Gorer's Gaze: aspects of the inauguration of audience studies in British Television. GARP1

This article is intended for anthropologists, but not solely for them. The main focus is on television in Britain in the 1950s - something which, at the time, we might have though anthropology had very little to say about. In this regard we would be wrong, as I shall attempt to demonstrate. Specialists of various persuasions were attempting to come to terms with this new domestic technology, indeed, general interest was such that intellectuals who engaged in popular debate were asked to contribute their own views and thoughts on the matter. This paper will look at such an intervention and examine one of the first sustained efforts to study the effects of television in the British context. This study was commissioned by the Sunday Times who invited the anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer to write a series of lengthy articles on the relationship between the English people and television. ... These articles, originally published in 1958, provide a fascinating insight into the concerns and preoccupations of a country faced with the fact of television becoming for the first time a 'mass' phenomenon. They also give us an insight into the mind of Gorer himself.