INTERACTING WITH "DALLAS"

INTERACTING WITH "DALLAS": CROSS CULTURAL READINGS OF AMERICAN TV

INTERACTING WITH "DALLAS": CROSS CULTURAL

READINGS OF AMERICAN TV

Introduction

Elihu Katz is Trustee Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Communication at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Scientific Director of the Guttman Institute of Applied Social Research. Tamar Liebes is Professor of Communication at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Director of the Smart Communications Institute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Together, these scholars have conducted research into cultural differences in the interpretation of American television drama - most notably the US prime-time melodramatic soap opera, Dallas, which was broadcast in many countries. These notes offer an outline of some of their key findings.

Discussion

Katz and Liebes assembled 'focus groups', each of 3 married couples (in each an initial couple invited two others from amongst their friends). Each group viewed an episode of Dallas in the hosts' living-room and then took part in a 'guided discussion' (for about one hour) with the researchers, moving from relatively open to less open questions. The discussions were in the group's native languages. A researcher initiated the discussion by asking the viewers to retell the episode which they had just watched together (Katz & Liebes 1985: 190; Katz & Liebes 1986: 152 and in Boyd-Barrett & Newbold 1995: 531; Katz & Liebes 1988: 278). Finally individuals completed a brief questionnaire concerning whether and with whom they normally watched and discussed the programme. The participants were from similar age-groups and educational backgrounds - all were lower middle-class with high school education or less (though Liebes notes that more of the Russians and the Arabs tended to have had some higher education - 1998: 290). They were all regular viewers of the programme, which in Israel was subtitled in both Hebrew and Arabic. In their main studies there were ten groups each of:

Israeli Arabs;

recent Jewish immigrants to Israel from Russia;

first- and second-generation Jewish immigrants from Morocco (sometimes referred to as 'veteran Moroccan Jews');

Israeli kibbutz members, mostly second-generation; and

matched second-generation Americans in Los Angeles. (Katz & Liebes 1985: 188; Katz & Liebes 1986 152 & in Boyd-Barrett & Newbold 1995: 531; Katz & Liebes 1988: 278). Another study (Liebes & Katz 1989) also included Japanese groups (the programme had lasted only a few months in Japan).

American television's ability to cross linguistic and cultural frontiers has long been taken for granted — so much so that scarcely any systematic research has been done to explain how and why American programming is successful in widely varying cultural milieus.

Does this represent cultural imperialism, as media critics often assert? Perhaps. But, surely, if viewers are unduly influenced by what they are viewing, they must be receiving a perceptibly "American" message. And they must be receiving it in similar ways in various cultures.

This seems to imply a fairly passive, receptive stance on the part of viewers who may simply be receiving programs as part of the television technology package — with equipment, maintenance and programs ...