Week 1- Monday 8th October 2002

I no longer “watch” television.  I am incapable of lounging on the couch, putting my brain on autopilot and lazily watching “the box”.  Over the last two years I have developed a habit of analysing television.  Every programme undergoes a thorough dissection exposing all its component parts.  I blame certain modules of my course in Communications for this.  Media Writing exposed the art of writing for television and caused those elusive subtexts to be as plain as day.  Semiotics made me aware of the symbolic importance of icons, so now I look for meaning in everything on screen.  Media Studies introduced me to intertextuality and now I constantly cross-reference programmes in my head.  Finally, Television Production exposed the industry behind television, and the technicalities involved in making a programme.  Now when I watch a show I not only see the actors and the set, but also the camera operators, the director, the producer, the target audience, the budget… The module objective for TV Drama and social history is to analyse television “in the context of the social history of the times”. Since the conventional simple pleasures of watching television have already been snatched from me, I might as well add a social element to my automated analysis.

The pre-lecture introduction mapped out the module and I am delighted at the journey that lies ahead this semester.  The 1st lecture was on story telling.  Fundamental questions such as “What is a story? What is drama?” were put to the class.  Answers were given tentatively.  One question, though not striking at first, stuck with me long after I’d left the lecture hall.  Why do we tell stories?  In class, Anthony had suggested escapism, and I tended to agree.  Helena Sheehan did not rule this out, but thought that there were other more important reasons for telling tales.  We tell stories to make sense of our world.  Every moment of the day we are telling or being told stories.  Even when we sleep our subconscious tells us stories about ourselves.  Telling stories puts our experiences into a framework, into an overarching personal narrative.  The stories we tell and the stories we hear make up and express who we are.  We assimilate different stories into our personal narrative, and modify our worldview accordingly.  Subconsciously our personality is also adjusted.

This week’s reading “Story, Myth, Dream and Drama“  (Sheehan, 2001), as well as reinforcing the concepts introduced in the lecture, brought up the idea of a “master story”, or story of the world, into which all the stories are interwoven.  I have just finished reading The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien.  In this novel, we follow the story of Bilbo Baggins.  Different incidents and different stories influence and change Bilbo during the course of his adventures.  But Tolkien’s went to great lengths to create a “bigger picture”.  Bilbo is part of the story of his family, the Bagginses.  The Baggins are just one of the players in the larger story of the species of Hobbits.  Hobbits, along with Men, Elves, Orcs and other creatures bring the histories of their people ages together to create the story of the world of Middle Earth.  Our world is of course more complex than this but the importance of stories is just as vital.  The world is made up of stories. People are made up of stories.  People tell stories to understand themselves, and the world.  I had never given too much thought to stories; they were just, well… stories.  Their importance now seems immensely important, and I don’t know how I didn’t realise this before now.

Both the lecture and the reading dealt with the concept of myths.  Having read about the features of mythic stories, I thought a little about myths in the modern era.  Star Wars and Lord of the Rings both deal with the mythical themes of creation and destiny, good and evil, quest and fulfilment, golden age and apocalypse.  The basic imagery is of light and darkness.  The protagonists are mythic figures: Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, Frodo and Lord Sauron.  These myths are born out of fiction, and are rarely considered myths, but both are archetypal stories.  I had never considered any contemporary myths born out of true stories. One of my favourite mythical figures is the “Unknown Soldier“, a student who, armed with his courage (and shopping bags!) brought the might of the Chinese army to a standstill during a public military display of power.  The tale of defiance is heightened by the political, historical, and social backdrop of Communist China.

The viewing, Shot Through the Heart caused quite a stir in me.  On an intellectual level, it is a textbook example of classic narrative structure, but emotionally it struck a chord.  Perhaps I was caught off guard by watching such a dramatic piece at nine in the morning, but my heart was wrenched at the end of viewing, so much so that I could not bring myself to work for a good two hours.  This demonstrates how powerful TV drama can be.  It made me think about my own values and ponder how I’d react with such a situation.  I have seen news reports on Sarajevo, but never have they caused me to react the way I did to Shot Through the Heart.   I had a similar reaction to Bloody Sunday, starring James Nesbitt, a story of the events in Derry in 1972. I never react to news stories about the troubles in The North, but I was angry and outraged at the dramatisation.
 

Week 2 – Sunday 13th October 2002

This week’s lecture I missed.  Instead of sitting at a desk in C104 I was kneeling in a pew in Mount Merrion, saying goodbye to my grandfather Tim.  I am not at all a religious person, and I found the service as a whole quite dull and impersonal.  The only segment that held my attention was when my uncle Michael, Tim’s eldest son, spoke about his father’s life.  In ten minutes, Michael tried to relate the “life and times” of his father.  I was amazed that in such a brief space of time he was able, with a dozen or so specially selected stories and anecdotes, to “sum up” Tim.  The stories Michael told painted a portrait of a lifetime.  Last week’s lecture was still fresh in my mind as I sat in the pew listening (I had written my diary the night before).  Each story had an initial situation, a complication, a resolution, a re-establishment of the status quo and some new moral or lesson learnt.  But each story formed just a fragment of a bigger story, the story of a man.  “Why do we tell stories?” was asked last week. Well in that church, we told stories to remember, to mourn, and to “make sense” of death.

When I returned to college I copied the lecture notes from my girlfriend Evanne, and read the reading “Television as a Medium for Drama”.  The reading discussed the impact of television and contrasted it with cinema, theatre and radio as a medium for drama.  For better or for worse,
“television has brought forth far reaching and fundamental changes, not only in how we spend our time, but in how we perceive our world, how we codify our experiences, how we relate to others and how we respond to other media.”
Helena Sheehan, Chapter 1 in Irish Television Drama: A Society and Its Stories (2001)

The constant stream of images has reordered our sensory priorities and lead to the intensely visually stimulating world we live in today.   Television was a cultural and social revolution.

Television has many advantages over other media.  In terms of mass dissemination, it is unrivalled.  It reaches a huge proportion of people who are television set owners.  It does not discriminate on the grounds of age, class, gender or race.  It is available to all.  Television is only a flick of a switch away, always available, always on tap.  It is delivered right into the living room.  No need to leave the comforts of home.  It seems to be the medium for drama.  But other medium still have advantages over television.

For me the experience of going to a cinema and watching a feature is much more enjoyable than watching TV.  There is an anticipation and concentration sitting in the dark, watching a film, with no other purpose than watching the movie.  There are no friends or phones to distract, in fact everything is done to minimise external stimuli.  Focused on the big screen and in the midst of surround sound, drama is taken in and processed.  When I was younger, I watched TV in the dark, and forbid my family to talk so that I could recreate the cinema environment. The effect was never the same though.  The ritual associated with going to the cinema is so much more exciting than sitting on the couch with a TV dinner hopping from channel to channel.

Brought up in the TV inspired visual world, it took me a long time to appreciate radio drama because I had to learn to use my imagination to construct an accompanying internal visual story.  Radio required much concentration, not needed for watching television because of the combination of both visual and auditory clues.  With only words to go on, a radio drama requires attention.  Often, this results in the radio drama making a big impact, as it is focused upon and taken in.  The use of the imagination makes radio dramas unique and personal, remembered longer, because the drama world is created in the mind’s eye.  Having said this, I remember having absolutely no interest in radio when I was younger, other than listening to music.  Television drama was fast and exciting, radio was boring.  It is still rare that I listen to a radio drama.  Old habits die hard.

I went to see a play in the Helix this week, I Don’t Want To Play House.  It was an autobiographical monologue about the life Tammy Anderson, a young woman who was abused as a child.  Her story was disturbing, it was powerful, it was real, it was fascinating and it was happening five meters away from me.  Tammy was an explosion of emotion, undiffused by any cathode tubes or projectors.  When the story got tough, there was no way of switching to a different play.  Emotions were stirred in me, and I had to face them or leave the theatre.  I stayed and felt rewarded in the end, though tired from my emotional involvement.  I have never felt this way at home watching any of the many TV dramas about child abuse.  There is a connection, a chemistry with the actors that can’t be got from television, simply because it doesn’t have the same atmosphere and energy that theatre drama has.

The viewing, this week The Truth About Claire is to be completed next week.  The disjointed narrative sequence, as opposed to last week’s classical narrative structure, makes the programme very enjoyable, as mentally it is quite stimulating.  I found myself looking for clues to fill in the blanks in the story of Claire, and was constantly having to re-evaluate my assumptions.  I found this form of narrative structure interesting in the way it allowed different interpretations of events and different sides of arguments subtly intermingle.  I am looking forward to seeing the final section of The Truth About Claire, the finished documentary.  At this stage I can foresee a frustrating ending, in that none of the five stories will provide a satisfying picture of the truth.  Only Claire’s own version of events would provide the true story.  An event witnessed by different people yields as many different stories as there are witnesses.

Helena Sheehan, Chapter 2 in Irish Television Drama: A Society and Its Stories (2001).
 
Week 3 - Monday 21st October 2002

This week’s lecture and reading focused on the criteria for criticising TV drama.  According to the reading, “Criteria for Criticising TV Drama” , when judging TV drama there are two key interrelated categories to examine - aesthetics and ideology.  How we judge TV drama depends, quite understandably, on the type of viewer we are, which according to the reading are couch potato, TV columnist, TV producer or Media Studies scholar.  In my capacity as couch potato, I judge a show on its ability to entertain and hold my attention.  It is an extremely superficial judgement, dictated primarily by my personal taste and mood at the time of viewing.  Such is the power of the remote control that each show has but seconds to impress before being clicked into TV wayside.  Looking at TV drama through the eyes of a student of media studies, is as I outlined in week 1, a growing phenomenon for me.  The different approaches to criticising TV drama within media studies were alien to me until the lecture.  Although methodological anarchism is attractive in a post-modern kind of way, after further reflection it seems something of a “cop-out”, an easy explanation.  I would identify most closely with a contextual / holistic approach.  I don’t believe that studying anything in isolation in the social science field gives a full understanding or a proper account of the big picture.

In class we attempted to judge the aesthetic facet of TV drama by answering the simple (seeming!) question, “What is it that makes some TV drama great, good, mediocre or bad?”  I must confess that most of the shows named by my classmates were unknown to me, mainly because I rarely watch television.  Ironic given the course I am studying, but I have good reasons.  For one, I have no television this year (not yet anyway).  Two, I spent my summer on a continent where televisions are as common as white elephants.  Three, the amount of badly written superficial rubbish on at the moment puts me off watching any drama at all.  It was not until the mention of the X-Files that I took a real interest in the discussion.  The X-Files “a mediocre show“, why that’s outrageous!  My media studies “objectivity” was put in check, and the coach potato resurfaced.  In the early days of the X-Files, before it became overly paranormal and formulaic, the show won award after award, was highly acclaimed by the critics and I was just one of a truly massive fan base.  The X-Files’ subject matter and its noir visual style were refreshing and original, but above all, the show was highly enjoyable and entertaining.  For me, the X-Files was great.  With my media studies hat on, I can see where my classmates are coming from, but this makes me question the value of sticking too rigidly to the media studies approach.  It’s entertainment after all.

One TV drama I think deserving of the “great” accolade, but overlooked in class is Inspector Morse.  The high production values make it a joy to behold, the acting is first rate, and the characters have a depth rarely seen on TV.  There are strong political, social and historical currents at play throughout the rich text.  Inspector Morse explores human condition as much as it solves crimes.  It challenges the audience to contemplate various aspects of society and humanity, and reassess assumed worldviews.

This leads to a second question posed in critiquing TV drama, “Is it ideological?”  I never doubted that it was and was surprised when Helena told the class that we were a minority to believe so.  The argument that certain basic values are presupposed in constructing a TV drama world leads to the conclusion that all TV drama is imbued with some degree of ideology, be it implicit, explicit or both.  This week’s concluding viewing of The Truth About Claire showed conflicting ideologies (urban society as modern vs. urban society as source of evil vs. rural innocence, for example), some of which conflicted within the text, stimulating thought, and creating drama.  Even in the stereotype world of the cardboard Friends characters there is the pervading ideology that friends “will be there for you”, and as a result the characters are expected to behave in a certain way towards each other.  Even the Cassidy’s, unanimously voted the worst show by the class demonstrates some form of ideology, assuming certain ideals about modern living and success.

Helena Sheehan, Chapter 3 in Irish Television Drama: A Society and Its Stories (2001).

Week 4 - Monday 28th October 2002

“Only those dramas that supported and reflected positive middle class values…were broadcast.”

This quote from my reading for this week sums up the dominant ideology of 1950s TV drama.  To understand 1950s drama, it is necessary to understand the social context of the drama.  The 1950s is not a decade I am familiar with.  What I know I learnt in at this week’s viewing, Gary Ross’ Pleasantville.  The film revolves around two adolescents from “our time” being sucked into the 1950s TV show Pleasantville, where they are trapped and must play the part of two 1950s adolescents.  The culture shock experienced by Jennifer, is similar to the adaptations someone of my generation must go through to properly understand life, and television as a reflection of life, in the 1950s.

Looking back at 1950s television, it all seems quite bland.  “Shows were to avoid completely socially and politically controversial themes”5.  Everything is A-Okay, America is great, don’t rock the boat seemed to be the messages emitted. Programmes should be centrist.   A prime reason for this was the power sponsors exerted over programme content.  Scripts exploring problems at the social level were not produced because sponsors didn’t want any problems brought up in a show that their product couldn’t solve.

So why was this era called the “Golden Age” of television drama? Live studio dramas, part of the Anthology Series, “teleplays” became popular prime time viewing on the major networks ABC, CBS and NBC.  In an era before videotapes, 90%  of the dramas were broadcast live.  Teleplays demanded a constant supply of actors, writers, directors and producers because each show was stand-alone.  A burgeoning industry evolved solely for the production of Teleplays.  Much talent flocked to work in television, both in front of and behind the camera (including very young looking Robert Redford, Jack Lemon, Walter Matthau, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen…).  Nowadays, television drama has moved completely away from live broadcasts, but even by today’s standards, the Anthology Series was an impressive format, and at the forefront of television production.  I would be quite interested to compare a 1950s live television drama, and a 21st century equivalent (if they even exist!).

Television displaced radio, theatre and film as the favourite leisure time activity for the suburban family.  I find this ironic given that television plundered inspiration from all three of its predecessors.  In the early days of TV drama, existing radio and theatre scripts were adapted for television as were literary works.  Quickly though, scripts began to be written expressly for television.  It is quite amazing that an infant medium like television in the 1950s could evolve so rapidly and capture such vast audiences.

I imagine that receiving pictures of the “wild west” or any kind of drama right into the living room must have been quite an experience in the 1950s, and Helena tells us that people in the 1950s were quite naïve when it came to television. In the last half-century, audiences have become more demanding of their TV drama.  Even by the end of the decade, the contented wholesomeness of 1950s teledrama was threatened.  Pleasantville was an interesting study of emerging social forces conflicting with the status quo.  In Pleasantville, the first splashes of colour were initially covered up and ignored.  IN the real world, shows like Paddy Chayesvsky‘s “Marty”, hinted at unhappiness, and the uncertainty of the future.   By the end of the 1050s political and social changes were bubbling below the surface. Television, and wider society, ignored the first tremors of change - revolt in Cuba, rock ’n’ roll...  The cosy, isolated comfort of the 1950s was nearing its end, but television continued as if everything was the same as before.

Everet, Anna from “’Golden Age’ of Television Drama” found at www.museum.tv/archives/etv/g/htmlg/goldenage/goldenage.htm on 26/10/02

Week 5 - Saturday 2nd November 2002

It is difficult for someone of my relative youth to understand the early decades of television; the main reasons being that I have seen precious little drama of the time, and I have not experienced the decade and so cannot easily grasp the context.  In dealing with 1950s television, these handicaps were surmountable.  According to Helena, what was on television in the 50s was reflective of the society, and captured the zeitgeist of the time.

Understanding the 1960s is much more difficult because television drama did not, by all accounts, reflect the complex times.  During an era when everything was changing and being questioned at a breakneck pace, there is little wonder that television could not move with the times - the times moved too quickly.

From reading “The Revolution Wasn’t Televised” , 1960s US television comes across as fickle, always seeking to reach a mass audience, both home and abroad.  Television dramas were grasping for the largest possible slice of the demographic pie, and so TV drama showed what the majority wanted to see, to the complete exclusion of the minority.  It was only when the minority could no longer be ignored that drama started to change.

The reading mentioned the concept of hegemony.  Hegemony shows how the media is involved in a perpetual struggle to reconcile social conflict and reach popular consensus.  It became a way to understand how the networks “negotiated the will for social change and the opposing urge for stasis”7.  I am not sure how well the networks negotiated during the 1960s, they seemed to prefer at all times to maintain “stasis” rather than incorporate change.

Eventually the networks realised that some changes had to be made, but these were tame when compared to the radical tumult of the real world.  Multiracial, 2 gender technocratic teams of heroes were some changes brought to TV drama.   Ambiguity crept into plots and characterisation.  Happy endings weren’t as happy as they used to be in the 1950s.  The issues dealt with were not the pressing social issues fought over in the streets.  No show was willing to take up the conflicts that were creating “a civil was in every family”, as Helena put it.

When cultural hegemony doesn’t work, when the changing social order cannot be assimilated into the logics of the (conservative) ruling elites, censorship takes hold.  The trickle of changes that did filter through was a faint shadow of the social changes that were taking place.    There is a view that “if you didn’t go home in the 1960s, you didn’t miss much good television. ”  So slowly did television take in the cultural revolution that for many people, the gap between TV drama and reality was too great to make television meaningful.

Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A Changing” that greeted the class as we walked into C104 seemed to capture the spirit of the decade far better that television drama.  In week two, we discussed Television as a medium for drama.  As an addendum to that, it seems that if the real world is too dramatic, television is not able to capture the drama of the time, and becomes out of touch, mediocre and false.  The fact that one man could write a song full of drama, and that teams of writers with huge budgets could not shows up the limitations of television.

Curtin, M & Spigel, L  (1997). The Revolution Wasn't Televised : Sixties Television and Social Conflict, Published by Routledge, New York

Week 6 - Sunday 10th November 2002

What struck me the most this week was the dominance of American-made TV Drama on the global market.  The viewing this week The Story Machine showed this quite clearly.  From the preview theatres of Sunset Boulevard, 400 Californians dictate to a large extent what the rest of the world watches.  A hit show would cover its own production costs within the US, meaning that the show could be exported at a cut down price, undermining the competitiveness of other national shows.  For a time, the only television drama available in Canada and Australia were American exports.  Today America continues to be the pacemaker.  Looking at the TV listings for Tuesday, between 1800 and 2330, Network 2 and TV3 could manage just two non-American shows between them: Home and Away and Emmerdale.  It is refreshingly rare when an Irish show like Bachelor’s Walk is able to compete with imports, and I was delighted to read that a second series will be broadcast this November.

In The Story Machine William Shatner of Star Trek fame thought that producers should be conscious of the image America projected of itself.  So what was American TV like in the 1970s? According to Helena, there was something of a return to the morality tales of the 1950s, in an effort to almost “forget” the 1960s.  Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons were symptomatic of this.  But a return to the world of Pleasantville was quite impossible.  Veterans were returning from Vietnam with tales of American atrocities, and when the war was finally lost, American patriotism was dented.  The Watergate scandal raised doubts as to the integrity of the American political leaders, the guiding forces of the nation.  There was a loss of faith in the social order.  A more cynical worldview permeated society, and this was reflected in television characters.  Cops and lawyers sometimes broke the law in order for a larger justice to prevail.  The Streets of San Francisco, Kojak and Ironside were a different breed of cop shows from their predecessors of the fifties.  There was a rise in violence and sexuality on screen, the corner stones of popular TV dramas.

EXAMPLE OF 1970s COPS SHOWS

The relevancy craze was a 1970s reaction to television’s failure to be reflective of society.  Network executives consciously read newspapers and dissected films in an attempt to feel the pulse of the era, and reinstate a correlation between their programmes and the real world. This involved a huge shake-up in scheduling.

“The trick was not only to read the restless public mood, but somehow to anticipate it and figure out how to encapsulate it in a show.”

At the start of the 1970s, CBS was the leading American network.  President of CBS Robert Wood controversially axed seven of its most popular shows.  They were rural based comedies, and Wood believed that these morality tales were getting high rating from an ageing audience.  A liberal, youthful urban target audience would be more “relevant”, more with the times.  The shows were replaced with new style comedies like M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and All in the Family.   These new programmes reflected the new liberalism in America.  They dealt the sensitive issues that had driven a wedge through the heart of American society.   At last these programmes began to discuss social antagonisms.

Mary Richards was a single woman “making it on her own” in a male dominated world in The Mary Tyler Moore Show.  All in the Family showed the tensions of family life.   M*A*S*H* was about Vietnam, and at the time Vietnam wasn’t talked about.  Using humour to diffuse the tension these issues provoked proved key to these comedies being accepted without causing uproar.  Feminist issues were suggested in other shows like Charlie’s Angels, though again the brunt of the controversy was diffused, this time by slightly undermining the female character’s credibility by playing up their physical appearance and making them “servants” to the mysterious male Charlie.  The transformation in the nature of the superhero is also noteworthy. The superhero of the seventies was conflicted and ambiguous, no longer the “straight as an arrow” capped crusader, fighting evil and defending the good and innocent.  Evil was no longer as recognisable as before, no was good always white and pure.  Super heroines were introduced for the first time, but as with Charlie’s Angels, female heroines were popular for their physiques, not because they were champions of justice.  At last television was coming closer to an accurate representation of the real world, though it still lacked the nerve to really grab key issues by the horns.  Nevertheless, progressive steps had been taken.

One slightly unrelated issue struck me when watching The Story Machine, concerning third world countries viewing American shows.  I was in Ghana for the summer and had the opportunity to see some African television.  The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Oprah, Flipper, Sunset Boulevard and All my Children were just some of the eclectic mix of bad/mediocre American imports on Ghanaian television.  The only Ghanaian production I saw (possible the only production on television) was a soap opera.  I was disturbed by how American it was.  It could have been an American soap, with black actors playing the part of whites.  To watch the soap was to believe that Ghana was a developed country, not unlike America, and that people were generally well-off and care free (the parallel between this soap and the Brazilian novellas is striking).  Needless to say this is nonsense.  Ghana is a very poor country, struggling to find its identity since gaining independence in the 1950s.  Is it ethically right for American networks to export their shows to make a small profit, when they are upsetting the cultural development of nations like Ghana?

Todd Gitlin, p203, Chapter 10, “The Turn Towards Relevance” taken from Inside Prime Time (1994).

Week 7 - Sunday 18th November 2002

I am a child of the 80s and I was looking forward to this week’s lecture more than I have any other so far.  I figured that since I was actually alive in the 80s, finally I’d have some idea of the shows being discussed.  The truth is that I know more or less as much about 1980s TV drama as I did about previous decades.  I know the names of the programmes, and have an idea of what they were about, but my personal memory is not strong enough to base critical opinion on.  I was a huge fan of the A-Team but although I remember enjoying the show, I recall little else beyond the names Face, Murdock, Hannibal and Mr. T, and of course the theme music.

Looking back on American TV Drama in the 80s, I am struck by how predictable and unvarying programmes seem to have been.  A successful show or idea was copied and imitated “to death”, with subtle alterations here and there.  How different were Airwolf (CBS) and Knight Rider (NBC)?  Having lost the Vietnam war, and following the social problems experienced throughout the previous two decades, there was a tendency to turn to machines and “cardboard” heroes and superheroes to deal with all the difficulties of the world.

Programmes in the 80s were markedly less serious than in the 60s and 70s.  There was a definite “lightening-up” as a backlash response to the tensions of the previous twenty or so years.  For the second series of Airwolf, CBS instructed the producers to “domesticate the show – to make stories less dark and symbolic, to make things more light-hearted” .  TV drama moved towards high-flying fantasies like Dallas and Dynasty.  In these tales, very much centred on wealth and power, the tumult of the previous decades was glossed over.  From what I have read, if it weren’t for the high number of Vietnam veterans making a living in the numerous cop shows, social amnesia would have blotted out the difficult past.  Simple answers were provided to extremely complex issues in a dissatisfying attempt to rationalise the past, without dwelling on it, or provoking discourse.   There were of course some exceptions to this trend.

Family Ties played off the generational and ideological conflict between the 60s and 80s, within the family unit.  The Alex was very much the “Wallstreet capitalist”, while his parents were “grown-up hippies”.  Serious friction between the new right and the new left were dealt with, but the sitcom format allowed humour to diffuse the tensions if they grew too strong.  Disappointingly, complex issues were often resolved by the family ties ideology, which was presented as stronger than any political or social ideologies - group hug!

Hill Street Blues was another show that tried to avoid “simple answers”.  Hill Street Blues, through its storylines, its characterisation and its dialogue, but also through its very methods of production, exposed the disintegration of social cohesion, and presented the flipside of the American dream.  The world was dangerous, and inhabited by a wonderful collection of characters from the underbelly of society.

“Through Hill Street station streamed all the wicked and wounded that a decadent social order could produce: murderers, muggers, madmen, rapists, pimps, prostitutes, porn merchants, drunkards, drug addicts, schizophrenics, sado-masochists, suicides, survivalists, transvestites, nymphomaniacs, vigilantes, loan sharks, street gangs, unhinged vets, random eccentrics, born-again believers and 'space cases' (e.g. a guy claiming to be ET).”

www.comms.dcu.ie/~sheehanh/tv/hillstbl.htm
 

The series explored the consequences of social fragmentation, and the effect upon the psyche.  Strongly felt were the ideas of being adrift and directionless, and searching for meaning in a society where meaning is lost.
 
After the screening of Canned Laughter, a minor debate took place over whether or not the exporting of Dallas was an underhanded act of American propaganda designed to corrupt the minds of citizens of the GDR with its capitalist “debauchery”.  I really don’t believe that the creators of Dallas sat down and deliberately plotted to subvert the regime of East Germany!  It is far more likely that they wanted to make a successful show that would appeal to an American public and ultimately make a profit.  With this in mind, Dallas was deliberately and implicitly imbued with popular capitalist ideology in order to appeal to a capitalist American audience.  Naturally when the show was exported, the ingrained ideologies crossed boarders, and may have appeared subversive to foreign regimes.  TV Drama is always ideological, and so will always appeal to some and not to others.  If the GDR really believed that Dallas was a vessel for American propaganda, wouldn’t the authorities have banned the show?

After the lecture I mentioned to Helena that I had never seen Dallas.  To say she was surprised is to understate her reaction.  In fact, a T-shirt in Father Ted branded “I shot J.R.”, and two episodes of The Simpsons revolving around “Who Shot Mister Burns” were all I knew of the soap.  Strange how intertextuality works! !

www.tvtome.com/servlet/showmainservlet/showid-2219/

Week 8 - Sunday 24th November 2002

Helena had selected 6 songs representative of the 90s to be playing at the start of class (as soon as the resident ghosts in the equipment had been exorcised).  The only song I was familiar with was “The Streets of Philadelphia”, and I don’t really identify with that track.  Maybe it’s because my mom loved “Brucey” and that as a teenager in the 90s it would have been absurd for me to have the same taste in music as my mother!  I had my own “social poets” in Thom York of Radiohead, and Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins.  They captured the zeitgeist of my time - the energy of youth, the ruthlessness of the world and the pressure of a faceless society!  The 90s for me were about finding my identity and my place in the world.  An important characteristic of the decade I am now conscious of is the fragmentation and sheer eclecticism of society in the 90s.  With the social contract defunct, the mainstream became a delta with many distributaries.  There was a “pick ‘n’ mix” of beliefs and intellectual discourses.

A key feature of 90s TV drama is the emphasis on the psychological dimension of life, and on the dynamics of relationships.  Cracker, ER and Ally McBeal are more than just a cop show, a hospital drama and a law series.  It is the probing of the characters personalities that makes these shows popular.  With Ally McBeal you don’t have to probe too deep to get to the core of the shallow characters, but with better TV drama characters, the psychological journey is engaging and emotionally involving.  There are only so many scenarios a writer can come up with in a hospital drama - it’s the characters’ interrelationships that are central to making ER so enduringly appealing.

“Why do we like The Sopranos?” was posed in class and answered with relative difficulty.  I believe that there are many reasons for liking the Sopranos.  The acting is fantastic and really does the characterisation justice.  The plots and dialogue are sharp and intelligent, the production values are first rate. This could be said about many shows, but there are two other factors in The Sopranos that help set the show apart.  As Helena pointed out, the “soap” aspect of the series draws the audience.  Each episode stands alone, but there is something strangely satisfying in seeing the bigger picture that builds through consecutive repeat viewing.  More importantly than any of these traits, “we like The Sopranos” because of an inherent attraction to evil.   We are socialised into obeying a myriad of rules.  To see the most fundamental of these rules broken - thou shall not steal, thou shall not covet thy neighbour’s wife, thou shall not commit murder - gives a certain release from the constraints of daily living (though as a civilised audience we naturally have to be shocked!).  I wonder what effect switching an episode of the Sopranos for the Lone Ranger back in the 1950s would have had on the cherished puritan American ideology!

My reading this week was an article called “Morality and 'The Sopranos'” .  It made the point that the Tony Soprano character, is a very attractive element of the show.
“Except for the fact that Tony deals in murder, maiming, extortion, money laundering, bookmaking, and other criminal activities, his home and business worries seem like those of any other middle-age dad. He can't understand his children. He's not sure about his wife. He's under pressure at work. He can't figure out where he fits into the grand scheme of life. No wonder the man is seeing a psychiatrist.”

There is a humanity in The Sopranos that makes audiences overlook the violence and the crime.  The characters are very human, very fallible.  For all the bad the characters do, they always have some redeeming moments to keep audiences on their side.  In class Helena enumerated the many faults of the Soprano family members and this did paint a bleak picture of pitiful and mean people.  I believe the writers have managed to capture the subtle intricacies of the family unit in the show, and that audiences relate to the characters in a familial level, and so see past their individual faults.

I found it difficult to formulate an satisfying evaluation to this week’s screening, “Northern Exposure”.  Helena talked it up a great deal, saying that it was “one of the most innovative shows of the 90s” - a bold statement!  Visually it was a delight; the stories were light though they touched upon some very serious issues (for example marital breakdown).  The acting was hard to fault.  I found the show very “watch-able”, but in spite of all this I didn’t like it much.  I find it hard to pinpoint what I didn’t like and I think that it was the slow pace and “simple” rural setting that alienated me.  There was something about the opening credits - the reindeer walking through the town of Cicely - that made me cringe inside.  It did make me want to go to Alaska though!

Podrazik, W. (2001), Morality and The Sopranos”, ONLINE at
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/08/07/p11s1.htm

Week 9 – Sunday 1st December 2002

This week’s lecture started where last week’s left off, Cicely – Alaska.  I mentioned in my previous diary entry that Helena had lauded Northern Exposure, but I had somewhat dismissed the show.  This week Helena elaborated a bit more.  She was particularly impressed by the way Northern Exposure captured many different contemporary worldviews, and played them off against each other.  Joel came from a scientific and urban background.  The Native Indians had a more spiritual worldview.  Maggie the pilot was a contemporary feminist.  Chris brought a “new-agey mysticism” to the story.  The mix of these ideologies, coupled with the beautiful aesthetics are impressive and from a student of TV drama point of view, I do concede that it is a noteworthy production.  As a couch potato I remain unconvinced.  This again highlights the importance of a question raised in week 3 – “what criteria do we use when judging TV Drama?”

I find it amazing that as scholars of television drama, the class seldom agrees on whether a programme is good or bad. Personal taste counts for an awful lot.  For instance, this week we watched two programmes in the screening: The Newsroom and Nothing Sacred.  A unanimous good or bad verdict could not be reached.  The merits of both programme were put forward, rebuked, sustained, countered but no agreement was reached.

I found the Newsroom to be highly enjoyable.  Though some complained about its visual style, I found it a welcomed break.  The satirical approach to the newsroom scene was humorous, but enlightening.  The exploration of the director’s psyche was a wonderful journey.  The juxtaposition of nuclear disaster and one man’s libido was a fascinatingly different way of looking at mortality.  The Larry Sanders Show is in a similar vein to The Newsroom and is also a show I rate quite highly.  I find the dry humour very clever, and the lack of canned-laughter just makes the humour and the jokes more satisfying.  I feel more intelligent for “getting the jokes” without being prompted!

The “Smart Sitcom” slide caught my interest during the lecture.  Seinfeld, Frasier and Friends (the earlier series before the characters lost all their dimensions) are a special batch of sitcoms I really enjoy. They are intelligent and repeatedly funny, but they have a humanity running through them that makes audiences identify with the characters and plots.  They are light entertainment that offer playful insights into modern society, without getting bogged down by serious issues.  The shows are sometimes criticised for being superficial, but Jerry Seinfeld defends the format by saying that his mind doesn’t work in a deep analytical level, "so I talk about cereal and not existentialism or drug addiction."  In fact Seinfeld is a show about nothing, and this gives the show the malleability to be about everything and anything.  Everyday life is not extraordinary, but the characters do end up in some quite extraordinary situations.  The scripts are extremely aware of society’s mannerisms, beliefs, goals and uncertainties, and is adept at reproducing them so that audiences laugh at the show, but are in fact laughing at some aspect of themselves (or at the very least of someone they know).

For this week’s reading, I looked further into comedy on television, and explored a website called “Sitcom: what it is, how it works”.  One question that has come up in a number of lectures, but has yet to be answered convincingly is “what is funny?”  According to the website (the results of an in-depth study into sitcoms that have appeared on US television since 1947) there are six elements that are required for something to be humorous:
“1) it must appeal to the intellect rather than the emotions;
2) it must be mechanical;
3) it must be inherently human, with the capability of reminding us of humanity;
4) there must be a set of  established societal norms with which the observer is familiar, either through everyday life or through the author providing it in expository material, or both;
5) the situation and its component parts (the actions performed and the dialogue spoken) must be inconsistent or unsuitable to the surrounding or associations (i.e., the societal norms); and
6) it must be perceived by the observer as harmless or painless to the participants.
When these criteria have been met, people will laugh. If any one is absent, then the attempt at humour will fail.”
These elements are all readily found in today’s sitcoms and particularly clearly in Seinfeld.  Taflinger insisted that all 6 elements need be present in order for something to be funny, and for the audience to “get it”.  I don’t agree with this.  For instance, I find Jackass to be very funny because Johnny Knoxville and his friends routinely get seriously injured doing their stunts.  It’s the same kind of humour that makes many You’ve Been Framed sketches funny.  This clearly goes against Taflinger’s sixth rule.  I spent some time in the library researching humour, but was unable to find any more satisfactory explanations for why certain things are funny.

www.uta.edu/english/mal/sein/details.html

Week 10 –Sunday 8th December 2002

Felicity, Dawson’s Creek and Party of 5 are three shows that I’ve watched once and will never watch again.  They are in a vein of melodrama that just does not appeal to me.  These are the only shows I am aware of that are set in or around universities.  Unless American universities are radically different from Irish ones, they bear little resemblance to the real world.  The characters are overly sentimental and there is too much focus on the hardships of relationships.  Everyone is so intellectually aware (as if they have been studying English and philosophy for the past 500 years!) and on a noble crusade to be “deep and meaningful” all of the time.  Because the characters are so hung up on themselves and their numerous “issues”, the full potential of a university based TV drama is never fully tapped into.

The university populace is incredibly diverse.  People from all backgrounds, with different interests and very different goals in life, spend time in university.  A drama that captures this “melting pot” atmosphere in a realistic way, that reflects the dynamics of the academic and social spheres of university would be a welcomed relief from what’s currently on offer.  University is an exciting and fun time, though you’d never know from watching Dawson’s Creek.
 
Whereas Dawson’s Creek has failed to find a realistic balance between the academic and personal lives of its characters, shows like ER have developed and effective formula for blending the private and professional worlds of its characters.  As well as this, ER also captures the social climate of the times.  The eclectic mix of characters that flow through the public hospital gives freedom to explore social issues.  These characters are spokespeople for the myriad of social values and ideologies that permeate society.  There is a strong emphasis on relationships between the principal characters, but this is seldom overplayed.  In spite of the traumas and hardships of hospital work, ER has a quirky humour to it that makes it enjoyable to watch.

The super heroes and heroines who saved humanity in all the previous decades are still busy ridding the world of evil at the dawn of the new millennium.  Superman has had an image overhaul and is now a “modern man” in The New Adventures of Superman. Hercules and Xena, Warrior Princess, cleaned up mythology in the mid 90s.  By far the most popular super-heroine of the moment though is a blond teenager from Sunnydale, California;  Buffy… the vampire slayer.

A spirited debate arose in class over Buffy the Vampire Slayer, centring on the questions of why she had to slay, of all things, vampires and why vampires are persistently popular in modern culture.  Vampires are night creatures who lurk in shadows of the underworld of society and although originally elegant creatures, they have become violent, and beastly.  Vampires are also very sexual; the act of sucking blood from a victim’s neck has been highly eroticised.  If you believe Freud, man’s primal drives are aggressive and sexual.  These are both captured in the vampire character, the embodiment of the id.  The vampire is unquestionably evil, yet remains appealing to the subconscious levels of the psyche; the fascination with the vampire results.

When researching a little on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I came across a feature article about the show.  I have always seen Buffy as a fairly innocuous show.  It is entertaining to watched, the characters are quirky, and the whole series is laced with a considerable dose of sharp wit.  Beyond that I don’t think that there is too much depth to the show, no great insights into life, no revelations.  The article in question was written for a “new course to train Christians to respond to our post-modern culture in a Biblical, effective way” .  The article was particularly concerned with the appealing light that witchcraft was portrayed in, the dubious morals displayed by the sexually active characters, and the constant portrayal of Hell but not of Heaven.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer did not set out to subvert Christianity and the author of the article, Ben Jeapes, may (or may not) be overreacting slightly.  This comes back to the issue of ideology.  Joss Whedon, the shows creator, has implicitly imbued the show with liberal ideals.  While it is taken for granted that pre-marital relations occur nowadays, the more conservative people in society clearly find this liberal ideology offensive or unnerving, and a threat to their beliefs.  This is a reminder that ideologies in TV Drama are powerful forces.
 
I have already written a good deal about The Sopranos during the course of this diary, and this week as a screening we watched the pilot episode.  I have so far neglected to discuss one of my favourite features of the show – the opening sequence.  I think it is a fascinating piece of visual narrative.  In a short space of time the audience is introduced to the geographic space of the mobster.  Cigar smoking Tony Soprano drives anonymously through the traffic.  The visual backdrop, the scenery glimpsed through the window, moves from the in-between “nowhere- land” of the motorway lay-bys, past industrial docklands, through light commercial districts, on past recognisable Italian restaurants… wonderful metaphors of Tony’s identity.  Where Tony is going is not clear, he could be going anywhere, for any purpose.  The soundtrack is calm, relaxed, but assured and confident, business like.  Tony is just another motorist (quite a sinister thought!).  As the sequence builds to its climax, the car turns sharply up the driveway of an expansive luxury suburban dwelling.  Tony Soprano, “the family man” is home.  Time to “get yourself a gun”.

Helena told us that the same producers made The Sopranos and Northern Exposure. I think it’s interesting that back in week 8 I remarked that the opening sequence of Northern Exposure encapsulated what I disliked about the show, and now I am saying that the opening sequence to the Sopranos encapsulates exactly what I like about the series: tension, energy, a sinister undercurrent moving amongst the mundane.  We have discussed plots, characterisation, themes, ideologies… but we have neglected to comment on the importance of opening sequences.  These set the tone of a show, build expectations, and grab an audience’s attention.  They are the sales pitch of TV Drama… if a show isn’t sold in these crucial first few seconds, the channel will be flicked.

Taflinger, R. (1996), Sitcom: what it is, how it works.  ONLINE at www.wsu.edu:8080/~taflinge/sitcom.html

www.facingthechallenge.org/buffy.htm

Week 11 –Sunday 15th December 2002

The history of South Africa is not one I am very familiar with.  Growing up, I was aware of Apartheid, Nelson Mandela’s metamorphosis from prisoner to president, a cultural revolution…  These were issues I knew of, but knew little about.  It was only recently that I began to understand the significance of the “New South Africa”.  The last week in November was “South African Week” in the Space.  Curiosity convinced me to go to He Left Quietly.  It was the true story of Duma Kumalo, a black South African imprisoned and sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit.  Hours before he was to be hanged, he was spared the death penalty.  The piece was emotionally evocative, a humbling experience, a disgusting tale of man’s inhumanity to fellow man.  I left the Space wondering how many stories of such injustice are surfacing in South Africa.  During this week’s lecture, Helena mentioned the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), whose purpose it is to hear the stories of the suppressed people of the scarred nation; people like Kumalo telling their stories, ordinary voices speaking on a historical stage.

Yizo Yizo, the viewing in class, is testament to this openness that is being encouraged in South Africa.  SABC produced Yizo Yizo to
“inform the public about what is really going on in township schools, that is to create an awareness of and stimulate debate about the state of learning and teaching in South African schools and to educate the youth about issues such as sex, crime and violence. ”

The article I read this week backed up what Helena had told us about the national debate Yizo Yizo generated, and illustrated the dangers of portraying social problems with such earnestness and realism.  The intent to increase awareness of the problems in township schools is commendable, but the degree of violence and the portrayal of criminality are questionable.  It seems the power of the show has not only been in generating discussion; worryingly, copycat crimes and delinquent behaviour have resulted.  The power of television must not be underestimated.  Yizo Yizo raises the questions of responsibilities of television producers to educate, but also to protect its audience.

I really enjoyed Yizo Yizo.  Last summer I was in Ghana for three months, and the African-made television I saw was absolutely awful.  To call it amateurish would be to insult the amateurs.  The television makers seemed to have no knowledge of pacing, shot composition, scripting or any other fundamental television making concepts.  The television drama did not reflect Ghanaian society; the characters lived in large houses, they were successful bankers or business owners and they drove flash cars.  We talked of how American television failed to reflect the real world during the 60s; Ghanaian television is also guilty of not representing the true nature of society; poverty, inequality, hardship.  Yizo Yizo seemed to give a fairer reflection of the status quo in township South Africa (after all yizo yizo means “that’s the way it is”). Through its characterisation, the show has managed to capture a wide cross-section of attitudes and beliefs.  This is a feature that we also identified and praised in Northern Exposure a few weeks back.

The screening on Friday was Six Feet Under.  I had heard mention of this show in class, but had never actually seen it.  I thought the premise of the show was quite daring.  Death and mortality aren’t concepts most people deal with easily.  To produce a comedy about death could be considered insensitive and offensive, but Six Feet Under isn’t the usual “comedy” in the mould of Seinfeld or Friends.  The humour is much darker and understated (not surprising given that the script was written by Alan Ball).  For some time I didn’t know if it was okay for me to laugh.  I had a feeling that I was breaking some kind of moral code by laughing, and this feeling of transgression actually added to my enjoyment of the show.  Beyond its thematic risk taking, Six Feet Under was notable for the emotional depth of the characters.  Whereas the characters in Friends, 3rd Rock From The Sun, That 70s Show operate in a single dimensional universe, the members of the Fisher Family are “fully-fleshed”.  Because audiences can recognise the humanity and ironies of life in the characters, permission is given to snigger at the characters and the situations they find themselves in.  Death is never laughed at directly.

http://www.unisa.ac.za/dept/kom/yizoyizo.htm

Week 12 – Wednesday 18th December 2002

Last year RTE launched two new comedies.  The first was hyped as the Irish Friends starring Ed Byrne but unfortunately it turned out to be The Cassidys.  Everyone was left disappointed; RTE were left to chalk up yet another failed sitcom.  Scheduled immediately after The Cassidys was the less publicised Bachelor’s Walk, and this on the contrary was quite a success story.

The shows premise is a simple one.  Three bachelors yearn and search for love in a modern Dublin City.   The storylines reflect this simple drive, but at the same time reflect and softly probe the intricacies of modern Irish life. The pacing is quite languid and slow, but never boring.  Rather than impose its plots, characters and humour on the viewer, Bachelor’s Walk gradually draws the audience in to the world of 49, Bachelor’s Walk.

Bachelor’s Walk was packaged as a comedy but the humour is so different from that of sitcoms that it is quite a novel viewing experience.  The humour does not stem from set pieces, but from the characters themselves.  They are all slightly deluded in their own way.  Their dialogue is natural banter and any jokes made are generated by the characters.  The jokes are usually quite innocent, but the emotional contract established between the characters and the audience makes the jokes “funnier”.  And then there’s the Barry Boland character…

Barry is the man who hid a refugee in his bedroom, built and destroyed a dot.com empire in his head, had a penchant for schoolgirls, lives in a camper van on the quays and is best of friends with a stray dog called Noel.  Keith McErlean who plays Barry was initially concern about “how to play a madman”?  He has managed to make the most clueless of the characters the most likeable.  He has a childlike manner to his behaviour, he is petulant and self centred, yet he is ever the optimist and never defeated.  The appeal of all the characters seems to be that they are fallible and ordinary.  I think that audiences like to be made feel superior in some ways to the characters on screen.  There is a perverse pleasure in watching characters complicate their lives when the audience, in all its wisdom, can see clearly which turns are the correct ones, and which roads should be walked.

The representation of Dublin city is one of the aspects of the show that I find most appealing.  I have never seen Dublin looking so attractive on television!  Bachelor’s Walk has managed to capture the energy and character of the streets and people of Dublin.  It comes across as a vibrant and fashionable city.  I think that key to achieving this is the spontaneity of the “guerrilla filmmaking” that was used in the shoot.  With a minimal crew and equipment, scenes were shot in recognisable locations, and the unsuspecting Dublin public has become an essential feature of the series.    I think it’s wonderful to be able to recognise the places and locations the characters frequent.  It adds to the “ordinariness” that imbues the show.  You almost expect to bump into the characters walking down the quay or through Templebar!

http://www.rte.ie/tv/bachelorswalk/

 
I do not wish to write a formal conclusion to these diary entries, because my learning journey is only just beginning!  From day one my impression of TV drama has been morphing and developing.  Each new show I analyse seems to turn up an area of TV drama that I hadn’t thought about and deserving of some form of reflection.

Overall, I have enjoyed this module; it has been challenging and informative.   The scope of the module demanded quite intensive study at times, in order to keep up with the decades, but ultimately it was rewarding, and I feel now that I have gained an understanding (albeit a general one) of television’s relationship to society.  More than the superficial learning of specific details pertaining to individual shows, it has been the governing forces behind TV drama that have interested me most.  The frameworks for thought that I have been exposed to have not only been relevant to TV Drama, but have been useful in other academic areas, as well as life in general.

I undertook this module with the desire to add a social dimension to my TV Drama analytical repertoire and I am happy I have done this, and had enjoyment doing in the process.