television authorship

In reading Mittell’s piece on Policing Genres, I was struck by the importance and impact of the “voice” that a show uses. Mittell describes how in Dragnet, actors read off of teleprompts and kept their lines distinctly undramatic. While the witnesses were more “colorful,” the detectives themselves maintained a distant tone. This apparently made the show more realistic. At first that seemed strange to me; while I understand that being overly dramatic detracts from the realism, it’s not as though people are naturally monotone. People, including detectives, are emotional. So, why is it that viewers would be more inclined to believe a detached delivery? Why are documentaries and semi-documentaries notably distant in their tone? I think it’s because viewers are inclined to associate the distant with the objective and in turn the scientific. Our culture’s assumptions about the relationship between truth and science mean that when we hear something in a distant and scientific tone we are more inclined to process it as fact. I wonder, though, if this is really the best way to achieve realism. Does this assumption that Dragnet relied on so much still hold true? Do we still believe a detached tone more than a dramatic one? How realistic does Homicide feel to us viewers. Does it do a good job of finding some sort of middle ground?

This episode had a lot that is was trying to address, mostly about he inner workings of the department and the intense camaraderie that is created in such a death enshrouded job. Because of this familial environment, there are moments when people must look the other way, as when Lewis allows Felton to help his friend, and then there are moments where justice needs to be satisfied, as in the case off Pembleton’s shooting. This is contrasted well with the general public who arewary of the police and their fraternity, especially the low income minority areas.

The show also doesn’t like the viewer forgetting the racial tensions that are a constant undertone in the city as well as in the workplace. Pembleton did a fantastic job of illustrating this as well as making the point to Giardello that he does not want what he is asking for, which is an easy answer.

The article on Dragnet was incredibly interesting, especially as it discussed the ways that the show broke new ground for the genre of the police drama. The way Mittel showed how it combined other artistic genres (the semi-documentary and so forth) to create something new was really interesting. But I was wondering where does a show become genre defining and where is it simply a failed attempt at something new? In retrospect, it’s fairly easy to point at the shows and movies that have redefined their respective genres for various reason, if only because so many copycats appeared afterwards.

But what drives that change? I would argue that it’s popularity, not critical acclaim, that allows things to become genre defining. High School Musical a hit? Make Glee! But I could be wrong. A counter-argument certainly exists: good producers/directors/writers are influenced by other quality works, which aren’t always the most popular ones. Still, can we put together criteria, more than just popularity, that would allow us to look at something in the moment and say it will redefine the genre it is working in? I don’t know.

I found Mittel’s analysis of genre in television quite interesting.  He says that “shortcuts to manage production and promotion practices are essential; genres provide a shorthand set of assumptions and conventions that producers can use to make a new program familiar to audiences and easier to produce” (Mittel 236).  Mittel goes on to say that genre does not destroy originality, which I completely agree with.  Every television series is part of a genre or a mix of multiple genres.  It is completely impossible to create a story without it being part of one or more genres.

Although I do not think adhering to genre is a bad thing, I do believe that marketing schemes that advertise a show as part of a certain genre can be detrimental to the television program.  A prime example is Arrested Development.  Originally advertised as a whacky sitcom, the show never picked up the audience it deserved, as many believed it to be one of many poor sitcoms from Fox.  In this instance, associating Arrested Development with the sitcom genre destroyed the series.  It is extremely challenging to market a cross-genre show such as Arrested Development; however, it is not impossible (X-Files went on for 2000 seasons and already has 2 bad movies).  Marketers must be careful not to too closely associate television series with the genre they supposedly belong.

            For the past couple of weeks we have spent a lot of time as a class discussing who can claim credit for the artistic understanding of a show. Through this, there was a small discussion on how much the audience is involved in this. To what extent the audience becomes the auteur is a valuable question to discuss in the study of any television program. Because the audience can theoretically control a large part of what is on television by choosing what and when to watch they should play a large role in the study and analysis of TV. I feel like a lot of the analysis of programs has been heavily waited to auteur and the content of the program, akin to studying the progression of author and the novel. However, because television is such a permeable medium and exists as a renewing and breathing part of pop culture it is more difficult to separate the show form the culture of the people who watched it.

            The articles this week focus on the idea of Genre and how the audience and studio work together to classify what a program is, be it a police drama or sitcom. Jason Mittell says in this weeks reading,  “Genre analysis must consider the historical evolution of genres, rather than thinking of genre categories as a historical unchanging definition.”( Mittel 239). I take this to mean that genre at any given time cannot be adequately compared to that of another. Take the differences between Homicide and Dragnet, both police procedurals but with dramatically different styles.  They fall in the same genre but because of the time gap between the production of Dragnet, in the 1950’s, and Homicide, in the 1990’s, the audiences who watched it understood the shows differently. The cultural contexts of the times were different. This effected the concept of what genre each of them belonged to, and if you asked two people of the different time periods to compare the shows in relation to the genre one could probably find many differences between the descriptions that speak to the pop culture of the time of each program.

I was re-watching part of the episode “Bop Gun” when I noticed something I missed the first time. When Pembleton and the other detectives go to arrest Marvin aka Kid Funkadelic there are two little girls sitting on a bed in the room the the police burst into. Pembleton searches under the mattress that they are sitting on to find evidence. There are several children in the episode but I can’t make a connection.  What do you think is the point of having children on the show? Why start the series out with the murder of a child? Contrasting the evil of criminals and the jaded detectives with the innocence of children is obvious, but how else do they function? A child was the criminal in one episode and a child was a critical witness in the same episode. The detective discuss Vaughn’s childhood quite a bit in “Bop Gun.” The idea that your family and childhood have a lot to do with becoming a criminal is reinforced throughout the series. The children have a role that is similar to the viewer. For the most part they are passive observers of the action and have no authority over what is going on.  Or is the viewer’s position most like the position of a witness? When we watch an interrogation scene are we meant to feel the intimidation that the witness feels? In order to wrap this up, my two main questions are how do children function as a motif in Homicide and what role in the police procedural is most like the role of the viewer?

In “Policing Genres”, Jason Mittell describes the influence that Dragnet has had on the police procedural over time. Several things struck me about the similarities and differences of Homicide and Dragnet. First, Mittell describes Webb as, “Wanting to direct a ‘half-hour of motion pictures, not a half-hour of TV films” (Mitell 143). This emphasis on cinematic production and style appears again with Homicide, through its jump cuts and innovative camera work. The show certainly looks more like a movie than a traditional television series.

Next, I was struck by the description of Dragnet actors reading their lines off the TelePrompTer in order to achieve the perfect monotone delivery. This was meant to convey detachment from the brutality of the crimes they were solving. While there is certainly a sense of detachment in Simon’s book, the television series seems to emphasize the cases when the detectives do get involved emotionally, as with the Adena Watson case and the scene where someone lights a candle each night. The other thing that differed for me was Dragnet’s insistence on stating that what it portrayed was based on a true story. Homicide is based on a true story, but does not feel the need to emphasize this fact. It can be as real or unreal as the viewer wants it to be.

One part of the reading I found particularly interesting was in Jason Mittell’s essay “Telling Television Stories.” I found it interesting where he pointed out that characterization, as in traditional narratives, is still present in unscripted television shows such as news programs, talk shows, and sports programs. I have always been disapointed with how news on television is more of a form of entertainment as opposed to something informative. I feel like this has a lot to do with that because often times the stories with the most entertaining narrative forms will supercede the ones that don’t, regardless of whether they actually contain important information.

However, one  form of characterization in a news show that I actually do like is Stephen Colbert. When the show went on air I was instantly a fan. To have a news caster take on such a far out role and go with it for the entirety of the show is something that was never done before. He adopted a character that satirizes conservative mindsets, while actually illuminating many of the issues in America that actually matter in a very funny way. I must admit, a good part of the show will be rather immature but thats a good thing cause it’s entertaining. Shows like that are what we need more of in order to develop a more informed American public, shows that are at the same time entertaining and intelligent.

A few late thoughts on Adaptation, as I was covered in flu when I should have been writing this…

I failed to grasp something very important during our class discussion over these essays. It’s summed up by the brilliant words of self proclaimed anti-Romantic Irving Babbitt, quoted by Linda Hutcheon in her essay “A Theory of Adaptation”.

“… that each art has its own formal and material specificity and therby defined modernist art’s self-reflexive focus on that very specificity”

Why do I love this? Because it gives me an excuse to kiss Tina Fey square on the lips. (Think 30Rock, self reflexivity to the max)

To me, television is at its best when its the most self aware of its constructs. Not necessarily only in a joking way, though that’s why I love 30Rock, but in a way which enables the program to move forward and beg the question “Ok, now what?” This quote makes me realize that in a legitimized way. I can say, “I like television when it knows it’s television! A fancy art critic told me I could!”

Jason Mittell’s essay “Telling Television Stories” discusses the various tools and conventions television uses to get us to watch. I’d like to explore the use of some of the most basic building blocks of television storytelling; characters and events. In particular, there seems to be a delicate balance between characterization and plot development as it relates to genre. For example, The Office , over the course of the last three seasons, has been increasingly criticized for its emphasis on plot development and lack of subtle interactions between characters.  Of course, these criticisms don’t come from professional television critics, but from my non-professional friends, whom I have watched The Office with religiously. But whose opinion matters more than those who watch the show?

In the first two seasons, we see very little change in cast, and characters are mostly comfortable fulfilling their role in the office just as they had before we were watching. Jim annoyed Dwight, Dwight annoyed Michael, and Michael annoyed everyone. Now, it’s not so simple. I attribute this change in the show to the addition of characters with more agency, or the ability of old characters to make choices with narrative consequence.

Take, for example, the character Stanley Hudson. Stanley is content to ignore most other characters in the early seasons of The Office, so much that it is a treat to see him interact with anyone. However, in the fourth season of the show he talks back to Michael, resulting in a near firing (actually, a fake firing, but still). Then, in the season opener of the sixth season, after Michael reveals to Stanley’s wife that Stanley is having an extra-martial affair,  Stanley  beats the windows out of Michael’s car with a nine iron. Still, after these seemingly office changing events, the office manages to stay almost exactly the same, except for how the characters interact with each other.

In addition to the changing character relationships brought on by this agency, I have found it much more difficult to explain “What happened?” as the show continues to air. I might sum up seasons one and two by saying that despite several threats to changes in the office, Michael somehow managed to keep it the same. Now, as the sixth season begins to air, Jim is already poised to take Michael’s position as office manager. How we define “What happened?”  becomes dramatically more absurd as the series carries onward, and dramatically harder to explain why what happened is relevant and funny.

Certainly, the agency given to characters in later seasons begins to alter the relationships between characters. This may not seem important, and it may even seem obvious, but it is noteworthy because it is outside the convention of the workplace sitcom genre. The office at the end of season two is comparatively very different to the office at the end of season 5. Pam may be a salesman (saleswoman) now, but still, the show is remarkably the same. It may even mean the show has made a transition from  episodic series to, at least partly, episodic serial, though it maintains a certain amount of amnesia towards previous episodes.  Can we attribute the shows regular growth in popularity (Nielsen ratings) every year to the change in balance between characters and events in any way?