Television has transformed from its earliest days in which it was confined as a medium to low picture quality and a small screen. However, like other forms of media, technological advances have transformed television into a medium that transcends the traditional domestic limiters initially in place into a wide reaching media entity. This shift was, in part, due to the technology of screens- small, portable, and high-definition screens that allow you to take your television with you wherever you go. The uses of portable screens extend beyond just television viewing and are now utilized for many other uses. Screens allow the viewers a privileged look at the world, reaching far beyond what is in your immediate field of vision. In this way, screens (and by extension television) break down the wall between public and private spaces more today than ever before. As Patricia Phillips was quoted in the article “Domesticity at War”: “just as the public space has become diminished as a civic site, the home has become in many senses, a more public forum. The public world comes into each home as it never has before through television, radio and personal computer'" (Colomina 9).
For Homeland, a television show in which the plot centers on the War on Terrorism in post 9/11 America, the notion of screens breaking down the barrier between what is private and what is public takes on another layer of significance. For example, in the first few episodes of Homeland season 1, Carrie Mathison’s domestic space was taken over by the surveillance equipment she used to observe Stg. Brody in order to prove her theory that he is involved in an upcoming terrorist plot. Additionally, while Carrie has her reasons for beginning her surveillance of Brody and his family, she is essentially invading their domestic space by her spying on and watching Brody and his family. As Beatriz Colomina writes in her article, “not only were these computers ‘concerned’ exclusively with domestic issues (displacing onto themselves traditional forms of domestic relations in areas as crucial as housework, decoration, companionship) but moreover, domestic space itself was deeply disturbed” (5). Therefore, we can see how the act of looking (either through a screen as with Carrie or a window as with Brody watching his wife, Jessica, and her former lover) is framed as a disturbance of the safety of the domestic space. We can also recognize this as an intrusion of privacy through Carrie’s reaction to the intimate moments between Brody and Jessica. Although Carrie’s initial reaction was to look away from the screen, the voyeuristic need to watch pulls her back in. This relation to the screen also means we can simultaneously view and be viewed. As Margret Morse wrote in “An Ontology of Everyday Distraction” television screens create a “dualism of outside/inside within these separate realms” which “means that a connection with ‘outside’ drifts between a ‘real’ outside and an idealized representation” (202). After watching Brody for more than a month, the lines between subject and observer have begun to blur for Carrie as by episode 4, Carrie has come to know Brody so well she can predict what he is going to do before he does it. This further breaks down the separation of private lives and the public image Brody is creating for the world.
Additionally, to look at this on another level, Brody’s message to his terrorist cell also directly invaded the domestic spaces of countless television viewers as he broadcast the message through the TV screens whenever he appeared on camera. By using mass media as a way to contact his terrorist cell, Brody was imbedding an extra layer of information directly into the TV screens. As Morse said, “discursive segments also constitute a plane of passage between the shows, items, and stories embedded within the plane” meaning that within the televisual plane, there can be many layers of meaning. Although as in the case with Brody, the meanings only become visible to those who know when and where to look (205). In this instance, as well as with Carrie’s surveillance, one type of gaze is privileged over another through the technology, viz. the screens, which allow for one to engage in this type of looking.