ABSTRACT
At the end of the last chapter, I began to address the issue of specta tor identification with MTV rock stars as encouraged by the sta tion’s management in order to involve teenagers even more with the channel, and thus increase consumption. But the issue of identifica tion raises all the larger ones about the way any individual (i.e. his torical subject) receives a popular text; this involves the codes that govern such a spectator, and affect response, making him /her recep tive to appeals like that of the “ look-alike” contests (to be discussed later on). The related issue of the kind of spectator positions that MTV videos construct or, perhaps better, offer , will be dealt with in a later chapter. But both issues involve attention to the specifically televisual (as against filmic) apparatus, since both the historical and hypothetical or model spectator (the latter “ constructed” through textual strategies) are differently positioned in television from in film.
