetic connection between shows that would otherwise exist as separate constructs (one fictional and one non-fictional). Through this inter-program referentiality, the television alludes to itself and “is able to keep itself responsive to its own supertext” (White 61). This cross-reference between the FOX news broadcast and Arrested Development helps to make the show’s crisis both more real and more humorous by impacting the nature of the text and the viewer’s relation to the world of television.

 

         In the second short clip, I have skipped to the main character Michael Bluth as he tells his father that he burned down the banana stand. The crisis arises when Michael realizes that he has destroyed what he has spent the whole episode looking for (money for the family)—the audience does not recognize the situation until the very end of the show when Michael’s father reveals the horrible news to us.  Although the flashback style and instant revealing of key information in the episode makes for a comical crisis, the effects of narrativisation in “Top Banana” designate the crisis form and conspicuously mediate viewers’ understanding of knowledge.

CLIP 3: INJURY CRISIS

         A sort of “in-between” clip of personal crisis, this real-life football injury clip creates an intense relation and direction of knowledge between the audience and the television.  I chose an ESPN clip of a follow-up information session they had regarding Eric’s recovery to illustrate the live witness that is nonetheless realized by such a report.  Although the injury had taken place days before this particular piece aired, the program’s transmission is live and the program itself appears to be live. 

          The direct address of Rutgers Director of Athletics Tim Pernetti produces the sensation that the audience is hearing and seeing things as they happen.  Even though the program is pre-recorded and addresses a past incident, the program is “able to claim the status of liveness simply because the act of transmission attaches [the program] to a particular moment” (Ellis, 31).

          This “co-presence,” as Ellis terms it, within the television image continually keeps viewers in the current moment while constantly updating the past.  I would argue that this means of the progression of knowledge is less of a smooth development and more of a series of small paradigmatic shifts—every new bit of information entirely reshapes viewers’ sense of all previous knowledge.  This constant modification of the viewers’ connective knowledge to the television beckons them to keep watching, to “stay tuned” to a shared continuity of experience with the crisis.

 

           The knowledge of television is cyclical and connective—the medium is constantly condensing its history into an all-encompassing present text.  Television’s instantaneous and temporal nature presents an exciting paradox for the means of communicating crisis: the continuous flow of television thrives on its own forgetability, yet when a crisis is presented time seems to stand still. The crisis mode is definitive of television, and at the same time the exception of the norm (Doane 223).  Information as it is laid out for audiences during crisis-type programming connects audience members to a broader, more “live” form of knowledge by continually redefining the truths of their world and the world of television.