Summary FAM1000S Exam Notes: Television Section

Television




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,Television Narrative
Television narratives
 Are changing
 Old rules no longer apply
o Were defined by television structure in relation to films

Television: connectivity
- Unifies media + home
- Replace by numerous media technologies > laptops

Traditional television audiences
 Collective family viewing
 Access to events as they happen
o ‘liveness’
 Intimacy
 Viewers tune in at broadcast times

Television

- Episodic + serial
- Transient
- Often derivative
- Emphasizes a lack of narrative closure
- Narratives are smaller in scale + scope
 Realist not epic
- Domestic
- Analysing television
 As a medium > flow + segmentation
 Audiences
 ‘Liveness’
 Genres
 Narrative
 Flow
 Scheduling + serial nature of texts
 Characteristics of TV + audience’s experience
 Segmentation/fragmentation
 Individual shows broken by ads/short texts
 Groups of texts vs. Unique/individual texts
 Repetitious + routine
- Content
 Domestic concerns + commodities
 Privileges character over plot + familiarity over difference/escapist fantasy
 Intertextual + self-referential

2

,  Commercial + educational concerns
 Immediacy + reality > “reality genres”
- Style
 Dialogue driven > sound dominates picture in TV
 Predominance of close-ups + interior/staged settings
 Direct address > acknowledge + involve audience
 Conversational/informal tone
- The role of television
 Express cultural consensus + concerns
 Naturalise the culture’s dominant value system
 Celebrate/showcase/interrogate/justify the actions of cultural representatives
 Public figures
 Celebrities
 Politicians
 Reinforce + question societies ways of dealing with conflict
 Transmit a feeling of socio-cultural citizenship + involvement
 Extend range + reach of the viewer’s experience + sphere of moral concern
 Enrich our understanding of the world + global issues
 As our theoretical ideas about television develop, the medium also rapidly changes
- Television focuses on close groupings or relationships that become substitute families

Narrative complexity

- Definition
 Redefinition of episodic forms under the influence of serial narration
 Distinct narrational mode
 Predicated on specific facets of storytelling
 Challenging the norms of what the medium can do
- Narrative confronts television style
- Foregrounds ongoing stories across a range of genres
- Widens the scope of serialisation beyond the traditional model of the soap opera
- Influences
 Convergence of film + TV aesthetics > rise in critical reception of television narrative
drama
 Changes in TV programming away from syndication
 Changes in technology > viewing platforms

Difference between humour and comedy

- Comedy = genre
- Humour = element of any text/incident
- Comedy =
 The representation of an ignoble act that invokes disgust
 This manifests as some form of unjustified good fortune/inappropriate behaviour
 This doesn’t cause the viewer discomfort > recognised as a form of ridiculous


3

, - Forms of comedy
 Wit
Wordplay
 Cultural references
 “aristocratic aspect” of comedy (Frank Muir)
 Slapstick
 Action induces laughter
 Humour
 Observation of everyday life + people
- Humour as
 Immanent
 Psychological theories > humour is a reversal or destabilization of a state of
equilibrium which is then restored
 Negotiated
 Social theory where humour is contextualized + must be
encoded/decoded/interpreted/misinterpreted + reliant on social contexts +
permissions
- Comedy
 Comedy is about class
 Often upper classes are the object of scorn + humorous contempt
 Characters are stuck with one another
 Main characters
 Represent broad aspects of social personalities
 Often contrasting aspects
 Respond mechanically to stimulus from plot




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