Polarization in television and film

Then tendency to feminize television and masculinize film as outlined in Lynne Joyrich's article is an interesting trend considering how indistinct tv and film really are. The femininity of television is defined mostly through consumerism by those who categorize it as feminine, but television is truly no more a consumer product than film. The key difference is that film is merely an advertisement for itself and those that were involved in the film. The consumer nature of film is somewhat hidden from the viewer. A film acts as an ad for the director, that actors in the film, the writer, etc. It is an advertisement for any future films that the people involved in the particular film you are seeing create in the future. Thus consumerism is intrinsically tied to the act of viewing a film. The other key difference is that the film industry's sense of consumerism is self contained. Films only advertise for other films, through previews and the film itself, and products related to the film industry (namely concessions and other products related to the theater). The advertising in television is merely more overt.

Another distinction that contributes to the categorization of television as feminine is the nature of the gaze in television. Ellis claims that T.V. involves a glance, a gaze without power. Quite frankly, I think this distinction is total bulls--t. Anyone who watches television and film can see that television is usually just a voyeuristic as film. It employs many of the same devices that film does and the possible distinctions between the two with regards to this subject grow less and less apparent with the passing of time. Film can be equally as base as a poorly written sitcom. Look to cookie cutter "college comedies" and the like for plenty of examples. Television does not as often achieve the same high artistic prestige as film, but there are certainly a select few shows that have done this, take David Lynch's "Twin Peaks" for example, a show that was generally very highly regarded in terms of artistic merit. 

I am not trying to suppose that film and television are essentially the same, or that they are indistinct. They are two very different mediums, but the differences are much too subtle to polarize them in the way that most past analysis has done. Neither film nor television is distinctly male or female and it is ridiculous to categorize either as such. In fact, the use of male and female as polar opposites is somewhat strange to begin with, but this is an entirely different issue. Television and film are simply to similar to define using polarizing terms, especially in our postmodern world.