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DEPARTMENT OF FILM AND TELEVISION STUDIES
MA in Film and Television Studies
TELEVISION HISTORY AND AESTHETICS
Autumn Term 2014
Monday, 10-5, A1.27
AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES
The aim of this module is to introduce students to key debates in Television Studies around history and
aesthetics, at the same time encouraging the development of interrogation and critique of scholarship in the
field. This module will, then, operate simultaneously at introductory and advanced levels and will thus be
taught through a combination of introductory presentations, screenings, discussion and small group work.
This will enable you to further refine and practise the skills in textual analysis acquired and developed on the
core module also taken in the Autumn term, and the module has been designed to work along side Screen
Cultures and Methods.
Our focus will be predominantly on US and UK television with key examples drawn from other national
television systems. In dialogue with the television historiography exercise undertaken on the core module,
our viewing will range across historical and contemporary programming, in order to prompt consideration of
development across time and to historicise the study of contemporary television.
By the end of this module, students will have a firm grasp of some key debates in Television Studies, and will
be able to interrogate critical and theoretical scholarship in the field, using their further defined skills of
textual analysis to test existing arguments and propose new ones. Many of our foci of study will be areas
prompted by the module tutor's own research interests, and in which little research exists to date.
Accordingly, the module aims to encourage students to undertake original research on television topics so
please do come and speak with me order to agree an essay topic which meets both your interests and the
learning outcomes of the module. This research essay is 5,000 words in length and should be submitted to
Adam Gallimore by 12.00 on Wednesday, 11 December, 2014 (Week Eleven) and so you should begin
working on a topic as soon as possible after the start of the module. See below for more detailed criteria.
A NOTE ON READING AND VIEWING
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 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.
Many journals articles are available online. The library has excellent resources, including an extensive
collection of the Radio Times and TV Times. 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
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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
5,000 word research essay, deadline: Wednesday, 11th December (Week 11, Autumn Term) 2014,
12.00.
This essay should demonstrate your ability to undertake original research through a combination of
reading, viewing and textual analysis. Please come and discuss ideas for your essay in plenty of
time before the deadline. Your project should enable you to demonstrate historical and/or
theoretical investigation, textual analysis and interrogation of scholarship in the field.
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, identified by your
student number, and submitted in duplicate.
WEEK ONE
Introductory Workshop Session, Thursday 2nd October, 2-4, A1.27
Screening: Gogglebox (Studio Lambert/All3Media/Channel 4, Channel 4, UK, 2013-)
What do we understand by the word 'television'? What does it bring to mind about programmes, aesthetics,
viewing practices, social relations and cultural value? We will watch an extended extract from the recent
Channel 4 programme Gogglebox during this first session, to see the kinds of ideas which might persist or
be in the process of being challenged, about television in the 21st century.
WEEK TWO
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SOAP OPERA AND TELEVISION STUDIES: FEMINISM IN THE ACADEMY
Screenings: Coronation Street (Granada, ITV, UK, 1960-), Dallas (Lorimar, USA, 1978-1991), Days of Our
Lives (NBC, USA, 1965-),
Further Viewing: Sex and the City (Darren Starr Productions/HBO, USA, 1998-2004).
Guiding Questions
How has soap opera been studied in the academy? How has it been conceptualised in terms of genre,
address and audience? The reading set this week will enable us to consider these questions. Is the study of
soap opera still relevant to the examination of the contemporary television landscape?
Reading
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Charlotte Brunsdon (1981) ‘Crossroads – notes on Soap Opera’, Screen 22, 4: 32--7, also collected
in her Screen Tastes.
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Tania Modleski (1979) ‘The search for tomorrow in today’s soap operas: notes on a feminine
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narrative form’, Film Quarterly 33, 1: 12-21; also collected in Brunsdon, D’Acci and Spigel, Feminist
Television Criticism.
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.
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
telenovelas. The further readings suggested 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
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Television Criticism, pp. 155—166.
Charlotte Brunsdon (2000) The Feminist, The Housewife and the Soap Opera, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
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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.
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Christine Geraghty (1991) ‘Utopian possibilities’, in Women and Soap Opera: A Study of Prime Time
Soaps, London: Polity Press, pp. 107-130.
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Christine Gledhill (1992) ‘Speculations on the relationship between soap opera and melodrama’,
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’.
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.
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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.
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. 56-64.
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Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel (1964) ‘Friends and neighbours’, in The Popular Arts, London:
Hutchinson Educational, pp. 225-268.
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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)
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)
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Feminist Television Criticism, pp. 235—246.
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.
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Tim O’Sullivan (1991) ‘Television memories and cultures of viewing 1950-1965’, in Corner (ed.)
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Popular Television in Britain, pp. 159—181.
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.
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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.
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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.
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Aluizio R. Trinto (1998) ‘News from home: a study of realism and melodrama in Brazilian
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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.
WEEK THREE
TELEVISION AND HIERARCHIES OF VALUE (I)
Screenings: Wife Swap
(Channel 4, UK, 2003-); The
Real Housewives of New York
City (Ricochet Television for
Bravo, US, 2008-)
Seminar: In this first of two weeks in which we will explore hierarchies of value in relation to television as
culture and programming, we begin by examining the debates around a television genre which has,
historically, occupied the lowest position in the televisual hierarchy: reality. We will consider the wider issues
around this positioning, including questions of address, aesthetics and the historical development of the
genre, as well as the specific intellectual debates around this genre concerning affect, intimacy, gender,
class and value. In the second week (Week 8), we examine the other end of the spectrum through the
example of 'cinematic' television.
Reading:
• Helen Piper (2004) 'Reality TV, Wife Swap and the drama of banality', Screen, 45, 4: 273-286.
• Beverley Skeggs and Helen Wood (2012) 'Introduction' and 'Chapter Five: Affect and Ambiguity, not.
Governance', in Reacting to Reality Television: Performance, Audience and Value, London: Routledge.
Further Reading:
Sara Ahmed (2014) [2004] The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Eva Illouz (2007) Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Owen Jones (2011) Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class, London: Verso.
Su Holmes and Deborah Jermyn (2004) Understanding Reality Television, London: Routledge.
Misha Kavka (2008) Reality Television, Affect and Intimacy: Reality Matters, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Helen Wood and Beverley Skeggs (eds) (2011) Reality TV and Class, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
WEEK FOUR
Television and Region: The Case of
Cornwall
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Screenings: Extracts from: 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).
Seminar: In Weeks Four and Seven of the module, we will be thinking about the codes and conventions
used by television to represent regional spaces. We will consider the role of genre in constructing place on
television, as well as questions of aesthetics. I am currently writing a book about the representation of
Cornwall in film and television, but also paying attention to the representation of this place in the arts and
popular ephemera, too. I am trying to think about the ways in which landscape and place are used to make
meaning in film and television, and, while there is a growing body of work on landscape and setting in film,
there is little work, as yet, on landscape and meaning in television, outside of documentary and factual
programming. For this reason, I have planned this week as a case study on Cornwall, and in Week Seven,
you will give short presentations on the representation of your own region. See below for more details.
Reading
• Helen Wheatley (2011) ‘Beautiful Images in Spectacular Clarity: Spectacular Television, Landscape
Programming and the Question of (Tele)visual Pleasure,’ Screen 52, 2: 233-248.
Research Task
• Explore the responses to the BBC's 2014 adaptation of Daphne DuMaurier's Jamaica Inn using library and
online resources in advance of the seminar, and be prepared to comment on your findings in class. You
might also investigate previous adaptations and responses.
Further Reading
• Bernard Deacon (2004) ‘Under Construction: Cultural and Regional Formation in South-West 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.
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Philip Payton (2004) Cornwall: A History, Fowey: Cornwall Editions Ltd.
Duncan Petrie (2000) Screening Scotland, London: BFI.
Russell, Dave. 2004. Looking North: Northern England and the National Imagination. Manchester:
Manchester University Press.
• Ella Westland (ed.) (1997) Cornwall: The Cultural Construction of Place, The Patten Press: Penzance.
WEEK FIVE
GUEST LECTURE: DR LAUREN THOMPSON
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British Television and Public Service
Broadcasting: Doctor Who
Screening: episodes of Doctor Who (BBC, UK, 1963 – 1989; 2005 – present). We will look at episodes of
the show from the first series (1963-64), the 10th series (1972-73) and from the recent reboot (2005 present).
In this session, we will look at how conceptions and definitions of Public Service Broadcasting have changed
over time. This is another way of thinking about the ‘value’ of television, and so will link to the work you do in
weeks 4 and 8.We will develop our understanding of what might constitute Public Service Broadcasting
beyond the oft quoted principles of ‘inform, educate and entertain’.
Doctor Who is a useful case study here, being a long-running BBC show that has been produced and
broadcast in all but one of the last six decades. Its explicit address to a family audience means that it has
often been at the centre of debates about the relationship between entertainment and education.
We will also look at how Doctor Who’s links to CBC, BBC America and BBC Worldwide might affect its
production and reception as an example of ‘British’ public service broadcasting. What does PSB mean in an
era of global television?
To illuminate our discussions of the public service qualities of Doctor Who, we will look at the BBC’s charter
from various points in the institution’s history. You can prepare for this week by looking at journalism related
to the debates around the license fee and the idea of television’s “dumbing down”.
Reading:
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Bignell, Jonathan. ‘Space for “Quality”: Negotiating with the Daleks’. In Bignell, Jonathan and Lacey,
Stephen (eds), Popular Television Drama: Critical Perspectives, Manchester University Press,
2005: 76-92.
Plus at least one of these online pieces:
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Steward, Tom ‘Time Monsters and Space Museums’ in Critical Studies in Television Blog [online],
25 November 2013, available at http://cstonline.tv/time-monsters-and-space-museums
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Higgins, Charlotte. ‘The future of the BBC: you either believe in it or you don't’. in The Guardian
[online], 20 August 2014, available at http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/aug/20/-sp-bbcreport-future-charter-renewal
Further Reading:
• Bignell, Jonathan An Introduction to Television Studies (3rd edition), 19-27
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Branston, Gill. ‘Histories of British Television’ in Geraghty, Christine and Lusted, David (eds.). The
Television Studies Book. 51-62.
Corner, John. Critical Ideas in Television Studies. 12-23
Evans, Elizabeth Transmedia Television. 19-39
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Hills, Matt. ‘The Year of the Doctor: Celebrating the 50th, Regenerating Public Value’, Science
Fiction Film and Television, 7.2, 2014: 159–78
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Hills, Matt. Triumph of a Time Lord: Regenerating Doctor Who in the Twenty-first Century, I.B.
Tauris, 2010.
Johnson, Catherine. Branding Television. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. 2012: 84-111 and 143-166.
Petley, Julian. “Public Service Broadcasting in the UK” in Gomery, Douglas and Hockley, Luke
(eds.). Television Industries. London: BFI, 2006: 42-45.
MacCabe, Colin and Olivia Stewart (eds) The BBC and public service broadcasting. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1986.
McDonnell, James. Public Service Broadcasting: A Reader. London; New York: Routledge, 1991.
Scannell, Paddy. “Public Service Broadcasting: The History of a Concept” in Goodwin, Andrew and
Whannel, Garry (eds.). Understanding Television. London: Routledge, 1990: 11-29.
Shimpach, Shaun Television in Transition: The Life and Afterlife of the Narrative Action Hero, 2010:
152-178 This piece sits particularly well with the Bignell reading and is an interesting look at
the issues surrounding the 2005 re-boot.
Tracey, Michael. The Decline and Fall of Public Service Broadcasting. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998.
WEEK SIX - READING WEEK
WEEK SEVEN
This week will be devoted to student presentations on television and region. Drawing on our work on
Cornwall in Week Four, everyone will prepare a 15 minute presentation on the question of television's
representation of region, to accompany a screening of a programme or an extract of their choice (up to 15
minutes in length, possibly longer dependent upon numbers). It would be wonderful if everyone could choose
a region with which they are familiar - perhaps their 'home' region - to present to the group. The programme
or extract can be from any genre, but you should explain both how you are defining genre and your choice of
screening. You will briefly introduce the screening and suggest some focus questions, and then give your
short presentation, which should aim to provoke discussion. I would like you to focus on the television image,
though you can make reference to other media where it is significant. You may show brief clips and images
within your fifteen minutes slot. We will establish your chosen 'region' and discuss the presentation further in
the seminar for Week Four, and if there are shared places you could work in a pair or small group. I imagine
that this small research task, which should not be especially burdensome might, for some of you, form the
basis of your assessed essay for this module.
WEEK EIGHT
TELEVISION AND HIERARCHIES OF VALUE (II)
Screening: Les revenants (The Returned) (Haut et Court
TV/Canal+, France, 2012)
Most discussion of television drama has focused on authored, 'quality' UK and US drama, as the suggested
reading below demonstrates. Recently, drama from other European countries has gained a presence in the
British television schedules, in particular, Danish and other drama of Scandinavian origin, around which a
field is beginning to develop (see essays in Journal of Popular Television 1, 2: September 2013). I have
chosen what I think is an interesting recent French drama shown on Channel 4 in the UK, which is still in
production, to offer us a case study outside of the existing paradigms in Anglo-American television
scholarship.
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Reading
• Jason Jacobs and Stephen Peacock (eds) (2013) Television Aesthetics and Style London: Bloomsbury,
Part One: Conceptual Issues (Essays by Sarah Cardwell, Deborah. L. Jaramillo, Jason Mittell and Brett
Mills on the problematic of 'cinematic television'.
Further Reading
• Glen Creeber (2001) ' "Taking our personal lives seriously": intimacy, continuity and memory in the
television serial drama', Media, Culture and Society 23, 4: 439-455 (important argument, discusses
German television serial Heimat).
• --- (2004) Serial Television: Big Drama on the Small Screen, London: BFI.
• Christine Geraghty (2003) 'Aesthetics and quality in popular television drama', International Journal of
Cultural Studies 6, 1: 25-45 (online)
• Jason Jacobs (2001) 'Issues of judgment and value in television studies', International Journal of Cultural
Studies 4, 4: 427-447 (online)
• Jason Jacobs and Stephen Peacock (eds) Television Aesthetics and Style, London: Bloomsbury.
• Mark Jancovich and James Lyons (eds) Quality Popular Television: Cult TV, The Industry and its Fans,
London: BFI.
• Lorna Jowett and Stacey Abbott (2013) TV Horror: Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen,
London: I.B.Tauris.
• Janet McCabe and Kim Akass (eds) (2007) Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond,
London: I.B. Tauris.
• Helen Wheatley (2006) Gothic Television, Manchester: Manchester University Press, especially the
Introduction.
WEEK NINE
The Television Western
Screenings: Rawhide (CBS, US, 1959-1965); Deadwood (HBO, US, 2004-2006); Justified (FX, 2010-)
There is an enormous literature on the film Western, around which much of the discussion about genre in
Film Studies has taken place (and which you might wish to explore, if you are not familiar with it, along with
viewing some classic film westerns). While the television Western has a long history, and has recently
enjoyed a resurgence with series such as Deadwood and Justified, it has received very little academic
attention, outside of the expected work within the framework of 'Quality US TV' (see Lavery, below). I would
like us to think about how we might approach the study of the television Western, asking questions, for
example, about representations of region and landscape, about gender and the discursive context for
production of the more recent instances.
Reading
• Martin Pumphrey (1989) 'Why do cowboys wear hats in the bath? Style politics for the older man', Critical
Quarterly 31, 3: 78-100 (online).
• William Rothman (2013) 'Justifying Justified', in Jacobs and Peacock (eds) Television Aesthetics and Style,
London: Bloomsbury.
Further Reading
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• William Boddy (1998) ' "Sixty million viewers can't be wrong": the rise and fall of the television Western', in
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Edward Buscombe and Roberta Pearson (eds) Back in the Saddle Again: New Essays on the Western,
London: BFI, 119-140. There is also a great essay on Western costume in this collection by Gaines
and Herzog.
Laura Crossley (2014) 'Gangstagrass: Hybridity and popular culture in Justified', Journal of Popular
Television 2, 1: 57-75.
Jason Jacobs (2012) Deadwood, New York: Palgrave for BFI.
David Lavery (2006) Reading Deadwood: A Western to Swear By, London: I. B. Tauris.
Jennifer L. McMahon and B. Steve Csaki (eds) The Philosophy of the Western, Lexington: The University
Press of Kentucky.
Stephen McVeigh (2007) The American Western, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Lee Clark Mitchell (1996) Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Peter. C. Rollins and John E. O'Connor (2005) Hollywood's West: The American Frontier in Film,
Television and History, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.
Jon Tuska (1985) The American West in Film: Critical Approaches to the Western, London: Greenwood.
Will Wright (1975) Six Guns and Society: A Structural Study of the Western, Berkeley, London: University
of California Press.
WEEK TEN
Television in the Digital Age: Genre,
Platform and Aesthetics
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
This session has been he signed to work in parallel to the final session of the core module for those who
have followed it. Those who have not will not be disadvantaged, however. 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 even on the production
of 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
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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 bingeable 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/the-persistence-oftelevision/ 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.
• Research Task: I would like you to look for references to 'binge-viewing' online and in the popular press.
How does the discourse and rhetoric around this new form of television consumption compare to popular
discourse around television at earlier moments in its history, or in other national contexts? Please be
prepared to feed your results into our workshop.
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.
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.
We will also conduct a module review in this final week of term.
Rachel Moseley and Lauren Thompson, September 2014.