VL & camp rerun nostalgia

[Terrance]

in p's first novel, v.,  we have a window jumper in the opening scene,
in the second novel we have the green eye of the tube in the opening
scene, and in vl (gonna  skip the GR connection for now because McHale
does such a good job of demonstrating how the openings of gr and vl
over-lap and i'm sure we'll get to it soon or later...) we have a window
jumper who jumps and then goes home and watches himself jumping on the
Tube. 

And Z wanted to give up window jumping. 

AND Paraire says, if the VCR was't broken,  sheedah taped the whole
thing and problee watched it over and over and over and over. she says
here boy friend has studied Z's window jumping. Z like some sorta
energizer bunny ... 

As McHale points out,  so many of the tv programs alluded to in VL are
reruns. 

Most television series are produced with the hope that they will become
successful enough to go into syndication. That's where the big profits
are. 

Because production costs are recovered from the initial
sale to broadcast networks (or at least after the first wave of
syndication), any subsequent syndication sales represent profit as pure
as ivory soap. How pure is that? 

Off-network reruns can be made available at a very low cost, and, since
there is a large audience for this inexpensive programming fare,
syndication is a major source of programming 
for affiliate stations, independent
stations, and cable program services. 

Once in syndication, however, a
program's original scheduling context (as theorized by Williams and
Browne) becomes irrelevant. Reruns can be framed by virtually any kind
of program schedule and by a wide variety of commercials. 

Homer: MMMMMMM commercials. 
Bart: Who cares about the Stuper Bowl anyways. 
Lisa: Yeah, it's so cold war. 
Marg: How about Giligan's Island
[Homer, reaches into the crack in his butt and pulls out the TV channel
changer]



New scheduling contexts necessarily will articulate 
program meanings in new ways;
syndication often depends on a new relationship 
between program and audience—often 
involving nostalgia value or camp. 


If we have seen the programs before, we probably are not watching to
find out what happens to familiar characters, as we would be with
first-run programs.


Rather, we are watching familiar characters do familiar and predictable
things. 

Why? 

And why do audiences mimic the speech and so on of rerun characters? 
What is it about hackneyed phrases and overused conventions that become
so apparent after a program has been viewed multiple times? 

As Andrew Ross explains, a camp effect  is created not
simply by a change in the mode of production, but rather when the
products of a much earlier mode of production, which has lost its power
to dominate cultural meanings, becomes available, in the present, for
redefinition according to  contemporary codes of taste 

Thus we find it entertaining to camp the outdated behaviors, costumes,
and production styles of earlier times. For channel surfers, camp or
nostalgia signifiers such as one-liners or "classic" scenes can be as
entertaining as entire programs. 




http://archive.salon.com/ent/tv/diary/2002/08/01/rerun_show/

http://www.sfca.unimelb.edu.au/refractory/journalissues/vol1/djoymibaker.htm

http://uwp.edu/~mullen/vidbites.htm