Evaluating Television: Affect as a Critical Optic

Abstract:This article examines the tensions between different schools of thought regarding the evaluation of television. Using scholarship on television and affect, I argue that all discussions of the medium involve evaluation, and that those evaluations are always conducted on both aesthetic and ideological terms, at the same time. In doing so, I unpack the challenges that attend evaluation, emphasizing that the variability of viewer experiences with programs complicates some common assumptions about the medium, particularly the aesthetic value of lowbrow texts and the ideological problems associated with the medium's representations of minorities.