‘A balance of terror’: Callan (ITV, 1967–72) as an existential thriller for television

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Oldham
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Continuous Performance ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Shared Culture ◽  
John Le Carre ◽  
Narrative Techniques

This chapter examines Callan (ITV, 1967-72), an early television reworking of the ‘existential’ strand of spy thriller associated with John Le Carré and Len Deighton. It characterises the series as converging of two areas in which ITV had previously played an innovative role, specifically plays which placed a new focus on the realities of working-class life and glamorous, escapist adventure series, using the former to partially subvert the latter and develop a much more pessimistic incarnation of the spy genre. Through close analysis, it examines how Callan was able to utilise its predominately studio-based style to create a psychologically intense drama rooted in continuous performance. Finally, it describes the circumstances in which the series became an unexpected break-out hit in 1969, attributing this to its innovative use of serial narrative techniques. Though this it illustrates the power of the shared culture of broadcasting in a period of limited channels.

Outlaws and Spies

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Conor McCarthy
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Don Delillo ◽  
History Plays ◽  
Popular Resistance ◽  
Robin Hood ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
John Le Carre ◽  
Ciaran Carson ◽  
Contemporary Writing ◽  
The Middle Ages

Outlawry and espionage would seem to be quite different phenomena, rarely discussed together. This book argues that they have something in common - that both involve exclusion from law. Challenging previous readings that view outlawry as a now-superseded historical phenomenon, and outlaws as figures of popular resistance, this book argues that legal exclusion is a longstanding and enduring means of supporting state power. Through close analysis of the literatures of outlawry and espionage, this book reads legal exclusion as a key theme in writing about outlaws and spies from the Middle Ages to the present day, arguing that literature plays an important role in representing and critiquing exclusion from law. The discussion draws on the work of Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Eric Hobsbawm, and engages with a range of primary legal texts from the Middle Ages to the present day. Literary works discussed range from the medieval Robin Hood ballads, Shakespeare’s history plays, and versions of the Ned Kelly story, to contemporary writing by John le Carré, Don DeLillo, Ciaran Carson and William Gibson.

Learning to be a lord, a friend, ‘a human’: Lord Snooty as a comic strip representation of John Macmurray’s philosophies of social and emotional learning

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dona Pursall
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social And Emotional Learning ◽  
Emotional Learning ◽  
First Year ◽  
Comic Strip ◽  
Social And Emotional ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
The Many ◽  
Educational Thinking

Friendship was a central motif of ‘Lord Snooty and His Pals’, a comic strip created by Dudley Dexter Watkins for the launch of DC Thomson’s new children’s weekly, Beano, in July 1938. The Lord and his working-class friends were motivated by their relationship to overcome boundaries in order to play and learn together. This close analysis of strips from the first year of the comic explores the ways in which friendship is depicted, illuminating the extent to which social learning is pivotal to the child reader’s pleasure. This examination is framed within educational thinking from the time. It specifically draws from Scottish philosopher John Macmurray’s notion of ‘valuational knowledge’, which contends that interrelational social compassion, developed through friendships, promotes our capacity for wisdom and rationalization. As one of the many humanist progressives of education at the time, he argued that it is through our companionships that we learn what we need to know in order to live socially. Through appreciation of the ways in which learning and compassion are portrayed in these comics, this article wishes to align these strips with both educational concerns from the 1930s, such as Macmurray’s, and further to draw attention to the relevance of this discussion in the light of renewed interest raised, for example, by Richard Gerver’s Education: A Manifesto for Change (2019) and as enacted by policies such as Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence (2010). Through a study of comics for children, this article compares pedagogic ideas from the 1930s with contemporary discourse related to childhood, learning and compassion.

scholarly journals Pronouns and identity: A case study from a 1930s working-class community

ICAME Journal ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-134
Author(s):  
Ivor Timmis
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Anthropological Study ◽  
Shared Culture ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Class Community

Abstract This article investigates the relationship between certain pronoun uses and identity in a 1930s working class community. It is based on a corpus of informal conversations drawn from the Mass-Observation archive, a sociological and anthropological study of the Bolton (UK) working class at this time. The article argues that certain pronoun uses in the corpus can only be explained as homophoric reference, a kind of reference which depends on implicit agreement about the intended referent of the pronoun. The article then discusses the basis on which this implicit agreement could operate: shared culture and knowledge and a tight network of social relations. In the conclusion, two particular questions are raised: 1) How far can the homophoric reference described be related to social class? 2) When does (dialect) grammar become pragmatics?

Learning to be a lord, a friend, ‘a human’: Lord Snooty as a comic strip representation of John Macmurray’s philosophies of social and emotional learning

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-166
Author(s):  
Dona Pursall
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social And Emotional Learning ◽  
Emotional Learning ◽  
First Year ◽  
Comic Strip ◽  
Social And Emotional ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
The Many ◽  
Educational Thinking

Friendship was a central motif of ‘Lord Snooty and His Pals’, a comic strip created by Dudley Dexter Watkins for the launch of DC Thomson’s new children’s weekly, Beano, in July 1938. The Lord and his working-class friends were motivated by their relationship to overcome boundaries in order to play and learn together. This close analysis of strips from the first year of the comic explores the ways in which friendship is depicted, illuminating the extent to which social learning is pivotal to the child reader’s pleasure. This examination is framed within educational thinking from the time. It specifically draws from Scottish philosopher John Macmurray’s notion of ‘valuational knowledge’, which contends that interrelational social compassion, developed through friendships, promotes our capacity for wisdom and rationalization. As one of the many humanist progressives of education at the time, he argued that it is through our companionships that we learn what we need to know in order to live socially. Through appreciation of the ways in which learning and compassion are portrayed in these comics, this article wishes to align these strips with both educational concerns from the 1930s, such as Macmurray’s, and further to draw attention to the relevance of this discussion in the light of renewed interest raised, for example, by Richard Gerver’s Education: A Manifesto for Change (2019) and as enacted by policies such as Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence (2010). Through a study of comics for children, this article compares pedagogic ideas from the 1930s with contemporary discourse related to childhood, learning and compassion.

Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) bei Kindern mit hyperkinetischem Syndrom - eine experimentelle Untersuchung mittels des Continuous Performance Test (CPT)

2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 239-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Hennighausen ◽  
G. Schulte-Körne ◽  
A. Warnke ◽  
H. Remschmidt
Keyword(s):  
Contingent Negative Variation ◽  
Performance Test ◽  
Continuous Performance Test ◽  
Continuous Performance ◽  
Experimentelle Untersuchung

Zusammenfassung Fragestellung: Gibt es neurophysiologische Korrelate der Aufmerksamkeitsstörung beim hyperkinetischen Syndrom (HKS) und welche Bedeutung haben diese für die Ätiologie der Störung. Methodik: Selektive Aufmerksamkeitsprozesse wurden anhand des zweistufigen Continuous Performance Test (CPT) bei 18 Jungen mit hyperkinetischem Syndrom (HKS) untersucht und mit einer nach dem Alter parallelisierten Kontrollgruppe von 21 Jungen verglichen. Die Altersspanne der Stichprobe betrug 6 bis 12 Jahre. Parallel dazu wurden ereigniskorrelierte Potentiale (EKP) während des Tests an den Elektrodenpositionen Fz, Cz, Pz und Oz mit Referenz zu verbundenen Ohren abgeleitet. Ergebnisse: Im EKP nach dem präparatorischen Stimulus konnten zwei Komponenten der Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) mit unterschiedlicher topographischer Verteilung identifiziert werden (CNV-1: 600 bis 1100 ms und CNV-2: 1000 bis 1500 ms nach Stimulus). Die Stichproben unterschieden sich nicht auf der Verhaltensebene (Fehlerrate und Reaktionszeit). Signifikante Gruppenunterschiede ergaben sich hinsichtlich der Topographie der beiden CNV-Komponenten. Kinder mit HKS zeigten im Vergleich zu Kontrollkindern eine signifikant niedrigere CNV-1 über der frontalen und eine Tendenz zu stärkerer Negativierung (CNV-1 und CNV-2) über der occipitalen Elektrode. Schlussfolgerungen: Die Ergebnisse unterstützen die Hypothese einer Unterfunktion frontaler inhibitorischer Prozesse bei Kindern mit HKS.

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