Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks is an American television series that first aired on the ABC network in the United States on 8 April 1990. Despite its critical acclaim the show was cancelled at the end of its second season in 1991 and remained off-air until its third series, titled Twin Peaks: The Return, was aired on the premium television network Showtime in 2017. The show was created by renowned filmmakers David Lynch and Mark Frost, whose television successes included police drama Hill Street Blues, and it was widely promoted as the series that would “change television.” The program, set in the fictional northwestern US town of Twin Peaks, was focused on the central mystery surrounding the murder of local schoolgirl Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) and the efforts of FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) in solving the case. The show featured a cast of inhabitants of the town and was renowned for quirky characters, dream sequences, and surrealism, which were seen as hallmarks of David Lynch’s cinematic work. The question of “who killed Laura Palmer?” constituted the key narrative enigma for the first season of the show. When this mystery was resolved at the midpoint of the second series, audience interest waned, and the show’s declining viewing figures led to its cancellation. The program’s original run ended on a cliffhanger where lead character Dale Cooper became possessed by the evil spirit BOB (who was responsible for Palmer’s death while possessing her father Leyland Palmer [Ray Wise]). In 1992, David Lynch directed the prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, which involved a return to Twin Peaks to depict the events leading up to Laura Palmer’s murder. The film was initially viewed as a disappointment, especially for those who wanted resolution to the show’s cliffhanger ending. Fire Walk with Me has since been reappraised and is now widely viewed as a groundbreaking piece of filmmaking. In 2016, David Lynch and Mark Frost began teasing a Twin Peaks–related announcement on their social media, with The Return of the series on Showtime announced soon after. While some setbacks were encountered when Lynch temporarily departed due to conflicts over budget and artistic vision, Twin Peaks: The Return aired in 2017 and was widely hailed as a return to form for the series. Throughout its history, Twin Peaks has attracted a loyal fanbase and critical attention on issues, including authorship, aesthetics, narrative, and genre.

What’s Whitney Got to Do with It: Black Female Triumph and Tragedy in the 2015 Lifetime Biopic Whitney

In 2015, the cable television network Lifetime broadcast the biopic Whitney, depicting the troubled life of the late superstar singer Whitney Houston. Whitney is the first film by director Angela Bassett, who, as actress, famously portraited Tina Turner in the biopic What’s Love Got to Do with It (Brian Gibson, 1993). In this article, I will first position Whitney within a larger tradition of the Hollywood biopic by making a comparison to earlier important biopics about black female entertainers, namely Lady Sings the Blues (Sidney J. Furie, 1972), starring Diana Ross as Billie Holiday, and What’s Love Got to Do with It. Second, I will discuss how the narratives of these three biopics tend to reduce their female subjects to victims, emphasizing the tragedy in their personal lives, while assigning much more agency to the male partners of these black female entertainers. Third and finally, I will analyze the final scenes of these three biopics in detail, as each presents a grand finale musical performance that seems to resolve the contradictions of the triumph and tragedy in their subject’s lives, yet in significantly different ways.

O show matemática do milhão: divulgando e promovendo conhecimento

RESUMO Esse artigo trata da apresentação de um jogo intitulado “Show Matemática do Milhão”, um jogo de perguntas que segue o formato do jogo televisivo “Show do Milhão” apresentado pela emissora de televisão SBT. O intuito do jogo foi despertar o interesse dos alunos por conteúdos matemáticos, visto que o jogo trata de diversos conteúdos de diversos níveis. O aluno acertando sente-se motivado a continuar os estudos e errado sente-se motivado a buscar o conhecimento para que o erro não se repita. Além de despertar o interesse dos alunos, o jogo também é interessante para professores que podem substituir uma avaliação formal de perguntar e respostas por essa avaliação mais dinâmica e divertida. ABSTRACT This paper is about the presentation of a game called "Show Math do Milhão", a quiz game that follows the format of the TV game "Show do Milhão", presented by SBT television network. The purpose of the game was to awaken the students' interest for mathematical contents, since the game deals with several contents at different levels. When the student gets it right, he/she feels motivated to continue studying, and when he/she gets it wrong, he/she feels motivated to seek knowledge so that the mistake will not be repeated. Besides arousing the students' interest, the game is also interesting for teachers, who can replace a formal evaluation of questions and answers by this more dynamic and fun evaluation.

Legitimation in documentary: modes of representation and legitimating strategies in The Lockdown: One Month in Wuhan

This article synthesizes modes of representation in documentary films with strategies of legitimation. It develops a framework of documentary legitimation, where each of the six modes recognized by Bill Nichols in Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (1991) and Introduction to Documentary (2017) – expository, participatory, observational, performative, reflexive and poetic modes – tends to highlight certain legitimating strategies. For instance, the expository mode mainly legitimates through voice-of-God commentary, expert speeches and expository intertitles, the participatory mode legitimates through witness testimony and the observational mode legitimates through audience observation, and so on. The proposed framework is applied to a case study of a documentary entitled The Lockdown: One Month in Wuhan produced by China Global Television Network (CGTN). Analysis demonstrates how legitimation of the Wuhan lockdown during the early outbreak of COVID-19 is realized by adopting different representation modes and legitimating strategies. The article illustrates how an interdisciplinary approach may lead to a more comprehensive understanding of legitimation and its realization.

Optimizing Broadcast Spectrum through the Planning of Digital Television Network

The transition from analogue to digital television promises an enormous digital dividend that can translate to spectrum resource provision for other services. In this work, the size of the spectrum that can be released as dividend after digital switchover in some selected States of Nigeria is estimated. First, the present analogue television (ATV) network coverage is compared with predicted digital terrestrial television (DTTV) network coverage during a simulcast period, and after ATV switch-off. The predicted DTTV network is initially planned with a multi-frequency network (MFN) and analysis showed that DTTV had a 12.5% improvement in spectrum utilization compared to ATV while achieving a better coverage probability of 95.3%. This work predicted further spectrum savings with the use of a single-frequency network (SFN) design for DTTV network planning. The analysis done showed that 87.5% of the ATV spectrum could be saved for other services after the transition to DTTV using SFN. Keywords: Digital television, SFN, MFN, Spectrum, dividend

The Sexual Politics of Blood: Theorizing an Ecology of Gendered Animality and Posthuman Possibilities Through Buffy the Vampire Slayer

First airing at the turn of the millennium, Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) held primetime slots on the WB Television Network for the first five seasons and the United Paramount Network for the final two. The show has since sustained a significant following among fans and scholarly audiences through its recent migration to online streaming services like Netflix. The considerable media attention garnered by the 20th anniversary of the series premiere demonstrates this continued cultural relevance.¹ Yet the eponymous heroine is—to borrow Buffy’s own words—“carbon dated” (“Welcome to the Hellmouth”). She remains an icon of Girl Power, embodying the distinctive aesthetics and politics of 1990s mainstream feminism—an evident counterweight to the patriarchal hegemony of preceding young-adult supernatural dramas.

The Sexual Politics of Blood: Theorizing an Ecology of Gendered Animality and Posthuman Possibilities Through Buffy the Vampire Slayer

First airing at the turn of the millennium, Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) held primetime slots on the WB Television Network for the first five seasons and the United Paramount Network for the final two. The show has since sustained a significant following among fans and scholarly audiences through its recent migration to online streaming services like Netflix. The considerable media attention garnered by the 20th anniversary of the series premiere demonstrates this continued cultural relevance.¹ Yet the eponymous heroine is—to borrow Buffy’s own words—“carbon dated” (“Welcome to the Hellmouth”). She remains an icon of Girl Power, embodying the distinctive aesthetics and politics of 1990s mainstream feminism—an evident counterweight to the patriarchal hegemony of preceding young-adult supernatural dramas.