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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 Charlotte Stevens
AUTUMN TERM 2015
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 build on the television work you did on Visual
Cultures in Year One. It will: develop your skills in the critical textual analysis of television
texts, and 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
term of the module will be taught by Dr Charlotte Stevens and the module outline will be
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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 are
included below. 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.
CONTENT
In the Autumn Term we will be focusing mainly on the issues of genre, address, aesthetics
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 (television drama) are well-established areas of interest within Television
Studies; some (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 am or am
intending 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, but you should plan to be in class until 4.00 every Friday.
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 (as, for example, in Week Three), 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.
Lecture 9.00-10.00; First Screening 10.15-12.00; Lunch Break 12.00-1.00; Second
Screening 1.00-2.30; Seminar 2.40-4.00.
SEMINARS
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
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:
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http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/search/extracts/fi/fi205
Many journals and books are available online. 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.
Glen Creeber (2015) The Television Genre Book, London: BFI; 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; Amanda D. Lotz (2014) The Television Will Be
Revolutionized, New York: New York University Press; 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 5, 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 (30% each, I submitted in each of Autumn and Summer terms)
Unseen examination: 2 questions, 2 hours (40%, Summer term)
Year 3
1 x 1000 formative textual analysis essay, Week 5 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 11th December (Week 10, Autumn Term)
Second 3,000 word essay: Tuesday 3rd May (Week 2, Summer Term)
Year 3 students
Formative 1000 word textual analysis: Monday 2nd November (Week Five, Autumn Term)
First 5,000 word essay: Friday 11th December (Week 10, Autumn Term)
First or second 5,000 word essay: Tuesday 3rd May (Week 2, Summer 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 2nd November (Week 5, 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 11th December (Week 10, Autumn Term 2014) to Adam Gallimore
in the departmental office.] This essay is an exercise in combining historical 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 3 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 (Gender and Generation)
Screenings: Top Gear, Inside Amy Schumer
Week Two: Histories and Economies of British Television
Screenings: The Bandung File, The Blue Planet, Jamie's Sugar Rush
Week Three: British Television Historiography - practical exercise, no screenings this week
Week Four: Music Television
Screenings: A selection of music programmes including Oh Boy!, Ready Steady Go!, The
Old Grey Whistle Test, The Tube, Later with Jools Holland
Week Five: Children’s Television I: Early Stop-Frame Animation
Screenings: A selection of children’s television programming from the 1960s and 1970s
Week Six: Reading Week
Week Seven: Children's Television II: CBeebies
Screenings: Me Too!, Rastamouse, Something Special, Katie Morag, The Bedtime Hour
Week Eight: Teen Television
Screenings: Could include: My So-Called Life, The OC, Glee, Going Out, Hollyoaks, Skins,
My Mad Fat Diary
Week Nine: Television and Region: The Case of Cornwall
Screenings: Extracts from Doc Martin, Jamaica Inn, 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, Outlander
DETAILED READING AND VIEWING PROGRAMME
WEEK ONE
Television Address
Gender and Generation
Screenings: Top Gear (BBC, UK, 2002-); Inside Amy
Schumer (Comedy Central, US, 2013-)
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Further Viewing
Where are/what is ‘television for men’?
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, 1986-1994)
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-); Sex and the City (Darren Starr Productions/HBO, USA, 1998-2004); Catastrophe
(Channel 4, 2015)
SEMINAR
What are the different ways in which television addresses its audience, outside of its 'national'
address? Who do particular programmes assume they are speaking to, and how can we tell
this? ‘Television for women’ and ‘children’ are assumed and accepted categories. What about
‘television for men'? Does television address its viewers in generational terms? Does this
happen via genre, channel, interstitial and para-textual material? To what extent does
performance play a part in television address? I would like us to tease apart some of the
preconceptions and judgements commonly held and made about television address, thinking
about questions of gender and generation to build upon the work you did on nation and
address on Visual Cultures. 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
•
Charlotte Brunsdon (1981) ‘Crossroads – notes on Soap Opera’, Screen 22, 4: 32--7,
also collected in her Screen Tastes.
•
Rosalind Gill (2007) ‘Postfeminist media culture: elements of a sensibility’, European
Journal of Cultural Studies 10, 2: 147-166. If you are interested in the politics of
the contemporary mediascape, you will find this interesting…
If at all possible, please also read:
• 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.
• 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 Postfeminism and Television
•
•
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).
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•
Christine Gledhill (1988) ‘Pleasurable negotiations’, in E. Deirdre Pribram (ed.)
Female Spectators, London: Verso, pp. 64-89.
•
Rachel Moseley and Jacinda Read (2002) ‘“Having it Ally”: Popular Television (Post)Feminism’, Feminist Media Studies 2, 2: 231-249.
•
•
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.
•
•
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.
•
•
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
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.
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Histories and Economies of
British Television: BBC and
Channel 4
WEEK TWO
Screenings: The Bandung File (Channel 4, UK, 1985); The Blue Planet (BBC, UK, 2001);
Jamie's Sugar Rush (Channel 4, UK, 2015)
Seminar: How has British television been constituted as a Public Service Broadcasting
system? What has this meant in the past? What does/will this mean in the
contemporary/future digital context, in terms both of access, aesthetics, genre and
scheduling? Please do some online research (including, but not limited, to www.gov.uk) to
see how the current BBC Charter Review has been presented and debated in recent months,
and be prepared to feed back in the seminar on what are perceived as the challenges facing
public service broadcasting in Britain, and use the OfCom website to look at the longer history
of this debate.
Reading
• Helen Wheatley (2004) 'The limits of television? Natural history programming and the
transformation of public service broadcasting', European Journal of Cultural Studies 7, 3:
325-339.
• Born, Georgina (2003) 'Strategy, positioning and projection in digital television: Channel
Four and the commercialization of public service broadcasting in the UK', Media, Culture &
Society, 25, 6: 774-799.
Further Reading
• Maggie Brown (2007) A Licence to be Different: The Story of Channel 4, London: BFI.
• Enli, G. S. (2008) 'Redefining public service broadcasting multi-platform participation',
Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 14, 1:
105-120.
• Dorothy Hobson (2008) Channel 4: The Early Years and the Jeremy Isaacs Legacy,
London: I.B. Tauris.
• Catherine Johnson (2012) Branding Television, New York: Routledge.
WEEK THREE
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 3. 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 share the results of the library exercise.
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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 discussion and presentation of research results
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.
•
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
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•
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 FOUR
Popular Music on Television
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.
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.
13
•
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 FIVE
Children’s Television I: Early Stop-Frame
Animation
Screenings: Ivor the Engine
(Smallfilms, ITV, BBC 1959);
The Pingwings (Smallfilms,
ITV, UK, 1961); Camberwick
Green (Gordon Murray Puppets, BBC, 1965); Pogles' Wood (Smallfilms, BBC, UK, 1966);
Trumpton (Gordon Murray Puppets, BBC, UK, 1967); Clangers (Smallfilms, BBC, UK, 1969);
The Herbs (FilmFair, BBC, UK, 1968); Bagpuss (Smallfilms, BBC, UK, 1974). As these
programmes are typically very short, we may watch more than one example of each, more
than once.
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, commensurability
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.
• Roni Natov (2003) 'Introduction', The Poetics of Childhood, New York: Routledge, pp.
1-8.
Further Reading
• Helen Bromley (2002) 'Pandora's Box or the box of delights? Children's television and the
power of story', in David Buckingham (ed.) Small Screens: Television for Children, London:
Leicester University Press.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
14
• D. Wiedermann and F. Tennert (2004) ‘Children’s television in the GDR’, Historical Journal
of Film, Radio and Television 24, 3: 427-440.
WEEK SIX: READING WEEK – SEE BELOW, WEEK EIGHT, FOR
SUGGESTIONS
WEEK SEVEN
Children’s Television II: CBeebies
Screenings: We will watch some 'flow' from CBeebies at different times of the day. 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
•
Amy Holdsworth (2015) 'Something Special: care, pre-school television and the
dis/abled child', The Journal of Popular Television, 3,2: 163-178.
•
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. This piece
comes out of a funded research project on children's television production
cultures.
Further Reading
David Buckingham (1996) Moving Images; Understanding Children’s Emotional Responses to
Television, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
David Buckingham (2000) After the Death of Childhood: Growing Up in the Age of Electronic
Media, Cambridge: Polity Press.
David Buckingham (2011) The Material Child: Growing Up in Consumer Culture, Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Henry Jenkins (1998) The Children’s Culture Reader, New York: New York University Press.
Erin L. Ryan (2010) ‘Dora the Explorer: Empowering Preschoolers, Girls and Latinas’, Journal
of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 54, 1: 54-68.
Jeanette Steemers (2010) Creating Preschool Television: A Story of Commerce, Creativity
and Curriculum, Basingstoke: palgrave Macmillan.
15
WEEK EIGHT
Teen Television
Screenings: We will watch the 'originating' programmes Going Out (Phil Redmond, Southern
Television, UK, 1980) and My So-Called Life (ABC/Bedford Falls, US, 1994-1995); together,
we will decide on a selection from: Hollyoaks (Phil Redmond, Mersey Television for Channel
4, UK, 1994-); The O.C. (Josh Schwarz, WB/Wonderland/College Hill, for Fox, US, 2003 -);
Skins (Company Pictures/Stormdog Films for E4, UK, 2007-), Glee (Brad Falchuck TeleyVision/Ryan Murphy Productions/20th Century Fox Television, US, 2009-); My Mad Fat Diary
(Tiger Aspect Productions for C4, UK, 2013-). You might have other suggestions, too.
Further Viewing
US: 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).
UK: 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
Gorgeous (Hat Trick North Productions for BBC 3, 2006); The Inbetweeners (Bwark
Productions for E4, 2008).
SEMINAR
• Did you watch any of these programmes as a young teenager (or before?) Which
other teen shows did you watch?
• Where is British teen television located, generically, in terms of schedule and
channel?
• What do you see as the key contemporary US teen shows? How do they relate,
generically, to those that have come before?
16
•
What connections and differentiation do you see between UK and US iterations of the
genre?
•
We will discuss Adorno’s essay on genre in relation to the development of the 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.
• 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.
• 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.
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
• 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.
• Glyn Davis and Kay Dickinson (2004) Teen TV: Genre, Consumption and Identity, London:
BFI.
• Jeffrey P. Dennis (2006) Queering Teen Culture: All-American Boys and Same-Sex desire
in Film and Television, New York: Harrington Park Press.
• Frederik Dhaenens (2013) 'Teenage queerness: negotiating teenage
heteronormativity in the representation of gay teenagers in Glee', Journal of Youth Studies
16, 3: 304-317
• Richard Dyer (1981) 'Entertainment and utopia', in Rick Altman (ed.) Genre: The Musical,
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 175-189. This piece is very helpful in thinking
about Glee. You may have encountered this canonical piece of writing before; if so,
please refresh your memory of it before the seminar.
• 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.
• Karen Lury (2001) British Youth Television: Cynicism and Enchantment, Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Sharon Marie Ross and Louisa Ellen Stein (eds) (2008) Teen Television: Essays on
Programming and Fandom, Jefferson: McFarland.
• 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.
17
• 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.
• 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.
•
• 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 So-Called
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 ScienceFiction 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.
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: 711-734 (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 NINE
18
Television and Region: The Case of
Cornwall
Screenings: Extracts from Poldark (BBC, UK, 1975-6; 1977-8; 2015); Wild West (BBC, UK,
2002); Doc Martin (ITV, 2004-); Cornwall with Caroline Quentin (ITV, UK, 2012-13), Jamaica
Inn (BBC, UK, 2014).
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.
19
• 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
Screenings Orange is the New Black (Tilted Productions/Lionsgate Television for Netflix, US,
2013-); Prison Break (20th Century Fox Television, US, 2005-9); Outlander (Starz/Amazon
Prime Instant Video, US, 2014-).
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 one
of my own 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.
20
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.
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, September 2015