Television as Video Art - Lauren

The title of the article seems to indicate that the entire history of video art revolves around the debate over how to categorize video between art and television or something in between.  Some people like “John Hanhardt argues that video art in the United States has been formed by…its opposition to commercial television”.  What this means is that the development of video art was due to the fight against some sort of television.         

  

Going off of this, I want to discuss television in more depth because I consider the videography behind certain television shows a work of art.  The article constitutes video as an art form if it is avant-garde, meaning it is new and innovative – something that has not been done before.  There are a few TV shows that stick out in my mind that could possibly be considered avant-garde, and therefore the videography could be considered at art.  Game of Thrones for example exhibits beautiful shots panning over scenery, the camera angles are always perfect to represent a person of power or a subordinate, some fight scenes use extreme close-ups on sword fighting or footwork, I could continue but I won’t.  On the other end of the spectrum is reality TV; today much of reality TV is formulaic, but The Real World, considered the first reality television show when it first aired in 1992, created a whole new way to interpret television which is what video art should do: it should make viewers think.  The Real World showcased real life people – not actors – for the rest of the world to see and view as complete idiots or cute or funny and naïve, but the point is that this was new because it was a camera crew following a “normal” human around their everyday life.