‘Verses: The Creation and Destruction of Television’s Imaginary Worlds

‘Verses: The Creation and Destruction of Television’s Imaginary Worlds

63rd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards, September 18, 2011

Watch on YouTube

http://youtu.be/G7C50iY04M8

http://youtu.be/G7C50iY04M8


Television’s Apartment Building, 63rd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards, September 18, 2011


Jesse Pinkman (Breaking Bad) Delivers to Creed Bratton (The Office)Television’s Apartment Building, 63rd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards, September 18, 2011


Television’s Apartment Building, 63rd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards, September 18, 2011

Film Studies

The Un-dead AuteurChair: Peter Krämer J. W. Briggs: Unaired Pilot or Bad Quarto:

Textual Problems in Buffy and Shakespeare in an Internet Age

J. Gray: Resurrecting The Author: Joss Whedon’s Place In Buffy’s Textual Universe

D. Lavery: A Religion in Narrative: Joss Whedon and Television Creativity

2002

Film Studies

2006

Film Studies

2007

Film Studies

2009

Film Studies

2010

Film Studies

Freaks and GeeksThe Simpsons

2010

Film Studies

2011

Film Studies

2013

Film Studies

2006. Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality. New York: Routledge.

2007. Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated Era. New York: New York University Press.

2008. Television Entertainment. New York: Routledge.

2009. Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era. New York: New York University Press.

2010. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. New York: New York University Press.

2011. Television Studies. London: Polity. 2013. A Companion to Media Authorship.

Boston: Blackwell.

University of California, Berkeley

Fordham University University of Wisconsin

Film Studies

Professor Gray now holds a position at the University of Wisconsin which once belonged to John Fiske.

Film Studies

Film Studies

Film Studies

Art explains; entertainment exploits. Art is freedom from the conditions of memory; entertainment is conditional on a present that is conditioned by the past. Entertainment gives us what we want. Art gives us what we don't know we want.—Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema

Film StudiesTelevision Studies Terminology

activated text: A television program which generates buzz.adaptation: Transforming a story conceived for another medium (a novel, a play, movie) so that it may be retold in a television series or movie. allusion: A conscious, meaningful reference to another work of art or indeed to anything outside the television text.ancillary text: Both secondary (criticism, publicity) and tertiary (discussion and commentary occurring at the fan level) texts.beat: In a television episode, an emotional or dramatic mini-climax punctuating the larger story.boutique television: A new, 1990s concept of television programming in the cable era in which programs are developed for small niche audiences with ideal demographics.


break: The process of plotting out a single episode of a television series, positioning beats, act breaks, etc.buzz: Cultural talk, at the water cooler and elsewhere, about a television series or other pop culture phenomenon.cliffhanger: A dramatic, episode-ending or season-ending, event intended to bring viewers back next week/next year and to inspire media buzz between episodes/seasons. The most famous cliffhanger in TV history was, of course, the "Who Shot JR?" ending on Dallas (1981).commodity intertext: Both official and unofficial fiction and non-fiction produced to satisfy the often cultic needs of television fans to know more—much more—and imagine more about their favorite programs.


continuous serial: "The storylines of most 'continuous serials' . . . [are] deliberately left hanging at the end of each episode; nearly all plots initiated in a continuous serial were designed to be infinitely continued and extended. . . . the individual episodes of a continuous serial have much more of a linear feel, leading regular viewers to believe they 'could not miss an episode.' . . . in a continuous serial, narrative change is all" (Dolan).couch potato: "A person who spends much time sitting or lying down, usually watching television" (Dictionary.com).credit sequence: That segment of a movie or television episode's beginning in which the credits appear, either as titles overlaying the action or separately, outside the diegesis.


crossover: When the characters ordinarily appearing on a television series put in an appearance, crossing over to, another television series.


Detective John Munch (Richard Belzer)

1. Homicide: Life on the Streets—122 episodes2. Law & Order—4 episodes3. The X-Files—1 episode4. The Beat—1 episode6. Law & Order: Trial by Jury—1 episode7. Arrested Development—1 episode8. The Wire—1 episode9. 30 Rock—1 episode10. Jimmy Kimmel Live!11. Sesame Street—A Muppet representation of Detective Munch appeared in the Sesame Street sketch "Law & Order: Special Letters Unit”


cult tv: Television which attracts and sustains a usually small but rabid audience, the members of which begin to use the show in cultish fashion. According to Reeves: "By the 1990s, there were generally two types of cult television shows. The first type, in the tradition of Star Trek, is comprised of prime-time network programs that failed to generate large ratings numbers, but succeeded in attracting substantial numbers of avid fans. Twin Peaks is the most outstanding recent example of this category. Shows of the second type first appear on


cable or in fringe timeslots and are narrowly targeted at a niche audience. Comedy Central's Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) and MTV's Beavis and Butthead (B&B) exemplify this category of cult programming that was never intended to appeal to mass audience."cumulative narrative: "Like the traditional series and unlike the traditional 'open-ended' serial, each installment of a cumulative narrative has a distinct beginning, middle, and end. However, unlike the traditional series and like the traditional serial, one episode's events can greatly affect later episodes. As Newcomb puts it, 'Each week's program is distinct, yet each is grafted onto the body of the series, its characters' pasts'" (Reeves).


episodic serial: "[A] hybrid narrative form, combining the dramatically satisfying finitude of the episodic series with the linear narrative development of the continuous serial," presenting "narratives that were limited in length but multi-episodic in form . . ." (Dolan). Tulloch and Alvarez identify a closely related narrative form which they deem the episodic serial. Episodic serials exhibit continuity between episodes but only for a limited and specified number (ix). The subject of their study, Doctor Who, serves as an example, as does another famous British series, The Prisoner. Horace Newcomb uses a different designation for essentially the same narrative manifestation: "cumulative narrative.”


episodic series: In an "episodic series" (e.g., I Love Lucy or Star Trek), an individual storyline almost never stretched beyond the limits of a single episode. To a certain extent, routine viewers of an episodic series watched in the secure knowledge that, whenever something drastic happened to a regular character like Lucy Ricardo or James T. Kirk in the middle of an episode, it would be reversed by the end of the episode and the characters would end up in the same general narrative situation that they began in. . . . The individual episodes of an episodic series tends to have a circular feel to them, always returning back to their given comedic or dramatic 'situation' . . . . in an episodic series, narrative change is minimized . . ." (Dolan). Each episode tells an independent, discrete, stand-alone story that adds little or nothing to the cumulative memory of the show over seasons/years.


fan fiction: Stories written by viewers (and often posted on the web) which make use of a television’s show’s characters in new, sometimes improbable situations. See also slash fan fiction. fan-scholar. Matt Hills' term (Fan Cultures) for a fan whose interest/enthusiasm for the work he/she obsessively follow exhibits the kind of academic rigor ordinarily expected of an academic scholar. See also scholar-fan.flashforward: Jumping ahead to events which will happen in the diegesis' future tense.flashback Jumping backward in time to an event that transpired before the story's current diegesis.grazing: See surfing.


homage. A spoof, "send-up" of another work of art, usually done in admiration of the original rather than for purposes of ridicule.interpretive community: The idea, pioneered by Stanley Fish, that "[s]imilar readings are produced . . . because similarly located readers learn a similar set of reading strategies and interpretive codes which they bring to bear upon the texts they encounter" [Radway].intertextual: The tendency—typical of postmodernism—of texts not merely to allude to other texts but to depend upon the similarities, differences, and contrasts between texts in order to establish their own signification. "Intertextuality should not be, but frequently is, used to refer to the intentional allusion (overt or covert) to, citation or quotation of previous texts in literary texts" [The Literary Encyclopedia].


jumping the shark: The "defining moment" when a television program "has reached its peak" and begins to go downhill. Named after a moment in Happy Days when its most memorable character (The Fonz) takes part in a shark jumping contest. See the Jump the Shark website: http://www.jumptheshark.com.

http://www.jumptheshark.com/


megagenre: A large, all encompassing, umbrella genre, having little or no distinct subject matter or style or iconography or formulae. The megagenres of television, for example, might be thought of as drama, comedy, animation, reality television.


miniseries: A miniseries is a narrative drama designed to be broadcast in a limited number of episodes. If the distinction is maintained between "series" (describing a group of self-contained episodes) and "serial" (a group of interconnected episodes), the term "miniseries" is an acknowledged misnomer, for the majority of broadcast material presented in the genre is in fact produced in serial form. There are, of course, exceptions. Boys from the Blackstuff (1982), for example, consisted of five narratively independent, but interlocking, episodes which culminate in a final resolution. The miniseries may also be seen as an extended telefilm divided into episodes" (Encyclopedia of Television). See episodic serial.


mobisode: "[A] term first coined by Daniel Tibbets then trademarked by his employer, Fox Broadcasting Company, for a broadcast television episode specially made for viewing on a mobile telephone screen and usually of short duration (from one to three minutes)" (Wikipedia). A new factor in multi-platform storytelling.narrative redundancy: The tendency, common to serial narratives like soap operas, to repeat/review previous kernel events in the story.


Netflix adultery: Watching ahead of a partner (thus being unfaithful) an item—typically an episode of a television series—in a Netflix streaming cue.netlet: Any of the newer, smaller networks (UPN, the WB, now the CW) which do not yet offer a full schedule of daily programs.niche audience: A carefully targeted demographic with narrow interests likely to be attracted to a particular kind of programming and easily targeted by advertisers.nighttime soap: Melodramas like Dallas (1978-1991) and Dynasty (1981-1989) which attempted to translate the previously daytime-only genre of the soap opera into primetime.non-synchronous sound: Sound that does not have a visible source in the film's diegesis.


pay-off: A satisfying return at a later point in the story, offering some sort of closure, to a narrative crux/conundrum introduced earlier. pilot: "[A] sample episode of a television show, [which] acts as a model for new programming which may be chosen by networks for the following fall's schedule" (Encyclopedia of Television).podcast: "[A] series of digital-media files . . . distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and computers" (Wikipedia). Many television shows inspire their own official (Ron Moore's podcast commentaries for each episode of Battlestar Galactica for example) or unofficial/fan-produced podcasts.


previously on: A recollective montage, ordinarily preceding the teaser and the credit sequence, of moments from already aired episodes of a television series relevant to the episode to follow, intended to get viewers caught up on the narrative so far.prime-time: The major, evening television viewing hours, ordinarily 8-11 p.m., ET or 7-10 p.m., CT.producer's medium: Characterization of television in the 1970s and 80s, a period in which powerful producers like Steven Bochco were seen as the individuals primarily responsible for the creation of television.


producerly: John Fiske's designation (Television Culture) for a text which "does not produce a singular reading subject but one that is involved in the process of representation rather than a victim of it," treating its "readers" "as members of a semiotic democracy, already equipped with the discursive competencies to make meanings and motivated by pleasure to want to participate in the process" (95-96).quality television: A new concept in 1970s programming, often credited to Grant Tinker and MTM Enterprises, that held that intelligent, well written, sophisticated programs, not LOP, would be most likely to retain viewers.


RCD: A remote control device, any gadget used to control a television set (or other electronic device) at a distance.reality television/reality programming: any program which makes use of real people as performers in (usually) contrived situations or scenarios.remote control device: See RCD.scholar-fan. Matt Hills' term (Fan Cultures) for an academic whose interest/enthusiasm for the shows he/she investigates exhibit certain fannish behaviors. See also fan-scholar.season: A single "year" of a television show or series, ordinarily stretching, in the US, from September to May. In the UK and elsewhere abroad, known as "series."


sequential series: Once the continuous serial broke free from its daytime prison, migrating to prime-time first in the form of night-time soaps like Dallas, the sequential series was born: television schedules were quickly populated by shows “that, had they been made a decade earlier, would almost certainly have been constructed in almost purely episodic terms,” series which “could very often not be shown in an order other than their original one, since events in one episode clearly led to events in another” (Dolan).


serial: "[A]ny narrative with an open-ended story" (Dolan). Existing contemporaneously with the episodic series, ghettoized, however, in the very different mediacosmos of daytime television, continuous serials told stories that “were by contrast, deliberately left hanging at the end of each episode; nearly all plots initiated in a continuous serial were designed to be infinitely continued and extended” (33). Linear, as opposed to the episodic series’ inherent circularity, the continuous serial makes narrative change its raison d’etre.sitcom: A television-specific form of comedy in which the main characters (often members of an ensemble cast) become involved in a "situation" or situations from which they will be extricated by the end of the episode.


slash fan fiction: Fan fiction which links together, usually in sexual situations, pairs of characters who are not so involved in the diegesis. In slash fan fiction, Mulder and Skinner might become lovers, or Spock and Kirk.spec script: A script, customarily for a different show, submitted as part of an application to become a member of the writing staff for a television show.spin-off: "The spin-off is a television programming strategy that constructs new programs around characters appearing in programs already being broadcast. In some cases the new venue is created for a familiar, regular character in the existing series (e. g. Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. from The Andy Griffith Show). In others, the existing series merely serves as an introduction to and promotion for, a completely new program (Mork & Mindy, from Happy Days)" (Encyclopedia of Television)


Bellisario v. CBS


spoiler: Information, avidly sought by some fans, available in advance of airing, about narrative developments in an ongoing story.spoiler whore: A fan who actively seeks out and/or propagates spoilers.spreadable: Media dispersed widely on a variety of formal and informal platforms.sticky: Old-model media aggregating in centralized locations (like networks).super-narrator: The voice, usually, speaking for the network and outside any particular program, whose voice-over gives us directions about "staying tuned."


surfing: Using an RCD to move back and forth across the cable spectrum looking for something of interest. Sometimes called grazing. syndication: "[T]he practice of selling rights to the presentation of television programs, especially to more than one customer such as a television station, a cable channel, or a programming service such as a national broadcasting system" (Encyclopedia of Television).


tabloid television: Any exploitative program, usually in the form of a talk show, dealing with sensational subject matter.target audience: The demographic group a network/channel and its marketers presume will show up for a certain series or show. tease/teaser: The opening segment of a television episode, customarily coming after the previously on and before the credit sequence, offering an introduction to/setup for the story to follow. telephilia: A love for television. television culture: Culture (high and low) created and sustained by television’s circulatory system.


TV I—["A] short-hand term for the broadcasting system that emerged in the 1950s, triumphed in the 1960s, and was slowly displaced in the 1970s, the term "TV I" refers to what has also been studied as "network era television." A period dominated by a three corporation oligopoly, TV I played a central ideological role in promoting the ethic of consumption, naturalizing the nuclear family ideal, selling suburbanization, sustaining Cold War paranoia, publicizing the Civil Rights Movement, and managing social upheaval." [Reeves, Rodgers, Epstein]


TV II— The post-network period in which increased competition encouraged "networks to develop programming forms that inspire devoted, rather than casual, engagement." Driven by a "grand logic of flexible accumulation," its "complicated product / producer relationship" is the result of a "combination satellite and cable distribution system, augmented by remote controls, personal computers, and video cassette recorders" [Reeves, Rodgers, Epstein].


TV III—The current media situation: the networks in steep decline; television viewing in real time plummeting—especially among the young; DVRs and DVDs, binge-viewing, and streaming (on Hulu, Amazon, Netflix) increasingly popular; new, multi-platform programming generated by not-only broadcast networks and basic cable and premium (subscription) channels but by the likes of Amazon and Netflix.


voice-over: When the voice of one of the characters speaks over the narrative on the sound-track, helping to tell the story. Dexter, for example, uses frequent voice-over, as does Desperate Housewives.webisode: "[A]n episode of a television show that airs initially as an Internet download or stream as opposed to first airing on broadcast or cable television" (Wikipedia). A new factor in multi-platform storytelling.WGA: "The Writer's Guild Of America (WGA) founded in 1912 is the official trade union and collective bargaining unit for writers in the film and television industries and actively monitors working conditions for writers" (Encyclopedia of Television).


writerly: Roland Barthes’ designation for a traditional "text" with conventional, seemingly fixed meanings.writers room: The inner sanctum where the writing staff of a television series collaboratively creates episodes, arcs, and seasons.zap: To skip past segments (usually commercials) of a recorded television program.zip: To move rapidly through a recorded television program.

Film Studies

David LaveryEpigraphs: Notes Toward a Theory*

It may be true, as the critic Wayne C. Booth has observed, that epigraphs and titles assume a particular importance in modernist writing, where ". . . . they are often the only explicit commentary the reader is given. . . ." All the same, they are hokey; one more bit of window-dressing before we get to the goods.

John Barth, "Epigraphs," The Friday Book (quoted from J. B.: "Epigraphs," in The Friday Book)

_______________* This essay originally appeared in Kentucky Philological Review. Bulletin of the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Kentucky Philological Association, March 7 and 8, 1986, Western Kentucky University: 12-18. You can find it on the “Collected Works” DVD.

Film StudiesRoger Silverstone

Pierre Bourdieu (see next slide)

http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/WhosWho/RogerSilverstone/RS_Obit.aspx

Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002). French sociologist and philosopher.

Major Figures

Popular Culture Studies

Film Studies

Jeffrey SconceTodd Gitlin

http://www.communication.northwestern.edu/faculty/?PID=jeffreysconce

http://toddgitlin.net/

http://toddgitlin.net/

Film Studies

Amanda LotzCornell Sandvoss

Kathy Myers

Film Studies

Thomas ElsaesserWill Brooker

http://home.hum.uva.nl/oz/elsaesser/

http://home.hum.uva.nl/oz/elsaesser/

http://fass.kingston.ac.uk/faculty/staff/cv.php?staffnum=354

http://fass.kingston.ac.uk/faculty/staff/cv.php?staffnum=354

Film Studies

Film Studies

Nick CouldryJohn Fiske

http://culturedigitally.org/nick-couldry/

http://culturedigitally.org/nick-couldry/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Fiske_(media_scholar)

‘Verses: The Creation and Destruction of Television’s Imaginary Worlds

Documents

Transcript of ‘Verses: The Creation and Destruction of Television’s Imaginary Worlds