'...what can one do, if the only straightforward task of every intelligent man is pointless chattering, the deliberate pouring out of emptiness.'
Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
So, after the first day of being sick, where I wasn't really able to focus my eyes on anything much beyond the inside of my eyelids, I decided to watch discs 2 and 3 of 30 Rock Season One that I had on loan from BigPond.
Between erratic television scheduling and cracked discs, I've had a bit of difficulty watching 30 Rock in any kind of sustained way over its four seasons, and if that hasn't been enough for me to just give in and buy it, then it's finally been due to the program itself, or at least from what I've managed to watch of it this weekend, that henceforth I will be on the look out to buy 30 Rock, preferably on sale.
I haven't mentioned it here before, but this semester I'm convening a subject in a television degree, and there are so many moments in 30 Rock that just speak to the massive changes that television as a medium has undergone in the past decade or so that I think it would be remiss of me, as a television scholar, not to own it.
Just off the top of my head:
Jack Donaghy is the Head of West Coast Television and Microwave Programming for GE .
Liz Lemon explains to a colleague of TGS with Tracy Jordan that 'This is not HBO, it's TV'.
In one episode a webisode is featured. It consists of a character's entrance to a room and two spoken lines before the credits--longer than the webisode--roll.
There, in three brief instances, you have commentary on the industrial context of contemporary television, as well as aesthetic and technological developments. Brilliant.
Finally, I can't overlook the irony of my desire to buy 30 Rock on DVD.
The DVD has contributed to changes in television that have brought about this current crop of extraordinary television narratives; it's encouraged the production of texts that can bear repeat viewing.
So, that's why I'll buy the DVDs of this TV show, because I don't want to miss a single self-referential moment of this television sit-com about the production of a live television variety show. And then I'll want to watch every moment again.
I was just catching up on last night's episode of Collectors when I was reminded, during a segment by Adrian Franklin on a glass exhibition in Tasmania, about a banner I had seen advertising another glass exhibition not far from me. As Franklin pointed out, there's a whole lot to love about glass as an art form, so I decided to take a bus trip up to Mount Coot-tha, which is where the exhibition, by the Creative Glass Guild, was being held.
The work was varied, ranging from that by people who had done their first classes in lead lighting and mosaics, to more obviously advanced practitioners. Most of the work was decorative rather than artistic--if I can make that distinction--which reflected the hobbyist focus of the Guild.
I thought that these pieces would be right at home in a tea or coffee shop:
While this one would be perfect for a music room:
As I left the exhibition, I paused on the way to the bus stop to take some photos of a sculpture that I've long admired from the bus window.
The sculpture sits in front of the Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium and the (temporary) plaque says it's a depiction of 'Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the Russian Father of Cosmonautics'.
After doing the barest minimum of research, looking at a few images on Wikipedia and elsewhere, I've concluded that this is a portrait of Tsiolkovsky as a young man.
This is not the 'conquerer of space' that characterises the monuments pictured on Tsiolkovsky's Wikipedia entry, where he resembles a kind of latter day Zeus, with flowing hair and beard, along with accompanying robes.
No. Here, Tsiolkovsky does not look into the distance, a master of all the space he can survey; instead he looks up, humbled by the vastness of the cosmos. His clothes and his body language are contained and endearing: his hands find sanctuary in his pockets, while his feet with their slightly too large boots stretch out before him, his thighs primly clenched.
I like the dreamer Tsiolkovsky is in this sculpture, wondering to the universe what it would be like to travel through space in a rocket of his invention.
n.b. There was no indication who the artist was on any signage around the sculpture. I suppose that information might be on the permanent plaque whenever it's mounted.
I've just finished reading Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. I don't know if I've mentioned before that I'm not especially into fantasy as a novel genre, so this is the first of his work that I've read.
I do know a few people who like Neil Gaiman, so I had heard of him before in a favourable way. It's because of these recommendations that I was glad of the opportunity to read his work when it was proposed by one of the people in the book club; I probably wouldn't have sought it out otherwise.
Anyway, I'm not really going to say much about it here except that I liked it. I'll save my discussion for book club or in the comments below (especially if you have some insights that I can use at the book club).
I really just wanted to link to the television adaptation of Neverwhere that someone has stuck up on YouTube. I've just watched the first installment and again I'm reminded that while I'm not especially keen on fantasy in novel form, I rather like it on television.
I suppose this means that, for me, fantasy is more suited to the televisual form. It must be all those special fx that I like.
What an excellent conference! I'm not sure if I'm channeling novelty factor with this statement, since it's been a long time between conference drinks for me... But, no! I will be assertive: this conference rocked. Sam puts it down to the fact that the Ladeez organised the conference and points particularly to Sue Turnbull who sat in each session generously chortling away (amidst the pain of being mid-ginormous-tattoo application) and offering interesting questions and comments. There is much merit to this argument, there was a spirit of generosity in the air and not more than a little bit of fizzy excitement about being TV nerds together.
If one was inclined to make comparisons, one might say it was a small conference, but from my perspective it made the whole experience far more manageable than the onslaught of people and sessions of much larger conferences I've attended. I think that you could have spoken to everyone in attendance at Television and the National if you put your mind to it and weren't too shy in the face of the rather star heavy composition of the delegates (I wonder what it would be like to be au fait with people quoting you while you sat in the audience?).
The other factor worth mentioning is that the conference had a variety of textures. It wasn't simply one paper after another. It began with a day on comedy, which feeds into the ARC funded work being undertaken by Sue Turnbull and Felicity Collins into the history and role of Australian screen comedy. There were key note speeches, a special guest presentation, a book launch, and plenary sessions that brought all of the delegates together, as well as a number of parallel sessions to round out the three day event.
On the first day I was particularly taken with Sue Turnbull's paper: 'It's like they threw a panther in the air and caught it in embroidery': Australian Television Comedy in Translation. The quote in the title is from Kath & Kim and so Turnbull gave an insightful analysis of the failure of the US version of Kath & Kim. She noted that it wasn't inevitable that the adaptation failed in view of the successful adaptation of The Office by the same creative team. Much of the problem with the US Kath & Kim derives from the bodies of the various performers: Selma Blair just can't push her flat stomach out enough to come anywhere near Gina Riley's embodiment of Kim. As well, much of the joke in the Australian Kath & Kim is down to the fact that this mother and daughter duo are played by women who are around the same age. Someone noted in question time that Australian television comedy draws much more from a theatrical/vaudeville tradition than US television comedy. When thinking about Kath & Kim that argument made sense to me. I also have a theory about the success of the US version of The Office, which wasn't successful straight away. I think, perhaps, that the US version built in popularity because Steve Carrell also appeared in a number of successful film comedies that almost certainly sparked more interest in him: Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and, especially, The 40 year Old Virgin.
Brett Mills presented the first key note of the conference: Comedy/Nation: Which Came First? It focussed on British self-understandings of themselves as funny and sought to interrogate that in view of the quite exclusive set of programs that are deemed British both in the UK and abroad. We were all in fits of laughter as Mills showed excerpts from Welsh comedies that weren't incorporated into the 'British'. Alas the programmes aren't even on YouTube, because you know I would have embedded a bit of Boyd Clack if I could.
The last session on the first day was a bit exciting for me as Robyn Butler of The Librarians gave a presentation and took questions. It wasn't so much her work with The Librarians that interested me so much as the excerpt she showed us from Very Small Business which she also co-wrote and starred in. It was a scene where Don Angel was in a therapy session with a psychologist. I got to ask about the creative reasoning for including the therapy sessions. She really gave me the best answer I could have hoped for: so detailed and thoughtful.
Before getting into the conference proper, I feel the need to talk a bit about what was going on in Brisbane last week too. Then I'll finish off with some things I did in Melbourne, which are not about the conference.
I left for Melbourne last Tuesday morning the 18th of November. Leaving on Tuesday meant that I could go and see Laura's paper which she delivered on Monday evening: 'Warming the imagination with scenes of the past': Time Travel romances about Jane Austen.
It's always a thrill to see someone you know from outside of academe talking about the research they do within academe. You get to see them in full, passionate scholar mode talking about something they really know and care about. I am not especially knowledgeable about the works of Jane Austen, I could only marvel at Laura's command of a whole range of literature, to which she casually referred throughout her presentation. Where I could get some purchase, if you will, was in her discussion of all the time travel fan-fiction that has proliferated around Austen and her works. I enjoyed Laura's identification of this sub-genre of Austen-derived fiction and I appreciated that while some of the novels she discussed are obviously fairly untenable, she takes seriously the phenomenon--and those who participate in it--as an expression of a broader cultural moment.
While I went off to Melbourne, I hoped that Laura would enjoy her first visit to Brisbane. At the beginning of her paper she had mentioned being attacked by a goose at the St Lucia campus of UQ (perhaps it was this one), but who was to know that would be the least of her worries as storms hit Brisbane causing widespread flooding and destruction? On the Sunday before I left for Melbourne a storm had ripped through the suburbs uncomfortably close to me:
On the Friday morning I was away, I was listening to news that reported the suburb I lived in was under water. I got a bit worried, especially when I heard about Ithaca Creek spilling its banks and cars floating down the streets:
I made a call to the property manager and left a message asking for reassurance that I still had a home, but then I had to take a deep breath, accept I could do nothing, and go and give my paper.
Thankfully, miraculously, the only evidence of the storm I could see around my home when I returned was a tree branch on the ground and some mud where the water had flowed through underneath the house. Everything inside was warm and dry.
The view from the bridge I walk across on a daily basis to catch the bus and go shopping tells a more dramatic story:
My street is just on the other side of the right bank there, so you can see why I was worried from afar given the water seems to have come up over the ravine.
In addition to missing bad tv lately, I've been continuing with my personal television history project where I'm catching up on the television canon as it has been ascribed by television critics and scholars.
In this vein, I've just finished watching both seasons of Lars von Trier's Riget (The Kingdom) a Danish television series from 1994 and 1997. While I have come across a scholarly article about this series, my desire to watch it in full was first sparked when I watched it intermittently at the time it originally screened on SBS. I recall being utterly fascinated by the idea of a kind of horror series where the doctors were evil. (I have since made choices at the Brisbane Film Festival based entirely upon my fascination with Riget). I also recall being somewhat confused about what was going on in Riget--a fact I would like to attribute to the late hour at which it screened.
I experienced a second wave of yearning to watch Riget after seeing Stephen King's much maligned adaptation of the series, Kingdom Hospital. (I actually went out and bought this after the frustration of yet another occasion of haphazard and late night scheduling by Channel Nine).
I liked Kingdom Hospital--quite a lot if you must know. I had no problem with King incorporating his hit-and-run accident into the story. Outside of Barthes-inflected scholarship I would argue that most people search relentlessly, ridiculously, for clues of the author in cultural artefacts. On the one hand I think, why complain when the author appeases such demands, on the other, the addition of this character lends a cohesiveness to the narrative which is completely missing from Riget (Terry Sawyer, in the review I linked to above, obviously didn't watch von Trier's production. Urgh! There's so much to take issue with in that review I don't know where to begin except to say that it's pretty nasty and ignorant).
Plus, I can't complain too much about anything starring Andrew McCarthy.
Anyway, back to Riget. Mostly I just wanted to show you the film clip of the theme song performed by The Shiver which was an extra on the DVD. I felt sure it would be on YouTube and so it was:
'Kingdom', The Shiver
Then I saw how many other clips of scenes I'd particularly enjoyed were also on YouTube.
This is the opening sequence, before the titles, of Riget. It doesn't have subtitles, but I love the atmosphere. You can get a sense of that without knowing the narration, but fyi it basically recounts how the land on which the hospital was built was first occupied by bleachers. The great swathes of hot cloth they handled created a permanent mist. But then the medical profession came along and superstition was repressed. Now the doctors are getting so arrogant, too arrogant, that the walls of the hospital are giving way to all that lies beneath.
The Bleachers
The charge of complacency is leveled at the medical profession throughout Riget (and The Kingdom). Watching Riget, I was reminded of a film by Aleksandr Sokurov, Moloch, which offered a portrait of Hitler as complacent, immature, mercurial, and willfully ignorant of the consequences of his actions. Von Trier presents a similiar portrait of consultant neurosurgeon Helmer and the hospital administration.
The Lodge
Operation Morning Breeze
Danish Scum!
Amidst all of this criticism of the medical profession are of course the spirits that are returning in protest:
Drusse and Bulder
I think the first series of Riget was far better than the second. There was a third series written, but never filmed, since up to 5 of the actors died before it could be made--if it was ever to be made. I wonder if much in the second series relied upon the production of a third series in order to be resolved. There was so much left unanswered, especially about the fate of Hook whom Helmer had turned into a zombie.
Oh well. Riget is definitely worth seeing, if only to glimpse the strangeness of Lars von Trier's imagination. I'll give the last word to the man himself:
These past two weeks, I've been reminded as to why I try to avoid getting too attached to any programme that screens on Channel Nine.
I started watching Fringe, an X-Files-esque show--in the sense that it involves the investigation of unexplained or fringe phenomena--but it disappeared off the schedule and I have no idea where it went. It wasn't especially riveting television, but given that it was science fiction, that it starred Joshua Jackson (Dawson's Creek) and Lance Reddick (The Wire), and that JJ Abrams (Alias, Lost) was one of its creators, I was willing to give it more than a chance to grow on me.
There was something vaguely interesting emerging around the fate of John Scott (Mark Valley, Boston Legal), who we thought died in the first episode but, as we learned in the second, was still alive on some kind of life-support at the behest of an Evil Corporation. As well, Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble) was of some tangential interest to my thesis; he had been in a mental institution for years, before he was released into the care of his son, Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson), to offer his insights into the various strange phenomena under investigation by FBI Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv).
While I concede that the word on the IMDb message boards was that Fringe was not so great (although this is contrary to its critical reception summarised at Wikipedia), this still doesn't mitigate my ongoing annoyance at Channel Nine for pulling programmes without sufficient warning or explanation. I would have continued to watch Fringe in the original time slot, but I really can't be bothered to guess where else it might appear in the schedule, if anywhere.
The problem of Channel Nine's mercurial programming practices saw me missing another new show that I've been giving some time to lately: The Mentalist starring Simon Baker (The Guardian). While Channel Nine did broadcast a number of announcements before they shifted this programme from one night to another, I still managed to miss this week's episode because the TV guide that I consult was printed and distributed before the station made its changes.
The thing is, that while I started watching The Mentalist because of Simon Baker, who really is a very fine actor and who I enjoyed so much in The Guardian--
--the character he plays in The Mentalist, Patrick Jane, is not nearly so interesting.
The Mentalist is in the mould of recent dramas that feature a central male investigator who is maverick and in possession of a singular talent. This character type is usually extremely cocky about his talent, but he is afforded emotional depth by way of a personal tragedy in his past. In The Mentalist, Jane consults for law enforcement in California using acute observational abilities that were honed in a former life where he masqueraded as a television psychic. His wife and child were murdered by a killer who took offence at some comments he made in a television interview.
Other recent programmes in this vein include Life and Burn Notice. In Life the lead character was working as a police detective when he was framed by his partner and wrongfully imprisoned. He has since been vindicated and returned to work for the police, his life made comfortable by the multi-million dollar compensation payout he received in a law suit against the state. While he was in prison he got religion, but Zen Buddhism rather than any denomination of Christianity.
Burn Notice follows a similar trajectory: the central character is an intelligence officer disavowed by the US government; out of a job he applies his talents as an investigator to help others in trouble, all the while seeking to reinstate his good name by finding and punishing those who have worked against him.
I think much of the problem with these shows is that the attempt to invoke an emotional response from the audience for the central characters is done in such a paint-by-numbers fashion. On the one hand the character embodies wise-cracking, laddish masculinity--perhaps to appeal to the male audience--and on the other he is also drawn to have elements of the SNAG or 'new' masculinity--perhaps to appeal to the female audience. The trouble is that rather than achieving any complexity in the characterisation, it simply feels manipulative; shallow, sentimental and unconvincing.
In The Mentalist, for example, the moments of emotion are incongruous amid the innocuous banter and all-knowing arrogance of Patrick Jane. On the one hand Jane knows at the beginning of every murder case on which he consults who the killer is. There seems to be little purpose for any of the law enforcement agents with whom he works, except as a foil for Jane's brilliance of which he is fully aware. Then, when everything is resolved, he goes home to the empty house he once shared in idyll with his wife and child, to sleep on a single mattress placed on the floor beneath the bloody smiley calling card left by his family's killer.
I'm not against emotion in my television viewing. The depth of emotion is what I so enjoyed about The Guardian; Simon Baker's ability to convey the extent of Nick Fallin's deep-seated anger was extraordinary. And I think The Guardian is one of the few programmes to represent anger as the corrosive and silent force that it so often is.
Perhaps that's my difficulty with The Mentalist--and Life and Burn Notice too--is that the range of so-called emotions is so limited or rendered in such a cynical manner that I just don't believe these characters, never mind like them.
And it is in this frame of mind, that the hiccup in Channel Nine's scheduling of The Mentalist is reason enough for me to give up on it, even with a talent like Simon Baker in the starring role.
Apropos of yesterday's post where I suggested I might do a TV diary, I thought I'd write a bit about Bones.
I watched last night's episode this morning over a bit of breakfast because I was too tired to watch TV last night. I had a big day yesterday, so I taped both Bones and Supernatural to watch back today.
I'm yet to watch Supernatural, but I thought I'd talk about Bones because as I sat down to watch it this morning, I thought I'd messed up the recording of it, and I was momentarily, but intensely, disappointed. I'd completely forgotten about it last Monday--it was a busy day last week too--and before I managed to get the episode to play back, I'd thought 'Oh noes! That's two weeks in a row I've missed it!'
At that thought I had a flash of self-awareness about the contradictions in my television viewing tastes.
I think most people who read this blog know that I'm doing a PhD thesis on 'quality' television drama. That means that I'm constantly thinking about the cultural value or lack thereof that is generally attributed to television and its texts.
In this context I know that Bones is not fantastic television. It's television that panders to least offensive programming policies. It's not the edgy, more culturally valued product of HBO and Showtime or even the BBC (if you're after a different measure of quality).
If I scratch the surface of Bones I know there are terrible flaws in the characterisation of its protagonist, forensic anthropologist, Dr. Temperance 'Bones' Brennan. Part of this is that in every episode Bones charts the same arc: she begins as a socially and emotionally inept rational scientist type and, coaxed along by the charming, sensitive and God-fearing FBI agent Seely Booth, she is transformed into someone who learns what it is to be a living, breathing, spiritual human being, as opposed to a mere collection of bones encased in flesh.
Last night's episode 'Baby in the Bough' is a case in point. At the scene of a car accident where the adult female driver dies, Booth and Bones find a baby in a capsule. The capsule was flung free of the car and landed, with the baby unharmed, in the bough of a tree. Booth thinks it's a miracle, while Bones intones that the baby's survival is exactly what such capsules are designed and manufactured to ensure. In a series of events that merely confirm Dr. Brennan's incompetence with real live human beings, the baby, Andy, ends up swallowing a key at the scene of the accident, and since it's a likely clue to help solve the mystery of the woman's death, Booth and Temperance have to look after the child until the key makes its way through his digestive tract. (Did I mention completely ridiculous plot contrivances?) Eventually, of course, Bones warms to Andy, becoming extremely protective of his care and determined to ensure him a secure future.
Another version of this arc happened the week before last, and no doubt if will happen again next week. Bones never really changes. This is television without a memory.
Here, I might be expected to make a claim along the lines of 'it's so bad, it's good', but I can't.
I don't even want to.
The fact is, I like Bones.
If I'm pressed to explain my taste, then it simply comes down to this:
Together, Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz are completely hot.
In these analyses Brunsdon emphasises the character trait of ‘responsibility’, maintaining that in view of the extensive agenda of social reform enacted by the Conservative government, the questions, ‘Who can police?’ and ‘Who is accountable?’ assumed considerable importance in greater British society and, subsequently, in its stories, including crime-based television drama.
And it occurs to me, in the context of the larger piece I am writing, that I don't know how it fits.
In composing this post I've come to realise that it's not officially available outside of the USA or Canada yet, which means I'm incriminating myself if I talk about how hilarious Nathan Fillion and Neil Patrick Harris are in this three act online musical. And if I give fulsome praise to this tale of a love-lorn evil mastermind then I'm toast.
It's the kind of thing I'll want to own on DVD to watch in High Definition (if that's possible), so hopefully it won't be long before the rest of the world gets proper access.
What is interesting about Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog from a Television Studies perspective is that once again Whedon has proved himself to be an innovator in the medium. Out of the mess of the writers' strike Whedon has found a way to deliver content that people want to watch (5 weeks at #1 on i-Tunes television downloads), by-passing the usual first-time distribution channels for this kind of work.
I predict a slew of PhD theses about Dr. Horrible, if not its very own journal.
For my own amusement, I decided to have another go at making my Manga self. This time I discovered another nose option that I hadn't noticed before, and another hair option as well that allowed me to account for its curl/general messiness and my habit of tucking my hair behind my ears.
I think this one is a bit more reflective of the cultural studies chick in me, but my head still isn't that big in proportion to my body. I do have red lounge chairs at home, but they're a bit more 70s retro in their style than this stuffed-armchair look. Some of that padding should be transferred to me, really.
Meanwhile as we're sitting comfortably in cultural studies mode (we were, weren't we?), I finally finished watching Boys from the Blackstuff, the British social-realist drama from 1982, written by Alan Bleasdale, and constantly cited in academic writing on television as the epitome of television at its most critical of government policy.
It's difficult to discuss this mini-series on its own merits 26 years after it was first broadcast. As viewers we have become far more used to advanced production technologies, even in works of social realism. Boys from the Blackstuff shows its age, not least because Julie Walters was, for me, virtually unrecognisable as Angie Todd, but also because the Play for Today model is very much in evidence; each installment could feasibly stand alone and at times the dialogue is so labored and didactic that it does seem better suited to the realm of the theatre.
Still, having expressed these reservations, it would be impossible to deny that at the time of its release, two years after the Brixton Uprisings, amidst rates of unemployment in Britain greater than those of the 1930s Depression, Boys from the Blackstuff would have been incredibly resonant with the greater British public. Each of the characters is metonymic of the experiences of the working classes under Thatcher's Tory government. There's George who epitomises the old union leader, committed to improving the lot of manual labourers and their families. He is dying. There's Chrissie, who used to be positive in the most dire of circumstances, but who has been ground down by unrelenting unemployment and poverty, and the strain it has put on his marriage.
The plight of Yosser Hughes is the most confronting, even while it's here that Bleasdale's script is at its most self-conscious. This character put me in mind of R W Connell's description in the first edition of Masculinities of some young men he interviewed who exhibited a 'tense, freaky facade'. I've always thought that the most perfect articulation of some young men I've encountered, those who you're never quite sure what their next move will be, except to say that it could easily be violent and so a direct threat to your personal safety.
Bleasdale makes a clear connection between the social effects of Thatcher's policies and the deterioration of the mental well-being of Yosser. His catchphrase is 'Gis a job' and he repeats it over and over while using his physical presence to intimidate his target. It's frightening. His friends begin to avoid him and his children are taken from him after his wife leaves him. Completely isolated from his peers and society, he returns home to his mother. He is a child again, his deteriorated mental state precludes any hope he will be fit for any kind of work again.
Overall, I do think it was important for me to see Boys from the Blackstuff, for many reasons related to appreciating television as a distinct medium. I'd be interested to know if anyone reading this managed to see this mini-series when it was originally broadcast, either here in Australia, or the UK, especially. Did it seem like significant television at the time to you?
As I continue to research my thesis on ‘quality’ television drama, I’ve become aware, as I’m reading, that particular programs are mentioned repeatedly in academic literature to the extent that they form a television canon. This is a somewhat different process of canonisation to that presented by Entertainment Weekly (USA) and discussed by David Knox over at TV Tonight. It’s closer to the canon making exercise undertaken by Glen Creeber in 50 Key Television Programs, which I discussed over at Sarsaparilla some time ago.
Perhaps what really defines the canon that I’m noticing emerging through my academic reading is that the programs are repeatedly discussed in the context of the trinity of interests in cultural studies informed research on television: text, audience, industry.
Here, programs might be nominated because they are exemplary of a given genre or they herald an important development in that same genre. In the police genre, for example, Hill Street Blues was a commercial failure in the US, but it marked a significant development in North American television, not only for its social realism, which was more reminiscent of British police drama, but, as well, it was a pioneering example of the ensemble cast, populated by a range of characters from various backgrounds, including representations of non-white and female police officers.
In academe, The Sopranos emerges as a canonical text because it was conceived and produced in an industrial environment where a niche audience was valued above a mass audience; where writers and producers were not constrained by a least objectionable programming (LOP) strategy dictated by the concerns of advertisers; but could push the boundaries of the televisual form and address an adult audience with advanced cinema and tele-literacies, to say nothing of advanced incomes. The textual features for which The Sopranos is so lauded are inseparable from the business of HBO. The serial narratives for which HBO is known arise more from the necessity to maintain their subscription audiences across several seasons than any particular affinity with the serialised novel form of Charles Dickens, for example.
Alternatively a programme might be repeatedly discussed in a number of academic sources because it sustains an active fan community. A fairly substantial body of literature exists, for example, around Science Fiction programs and their fan communities, including Star Trek andDoctor Who fandom.
Just reading back over what I've written above, I'm aware that I've seemed to imply there's a fundamental difference in the kinds of values that academic and popular sources apply when judging television texts. The argument against drawing that conclusion too readily is to note the similarities between Creeber's list and the popular press nominations of Entertainment Weekly; both lists include, for example, The Sopranos, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Simpsons, which suggests there is some agreement about the cultural impact of these shows, whether in terms of their subject matter or their reworking of familiar forms. Perhaps the key difference in approaches is simply one of transparency, or the amount of explanation and justification for the choices that each decides upon.
Another difference between the two approaches is the extent of their influence upon me. In the context of writing a dissertation on television drama, it is the academic nominated canon with which I feel compelled to be familiar. When a significant portion of my thesis will be considering The Sopranos, I take seriously Glen Creeber's Introduction to his study on The Singing Detective where he writes that '[e]verything from The Sopranos (HBO, 1999-), Six Feet Under (HBO, 2001-), Oz (HBO, 1997-2003) and Stephen King's own Kingdom Hospital (ABC, 2004) owe a debt to it'.
It is this concern, for me to be familiar with the genealogy, if you will, of television programmes, that is informing my DVD viewing at the moment. I watched The Singing Detective (BBC/ABC 1986) and saw what features pioneered by Dennis Potter (Writer), John Amiel (Director), and Kenith Trodd (Producer) have made their way into contemporary 'high-end' television. In particular it is the ontological shifts undertaken by the lead character of The Singing Detective, Philip Marlow, that are most apparent in the HBO productions cited by Creeber; those moments where we believe that Nate is being hit by a bus or screaming at Lisa, only to discover that he is simply standing by the side of the road or calmly eating dinner were, in part, prempted by Marlow's 'witnessing' of his wife's affair and his experience of hospitalisation.
We have, as well I think, The Singing Detective, to thank for all those musical episodes of television programmes, including Buffy's 'Once more with feeling' and the 'My Musical' episode of Scrubs.
To say nothing of all those Ally McBeal moments:
I don't want to overstate the influence of any particular programme on any other. These histories are alway easily written in retrospect and, of course, the influences upon any one text are multiple. In the North American tradition especially, it would be foolish to ignore the place of the film musical in that culture, although perhaps we might still want to credit the British with bringing it to television.
A book that has been quite influential for me recently, in terms of informing my DVD watching, is Robin Nelson's State of Play: Contemporary High End TV Drama. Nelson also cites The Singing Detective, but his book has been instrumental in helping me seek out various other programmes to watch for my personally assigned television history project.
One programme that Nelson discusses as exemplary of high-end television, which has emerged in the TV 3 era*, is Shooting the Past. I watched it overlapping with the first season of the BBC/HBO co-production, Rome. Apart from the coincidence that Lindsay Duncan was in both programmes, I was able to consider Nelson's discussion of Stephen Poliakoff's desire to create 'slow' television, to challenge the myth that we all have increasingly short attention spans and will switch channels the moment we encounter a lull in the action.
I think the excerpt from The Sopranos, above, illustrates the narrative richness of slow television.
I've just started watching Boys from the Blackstuff having first watched the tele-play from which it was developed, The Blackstuff. It's pretty bleak social realism looking at the plight of unemployed working class men in Liverpool during the Thatcher years.
More on this another time.
* Post-1995, arises 'from a conflation of influences (cultural, technological, industrial, social, aesthetic) with particular implications for TV drama forms and their production, distribution and reception under new circumstances' (Nelson 2007, 8).
Warning. Spoilers ahead for Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky and the first season of the BBC/HBO series Rome.
The book club I'm in discussedSuite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky at the last meeting. I was still reading, so hadn't yet happened upon this scene towards the end of the first part 'Storm in June'.
Father Phillipe Pericand is a young Catholic Priest charged with escorting a group of orphans out of Paris to the countryside on the eve of the German occupation of France in WWII. They have stopped for the night to camp in a field. Nearby is a grand looking house, about which some of the older boys avaricely express some curiosity. Phillipe tries to dissuade them from breaking in, but during the night they take matters into their own hands.
The moon lit up the front of the house. One of the boys was pushing the shutter, forcing it open. Before Philippe could shout at them to stop, a stone shattered inside the window and there was a rain of glass. The boys as lithe as cats, leapt inside.
...
'What are you doing here?' said the priest. He heard a noise behind him and turned round; another boy was in the room, standing right behind him; he too was about seventeen or eighteen. He had thin, contemptuous lips and his yellowish face looked wild, as if he were possessed.
...
Philippe would have proven the stronger in spite of everything but they hit him on the head with a pedestal table with bronze legs; he fell down and as he fell he heard one of the boys run to the window and whistle. He saw nothing else: not the twenty-eight teenagers suddenly waking up, running across the lawn, climbing through the window; not the rush towards the delicate furniture that was being ripped apart and thrown out on to the grass.
...
They felt a terrifying kind of joy. Dragging Philippe by the feet, they threw him out of the window, so he fell heavily onto the lawn. At the edge of the lake, they swung him like a bundle.
...
Finally he raised both arms, put them in front of his face, and the boys saw him sink straight down, in his black cassock. He hadn't drowned: he'd got trapped in the mud. And that was how he died, in water up to his waist, head thrown back, one eye gouged out by a stone.
It's probably not too much of a spoiler to report on the death of Julius Caesar in Rome:
What distinguishes this particular depiction of Julius Caesar's murder by the senate, however is the way that in the BBC/HBO production it's intercut with the death of a Roman woman, Niobe. Niobe is the wife of Vorenus, formerly a soldier in Caesar's army and whom Caesar has since appointed a senator.
The importance of this distinction is commented upon in another YouTube video that takes issue with the editing of the above scene of Caesar's murder:
Watching these scenes as they were originally juxtaposed, I thought about some comments made in a paper delivered by Georgina Born in response to Frederic Jameson's charge that historical dramas were little more than an exercise in nostalgia. Born countered that in fact contemporary interpretations of historical texts offer insights into contemporary issues and values. I forget which particular BBC adaptation Born referred to, but I do recall she showed a particularly dark scene of what was effectively domestic violence. It may well not have been construed in those terms when the original novel was published, however, it is that interpretation which was invited by the BBC adaptation.
In Rome then, the witnessing of Caesar's death alongside that of Niobe, is a contemporary questioning of the prominence that has been historically afforded the lives and deaths of Great Men to the detriment of those of women in the same societies. I think it's important too that Vorenus is a character whom we are invited to admire: we think of him as an extraordinarily ethical man, who has struggled with his conscience on many occasions as he has risen through the ranks of society. On this occasion, Niobe's death is a tragedy much greater than Caesar's because it is an indirect and unintended consequence of a questionable war.
I was in the middle of writing another post, looking for relevant videos on YouTube, when I came across this skit that David Tennant and Catherine Tate did for Comic Relief in the UK last year.
It seems appropriate to post it here today since Catherine Tate will be introduced as the Doctor's sidekick on ABC1 tonight.
I've just finished watching the first season of Medium on DVD. I've watched it before--when it was broadcast on free-to-air here in Australia--but I've had to watch it again because I'm writing an assignment on it for an Advanced Study Option I have to do as part of my PhD.
This so-called Option arises out of the Charlotte Brunsdon Master Class I attended at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies. You could just attend the Master Class and be done with it, as much as one can be done with a rewarding and valuable learning experience, but since it is a requirement of my degree that I complete two Advanced Study Options, then creating one on the coat-tails of a visiting international scholar in my field is certainly a better offer, as far as these Options go, than having to do one in an obliquely related field such as film or literature (not that there's anything wrong with film or literature, it's just that people studying those seem to have more Options from which to choose).
Oh, I sound so cynical, but really I'm not. I'm looking forward to writing a contained piece amidst the amorphous experience of the PhD dissertation.
I've quite enjoyed the repeat performance of the first season of Medium, viewing it through the discussion that came up in the Master Class, especially in relation to television crime shows: the discourse of equity that has permeated programs since Juliet Bravo and Hill Street Bluesand the question identified by Brunsdon as central to the anxieties worked out in this sub-genre of drama, 'Who can police'?
I have much more to say about this project--I do find all of these questions enormously interesting--but this post is supposed to be, as the Friends rip-off title suggests, about what I've been watching on television, as a way of easing you into the forthcoming 'episodes' of this television six-pack that I promised to write over a month ago now. Yes, you may have thought I'd forgotten about that, but really I was just doing what I do best, which is procrastinating.
So, I did start writing this post before and I didn't get much further than a rather dreary explanation of how the programs that are listed in the side-bar over there on the right are only a partial documentation of what I watch on television. I went on about the omission of the odd news and current affairs programs, as well as the difficulty of indicating any one-off documentaries I might watch.
To continue in a similarly dreary vein: there are the shows that are listed there that I have every intention of watching, but somehow end up missing. Spicks and Specks is in that category at the moment, as is The Cook and the Chef. I've been meeting an old friend for dinner and conversation on Wednesday nights instead.
And I can't neglect to mention my brief flirtation with bit torrent that I got over very quickly, mostly due to my technical incompetence and impatience with download times of more than four hours. Still I did find a site that streams Dexter, but I've only managed to watch three episodes of that, which is not to say I didn't like it, but I like watching my TV on the TV. There'll be no multi-platform-delivery-convergence-thing-a-mammy for me, no siree! But maybe Dexter should be in the side bar because I imagine I will watch it eventually, if sporadically, if someone doesn't close the site in question down, because I'm sure a legal reason is being searched for as I write.
Then there's the repository of the DVR hard-drive. Is there any point anyone knowing that I've still got two episodes of Jekyll to watch? That I haven't watched films that I recorded from over a year ago? Do you want to know when I watch them? Is it necessary for you know every time I point the remote at the television to turn it on. Why do I even want to relate every televisual experience I have? Am I wrong to think it's harder to have a list 'What I'm watching on Television' than 'What I'm reading' or 'What's in my library'?
Viewers, I'm boring myself, which is quite a feat for someone who is genuinely entertained by Facebook and its incessant applications.
The solution to the above dilemma, is the solution to many an academic problem, which is to point out the impossibility of comprehensiveness, to make instead the lesser claim for representativeness, or perhaps in this instance, the even lesser claim for 'whenever the hell I can be bothered to update the bloody list'! (Yes we really do say 'bloody' and 'hell' a lot here in Australia).
But, really, I first wanted to do the post to comment on the new TV programs I'd watched, to let you know which I was persisting with and which I was not, on the basis that there wasn't enough in them for me to commit to on a weekly basis. Women's Murder Club was in the latter list (this is what taking the discourse of equity to extreme banality looks like). Dirty Sexy Money was in the former. What a delight it is. Still enjoying Brothers & Sistersand Bondi Rescue. Hated Life--what an irritating character, what irritating pseudo Buddhism. Found Psychsimilarly irritating and unfunny, which is a shame for Dule Hill. Am lately getting into ABC2 much more. I like the time shifting and the British comedy repeats. Cannot believe the total mishandling of the commercial digital channels--do they want anyone to watch them? They make it so difficult, scheduling shows that attract similar viewers, ie me, up against one another. I'm not wasting another breath on them since the programmers are impervious to the constructive feedback about their scheduling practices that I read all over the internets and even in TV Week.
I've been meaning to talk more about television, specifically television as it relates to my thesis.
It didn't escape my notice when I did that new year's post taking the first line from the first post of each month that there was no reference to the thesis whatsoever. Not that there has to be. In fact this is quite specifically not one of those dreary self-serving young academic careerist blogs, no, it's all about dreary domesticity and inappropriate expressions of angst here.
Still, since I often work at home, especially now, since I've joined the 21st century and connected to the internet via broadband, and succumbed to peer pressure and acquired a MacBook, you'd think domestic angst about the thesis would be a little more at the forefront of my outpourings. Well, I'd think it.
I'm seeking to rectify my lack of preoccupation with my thesis*.
As the title of this post suggests, I'm going to do a series of posts relating to television. In television terms it's likely to be more of a hybrid series-serial, since there will probably be an over-arching narrative of my angst about it all. And so any infrequent readers can drop by to read a single post without being left dissatisfied, each post will also probably be able to stand on its own.
I've chosen to go with the six-pack, because it seems to be the format of some good TV coming out of Australia at the moment: The Circuit, Remote Area Nurse, East West 101, to name some of my favourites. And as the folk at Televised Revolution say 'TV should be good'. Whether we mean the same thing by that will probably be discussed in at least one of these posts.
I decided not to go with the longer form cumulative narrative over multiple seasons that is the hallmark of 'quality' television as it is understood as an HBO brand, because, aside from the fact that I don't have the budget or the stamina, 'It's TV, it's not HBO'! **
Anyway, that's probably enough of an introduction. Hopefully you've got some idea of what the six pack will be about: television programs, a bit of a look at blogs about tv, and the thesis. I also hope to have reflect on other television related academic encounters such as teaching and a recap on the Charlotte Brunsdon Masterclass I attended, and somewhere in the weeks ahead Robert C. Allen will be visiting Brisbane too, so if there's anything to report, I'll do so.
Consider this post the first episode, and "stay tuned". "Don't touch that dial." This might not be HBO, but it could be "must see TV"! ***
* Did you notice the first sentence of this post? And the date too? That'll look impressive in the 2009 New Year's post, what?
** Heh, even though I'm a big fan of HBO dramas, I love this line, snapped by head writer Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) from 30 Rock.
