1. Stanley Aronowitz, False Promises (McGraw-Hill, 1973).
2. Donald Lazere, "Mass Culture, Political Consciousness, and English Studies," College English (April 1977), 751-67; Douglas Kellner, "Television Images, Codes, and Messages," Television, 7 (1980), 2-19.
3. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford University Press, 1977), 110.
4. Todd Gitlin, "Prime Time Ideology: The Hegemonic Process in Television Entertainment," Social Problems (February 1979), 251-66.
5. In its first season - from September 1978 to April 1979 - the series received the third highest audience ratings among regular network prime-time television programs. During that period the show was seen by approximately 45% of the Thursday night viewing audience. In the Fall of 1979 (in its second season), however, the share of the audience watching M & M had dropped nearly 20%, and the series finished the second season 26th in the ratings rankings.
6. The producer of the series, Garry Marshall, states that he initially proposed the title Mork Chronicles. That title was intended to convey an emphasis on an enlightened alien reporting and commenting on our way of life. Marshall reports that a network executive rejected that title on the grounds that the viewing public would not know the meaning of "chronicles". Instead the network executive asked for a "polar bear" title - a title simple enough to remember so that people can name pets or animals in the zoo after it. This is a revealing instance of the way in which mimesis becomes a predominant modality of television viewing. The network executive rejected a title that called for minimal reasoning based on conceptualization in favor of a title format designed to maximize recall. The network executive thus engaged in a hegemony-producing practice: heeding the imperatives of profit and audience maximization, he moved to sacrifice conceptualization in the interest of the efficiency of repetition and recall.
7. Quoted in Playboy (March 1979), 209.
8. For the purposes of this essay, however, the central question is not "What is the impact of these programs? but rather a prior one, What do these programs mean? For only after thinking through their possible meanings as cultural objects and as signs of cultural interactions among producers and audiences may we begin intelligibly to ask about their 'effects."' Gitlin, "Prime Time," 251.
10. Henri Lefebvre, Everyday Life in the Modern World (Harper, 1971), 24.
11. Gitlin, "Prime Time," 251.
13. See Theodor W. Adorno, "Television & the Patterns of Mass Culture," in Bernard Rosenberg and David M. White, eds., Mass Culture (Free Press, 1957); Douglas Kellner, "TV, Ideology, and Emancipatory Popular Culture," Socialist Review (May-June 1979), 13-53.
14. Mork himself is frequently presented as the alternative form insofar as he embodies the ideal of the utopian bourgeois hero, the ideal of the autonomous ego. It must be kept in mind, however, that this utopian version of the autonomous individual is introduced in the shape of an "alien". Hence the alternative to the oppressiveness of society is introduced from without, rather than as an internal development of self-contradiction. The character of Mork is not emergent from the fabric of societal contradictions. As a consequence, the premise of the alien permits the introduction of critique qua reflexivity, but at the same time places limits on how far that critique can be extended. b
16. Aaron Cicourel, Cognitive Sociology (Penguin, 1973).
17. This discussion should be set within the larger framework of the contradictions of the culture industry. Aronowitz (following Gramsci) notes that the class that controls the institutions of the mass media cannot themselves "create" culture, but must depend on the purchase of the labor of creativity on the part of artists, et al. Thus, paradoxically, the reproduction of ideological hegemony depends on the exercise of artistic creativity as wage labor. There exists an uneasy balance, however, between the "ideological need for stability, equilibrium, and integration" and the "latent need for creativity and innovation." Thus "even though the work of artists or filmmakers may remain strongly tied to the norms of the dominant consensus and of the system of class domination, it may also to some extent contain a critique of reality" (Aronowitz, 119). I offer the instance of Robin Williams in the role of Mork and Garry Marshall as producer of M & M as an exemplar of this set of contradictions.
18. Cicourel, 89; Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers: L The Problem of Social Reality (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967), 13.
19. These few examples are drawn from a larger inventory of interpretive procedures that may be examined via an analysis of the series. Scattered throughout the episodes are violations of general principles of interpretive procedures; violations of the timing of speech and silences; turn-taking violations; violations of rules concerning the opening and closing of conversations (e.g., Mork ends a conversation with "Your mama"); violations of categorization procedures; violations of the assumption of reciprocally shared experiences; violations of the assumption of a "common and standardized system of implicit signals and coding rules."
20. For an extension of this discussion, in a different historical context, see Francis Hearn, "Legitimation and Suppression of Imagination," in Domination, Legitimation and Resistance: The Incorporation of the Nineteenth-Century English Working Class (Greenwood, 1978).
22. Norbert Elias, The Civilization Process (Urizen Books, 1978).
23. Kellner, "TV"; Hans Magnus Enzensberger, The Consciousness Industry (Seabury Press, 1974).
24. Todd Gitlin, "Spotlights and Shadows: Television and the Culture of Politics," College English (April 1977), 790; Adorno, 479.
25. For example, Mork observes in a report to Ork that banks are places where money can make more money. But, he adds, only the rich are allowed to use them for this purpose. He also points out that banks will sometimes loan money to buy cars or boats, but never for food because it is so difficult to repossess food. Another episode probes the limits of democracy via Mork's confusion concerning the practice of democracy. Confronted with a sociopolitical concept that is unfamiliar Mork requests a definition from the resident anthropologist. But Mork takes the definition of democracy and extends the logic of democratic practice to the making of decisions about the mundane features of daily affairs. Needless to say, his efforts "to play the democracy game" are blunted by others who indicate that dally life is not a terrain in which democratic practices are applicable. And when he invites a friend to stay at Mindy's house (the vote is two to one, Mork and his friend against Mindy), Mindy's response is that "I pay the rent and he can't stay." Murk replies, "Oh, I see. The one with the money controls the vote, huh?"
26. Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization vintage, 1956), 130.
27. Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man Vintage, 1978).
28. Another illustration of the penetration of the commodity form and cash-nexus into dally life may be drawn out of Mork's parody of television hucksterism with a product he calls Zen-O-Matic. This "exciting new kitchen tool does absolutely nothing. That's right, it can't peel, it can't dice, it can't make julienne fries -whatever those are. Zen-O-Matic does diddly for you!"
29. Praxis is defined here in an idealist, individuated fashion as "will-power" and hence divorced from all structuring determinations (which had been alluded to only moments before in the context of the critique). It is a praxis defined in terms of seriality and separation rather than in terms of association. (See John Brenkman, "Mass Media: From Collective Experience to the Culture of Privatization," Social Text (1979, 94-109.) The endorsement of "will-power" as the solution to the excesses of commodity culture is precisely the position advanced by the networks (through the National Association of Broadcasters) in their battle with the Federal Trade Commission over proposals made by the FTC that would impose limits on the advertising techniques employed to sell sugar, toys, etc., to children under the age of six. It might be fruitful to reflect for a moment on some of the alternatives that were not set forth as solutions to the excesses of consumerism. Instead of proposing the ideology of will-power the show might have suggested: 1) the abolition of ads directed at young children, or perhaps limits on the frequency of repetition; 2) an endorsement of the consumer movement; 3) that viewers engage in collective, critical discussion of advertising and its relationship to their needs; or 4) that advertising be banned from broadcast media in favor of state financing of broadcasting.
30. Gitlin, "Prime Time," 261.
31. Todd Gitlin, "Sixteen Notes on Television and the Movement," Triquarterly (Winter-Spring 1972), 356.
32. Marilyn Beck, "Anti-Nuke Stance Puts 'Mork & Mindy' in Power Struggle," Louisville Courier-Journal, 24 October 1979, D3.
33. Gitlin, "Prime Time," 255.
34. Gitlin, "Sixteen Notes," 356.
35. Umberto Eco, "Can Television Teach?," Screen Education (Summer 1979), 24.
36. Gitlin, "Prime Time," 253.
38. Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh. The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows: 1946-Present (Ballantine Books, 1981), 507.
40. Gary Deeb, "New Lineup Won't Help ABC Bungles," Lexington Herald, 5 May 1981, D4. Again mechanistic reversals predominate in the construction of the show's format. Not only will the couple have a baby, but Mork will be the one who becomes pregnant (with egg), the baby will be born as an adult, and will age backwards. These reversals resemble mirror-reflections in that the form of roles and the constellations of relations remain unchanged and unchallenged. The substitution of reversals for oppositions makes for a superficial type of critique: one that focuses on appearances and does not penetrate to more fundamental relations. In this case the reversals may permit a thin spoof on the Moral Majority's fixation with matters having to do with sexuality, reproduction, and mothering; but they also end by naturalizing and affirming contemporary cultural patterns concerning those activities.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Dwight Billings for many patient hours of conversation on Thursday nights following M & M. Thanks also to Todd Gitlin, Doug Kellner, and David Dickens for critical comments on earlier drafts.
Theory and Society 11(1982)363-388
Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam - Printed in the Netherlands