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DEPARTMENT OF FILM AND TELEVISION STUDIES
BA Film Studies, Year 2, BA Film and Literature Year 3 (Option)
TELEVISION HISTORY AND CRITICISM
(FI 205)
Module Tutors: Dr Rachel Moseley and Dr Lauren Thompson
AUTUMN TERM 2014
AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES
This module aims to enable your further exploration of television as an historical, critical and
theoretical object of study. The module aims to develop your skills in the critical textual
analysis of television texts, and to enable you to evaluate critically, and to mobilise, a range of
theoretical concepts and methodologies in relation to the study of television as a textual,
institutional, historical and cultural object. By the end of the module, you should be able to
offer clear and precise critical accounts of the texts, histories and theories we have studied,
both orally and in writing. For this reason, it is important that you contribute fully to seminar
discussion in an informed manner. If you find seminars difficult, please arrange to see me and
we will discuss ways of managing this important aspect of your learning.
LEARNING AND TEACHING METHODS
The module will be taught through a combination of lectures, screenings, seminars and small
group work. Substantial preparatory reading (and viewing) will be required for each week’s
sessions. It is not possible for lectures and seminars to cover every interesting and significant
aspect of the texts we will study and their institutional and cultural contexts. For this reason,
you should aim to read as broadly as possible around our topic area each week to
supplement what you are offered in the lecture. This document, and lecture handouts, will
suggest areas of further interest for you to pursue. The degree to which you have followed up
these suggestions will be evident in your assessed and examined work, and in your seminar
contributions. The lecture handout is designed as an aide-memoire, and is not intended as a
substitute for taking notes or for attendance at lectures, screenings and seminars. Sometimes
we will view the same programme twice, as you have been accustomed to doing on Film
Studies modules, but more often we will view them once only, in order to have time to see a
range of material in one week. It is, then, especially important that you take detailed notes
during television screenings. Learning to manage television viewing in a scholarly
context is a critical part of your development on this module.
This document details the screening programme, and gives detailed information on
the weekly topics, reading and further reading and viewing for the Autumn term. The Spring
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term of the module will be taught by Dr Lauren Thompson and the module outline will be
available at the end of the Autumn term. The module will be assessed through a combination
of essays and an unseen end of year examination, and details of the first assignments (a
short formative piece FOR THOSE STUDENTS WHO DID NOT TAKE FI 109 VISUAL
CULTURES in the previous academic year and a fully assessed summative essay) are
included below.
CONTENT
In the Autumn Term we will be focusing mainly on the issues of genre, address and
representation. What are the defining formal and thematic features of key television genres,
and how do they speak to and imagine their audiences? What questions do our programmes
raise around the politics of representation? We will look at a range of texts, British and
American, contemporary and historical, but our focus will be on questions of aesthetics and
address across the range of programmes that we study. Some of the genres we will consider
(soap opera, British television drama) are well-established areas of interest within Television
Studies; some (lifestyle, teen television) are recent and developing areas and others (music
television, children’s television) have been studied only from very particular perspectives,
which we will aim to expand in our work this term. In a number of cases, I have chosen areas
I intend to work on in the near future (e.g. music, children’s television, regional
representation) and so we will be doing research-led teaching (and teaching-led research, of
course!)
TIMETABLE
All sessions in this module will take place on Fridays, between 9.00 and 4.00 in A1.25. The
timings for each week’s sessions will vary slightly from week to week, depending on the
length of our screening materials. As you will see, our televisual object of study ranges from
short pieces of children's television to serial drama. In broad terms, though, our meetings will
be as follows. If the timetable will be very different from this, I will let you know in advance
and will usually email the timetable in any case on the day before each week’s session, so
you should be careful to check your Warwick email regularly.
First Screening 9.00-10.30, Lecture, 10.30-11.30 Lunch Break, 11.30-12.30 Second
Screening, 12.30-2.00, First Seminar, 2.00-3.00, Second Seminar, 3.00-4.00
SEMINARS
We will probably have two seminar groups on a Friday afternoon this year, if the group is
large, but we will also experiment in the first few weeks with a longer seminar en masse that
includes small group work, to see what suits us best. Seminars can be one of the most
productive ways to learn in a university setting – they can also be hard work when you are
under-prepared for them, or when the group doesn’t foster a collaborative, supportive attitude
to each other and each other’s learning. If you are finding it difficult to contribute to seminar
discussion, please let me know as soon as possible, and I will do what I can to facilitate your
involvement. Seminars will almost always combine discussion of the programmes
screened in that week and of the reading set. Please note: while we are likely to
discuss the set reading every week, I have indicated, week by week, where seminars
will focus on detailed discussion of a specific piece of set reading. You MUST come to
seminars having done the required reading and made notes on it in preparation for
contributing to discussion.
A NOTE ON READING AND VIEWING
As you will know by now, planning ahead is essential in ensuring you have access to the key
books and articles we will be reading each week. Copies of all essential reading will either be
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held in the Short Loan collection (you should photocopy key pieces of reading where
possible) or will be available in digital form through the library’s electronic resources/course
extracts pages and link, and you should check for set reading here first:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/main/electronicresources/extracts/fi/fi205
Where journals are available online, I have indicated this. Remember that the set reading for
the module is intended only as a starting point for your own study. You should aim to read
(and view) as widely as possible. The library has excellent resources, including an extensive
collection of the Radio Times, TV Times and television trade journals such as Broadcast
(reading this on a weekly basis will give you a good picture of current shifts in the British
television industry and landscape). Articles on particular programmes and topics can be
sought using the library’s electronic databases, as can newspaper reviews of television
programmes. It is good practice, as a matter of course, to look out reviews of television
programmes in which you are interested. A key aim of the module is to raise your critical
awareness in relation to your own television viewing. You should try to view an eclectic mix of
programming, read a wide range of sources on television, both historical and contemporary,
and become aware of discourses on television which circulate everyday in the media (in print
journalism, on the internet, and indeed on television). The following books (all in the library),
will be useful throughout the module:
Robert C. Allen and Annette Hill (eds) (2004) The Television Studies Reader, London and
New York: Routledge; Edward Buscombe (ed.) (2000) British Television: A Reader, Oxford:
Oxford University Press; John Corner (1999) Critical Ideas in Television Studies, Oxford:
Clarendon Press; Glen Creeber (ed.) (2001) The TV Genre Book, London: BFI; Glen Creeber
(ed.) Fifty Key Television Programmes, London: Arnold raises interesting issues of television
canonicity. Andrew Crisell (2002) An Introductory History of British Broadcasting (Second
Edition), London: Routledge is a good historical overview, though remember that this book
will not cover the most recent developments around the future of television in Britain, the
move to digital and debates around public service broadcasting. Look at the Ofcom website
(www.ofcom.org.uk) to follow up more recent institutional/political developments. John Ellis
(2000) Seeing Things: Television in the Age of Uncertainty, London: I.B. Tauris; Christine
Geraghty and David Lusted (eds) (1998) The Television Studies Book, London and New
York: Routledge; Michele Hilmes (2003) The Television History Book, London: BFI; Jason
Jacobs and Stephen Peacock (eds) (2013) Television Aesthetics and Style, New York:
Bloomsbury; Karen Lury (2005) Interpreting Television, London: Hodder Arnold, offers an
excellent introduction to the textual study of television. Toby Miller (2002) Television Studies,
London: BFI; Jason Mittell (2004) Genre Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in
American Culture, New York and London: Routledge. James Bennett and Nikki Strange
(2011) Television as Digital Media, Durham: Duke University Press, Jennifer Gillan (2011)
Television and New Media: Must-Click TV, London, Routledge; Paul Grainge (2011)
Ephemeral Media: Transitory Screen Culture from Television to YouTube, London: BFI, Lynn
Spigel and Jan Olssen (eds) (2004) Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition,
Durham: Duke University Press and Graeme Turner and Jinna Tay (2009) Television Studies
After TV: Understanding Television in the Post-Broadcast Era, London: Routledge are some
of the recent titles which think about the digital transformation of television. You might also
look at John Caughie (2000) Television Drama: Realism, Modernism and British Culture,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, which introduces and interrogates some of the debates
around British television drama since the 1960s.
ASSESSMENT
The module will be assessed through a combination of essays and an unseen end of year
examination. The question for the first long essay (due on FRIDAY of Week 10 of the
Autumn term) is supplied below. Those students who did NOT take FI 109 Visual Cultures
last year must also submit a short formative essay on Monday of Week 4, Autumn Term, The
details of this essay task are also included below. Essays must be submitted anonymously
and in duplicate (but must be identifiable by your student number at the top of the
page).
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Year 2
2 x 3000 word essays (25% each, I submitted in each of Autumn and Summer terms)
Unseen examination: 2 questions, 2 hours (50%, Summer term)
Year 3
1 x 1000 formative textual analysis essay, Week 4 Autumn term (if you did not take Visual
Cultures)
Either: 1 x 5000 word essay + 1 x 2 hour unseen examination (50% assessed/50%
examined)
Or: 2 x 5,000 word essays (50% each, 100% assessed)
Or: 1 x unseen examination (3 questions, 3 hours, 100% assessed)
ASSESSMENT DEADLINES
All essays must be submitted to Adam Gallimore, in the departmental office, by 12.00 on the
day of the deadline. Extensions may only be given by the Chair of Department, Dr
Alastair Phillips, in advance of the deadline. An essay submitted late without an
extension will receive a penalty of a 5% reduction of the mark per day.
Year 2 students
First 3,000 word essay: Friday 5th December (Week 10, Autumn Term)
Second 3,000 word essay: Monday 16th March (Week 11, Spring Term)
Year 3 students
Formative 1000 word textual analysis: Monday October 20th (Week Four, Autumn Term)
First 5,000 word essay: Friday 5th December (Week 10, Autumn Term)
First or second 5,000 word essay: Monday 16th March (Week 11, Spring Term)
If they wish to do so, finalists may submit 2 x 5000 word essays and take the best mark
forward. The work from the other essay may then be used in the examination.
ESSAY QUESTIONS
1,000 word Formative Essay (Year 3 students who did not take
Visual Cultures)
Due: Monday 20th October (Week 4, Autumn Term)
This short essay is an exercise designed to develop your skills in the critical viewing of, and
writing about, television. As such, you should avoid simply describing what you see on screen
without offering a critical analysis of its significance. While the mark given for this exercise will
not contribute to your grade for this module, the feedback will give you an indication of
progress and areas to develop before you begin work on your assessed essays.
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Write a 1000 word textual analysis of a short piece of television, no more than 3 minutes in
length. In writing your textual analysis, you should bear in mind models of television as a
medium, its particular form and textuality, questions of address, and any significant
generic elements in your sequence that contribute to the ways in which meaning is made.
As with the analysis of film, you should consider questions of mise-en-scène and style,
and pay attention to editing, pace, lighting, sound, music, framing, composition, camera
position, camera movement, colour, performance, and so on.
it may be helpful to offer some graphic representation of elements of your chosen
sequence using ICT; try to use these to demonstrate the significance of the points you
make, rather than simply as illustration. Please append a DVD of or link to your chosen
extract, with precise timings.
First 3,000 (5,000 if Year 3) Word Essay Question
[Deadline: Friday 5th December (Week 10, Autumn Term 2014) to Adam Gallimore
in the departmental office.] This essay is an exercise in combining research, reading
and textual analysis. If your essay includes discussion of a television programme we have
not viewed together on the module, then please append a DVD copy to your essay, or
provide a link. Please make sure that you have followed the assessment criteria
guidelines in the handbook in researching, writing and presenting your essay, and that
you have attached a cover sheet. Your essay should be anonymised and submitted in
duplicate.
N.B. Please avoid using textual examples on which we have worked together in
class in your essays.
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This comparative exercise is designed to enable you to demonstrate the
skills that you have developed in textual analysis, historical research
and critical reading in the first term of the module. In particular, you will
find the work on television historiography and the use of television
listings magazines that we covered in Week 2 useful, and your essay
should demonstrate your awareness of this. You should choose two
BRITISH programmes that are of the same genre, but that are
historically differentiated: one should be from before 1990, and one from
after. Offer an analysis of each programme, demonstrating that you
understand the programme’s critical and historical context, aesthetic
distinctiveness and its positioning in relation to channel identity and
genre. Your discussion of each programme should include a detailed
textual analysis of a short, defined sequence. You should give equal
weight to the analysis of each programme, and try to draw out
connections and distinctions between them where possible.
Essay Support Notes
1. Finding pre-1990 television texts
• Lecture handouts give other programme suggestions
• Consult key works such as the BFI’s Television History Book (Hilmes 2003), Television
Genre Book (Creeber 2001, 2008, 2014) and Creeber’s 50 Key Television Programmes
(Creeber, 2004)
• Look at BFI TV Classics book series
• Consult www.screenonline.org.uk/tv which gives first transmission (tx) dates. Useful for 2
below.
• Websites like www.tv-ark.org.uk and www.kaleidoscope.org.uk can be useful but are not
strictly ‘academic’ sources
• Radio Times, TV Times
2. Contextualisation
• Radio Times and TV Times
• Academic books and journal articles
• Reviews in newspapers and, for example, The Listener
3. Some Possibilities
• Drama: ongoing serial (soap opera then and now), classic adaptations (often Sunday night),
the single play, anthology formats, genre series (e.g. police procedural, hospital etc.)
• Sitcom
• Music programmes
• Children's programmes
• Documentary
IMPORTANT: Make sure you can access an appropriate, full version of your chosen
programme, ideally through the library, regional mediatheque, BFI or online archive.
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VIEWING PROGRAMME
Week One: Television Address
Screenings: Top Gear, Brookside, Dallas, Sex and the City
Week Two: British Television Historiography - no screenings this week
Week Three: Music Television
Screenings: A selection of music programmes including Oh Boy!, Ready Steady Go!, Old
Grey Whistle Test, The Tube, Later with Jools Holland
Week Four: Children’s Television
Screenings: A selection of children’s television programming from the 1950s to the present
day.
Week Five: Television Sitcom (Dr Lauren Thompson)
Screenings: I Love Lucy, The Likely Lads, Fawlty Towers, Roseanne, How I Met Your
Mother, The Office
Week Six: Reading Week
Week Seven: US Teen Television
Screenings: My So-Called Life, The OC, Glee
Week Eight: UK Teen Television
Screenings: Going Out, Hollyoaks, Skins, My Mad Fat Diary
Week Nine: Television and Region: The Case of Cornwall
Screenings: Doc Martin, Jamaica Inn and extracts from Poldark, Wild West and Cornwall
with Caroline Quentin
Week Ten: Workshop on Television in the Netflix Age: Platform, Genre, Aesthetics and
Audience
Screenings: Orange is the New Black, Prison Break and/or student choice
DETAILED READING AND VIEWING PROGRAMME
WEEK ONE
Television Address
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Screenings: Coronation Street (Granada, ITV, UK, 1960-), Brookside (Channel 4, UK, 19822003), Dallas (Lorimar, USA, 1978-1991), Sex and the City (Darren Starr Productions/HBO,
USA, 1998-2004), Top Gear (BBC, UK, 2002-)
Further Viewing
Where are/what is ‘television for men’? Look at other contemporary British and American
soaps; think about how the themes, concerns and settings have changed or remained
consistent, and about how the genre has developed in your viewing lifetime. Look at the Black
British soap Empire Road (BBC Birmingham, UK, 1979), of which we have several episodes
in the library, and see also Dancin’ Days (Rede Globo, Brazil, 1978), a classic Brazilian
telenovela, also in the library. The Mary Tyler Moore Show (MTM, USA, 1970-1977), Cagney
and Lacey (CBS/Filmways/Orion, USA, 1982-1988), L.A. Law (20th Century Fox, USA, 19861994) Thirtysomething (Bedford Falls Productions/MGM/UA, USA, 1987-1991), Murphy
Brown (WB, USA, 1988-1998), This Life (BBC/World productions, UK, 1996-1997), The L
Word (Anonymous Content/Dufferin Gate Productions/Showtime Networks, Viacom
Productions, 2004-).
SEMINAR
What are the different ways in which television addresses its audience? Who do particular
programmes assume they are speaking to, and how can we tell this? Why are soaps so
popular? Do you watch them, and if so, which ones? If you do not, why not? Does soap still
have the same gendered address which has been so consistently assumed? ‘Television for
women’ and ‘children’ are assumed and accepted categories. What about ‘television for
men?’ I would like us to tease apart some of the preconceptions and judgements commonly
held and made about television address. We will use the piece by Brunsdon to think about the
ways in which soap opera was initially theorised as gendered in the academy; are these
arguments appropriate now? If not, why not? Is the term ‘postfeminist’ (or, indeed, ‘feminist’!)
familiar and/or useful? What other programmes would you characterise as postfeminist? Are
there postfeminist ‘men’s’ programmes? We will look at the Gill piece to consider the current
parameters and problematics of the postfeminist cultural turn and to support an analysis of
Sex and the City. The piece by Bonner makes an interesting argument about Top Gear as
‘invisible television’. Is this related to its address?
Reading
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Charlotte Brunsdon (1981) ‘Crossroads – notes on Soap Opera’, Screen 22, 4: 32--7,
also collected in her Screen Tastes.
• Rachel Moseley, Helen Wheatley and Helen Wood (2014) 'Introduction: Television in
the Afternoon', in Moseley, Wheatley and Wood (eds) Critical Studies in Television
Special Issue on Afternoon Television, 9, 2: 1-19. The entire issue focuses on the
question of address and the schedule, but the introduction will probably be most
useful.
If at all possible, please also read:
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Rosalind Gill (2007) ‘Postfeminist media culture: elements of a sensibility’, European
Journal of Cultural Studies 10, 2: 147-166 (ONLINE) If you are interested in the
politics of the contemporary mediascape, you will find this interesting…
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Frances Bonner (2010) 'Top Gear: Why does the world's most popular programme
not deserve scrutiny?', Critical Studies in Television 5, 1: 32-45. (ONLINE. You could
also look at Brett Mills' opening essay in this issue, 'Invisible Television'.)
Further Reading on Soap Opera and the Television Audience
There is an enormous literature, especially feminist scholarship, on Anglo-American soap
opera, as well as on Brazilian telenovelas. The further reading suggested for week one which
follows are key essays and collections which have been formative for the field of soap opera
studies in the Anglo-American context, but you will find many others in the library:
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Ien Ang (1985) Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination, (in
particular chapters 2 and 3), London and New York: Methuen; or, you could look at
her ‘Melodramatic identifications: television fiction and women’s fantasy’, in
Brunsdon, D’Acci and Spigel (eds) Feminist Television Criticism, pp. 155—166.
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Glen Creeber (2001) The Television Genre Book, section on ‘Soap Opera’, pp. 47—
60.
David Buckingham (1987) Public Secrets: EastEnders and Its Audience, London: BFI.
Richard Dyer (1977) ‘Entertainment and utopia’, Movie 24: 2-13.
Richard Dyer et al (1981) Coronation Street, London: BFI Monograph 13.
John Fiske (1987) Television Culture, Chapters 10 and 11 on ‘gendered television’.
Christine Geraghty (1991) ‘Utopian possibilities’, in Women and Soap Opera: A Study
of Prime Time Soaps, London: Polity Press, pp. 107-130.
Christine Gledhill (1992) ‘Speculations on the relationship between soap opera and
melodrama’, Quarterly Review of Film and Video 14, 1-2: 103—123.
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Annette Kuhn (1984) ‘Women’s genres’, Screen 25, 1: 18—28; also collected in
Brunsdon, D’Acci and Spigel (eds) Feminist Television Criticism.
•
Tania Modleski (1979) ‘The search for tomorrow in today’s soap operas: notes on a
feminine narrative form’, Film Quarterly 33, 1: 12-21; also collected in Brunsdon,
D’Acci and Spigel, Feminist Television Criticism.
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Tania Modleski (1983) ‘The rhythms of reception: daytime television and women’s
work’, in E. Ann Kaplan (ed.) Regarding Television.
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Ellen Seiter et al (1987) ‘”Don’t treat us like we’re so stupid and naïve”: towards an
ethnography of soap opera viewers’, in Seiter et al (eds) Remote Control: Television
Audiences and Cultural Power, London: Routledge, pp. 223—247. This piece is an
interesting response, produced through ethnography, to the theoretical model
of spectatorship proposed in Modleski, above, and thus should be read in
conjunction with it.
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Lynn Spigel (1992) ‘Installing the television set: popular discourses on television and
domestic space, 1948—1955’, in Lynn Spigel and Denise Mann (eds) Private
Screenings: Television and the Female Consumer, Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, pp. 3-40 (on discourses of TV as education and breaking down
division between public and private).
On television culture and Britain in the 1960s:
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•
Alan O’Connor (ed) (1989) Raymond Williams on Television: Selected Writings,
London: Routledge.
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Raymond Williams (1961) ‘The analysis of culture’, The Long Revolution, London:
Chatto and Windus, pp. 57-70, also collected in John Storey (ed.) (1994) Cultural
Theory and Popular Culture, New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, pp. 5664.
•
Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel (1964) ‘Friends and neighbours’, in The Popular Arts,
London: Hutchinson Educational, pp. 225-268.
Martin Williams (1982) TV: The Casual Art, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
•
On the television audience and the ‘uses’ of television:
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•
Ien Ang and Joke Hermes (1991) ‘Gender and/in media consumption’, in James
Curran and Michael Gurevitch (eds) Mass Media and Society, Sevenoaks: Edward
Arnold, pp. 307-328.
David Gauntlett and Annette Hill (1999) TV Living: Television, Culture and Everyday
Life, London: Routledge. (Study of the relationship between television and everyday
life, based on the BFI’s Audience Tracking Study)
•
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Marie Gillespie (1995) Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change, London and New
York: Comedia/Routledge.
Ann Gray (1992) Video Playtime: The Gendering of a Leisure Technology, London:
Routledge; see also her ‘Behind closed doors: video recorders in the home’, in
Brunsdon, D’Acci and Spigel (eds) Feminist Television Criticism, pp. 235—246.
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•
•
•
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Henry Jenkins (1992) Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture,
London: Routledge.
Henry Jenkins and John Tulloch (1995) Science Fiction Audiences: Watching Doctor
Who and Star Trek, London: Routledge.
Lisa Lewis (1992) The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, New York:
Routledge.
David Morley (1986) Family Television: Cultural Power and Domestic Leisure,
London: Comedia.
David Morley (1992) Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies, London and New
York: Routledge.
Margaret Morse (1990) ‘An ontology of everyday distraction: the freeway, the mall,
and television’, in Mellencamp (ed.) Logics of Television, pp. 193—221.
•
Tim O’Sullivan (1991) ‘Television memories and cultures of viewing 1950-1965’, in
Corner (ed.) Popular Television in Britain, pp. 159—181.
•
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Ellen Seiter (1999) Television and New Media Audiences, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Roger Silverstone (1994) Television and Everyday Life, London and New York:
Routledge.
• John Tulloch (2000) Watching Television Audiences: Cultural Theories and Methods,
London: Arnold.
On Brazilian Telenovelas
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Ondina Fachel Leal (1990) ‘Popular taste and erudite repertoire: the place and space
of television in Brazil’, Cultural Studies 4, 1: 19—29.
•
Ana Lopez (1995) ‘Our welcomed guests: telenovelas in Latin America’, in Robert C.
Allen (ed.) To be Continued…Soap Operas Around the World, New York: Routledge.
•
Michèle Mattelart (1997) ‘Everyday life (excerpt)’, in Brunsdon, D’Acci and Spigel
(eds) Feminist Television Criticism, pp. 23—35.
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•
Irene Penacchioni (1984) ‘The reception of popular television in Northeast Brazil’,
Media, Culture and Society 6: 337—341.
•
Aluizio R. Trinto (1998) ‘News from home: a study of realism and melodrama in
Brazilian telenovelas’, in Geraghty and Lusted (eds) The Television Studies Book, pp.
275—285.
•
Thomas Tufte (2000) Living with the Rubbish Queen: Telenovelas, Culture and
Modernity in Brazil, Luton: University of Luton Press.
Further Reading on Postfeminism
•
Angela McRobbie (1997) ‘Pecs and penises: the meaning of girlie culture’, Soundings
5, pp. 157-166
•
Angela McRobbie(2004) ‘Post-feminism and popular culture’, Feminist Media Studies
4, 3 (online).
•
Christine Gledhill (1988) ‘Pleasurable negotiations’, in E. Deirdre Pribram (ed.)
Female Spectators, London: Verso, pp. 64-89.
See also specific readings of the programmes in question:
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Rachel Moseley and Jacinda Read (2002) ‘“Having it Ally”: Popular Television (Post)Feminism’, Feminist Media Studies 2, 2: 231-249.
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Investigate the essays collected in Kim Akass and Janet McCabe (eds) (2004)
Reading Sex and the City, London: I.B. Tauris. Those by Greven, Merck, Nelson,
Akas and McCabe are good places to start.
•
Jane Arthurs (2003) ‘Sex and the City and consumer culture: remediating
postfeminist drama’, Feminist Media Studies 3, 1: 83-98.
•
Diane Negra (2004) ‘ “Quality postfeminism?” Sex and the single girl on HBO’,
Genders 39 (online).
Further Reading on Women's Television
There is an enormous literature in this area, on both postfeminism and on the representation
of ‘career girls’ and working women on television. You may find the following useful:
•
Serafina Bathrick (1984) ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show: women at home and at work’,
in Jane Feuer, Paul Kerr and Tise Vahimagi (eds) MTM: ‘Quality’ Television, London:
BFI, pp. 99—131.
•
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Charlotte Brunsdon (1982) ‘A subject for the seventies’, Screen 23, 3—4: 20—9.
Jackie Byars and Eileen R. Meehan (1995) ‘Once in a lifetime: Constructing ‘the
working woman’ through cable narrowcasting’, Camera Obscura 33-34; also collected
in Newcomb (ed.) Television: The Critical View (Sixth Edition), pp. 144—168.
•
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Camera Obscura 33—34 Special Issue: ‘Lifetime: A cable network ‘for women’’.
Bonnie J. Dow (1996) Prime-Time Feminism: Television, Media Culture and the
Women’s Movement since 1970, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
•
Joanne Hollows and Rachel Moseley (eds.) (2005) Feminism and Popular Culture,
London: Berg. This collection has a useful overview introduction on the relationship
between postfeminism and popular culture.
•
Moya Luckett (1999) ‘A moral crisis in prime time: Peyton Place and the Rise of the
Single Girl’, in Haralovich and Rabinovitz (eds) (1999) Television, History and
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American Culture: Feminist Critical Essays, Durham and London: Duke University
Press, pp. 75—97.
•
Judith Mayne (1997) ‘L.A. Law and Prime-Time Feminism’, in Brunsdon, D’Acci and
Spigel (eds) (1997) Feminist Television Criticism: A Reader, London: Oxford
University Press, pp. 84—97.
•
Elspeth Probyn (1988) ‘New traditionalism and post-feminism: TV does the home’,
Screen 31, 147-59.
WEEK TWO
British Television Historiography:
Researching Television History
There will be no screenings this week; instead we will be working
in the library together, researching British television history. The aim of the exercise will be to
see what can be gleaned about the history of British television, its programming and
surrounding cultures, in different periods with which you are unfamiliar, by looking at the
schedules and surrounding critical and advertising material. Further details will be given in
Week 2. During each ‘library session’, one seminar group will work on the Radio Times
microfiche, and the other on hard copies of the TV Times, so that each group has looked at
both resources. It is essential that you have done the required reading for this week
BEFORE the start of the session. In the seminars, we will discuss the reading and the
results of the library exercise.
Timetable
9.00-9.45: introduction to the week's work. Walk over to library.
10.00-11.30: Group 1, Radio Times microfiche; Group 2,TV Times hard copies.
11.30-12.00: break
12.00-13.30: Group 2, Radio Times microfiche; Group 1,TV Times hard copies.
13.30-14.00: break/return to department
14.00-16.00: Seminar en masse
Reading
•
John Corner (2003) ‘Finding data, reading patterns, telling stories: Issues in the
historiography of television’, Media, Culture & Society, 25, 2: 273-280.
•
Jason Jacobs (2006) 'The television archive: past, present and future', Critical
Studies in Television 1,1: 13-20.
Further Reading
• Michele Hilmes (ed.) (2003) The Television History Book, London: BFI.
•
Jason Jacobs (2006). ‘Television and history: investigating the past’ in G. Creeber
(ed.) Tele-Visions: An Introduction to Studying Television, pp. 107-115.
•
Lacey, S. (2006) ‘Some thoughts on television history and historiography: a British
perspective’, Critical Studies in Television, 1, 1: 3-12.
13
•
Lynn Spigel (1992) ‘Installing the television set: popular discourses on television and
domestic space, 1948-1955’, in Lynn Spigel and Denise Mann (eds) Private
Screenings: Television and the Female Consumer, Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, pp. 3-40. This is a very significant piece of scholarship which
shows clearly the scholarly use to which apparently ‘ephemeral’ tv listings
magazines can be put….
•
Helen Wheatley (2007) Re-viewing Television History: Critical Issues in Television
Historiography (IB Tauris) Read the introduction, but you might also find it useful to
dip into other chapters in the book.
Watching Television: Audiences and Television Memory
•
Julia Hallam (2005) ‘Remembering Butterflies: the comic art of housework’, in
J.Bignell and S. Lacey (eds) Popular Television Drama: Critical Perspectives,
Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 34-50.
•
Amy Holdsworth (2008) ‘“Television Resurrections”: Television and Memory’, Cinema
Journal 47, 3: 137-144. Available online.
•
Tim O’Sullivan (1991) ‘Television Memories and Cultures of Viewing 1950-1965’, in
John Corner (ed.) Popular Television in Britain: Studies in Cultural History, London:
BFI, pp.159-181.
•
Tim O’Sullivan (2007) ‘Researching the viewing culture: Television and the home,
1945-1960’ in Wheatley (ed.) Re-viewing Television History, pp.159-169.
•
Lynn Spigel (1995) ‘From the dark ages to the golden age: women’s memories and
television reruns’, Screen 36, 1: 16-33.
Television as Physical/Social object
•
Ondina Fachel Leal (1990) ‘Popular taste and erudite repertoire: the place and space
of television in Brazil’, Cultural Studies 4, 1: 19—29.
•
Lynn Spigel (1992) ‘Television in the family circle’, in Make Room for TV: Television
and the Family Ideal in Postwar America, Chicago and London: University of Chicago
Press, pp. 36-72.
Television as Broadcast Text: the Archive
•
Rachel Moseley (2009) ‘Marguerite Patten, television cookery and postwar British
femininity’, in Stacy Gillis and Joanne Hollows (eds) Feminism, Domesticity and
Popular Culture, London: Routledge pp.17-31.
WEEK THREE
Popular Music on Television
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Screenings: Oh Boy! (ATV, UK, 1958-1959); extracts from Ready Steady Go! (AssociatedRediffusion for ITV, UK, 1963-1966), The Tube (Tyne Tees Television for C4, 1982 -1987)
and The Old Grey Whistle Test (BBC, 1971-1987); Later with Jools Holland (BBC, 1992-)
Seminar
There will be a discussion of this week’s programmes and extracts in the light of the Frith
piece. What are the relationships between music and image in different kinds of popular
music television?
Reading
•
Simon Frith (2002) ‘Look! Hear! The uneasy relationship of music and television’,
Popular Music, 21,3: 277-290. (ONLINE)
Further Reading
• Norma Coates (2013) 'Excitement is Made, Not Born: Jack Good, Television, and
Rock and Roll', Journal of Popular Music Studies, 25: 301–325. The enhanced
version of the article has links to existing episodes of Oh Boy! On YouTube.
•
Theodor W. Adorno (1941) ‘On popular music’, Studies in Philosophy and Social
Science IX,1, collected in John Storey (ed.) (1994) Cultural Theory and Popular
Culture: A Reader, New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, pp. 202-214. This
is an influential piece, more about the nature of popular music than music on
television as you see from the date, but, I think, nevertheless useful for thinking
about contemporary music television, especially MTV.
•
Lawrence Grossberg (1986) ‘The deconstruction of youth’, Critical Studies in Mass
Communication 3: 50-74, also collected in Storey (ed.) Cultural Theory and Popular
Culture, pp. 183-190.
E. Ann Kaplan (1987) Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism
and Consumer Culture, New York and London: Methuen. This is the classic text on
MTV, but, clearly, dated by the textual examples. It is, however, an invaluable
•
account, in particular chapter 3 ‘MTV and the avant-garde: the emergence of a
•
•
postmodernist anti-aesthetic?’ Chapter 5 ‘Gender Address and the Gaze’ and
the conclusion.
Karen Lury (2001) British Youth Television: Cynicism and Enchantment, Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Karen Lury (2002) ‘Chewing gum for the ears: children’s television and popular
music’, Popular Music, 21, 3: 291-305.
•
Kevin Williams (2003) in Why I [Still] Want My MTV: Music Video and Aesthetic
Communication, New Jersey, Hampton Press Inc.
WEEK FOUR
Children’s Television in Britain
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Screenings: a selection of children’s television programmes from the 1960s to the present. I
will supply a precise screening list on the handout for this week’s work.
As these programmes are typically very short, we may watch more than one example of
each. It would be very helpful, if you have access to it, if you could watch some contemporary
children’s television, at different times of the day, before this week’s work.
Reading
There is little writing on the texts of children’s television, as you will see, and most work in the
area focuses either on policy and production or on media ‘effects’ rather than aesthetics or
genre.
•
David Oswell (2002) Chapter 3: 'Children's television: participation, commensurate
lite and differentiation', in Television, Childhood and the Home: A History of the
Making of the Child Television Audience in Britain, Oxford: Oxford. University Press,
pp 45-80. This chapter draws on archival research to consider the conditions
underlying the address to the child audience in early British television. The
whole book is a fascinating study.
•
Jeanette Steemers (2010) ‘The BBC’s Role in the Changing Production Ecology of
Preschool Television in Britain’, Television and New Media 11,1: 37-61 (Online) This
piece comes out of a funded research project on children's television
production cultures.
Further Reading
David Buckingham, Hannah Davies, Ken Jones and Peter Kelley (1999) ‘Children’s
Television 1946-80’, Children’s Television in Britain: History, Discourse and Policy, London:
BFI, pp. 14-44.
David Buckingham (1996) Moving Images; Understanding Children’s Emotional Responses to
Television, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
David Buckingham (1999) Children’s television in Britain: History, Discourse and Policy,
London: BFI.
David Buckingham (2011) The Material Child: Growing Up in Consumer Culture, Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Anna Home (1993) Into the Box of Delights: A History of Children’s Television, London: BBC
Books.
Henry Jenkins (1998) The Children’s Culture Reader, New York: New York University Press.
Máire Messenger Davies (2001) “Dear BBC”: Children, Television Storytelling and the Public
Sphere, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Erin L. Ryan (2010) ‘Dora the Explorer: Empowering Preschoolers, Girls and Latinas’, Journal
of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 54, 1: 54-68.
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Jeanette Steemers (2010a) ‘The BBC’s role in the changing production ecology of preschool
television In Britain’, Television and New Media, 11, 1: 37-61.
Jeanette Steemers (2010b) Creating Preschool Television: A Story of Commerce, Creativity
and Curriculum, Basingstoke: palgrave Macmillan.
Helen Wheatley (2012) 'Uncanny Children, Haunted Houses, Hidden Rooms: Children's
Gothic Television in the 1970s and '80s', Visual Culture in Britain, 13, 3: 383-397.
D. Wiedermann and F. Tennert (2004) ‘Children’s television in the GDR’, Historical Journal of
Film, Radio and Television 24, 3: 427-440.
Television Sitcom
WEEK FIVE: GUEST LECTURE BY DR LAUREN THOMPSON
Screenings: I Love Lucy (CBS, US, 1951-7), The Likely Lads (BBC, UK, 1964 – 1966),
Roseanne (Wind Dancer Productions/Carsey-Werner Company, US, 1988-1997), Fawlty
Towers (BBC, UK, 1975-1979), How I Met Your Mother (20th Century Fox Television/Bays
Thomas Productions, US 2005-), The Office (BBC, UK, 2001 – 2003)
Reading
•
Mills, Brett (2004) “Comedy verite: contemporary sitcom form” in Screen. Vol. 45:
No. 1. Pp. 63 – 78.
•
You will be asked to critique Mills’ argument and apply his work to the sitcoms that
we watch this week so please ensure that you have read the piece and bring a copy
to the seminar.
Further Reading:
•
Christopher Anderson (1997) ‘I Love Lucy’, in Horace Newcomb (ed.) The
Encyclopedia of Television, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn.
•
Susan M. Carini (2003) ‘Love’s Labors Almost Lost: Managing Crisis during the
Reign of “I Love Lucy”, Cinema Journal 43,1: 44-62.
•
Jim Cook (ed.) (1982) BFI Dossier 17: Television Sitcom. London: BFI.
-
especially Curtis, Barry (1982) “Aspects of Sitcom” in above pp. 4 -12.
17
•
Peter Goddard (1991) ‘Hancock’s Half Hour: A watershed in British Television
Comedy’, in John Corner (ed.) Popular Television in Britain: Studies in Cultural
History, London: BFI, pp. 75-89.
•
Julia Hallam (2005) “Remembering Butterflies: the Comic Art of Housework.” in
Bignell, Jonathan and Stephen Lacey (eds) Popular Television Drama: Critical
Perspectives. Manchester: Manchester UP. pp. 34 – 50.
•
Mary Beth Haralovich (1992) “Sit-coms and Suburbs: Positioning the 1950s
Homemaker” in Spigel, Lynn and Denise Mann (eds) Private Screenings: Television
and the Female Consumer. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 109 –
141.
•
Judy Kutulas (2005) “Who Rules the Roost?: Sitcom Family Dynamics from the
Cleavers to the Osbornes.” in Dalton, Mary M. and Laura R. Linder (eds) The
Sitcom Reader: America Viewed and Skewed. Albany: State University of New York
Press. pp. 49 – 59.
•
Laura R. Linder (2005) “From Ozzie to Ozzy: The Reassuring Nonevolution of the
Sitcom Family.” in Dalton, Mary M. and Laura R. Linder (eds) The Sitcom Reader:
•
America Viewed and Skewed. Albany: State University of New York Press.pp. 61 –
71.
Barry Langford (2005) “ 'Our Usual Impasse': The Episodic Situation Comedy
Revisited.” in Jonathan Bignell and Stephen Lacey (eds) Popular Television Drama:
•
•
•
•
•
Critical Perspectives. Manchester: Manchester UP. pp. 15 – 33. This is an excellent
piece on narrative and the sitcom with a focus on UK examples.
David Marc (1989) Comic Visions: Television Comedy and American Culture,
London: Blackwell.
Brett Mills (2005) Television Sitcom, London: BFI.
Brett Mills (2009) The Sitcom: TV Genres. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Kathleen Rowe (1995) The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter,
Austin: University of Texas Press.
Lynn Spigel (1992) “Installing the Television Set: Popular Discourses on Television
and Domestic Space, 1948 – 1955.” in Spigel, Lynn and Denise Mann (eds) Private
Screenings: Television and the Female Consumer. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press. pp. 3 – 40.
WEEK SIX: READING WEEK – SEE BELOW, WEEK SEVEN, FOR
SUGGESTIONS
WEEK SEVEN AND EIGHT
Case Study: Teen Television Drama
The next two-week block of this term focuses upon teen television drama. There are
significant online resources for all of the programmes we will study, and in particular
there are fascinating archived fansites, discussion fora and fan-fiction which you
18
should explore. You could also look at the sociological literature which constructs
teenagers in particular and persistent ways, for instance:
•
Christine Griffin (1997) ‘Troubled teens: managing disorders of transition and
consumption’, Feminist Review 55: 4-21.
Glyn Davis and Kay Dickinson (2004) Teen TV: Genre, Consumption and Identity,
London: BFI is one key collection of essays on contemporary American teen television, and
you should read the introduction as well as looking through essays relevant to our
programmes. There is also the more recent Sharon Marie Ross and Louisa Ellen Stein (eds)
(2008) Teen Television: Essays on Programming and Fandom, Jefferson: McFarland. See
also Jeffrey P. Dennis (2006) Queering Teen Culture: All-American Boys and Same-Sex
desire in Film and Television, New York: Harrington Park Press.
WEEK SEVEN
US Teen Television
Screenings: My So-Called Life (ABC/Bedford Falls, 1994-1995); The O.C. (Josh Schwarz,
WB/Wonderland/College Hill, for Fox, 2003 -); Glee (Brad Falchuck Teley-Vision/Ryan
Murphy Productions/20th Century Fox Television, 2009-).
Further Viewing
Fame (USA, MGM Television, 1982-1987); ) Beverley Hills 90210 (Spelling Television for
Fox, 1990-2000), Party of Five (Columbia/High/Keyser/Lippman, 1994-2000); Dawson’s
Creek (Kevin Williams, Outerbank/Columbia Tristar, 1998-2003); Buffy the Vampire Slayer
(Joss Whedon, 20th century Fox/Mutant Enemy/Kuzui/Sandollar, 1997-2003); Charmed
(Spelling Television/Northshore Productions/Paramount Pictures/Viacom Productions, 1998-),
Angel (Mutant Enemy/Kuzui/Sandollar/20th Century Fox, 1999-2004), Roswell (20th Century
Fox/Jason Katims/Regncy, 1999-2002); Gilmore Girls (Amy Sherman Palladino, Dorothy
Parker Drank Here Productions/WB/Hofflund/Polone, USA, 2000-); Freaks and Geeks (Paul
Feig, Apatow Productions/Dreamworks SKG, 1999-2000); One Tree Hill (WB/Tollin Robbins
Productions, USA, 2003-), Veronica Mars (Silver Pictures Television/Stu Segall Productions
Inc./ WB, USA, 2004-), Dark Angel (Fox/Cameron-Eglee, 2000-2002), Point Pleasant
(Fox/Adelstein Parouse, 2005 -); High School Musical (Kenny Ortega, Disney Channel, 2006;
Gossip Girl (17th Street Productions/Alloy Entertainment/CBS Paramount Network Television,
2007).
SEMINAR
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•
•
Did you watch any of these programmes as a young teenager (or before?) Which
other teen shows did you watch?
What do you see as the key contemporary US teen shows? How do they relate,
generically, to those that have come before? We will discuss Adorno’s essay on
genre in relation to the development of the American teen drama. It is essential that
you have read this piece before your seminar.
Reading
The body of literature on teen television is growing, and there are pieces on specific
programmes listed in the secondary and further reading below for you to explore. For the
seminar, please focus on the two theoretical pieces below, plus the lighter piece on Glee from
Antenna.
•
•
•
Theodor W. Adorno [1975] ‘Culture Industry Reconsidered’, New German Critique 6:
12-19, reprinted in J. M. Bernstein (ed.) The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on
Mass Culture, London: Routledge, pp. 85-92.
Richard Dyer (1981) 'Entertainment and utopia', in Rick Altman (ed.) Genre: The
Musical, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 175-189. You may have
encountered this canonical piece of writing before; if so, please refresh your
memory of it before the seminar.
Allison McCracken (2011) 'The countertenor and the crooner', Antenna,
http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2011/05/03/glee-the-countertenor-and-the-crooner/
Ideally you should read all three parts of this article if possible, but certainly
this one.
Secondary Reading
•
Frederik Dhaenens (2013) 'Teenage queerness: negotiating teenage
heteronormativity in the representation of gay teenagers in Glee', Journal of Youth
Studies 16, 3: 304-317
•
John Hartley (1999) Chapter 14 ‘Clueless? Not! DIY citizenship’, in Uses of Television,
London: Routledge, pp. 177-188.
•
Lynne Joyrich (1988) ‘All that television allows: TV melodrama, postmodernism and
•
•
consumer culture’, Camera Obscura 16 (January): 129-153.
Michaela Meyer and Megan Wood (2013) 'Sexuality and teen television: emerging
adults respond to representations of queer identity on Glee', Sexuality and Culture 17,
3: 434-448.
Susan Murray (1999) ‘Saving Our So-Called Lives: Girl Fandom, Adolescent
Subjectivity, and My So-Called Life’, in Marsha Kinder (ed.) Kids' Media Culture, Duke
UP, Durham, NC, pp.221-35
•
•
•
Susan Sontag [1964] (1999) ‘Notes on camp’, in Fabio Cleto (ed.) Camp: Queer
Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, pp. 53-65.
Faye Woods (2013) 'Teen TV meets T4: Assimilating The O.C. into British Youth
Television', Critical Studies in Television 8, 1: 14-35.
Faye Woods (2013) 'Storytelling in song: television music, narrative and allusion in
The O.C.', inJason Jacobs and. Stephen Peacock (eds) Television Aesthetics and
Style, London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Further Reading
•
Jenny Bavidge (2004) ‘Chosen Ones: Reading the Contemporary Teen Heroine’, in
Davis & Dickinson pp 41 – 53.
•
Anne Bilson (2005) Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BFI TV Classics), London: BFI.
20
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Will Brooker (2001) ‘Living on Dawson’s Creek: teen viewers, cultural convergence
and television overflow’, International Journal of Cultural Studies 4, 4: 456-472 (Short
Loan box) and collected in Robert C. Allen and Annett Hill (eds) (2004) The
Television Studies Reader, London: Routledge.
Byers, Michele and Lavery, David (eds) (2007) Dear Angela: Remembering My SoCalled Life, Lexington Books.
Eric Freedman (2005) ‘Television, horror and everyday life in Buffy the Vampire
Slayer’, in Hammond and Mazdon (eds) The Contemporary Television Series, pp.
159-180.
Elyse Rae Helford (ed.) (2000) Fantasy Girls: Gender in the New Universe of
Science-Fiction and Fantasy Television, Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield.
Amanda Howell (2004) ‘“If we hear any inspirational power chords…”: rock music,
rock culture on Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural
Studies 18, 3: 406-422 (available online).
Look at websites, fansites etc. for this show.
Michele Byers (1998) ‘Gender/sexuality/desire: subversion of difference and
construction of loss in the adolescent drama of My So-Called Life, Signs 23,3: 711734 (online).
E. Graham McKinley (1997) Beverly Hills, 90210: Television, Gender and Identity,
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Rachel Moseley (2002) ‘Glamorous witchcraft: gender and magic in teen film and
television’, Screen 43, 4: 403-422. See also my short piece in The Television Genre
Book which I am in the process of updating for the new edition.
Slayage: An Online Journal of Buffy Studies can be found at www.slayage.com and
had a number of interesting essays and links.
James B. South (ed.) (2003) Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and
Trembling in Sunnydale, Chicago: Open Court.
John Tulloch (2000) Chapter 11 ‘Conclusion: Cult, talk and their audiences’, in
Watching television Audiences: Cultural Theories and Methods, London: Arnold, pp.
202-248. This chapter has an interesting account of a fan study on Beverley
Hills 90210.
Rhonda Wilcox (2005) Why Buffy Matters: The Art of Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
London: I.B. Tauris.
WEEK EIGHT
British Teen Television
Screenings: Going Out (Phil Redmond, Southern Television, UK, 1980); Hollyoaks (Phil
Redmond, Mersey Television for Channel 4, 1994-); Skins (Company Pictures/Stormdog
Films for E4, 2007-), My Mad Fat Diary (Tiger Aspect Productions for C4, 2013-).
Further Viewing
Grange Hill (BBC, 1978-2008), Maggie (BBC, 1981); As If (Carnival Films/Columbia TriStar
International Television for Channel 4, 2001-4); Hex (Shine/Sony Pictures Television for Sky
One, 2004 -); Sugar Rush (wr. Julie Burchill, Shine for Channel 4, 2005); Drop Dead
21
Gorgeous (Hat Trick North Productions for BBC 3, 2006); The Inbetweeners (Bwark
Productions for E4, 2008).
SEMINAR
Where/what is British Teen television? What do you think these programmes share with their
US counterparts, and what differentiates them?
Reading
• Susan Berridge (2013) '"Doing it for kids?" The discursive construction of the teenager and
teenage sexuality in Skins', Journal of British Cinema and Television 10, 4: 785-801.
• You could also look at Faye Woods (2013) 'Teen TV meets T4: Assimilating The O.C.
into British Youth Television', Critical Studies in Television 8, 1: 14-35, on the ways in
which British youth television has incorporated US teen television.
Further Reading
• Karen Lury (2001) British Youth Television: Cynicism and Enchantment, Oxford:
Clarendon Press,
•
Rachel Moseley (2007) ‘Inform, Educate, Regulate: Teenagers and Television Drama
in Britain, 1978-1982’, in H. Wheatley (ed.) Re-viewing Television History: Critical
Issues in Television Historiography London: I. B. Tauris, pp. 184-197.
WEEK NINE
Television and Region: The Case of
Cornwall
Screenings:
Poldark (BBC, UK, 1975-6; 1977-8); Wild West (BBC, UK, 2002); Doc Martin (ITV, 2004-);
Cornwall with Caroline Quentin (ITV, UK, 2012-13), Jamaica Inn (BBC, UK, 2014).
22
Reading
• Helen Wheatley (2011) ‘Beautiful Images in Spectacular Clarity: Spectacular Television,
Landscape Programming and the Question of (Tele)visual Pleasure,’ Screen 52, 2: 233248.
Seminar
We will be thinking about the codes and conventions used by television to represent regional
spaces, using Cornwall as a case study (I am writing a book about this at present). We will
consider the role of genre in constructing place on television, as well as questions of
aesthetics. It is essential that you have read Wheatley before the Friday screenings, and
I would like you to think about how your own region is typically represented on TV, and
be prepared to say something very brief about this.
Further Reading
• Bernard Deacon (2004) ‘Under Construction: Cultural and Regional Formation in SouthWest England’, European Urban and Regional Studies 11, 3: 213-225.
• Rachel Moseley (2010) ‘A Landscape of Desire: Cornwall as Romantic Setting in Love
Story and Ladies in Lavender’, in Melanie Bell and Melanie Williams (eds) British Women’s
Cinema, London and New York: Routledge, pp 77-93.
• --- (2013) ‘Women at the Edge: Encounters with the Cornish Coast in British Film and
Television’, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies Special Issue ‘This is the
•
•
•
•
•
•
Sea’, 27, 5: 644-662.
--- (2013)
Philip Payton (2004) Cornwall: A History, Fowey: Cornwall Editions Ltd.
Duncan Petrie (2000) Screening Scotland, London: BFI.
Dave Russell (2004) Looking North: Northern England and the National Imagination.
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Rob Shields (1991) Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity, London:
Routledge.
Ella Westland (ed.) (1997) Cornwall: The Cultural Construction of Place, The Patten Press:
Penzance.
WEEK TEN
Television in the Digital Age: Genre,
Platform and Aesthetics
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Screenings Orange is the New Black (Tilted Productions/Lionsgate Television for Netflix, US,
2013-), Prison Break (20th Century Fox Television, US, 2005-9) and ......? See below.
Seminar
What, precisely, is meant by the term 'television' is increasingly a subject for debate, from
HBO's proclamation that 'It's not TV, it's HBO' to the impact of new digital delivery platforms
and devices on television viewing....and on television itself. Scholars have been reflecting on
this over the last few years, but the speed of technological change is such that scholarship
and theory is now quickly redundant or at least outdated. In this final week of the module, we
will come together in a viewing and discussion workshop to consider the shifts underway in
what we understand to constitute 'television' now. At the same time, programmes like
Gogglebox (Channel 4, UK, 2013-) insist on the family audience gathered around the
television set in the home. We will look at an example of Netflix originated programming as
well as network programming binge able on digital delivery platforms. I have suggested my
own summer Netflix binge Prison Break, but would like to hear suggestions from you about
other programming we might look at together, whether YouTube television, webisodes or
downloads and instant delivery of other kinds. I will ask you for suggestions in Week Nine.
Reading
• Charlotte Brunsdon (2010) 'Bingeing on box-sets: the national and the digital in television
crime drama', in Jostein Gripsrud (ed.) Relocating Television: Television in the Digital
Context, London: Routledge.
• Amanda D. Lotz (2014) 'The Persistence of Television', Flow, http://flowtv.org/2014/01/thepersistence-of-television/ Searching flowtv.org with terms like 'binge viewing' and
'Netflix' will bring up a number of interesting pieces by contemporary TV scholars
thinking through the questions we are tackling this week.
Further Reading
William Boddy (2011) '"Is it TV yet?" The dislocated screens of television in a mobile digital
culture', in James Bennett and Niki Strange (eds) Television as Digital Media, Durham: Duke
University Press, pp. 76-101.
John Thornton Caldwell (2003) 'Second Shift Aesthetics: Programming, Branding, and User
Flows', in New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextuality, London and New York:
Routledge.
Michael Curtin (2009) 'Matrix media', in Graeme Turner and Jinna Tay (eds) Television
Studies After TV: Understanding Television in the Post-Broadcast Era, London: Routledge,
pp. 9-19.
Paul Grainge (2011) Ephemeral Media: Transitory Screen Culture from Television to
YouTube, London: BFI.
24
Pelle Snickars and Patrick Vonderau (eds) (2009) The YouTube Reader, Stockholm: National
Library of Sweden.
William Urrichio (2004) 'Television's next generation: technology, interface culture, flow', in
Jan Olssen and Lynn Spigel (eds) Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition,
Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 163-182.
Rachel Moseley and Lauren Thompson, September 2014