scholarly journals ‘You Know the Business and I Know the Chemistry’: The Scientific Ethos of Breaking Bad

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-89
Author(s):  
Ben Wetherbee ◽  
Stephanie Weaver
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Social Effects ◽  
Theoretical Discussion ◽  
Television Drama ◽  
Breaking Bad ◽  
American Television ◽  
Textual Construction ◽  
Images Of Science ◽  
Scientific Ethos ◽  
Serial Television

We conduct an analysis of the American television drama Breaking Bad as a show that resists the label of 'science fiction', while its use of scientific imagery and discourse create what we call a 'scientific ethos'. This essay explores the use of science as an appeal to intelligence and credibility in Breaking Bad. We include a theoretical discussion of how ethos emerges in serial television narratives, an analysis of the show's textual construction of its ethos, and a discussion of the intertexual and social effects of that ethos. Finally, we recommend the adoption of a rhetorical perspective in analysing how images of science circulate in fictional texts.

The ancient world as serial television drama

TV antiquity ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Sylvie Magerstädt
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Television Drama ◽  
Intrinsic Connection ◽  
Television Screen ◽  
Serial Television ◽  
Father And Son ◽  
Small Screen

When Samsung introduced its new curved television screen in 2014, I was struck not by the technology but by its official television advert. Rather than using science fiction or another ultra-modern environment to showcase this innovative new gadget, the advertisement featured a father and son in their pyjamas in the middle of a gladiatorial arena. All the tropes of screen antiquity were represented in the 30-second clip: the crowds, the arena, the evil emperor and of course the gladiators with their swords and sandals that defined the genre. What this advert encapsulated for me was not only that the audience’s interest in antiquity was alive and well, but also that there was an intrinsic connection between fictional antiquity and the (no longer so) small screen....

The Forgotten Bond : The CBS production of Casino Royale (1954)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Television Drama ◽  
James Bond ◽  
American Television ◽  
Television Network ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Bond Character

In 1954, the US television network CBS broadcast a live studio dramatization of Casino Royale as an instalment of its drama anthology series Climax! Casino Royale was long thought to be “lost” and is still regarded as something of a curio item in the history of James Bond adaptations for the screen. This chapter offers a critical reassessment of the 1954 CBS production of Casino Royale by placing it in the institutional and aesthetic contexts of American television drama in the 1950s. In doing so, it argues that the Americanization of James Bond (played by American actor Barry Nelson) may be seen as part of a strategy of the cultural repositioning of the James Bond character for American consumption.

A ‘New Wave’ in British Television Drama

2005 ◽  
Vol 115 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lez Cooke
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Television Drama ◽  
American Television ◽  
The World ◽  
British Cinema ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Queer As Folk ◽  
The 1960S

In recent years, American television drama series have been celebrated as ‘quality television’ at the expense of their British counterparts, yet in the 1970s and 1980s British television was frequently proclaimed to be ‘the best television in the world’. This article will consider this critical turnaround and argue that, contrary to critical opinion, the last few years have seen the emergence of a ‘new wave’ in British television drama, comparable in its thematic and stylistic importance to the new wave that emerged in British cinema and television in the early 1960s. While the 1960s new wave was distinctive for its championing of a new working-class realism, the recent ‘new wave’ is more heterogeneous, encompassing drama series such as This Life, Cold Feet, The Cops, Queer as Folk, Clocking Off and Shameless. While the subject-matter of these dramas is varied, collectively they share an ambition to ‘reinvent’ British television drama for a new audience and a new cultural moment.

scholarly journals The Accented American: The New Voices of British Stardom on US Television

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Holliday
Keyword(s):  
Television Drama ◽  
Cultural Discourses ◽  
American Television ◽  
Foreign Accents ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Small Screen

This article investigates the cycle of British performers in contemporary American television drama and what is at stake in their adoption of a US accent. British actors have been increasingly heralded for their ability to adopt credible foreign accents, marking a negotiation of ‘Britishness’ and assumed vocal ‘foreignness’. By examining several pilot episodes of contemporary US dramas, this article poses the hybrid voice of the ‘accented American’ as a privileged and self-reflexive form of sonic spectacle. This is a voice narratively ‘othered’ to reinforce the screen presence of the British actor-as-American, soliciting spectators’ attention to their extra-textual identities as non-natives, while paradoxically consecrating ‘Britishness’ through the individual actor's assured command of American language. The article concludes by scrutinising the post-9/11 captive narrative of successful US drama Homeland (Showtime, 2011–). Through its themes of dubious patriotic allegiance, Homeland inscribes the cultural discourses surrounding Damian Lewis's starring role and falsified Americanness. The series also operates as a valuable commentary upon the wider proliferation of British talent across American television, revealing the ways in which such small-screen dramas are helping to regenerate prior conceptions of British stardom.

Journalism and the hybrid condition: Long-form television drama at the intersections of news and narrative

Journalism ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Baym
Keyword(s):  
Public Affairs ◽  
Television Drama ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Broadcast Journalism ◽  
American Television ◽  
Long Form ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
Political Realities

Particularly in the context of American television, hybridity has become the defining feature of contemporary broadcast journalism. Hybridity itself manifests on multiple levels – the textual, systemic, and discursive. Together, these three levels of hybridization challenge traditional conceptions of journalism while at the same time enabling the emergence of new forms of journalistic truth-telling. This essay explores three examples of ‘public affairs narratives’, long-form fictional dramas that sit, in different configurations, at the intersections of news and narrative. It concludes that in an age of complexifying distinctions between the factual and the fictive, hybrid public affairs narratives have the potential to play a valuable journalistic function, orienting audiences to critical, but often under-explored, socio-political realities.

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