This article seeks to build a bridge between approaches to television drama that explore form and style, and those that explore realism and representation. It proposes questions which can be applied to any television drama, and reveal meaningful distinctions. The argument is developed through comparative analysis of Sally Wainwright’s Happy Valley (2014‐present) and long-running British soap opera Coronation Street (1960‐present).
{"title":"Notes towards a formal and social poetics of television drama","authors":"James Zborowski","doi":"10.1386/jptv_00080_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jptv_00080_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article seeks to build a bridge between approaches to television drama that explore form and style, and those that explore realism and representation. It proposes questions which can be applied to any television drama, and reveal meaningful distinctions. The argument is developed\u0000 through comparative analysis of Sally Wainwright’s Happy Valley (2014‐present) and long-running British soap opera Coronation Street (1960‐present).","PeriodicalId":41739,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Popular Television","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49183283","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Despite its cultural significance, soap opera as a television genre has been in decline in the United States since the early 2000s. While the nature of its audience has been changing, the media landscape also has been drastically shifting because of the wide expansion of new media technologies. In this article, I survey these reasons and examine the current state of the genre. To do so, I first briefly examine the history of the genre before I review the significant cultural and social forces that reshaped the US media landscape and eroded the popularity of the genre in certain segments of the audience.
{"title":"Serial narratives in the new millennium: The decline and the future of daytime US soap operas","authors":"Ahmet Atay","doi":"10.1386/jptv_00074_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jptv_00074_1","url":null,"abstract":"Despite its cultural significance, soap opera as a television genre has been in decline in the United States since the early 2000s. While the nature of its audience has been changing, the media landscape also has been drastically shifting because of the wide expansion of new media technologies.\u0000 In this article, I survey these reasons and examine the current state of the genre. To do so, I first briefly examine the history of the genre before I review the significant cultural and social forces that reshaped the US media landscape and eroded the popularity of the genre in certain segments\u0000 of the audience.","PeriodicalId":41739,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Popular Television","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44362824","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This is an introduction to the Special Issue, inspired by the Histories and New Directions: Soap Opera and Serial Narrative Research conference at the University of York in July 2017. The event was conceptualized and organized by the editors of this Special Issue to gather media and cultural studies scholars, and generate a scholarly dialogue on the historical issues, current status and future directions of serial narratives and soap opera as a genre. The introduction outlines the seven articles in this issue, all of which revisit and expand on previous soap opera scholarship and its enduring appeal to audiences and fans. In asking questions about the aesthetics, audiences and industries of soap operas, the articles in this Special Issue highlight some of the key issues in soap storytelling and fandom such as community, pleasure and gender. Some of the articles also consider the impact of COVID-19 on the production and reception of soap operas.
{"title":"Histories and new directions: Soap opera/serial narrative research","authors":"Ahmet Atay, K. Gorton","doi":"10.1386/jptv_00073_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jptv_00073_2","url":null,"abstract":"This is an introduction to the Special Issue, inspired by the Histories and New Directions: Soap Opera and Serial Narrative Research conference at the University of York in July 2017. The event was conceptualized and organized by the editors of this Special Issue to gather media\u0000 and cultural studies scholars, and generate a scholarly dialogue on the historical issues, current status and future directions of serial narratives and soap opera as a genre. The introduction outlines the seven articles in this issue, all of which revisit and expand on previous soap opera\u0000 scholarship and its enduring appeal to audiences and fans. In asking questions about the aesthetics, audiences and industries of soap operas, the articles in this Special Issue highlight some of the key issues in soap storytelling and fandom such as community, pleasure and gender. Some of\u0000 the articles also consider the impact of COVID-19 on the production and reception of soap operas.","PeriodicalId":41739,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Popular Television","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44751610","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores the resilience of soap screenwriters and the resilient characters they create in soap opera through interviews with screenwriters on the Dublin-based soap opera Fair City (1989‐present). The article also draws on an interview with Brigie de Courcy, executive producer of Fair City, to highlight the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on soap operas. The interview reveals inherent characteristics of the soap genre, including the habitual viewing of its audience and the ways in which the soap narrative relies on the physical proximity of its actors. The interview also reflects the genre’s resilience and the resilience of the people who work within it.
{"title":"‘Storytelling is storytelling’: Resilience, gender and screenwriting in Fair City","authors":"K. Gorton","doi":"10.1386/jptv_00075_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jptv_00075_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the resilience of soap screenwriters and the resilient characters they create in soap opera through interviews with screenwriters on the Dublin-based soap opera Fair City (1989‐present). The article also draws on an interview with Brigie de Courcy,\u0000 executive producer of Fair City, to highlight the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on soap operas. The interview reveals inherent characteristics of the soap genre, including the habitual viewing of its audience and the ways in which the soap narrative relies on the physical proximity\u0000 of its actors. The interview also reflects the genre’s resilience and the resilience of the people who work within it.","PeriodicalId":41739,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Popular Television","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46940973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Australian soap Neighbours (1985‐2022) was in active production for nearly 40 years. As a piece of popular television, it is still syndicated internationally and also sold as a successful format for new works. Neighbours has also served as an outlet to launch new generations of Australian on- and off-screen talent. Despite these successes, Neighbours has been overlooked by tastemakers, academics and critics. This article places Neighbours in context within the Australian television landscape; going on to explore how the soap has responded during the rapid technological, industrial and cultural evolutions that have occurred since its beginnings in the 1980s. Importantly, Neighbours has featured a variety of different types of Australian characters with a variety of narratives, including working class, migrant, LGBTQI+, and blended families.
{"title":"Finding the ‘perfect blend’ in an undervalued genre: Considering the importance of ‘ordinariness’ in Australian soap opera Neighbours","authors":"L. Giuffre, Sarah Attfield","doi":"10.1386/jptv_00079_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jptv_00079_1","url":null,"abstract":"Australian soap Neighbours (1985‐2022) was in active production for nearly 40 years. As a piece of popular television, it is still syndicated internationally and also sold as a successful format for new works. Neighbours has also served as an outlet to launch new\u0000 generations of Australian on- and off-screen talent. Despite these successes, Neighbours has been overlooked by tastemakers, academics and critics. This article places Neighbours in context within the Australian television landscape; going on to explore how the soap has responded\u0000 during the rapid technological, industrial and cultural evolutions that have occurred since its beginnings in the 1980s. Importantly, Neighbours has featured a variety of different types of Australian characters with a variety of narratives, including working class, migrant, LGBTQI+,\u0000 and blended families.","PeriodicalId":41739,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Popular Television","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49616800","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
TV Azteca is one of the biggest multimedia conglomerations in Mexico. From its beginnings in 1993, TV Azteca knew it had to offer something different to audiences so they had a reason to tune in to its telenovelas. Things have changed significantly as TV Azteca announced in the middle of 2016 that it would no longer produce telenovelas. However, TV Azteca still has a vested interest in TV production via its super series. This research focuses on the political economy of production and development of telenovelas and super series, the effect of delineating quality television and the regendering of melodramatic narratives and heroines. It proposes that new content does not need to eradicate women’s stories and melodrama in the service of quality.
{"title":"From telenovelas to super series: Reflections on TV Azteca’s ‘improved’ content","authors":"Sofia Rios","doi":"10.1386/jptv_00077_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jptv_00077_1","url":null,"abstract":"TV Azteca is one of the biggest multimedia conglomerations in Mexico. From its beginnings in 1993, TV Azteca knew it had to offer something different to audiences so they had a reason to tune in to its telenovelas. Things have changed significantly as TV Azteca announced in the middle\u0000 of 2016 that it would no longer produce telenovelas. However, TV Azteca still has a vested interest in TV production via its super series. This research focuses on the political economy of production and development of telenovelas and super series, the effect of delineating quality television\u0000 and the regendering of melodramatic narratives and heroines. It proposes that new content does not need to eradicate women’s stories and melodrama in the service of quality.","PeriodicalId":41739,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Popular Television","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48484649","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The influence of soap operas on other forms of television narrative has long been remarked upon by television scholars, especially with regards to the increasing tendency towards serialized plotlines that contemporary dramas have exhibited over the last three decades. Nonetheless, the full impact of the soap opera form on the structural principles of ongoing television narratives is yet to be explored. A crucial part of this lineage is the privileged role granted to communities in soaps, a narrative strategy that has been embraced by an array of other types of serialized programming, including ‘premium’ dramas. Drawing on Christine Geraghty’s writing on soap operas’ construction of community, this article will examine how this storytelling strategy is reworked by contemporary ‘premium’ programmes. Using Orange Is the New Black (2013‐19) as a case study, I will explore how the patterns of interplay between the individual and the group can shape both the form and diegesis of a programme. I will analyse how Orange Is the New Black gradually shifts from being structured around a single protagonist to being structured around the community as a whole, demonstrating that the tension between individual and collective identities can be a productive force that proliferates and expands the narrative of a programme.
肥皂剧对其他电视叙事形式的影响一直被电视学者所关注，尤其是在过去三十年中，当代电视剧呈现出越来越多的情节系列化趋势。尽管如此，肥皂剧形式对正在进行的电视叙事结构原则的全面影响仍有待探索。这种传承的一个关键部分是社区在肥皂剧中被赋予的特权角色，这种叙事策略已经被一系列其他类型的系列化节目所接受，包括“收费”电视剧。借鉴Christine Geraghty关于肥皂剧“社区建构”的文章，本文将研究这种讲故事的策略是如何被当代“优质”节目重新设计的。以《女子监狱》(Orange Is the New Black, 2013 - 19)为例，我将探讨个人与群体之间的相互作用模式如何影响项目的形式和发展。我将分析《女子监狱》是如何逐渐从围绕单个主角的结构转变为围绕整个社区的结构，证明个人和集体身份之间的紧张关系可以成为一种生产力，它可以扩散和扩展节目的叙事。
{"title":"Serial communities: The dynamics between individual and collective identity in Orange Is the New Black","authors":"Kristina Graour","doi":"10.1386/jptv_00076_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jptv_00076_1","url":null,"abstract":"The influence of soap operas on other forms of television narrative has long been remarked upon by television scholars, especially with regards to the increasing tendency towards serialized plotlines that contemporary dramas have exhibited over the last three decades. Nonetheless, the\u0000 full impact of the soap opera form on the structural principles of ongoing television narratives is yet to be explored. A crucial part of this lineage is the privileged role granted to communities in soaps, a narrative strategy that has been embraced by an array of other types of serialized\u0000 programming, including ‘premium’ dramas. Drawing on Christine Geraghty’s writing on soap operas’ construction of community, this article will examine how this storytelling strategy is reworked by contemporary ‘premium’ programmes. Using Orange Is the\u0000 New Black (2013‐19) as a case study, I will explore how the patterns of interplay between the individual and the group can shape both the form and diegesis of a programme. I will analyse how Orange Is the New Black gradually shifts from being structured around a single protagonist\u0000 to being structured around the community as a whole, demonstrating that the tension between individual and collective identities can be a productive force that proliferates and expands the narrative of a programme.","PeriodicalId":41739,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Popular Television","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41353992","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Fans of teen drama television series often feel that their pleasures are devalued. The history of research into soap opera fans (the genre from which teen drama series derive) tells us that this is unsurprising, as women’s popular pleasures have long been denigrated. Gaining global popularity in the mid-2000s, teen drama fandoms have almost exclusively played out on social media, and this article asks how fans’ experiences of their ‘guilty pleasures’ might have changed in a social media age. The article argues that two things remain unchanged: (1) the stubbornness of gendered and classed assumptions about ‘acceptable’ forms of culture and (2) the policing of behaviour within fandoms. But a noteworthy change lies in the norms themselves; that is, laborious and emotional fan practices are now more valuable than ‘likes’ and other social media metrics, a shift that undoes decades-old understandings of acceptable attachments to popular cultures.
{"title":"Rethinking women’s guilty pleasures in a social media age: From soap opera to teen drama series","authors":"Y. Gerrard","doi":"10.1386/jptv_00078_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jptv_00078_1","url":null,"abstract":"Fans of teen drama television series often feel that their pleasures are devalued. The history of research into soap opera fans (the genre from which teen drama series derive) tells us that this is unsurprising, as women’s popular pleasures have long been denigrated. Gaining global\u0000 popularity in the mid-2000s, teen drama fandoms have almost exclusively played out on social media, and this article asks how fans’ experiences of their ‘guilty pleasures’ might have changed in a social media age. The article argues that two things remain unchanged: (1) the\u0000 stubbornness of gendered and classed assumptions about ‘acceptable’ forms of culture and (2) the policing of behaviour within fandoms. But a noteworthy change lies in the norms themselves; that is, laborious and emotional fan practices are now more valuable than ‘likes’\u0000 and other social media metrics, a shift that undoes decades-old understandings of acceptable attachments to popular cultures.","PeriodicalId":41739,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Popular Television","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42526343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores how young Qatari audiences perceive authenticity in Turkish television dramas. The concepts of authenticity and realism are used as analytical tools to examine empirical findings from twenty focus group discussions with students, in 2016 and 2017. The results reveal that young Qataris see Turkish serials as offering a more authentic representation of real life than local and regional television serials. Although Turkish drama serials do not provide a window into actual life within Turkish society, they are perceived as offering a realistic depiction of characters and storylines representing Turkey’s social life and culture. This article establishes that Turkish serials’ dubbing into a colloquial Syrian dialect has heightened audience experience of authenticity. The fact that Turkish dramas were created against the backdrop of a Muslim country with significant ethnic and cultural similarities further elevated the Arab audiences’ perception of authenticity.
{"title":"The interplay between authenticity, realism and cultural proximity in the reception of Turkish drama serials among Qatari audiences","authors":"Miriam Berg","doi":"10.1386/jptv_00068_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jptv_00068_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores how young Qatari audiences perceive authenticity in Turkish television dramas. The concepts of authenticity and realism are used as analytical tools to examine empirical findings from twenty focus group discussions with students, in 2016 and 2017. The results reveal\u0000 that young Qataris see Turkish serials as offering a more authentic representation of real life than local and regional television serials. Although Turkish drama serials do not provide a window into actual life within Turkish society, they are perceived as offering a realistic depiction of\u0000 characters and storylines representing Turkey’s social life and culture. This article establishes that Turkish serials’ dubbing into a colloquial Syrian dialect has heightened audience experience of authenticity. The fact that Turkish dramas were created against the backdrop of\u0000 a Muslim country with significant ethnic and cultural similarities further elevated the Arab audiences’ perception of authenticity.","PeriodicalId":41739,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Popular Television","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47185010","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article analyses three contemporary TV and streaming series that reimagine the Cold War era of the 1980s in a nostalgic mode: the docudrama Chernobyl (2019), the science fiction series Stranger Things (2016‐present) and the spy thriller The Americans (2013‐18). It argues that these productions rely on nostalgia and retro aesthetics in the service of an anti-communist imaginary and what Mark Fisher has called ‘capitalist realism’: the perception that capitalism is the only viable system of economic and political organization and, more crucially, that a coherent alternative to it has become unimaginable in our current, allegedly post-ideological, historical moment. The series present us with a past in which the future was still open ‐ when there were still alternatives to the paths now being taken, which are now foreclosed. As these series depict all ideologies as anachronisms, their nostalgic mode serves to continually reaffirm the capitalist belief system and to symbolically annihilate any socialist or communist alternatives, yet, at the same time, also reflects resistance to the contemporary neo-liberal order.
{"title":"Reimagining the Cold War: Capitalist realism, anti-communism and nostalgia in twenty-first-century TV and streaming series","authors":"S. Knewitz","doi":"10.1386/jptv_00071_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jptv_00071_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses three contemporary TV and streaming series that reimagine the Cold War era of the 1980s in a nostalgic mode: the docudrama Chernobyl (2019), the science fiction series Stranger Things (2016‐present) and the spy thriller The Americans\u0000 (2013‐18). It argues that these productions rely on nostalgia and retro aesthetics in the service of an anti-communist imaginary and what Mark Fisher has called ‘capitalist realism’: the perception that capitalism is the only viable system of economic and political organization\u0000 and, more crucially, that a coherent alternative to it has become unimaginable in our current, allegedly post-ideological, historical moment. The series present us with a past in which the future was still open ‐ when there were still alternatives to the paths now being taken, which\u0000 are now foreclosed. As these series depict all ideologies as anachronisms, their nostalgic mode serves to continually reaffirm the capitalist belief system and to symbolically annihilate any socialist or communist alternatives, yet, at the same time, also reflects resistance to the contemporary\u0000 neo-liberal order.","PeriodicalId":41739,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Popular Television","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47191689","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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