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....

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.

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.

The Truth is in the Eyes: Susanne Bier’s Use of Close-ups in The Night Manager

2018 ◽  
pp. 187-204
Author(s):  
Eva Novrup Redvall
Keyword(s):  
Television Drama ◽  
Serial Television

“The Truth Is in the Eyes: Susanne Bier’s Use of Close-ups in The Night Manager” sheds light on aesthetic strategies apparent across Bier’s works. Eva Novrup Redvall points to Bier’s decision to frame and interject eyes as a means of aligning the audience with the visual sensibility of a spy. In her analysis of Bier’s recent and extremely successful foray into serial television drama, Novrup Redvall takes extensive note of Bier’s use of close-ups. Applying theoretical discourses on the close-up and studies of Bier’s stylistic traits in her previous work, she reflects on the “remarkable array” of eyes, as well as Bier’s use of close-ups of objects. She concludes that Bier achieves a high-end mainstream genre production replete with arthouse aesthetics, which forefronts character interiority while highlighting the “complicated tensions” between characters and their circumstances.

Gendered Representations of Fandom

2018 ◽  
pp. 1654-1670
Author(s):  
Ödül A. Gürsimsek
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Web 2.0 ◽  
Online Discussion ◽  
The Other ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Television Drama ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Legitimate Interests ◽  
Mixed Gender ◽  
Online Web

Lost is a transgeneric, transmedia television drama that aired from 2004 to 2010, a period which coincided with the emergence of several participatory online Web 2.0 platforms including blogs, forums, YouTube, and Twitter. Thus, Lost audiences used various platforms to form communities and discuss the show. This chapter analyzes the discursive practices of audiences that compose the transgeneric audience discourse of Lost, and the tensions that arise when romance fans and science fiction/mystery fans are situated in conflicted positions regarding certain storylines. The analysis provides a critical discursive perspective that demonstrates that gender dynamics plays a role in interpreting the material related to fiction and the points of view of the other fan groups. The audience discourse that is shaped and negotiated by men and women who deliberate the so-called gendered interests in online mixed-gender platforms offer insights into how female audiences use online discussion platforms to empower themselves by constructing their identities as equal audience groups with legitimate interests.

No Father-and-Son Reunion: Chinese Sci-Fi in The Wandering Earth and Nova

2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-44
Author(s):  
Chris Berry
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
First Century ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Chinese Films ◽  
Father And Son

Chinese films in “the Chinese century” are more expansively confident than ever. A new vogue for science fiction, a genre that has taken off in China alongside the country's stratospheric growth, suggests that China is ready to take up the baton of galactic discovery adventure. Chris Berry examines the father-son narratives in The Wandering Earth (Frant Gwo, 2019) and Nova (Cao Fei, 2019), two recent films that link Chinese patriarchy to the triumph and trials of modern science and progress. The Wandering Earth reaffirms those dominant models in action adventure mode, while Nova's melancholic wanderings are ambivalent and even mournful. Nova reveals a more complex and varied Chinese imagination regarding the challenges presented by the twenty-first century than a mainstream production like The Wandering Earth.

scholarly journals Mediations on Emergent Occasions: Mad Men, Donald Draper and Frank O’Hara

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Lilley
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Authority ◽  
Television Drama ◽  
Frank O'hara ◽  
Mad Men ◽  
Serial Television ◽  
Poetry Collection

Frank O’Hara’s 1957 poetry collection, Meditations in an Emergency, features in Season Two of Mad Men (2008) as a talismanic phrase and object. Pressed into service as Matthew Weiner’s valentine to his returning viewers, the circulation and citation of the book across the season, through different diegetic and extradiegetic levels, aligns poetry, advertising and quality serial television drama as textual modes intent, above all, on creating attachment through feeling. O’Hara’s book is a crucial link in a series of metonymic relays, chain effects and affects, which underwrite Mad Men’s citational poetics to assert its own cultural authority, and the mediating power of television.

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