Low Television, High Fidelity: Taste and the Gendering of Home Entertainment Technologies

Abstract

Abstract This paper examines the relationship between high-fidelity equipment and television during their simultaneous introduction into US homes in the immediate post-war years. Through an analysis of popular discourse, cartoons, and motion pictures, it is argued that the development of a negative view of television as "feminine" and "low" was tied, in part, to the emergence of high fidelity sound technology as a masculine bastion of high culture. The peculiar interaction of discourses of gender, taste, and technology in this process is highlighted.